Misplaced Music in Movies

[dwightsteel]

The latest Star Trek

When young little Jimmy was driving the antique Corvette Stingray, cruising down the open road, blaring.... the Beastie Boys?

WTF?

actually, I kind of dug the usage of the Beastie Boys.

How? How does that fit at all, other than trying to be "hip" with the "kids nowadays"?

I suppose what I most object to on the basis of principle is that they didn't make the sound (for when i saw it anyway) come out of the radio in the car, it was more like background music. Sure make your case for it coming from the car, but then make it sound like its from the car, not background music.

...you realize that what they were doing is a commonplace musical insertion in most movies. Yeah, the music was supposed to be coming from the car, but they expound upon that giving it the spotlight as the scene progresses. That's because the song has some significance to the scene. In that scene the Beastie Boys, namely the song (which I believe was "Sabotage"), was meant to inspire a rowdy, youthful, disobedient tone, which fits with the attitude of our young Jim.

Sometimes it starts out just sounding on the radio, and grows into a set piece all its own. Sometimes it's made to look like it was supposed to be on the radio, but simply starts out as the main background tune. Sometimes it winds down into the radio after being a big part of the scene. Regardless, it was supposed to be recognized, it was never meant to be disguised. It had a purpose in the scene, regardless of how you felt about it.

I, personally, felt it was an appropriate use of the Beastie Boys, outlining the qualities of the scene I mentioned previous, as well as having a "classical" edge the same way the car does.

 

[manicfoot]

A few songs in Watchmen were so out of place. The big one is "the sex scene".

I concur. The film overall was good but MAN that was horrible! Sex scenes should not have organs playing in the background.. Oh, and the bit where the rocket that powers their ship goes off when he climaxes. Hilariously bad.
Also didn't like the 20 seconds of 99 red balloons. Felt random.

 

[timmytom1]

Leonard Cohen's version of Hallelujah in "The Watchmen", it's an adequate song but his version just didn't sit right.

Agreed it completely killed the scene off ,it left me LOLing for some reason,things were quickly redeemed though by the appearance of all along the watchtower

 

[L4hlborg]

To this day, I still have no idea why those songs were in the movie. The Radiohead one is borderline understandable, but Muse? I know WHY Muse was in the movie, but it just didn't fit at all.

IMO that part wasn't all that horrible. It actually fit ok. The movie wasn't all that horrible either. It had some good parts and the idea was ok, but the actors and the directore could have been a lot better. I'm not sure are you judging the movie or if the song fit in that scene, because imo that song fit there pretty well.

Going a bit off topic, the best fitting song to any movie I've pretty much ever heard is Down with the Sickness in Dawn of the Dead. Amazing match.

 

[Trivun]

I'd have to say the soundtrack in A Knight's Tale was annoyingly out of place.

Seriously...I was not aware that commoners in medieval England knew about Queen.

Well, the whole film was meant to be a parody of medieval England, such as the whole Geoffrey Chaucer/Paul Bettany drunken wastrel idea, and the idea of knights being like the football stars of the day. Sort of. Anyway, of course they knew about Queen, Queen are that awesome they transcend the laws of space and time in order to project their epicness even to the past.

I quite like the song and sequence at the start of Romeo + Juliet (the Baz Luhrman one), but when my parents tried to watch it with me (it's one of my favourite movies, for the record), they wouldn't watch it because they hated the bit at the start. Given the rest of the film, that's out of place a bit. But here's the song from the start anyway, so you know what I'm on about.

Spoiler: Pretty Piece of Flesh

This is the full version, only a shorter remix version is heard in the film.

 

[zen5887]

A few times movies will get songs that don't suit to create some emotional tention. Like in having a really happy song in a sad moment.

The Watchmen does this in pretty much every single scene there is music..