What was the point of the Rhianna song?
- Thread starter DertyNerdy
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Hey now, maybe it did. Are most Rihanna fans 40 or older??? If so, they came in spades!!!
Annoying you, apparently.
It's been done at least since the 1950s.
The point was to create awareness of the movie, and it did that. To those who say it didn't bring in viewers, how do you know?
Its position in the end credits was ideal. I mean, there's nowhere else it would fit unless it was playing in the background in some spacebar.
As music it starts well, then becomes somewhat monotonous, but it's still okay. I'd rather hear that than Giacchino pretending he knows how to write for an orchestra.
I only heard the song about a week before I saw the film and when I heard it, I did wonder what it had to do with the plot. After all, a sledge-hammer isn't really Trek tech (and admittedly part of me wanted to hear Peter Gabriel when I heard the title). However I did like the song and it did seem to fit the end credits of the film nicely.
I don't object to them trying to draw in more Star Trek fans though and even if one Rihanna fan is now a Star Trek fan then it's not bad news. I can't see people stopping liking Star Trek or Rihanna because of the tie-in.
I don't object to them trying to draw in more Star Trek fans though and even if one Rihanna fan is now a Star Trek fan then it's not bad news. I can't see people stopping liking Star Trek or Rihanna because of the tie-in.
It's been done since the beginning of sound film, and I mean that quite literally. The first "talkie" was a musical, The Jazz Singer. Many early comedies and romantic movies prominently featured songs that were highlighted by name in the opening credits. And most of the early sound cartoons were basically music videos, built around and named after songs from their studios' libraries. That's why Warner Bros.' cartoon series were named Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies -- because they were originally based on songs, before they shifted to being built around popular characters and comedy scenarios.
And yes, it was always about selling records, or selling sheet music so people could play the tunes themselves (something that was more popular in the past than today). The studios put these songs in their movies and cartoons in order to promote them, or songwriters and promoters sold studios the rights to their songs in order to publicize them in movies. Before movies, they did it in vaudeville.
And, before those, Disney's Silly Symphonies, in the making of which animator Ub Iwerks and composer/arranger Carl Stalling developed many of the techniques they would later use in the WB cartoons.
It's a publicity thing. The idea is not that it will lure Rhianna fans to the movie just to hear the song. The idea is to increase awareness of the movie among the general public, beyond the usual sci-fi crowd. People see the publicity about the Rhianna connection, they watch the music video, and they hear about the movie. It's advertising.
Plus, if you're lucky, you get a hit song, a hit soundtrack album, and maybe even a Best Song nomination. See TITANIC and "My Heart Will Go On."
And, honestly, it was worth a try. Remember, not too long ago people were complaining that Paramount wasn't doing enough to promote the movie. Now we have a big-name pop star promoting the movie and that's an issue?
Can't win for losing, I guess.
True, of course, but I think those pretty much kept their musical focus throughout, while Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are mostly known today for being more comedy-focused, so the origin of their names has been obscured. Then again, I'm not much of a Disney fan, so I can't say for sure if the Silly Symphonies title went through the same kind of change.
MGM also had a range of cartoons in the same vein. They called them Happy Harmonies. In fact, the last few were written as Silly Symphonies but when Disney refused to buy all but one of another series of cartoons they'd created, they sold them to MGM instead.
I know movies have been associated with songs (even before sound movies) - what I meant was the idea of a cross-promotional song used for a film which is not a musical. I was thinking specifically of Doris Day, who would often record a single which would be released at the same time as the movie, but might only be heard in the opening credits of the actual film.
And that's what I mean too. A musical, presumably, means a production that has multiple songs throughout, or that carries much of the story through song. What I'm talking about is the practice of comedy or romance films having just one or two songs prominently featured in the soundtrack in order to promote them. Most of the film would be presented straight, but there would be one or two musical interludes where the story would pause to feature the song. For instance, this was routine in Marx Brothers movies. The Marx Brothers classic A Night at the Opera featured the song "Alone," both as a serenade performed by the film's young lovers to each other and as the tune Harpo played in his harp solo, and it went on to become a hit because of its inclusion in the movie (if I recall Leonard Maltin's DVD commentary correctly). I doubt you could find very many '30s comedies or romances, or even dramas or Westerns in many cases, that didn't have featured songs.
Although they managed to work "Que Sera Sera" into the plot of her Hitchcock movie.
But, yes, adding a pop song to the closing credits has going on for ages. Just a glance at my movie soundtrack collection indicates that they did it for THE MASK OF ZORRO, THE SHADOW, ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES, etc. Heck, many people don't even remember any more that Michael Jackson's song "Ben" started out as the title song to a 1972 horror movie about a killer rat!
My wife had pet rat named Ben as a child. Named for the rat in the movie/song.Heck, many people don't remember any more that Michael Jackson's song "Ben" started out as the title song to a 1972 horror movie about a killer rat!
I'm still traumatized by the fact that my sixth-grade music teacher, who was trying to teach us all that lovely song, didn't believe me when I kept insisting that it was actually about a man-eating rat!
It's like she thought I was just some weird horror-obsessed kid or something!
(Oh, have you seen the new GHOSTBUSTERS yet? Check out the movie marquees in the Times Square scene--just for a blast from the past.)
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