Bring Back Explainer Theme Songs for Movies, TV, and… Games?

Bring Back Explainer Theme Songs for Movies, TV, and… Games?

“It’s the story / Of a man named Victor…”

The idea that you may have to do “homework” before seeing a new movie, watching a new TV show, or playing a video game didn’t exist in the now-medieval-feeling days before high-speed internet. Sure, there were some exceptions to the general rule, like soap operas and the serial “mythology” episodes in Twin Peaks and The X-Files, but even those shows were able to consistently give new viewers a general idea of the premise of their shows before thrilling viewers with a story that had some sort of beginning, middle, and end.

And plenty of shows had the occasional special-two parter. where part one ended in a cliffhanger and part two tied it all up, but those were, well, special—that is, rare. Now, it seems like almost every episode of everything is just one chapter in some potentially never-ending story. This reflects a collective effort to make every movie, videogame, and TV show feel like an “important” part of a larger whole. But the strategy backfires when it leaves your potential audience with the impression that trying out a new TV show, movie, or book will leave them scratching their heads with confusion unless they bone up on the story so far first.

That’s why some are already scoffing at Marvel’s choice to release a list of 15 movies and TV shows that you should watch before checking out Avengers: Doomsday. Now, you might think that, this being the fifth Avengers movie, all you’d need to see is the fourth film to bring yourself up to speed. But no: It turns out that Doomsday will have an almost entirely new main cast, with large swaths of Endgame’s leads (like the Guardians of the Galaxy) being specifically tied to that film’s Thanos-centric plot and more or less irrelevant here. If you want to know who the new (or in some cases, quite old) protagonists of this movie are, you’ll have to watch everything from the recent Fantastic Four film, the second Black Panther movie, and even the old Fox X-Men films from 20 years ago.

That’s alienating and is sure to lose Doomsday at least a few casually interested viewers. Conversely, Spider-Man: Brand New Day did an excellent job of telling you everything you needed to know about this iteration of the character’s story so far in its opening scenes. No homework required! And as such, it’s become one of the fastest movies ever to make $2 billion in worldwide ticket sales.

But how well would the movie have fared if, instead of catching up viewers to the general gist of Spidey’s current dilemmas via organically weaving that info into the narrative, they went with the old-fashioned approach of doing that through an opening theme song? It used to be customary for every TV show to start with an opening credits roll that had some form of catchy tune behind it, and those songs usually told you everything you needed to know about the story so far to get on board. Sure, Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t technically an episode of a TV show, but as the ninth movie in Sony’s now-interconnected Spider-Man film franchise, and the seventh appearance of Tom Holland’s Spidey in a film, it might as well be one.

So, just as The Beverly Hillbillies opened with a song about a man name Jed (a poor mountaineer who barely kept his family fed), it wouldn’t have hurt to start Brand New Day with a number—maybe set to the classic ’60s Spider-Man cartoon theme—about “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, in self-imposed social ban. Lives alone, in a loft, punches hard, heart is soft.” That sort of thing.

It certainly seemed to work for the Brady Bunch when they made the leap from TV to movies, keeping their theme song intact for the jump, bringing in new fans and keeping old ones invested along the way. Of course, these new superhero movies are pretty serious. Doomsday, in particular, looks like it’s shooting for full-bore drama without a hint of levity in sight. But that, we say, is all the more reason to defy expectations with a catchy theme song that tells you all about Shuri, Sam Wilson, Cyclops, and of everyone else starring in this movie as it’s starting up. Get Tim Heidecker’s character from Ant-Man and The Wasp to sing it from a mountain top at the heart of the multi-verse. If you’re cowardly, make it a separate thing just for the internet to catch people’s eye. You can even call it (yuck) “Meme Humor” if you must. 

For cripes’ sake, just give people some sort of easy and fun way to learn everything they need to know before seeing your new movie. Life is too short for homework when the only reward in return for your studies is an imaginary degree in Nerd Fiction from the “I Understood That Reference” School of Arts and Sciences.