THE Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest blockbuster film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness looks set to continue breaking records globally, following its huge debut on May 5.
On Friday, Disney revealed that the film had earned more than US$550 million (RM2.4 billion) worldwide during its first nine days of screening, making it one of the studio’s biggest blockbusters for the franchise.
In a recent interview with Yahoo Entertainment, composer Danny Elfman, who wrote the score for the film, revealed that there were a number of musical Easter eggs in the movie.
Aside from incorporating the classic X-Men theme song during a scene revealing X-Men founder Charles Xavier (a cameo by Patrick Stewart), Elfman also slipped in Michael Giacchino’s original Doctor Strange theme from the original 2016 film.
He also pulled out all the stops during another memorable sequence in the film, which shows Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) literally weaponising musical notes in a battle against a multiverse variant of himself, which Elfman said Marvel chief Kevin Feige explained to him was like a visual battle between Beethoven and Bach.
The film also marked Elfman’s reunion with director Sam Raimi. The two became friends after working together on 1993’s Evil Dead sequel Army of Darkness, and worked on four movies together over the next decade; however, they famously fell out after 2004’s Spider-Man 2.
Elfman said of his reconciliation with Raimi: “In a many-decade relationship, you’re gonna have moments where you go off-track, but what matters is that you love each other and you come together again. It’s just like a relationship with family.”
The composer famously met his wife [Bridget Fonda] on the set of Raimi’s Evil Dead sequel, and the two share a son together.
In fact, Elfman’s now-teenage son Oliver was ths main reason why he got involved in the MCU in the first place.
Elfman had been asked by his son to get tickets to the premiere of the 2015 film Avenger: Age of Ultron, and took on a job writing additional scoring for the film as a way to get invitations to the event.
