Avengers: Age of Ultron (Brian Tyler & Danny Elfman)


In 2015, Joss Whedon returned to direct this Avengers sequel. This music though, had quite a complicated journey. Instead of having Silvestri return, Marvel chose to continue working with Brian Tyler (who had scored two other Phase 2 films). Tyler incorporated his great Iron Man theme, but instead of using Silvestri's iconic ensemble theme, he instead composed a new Avengers theme, as well as a motif for Ultron. The film went through reshoots, and according to rumor, Tyler was at this point involved with another film for a different studio, and either Marvel was unhappy with his musical direction, or begrudged the fact that he broke exclusivity to work on a rivaling project. Instead of having him return to rescore portions of the film, they brought veteran Danny Elfman on to rescore large portions of the film, re-incorportating Silvestri's thematic material (though providing his own glorious spin on it as well). Most of Tyler's score eventually surfaced online, and it is indeed interesting to compare the results side by side. Fortunately, despite the tumultuous process behind the scenes, the finished work by both composers is top-notch and surprisingly cohesive stylistically.


So, I certainly didn't set out to set a record this early, but here you go--eight (8) covers to enjoy! My original was actually #6 below, but since I'm now following this foolish notion of providing variety and options, and since there was a whole plethora of fantastic artwork to choose from, I had to keep going.

The original soundtrack cover is fine, though the text is a tad dull and the cropping is very tight. My remake gives the image more breathing room and hopefully pops more. The next image of the "A" logo was relatively simple, just adding the previously used fonts and the title in the center of the image. The third image involved some editing, as the original poster featured Ultron towering behind our heroes. Sadly, for composition reasons with artwork featuring so many characters, he had to go.

The second set of covers use the character posters for Steve and Tony, and I assigned one per each composer--in case anyone wants to separate Tyler's original intended score from the rest of Elfman's contributions.

The sixth image is a lovely painted poster, though took some work to compose with such a busy image. Again, I had to remove poor Ultron from the image, and then isolate and reposition most the characters in the bottom half of the image to make space for the title and just tighten the design overall. I'd had an early design trying to keep the Hulkbuster face-off, but again--too busy visually. 

The seventh image took some reconfiguring, as again, things had to be tightened significantly to fit a square shape. Most of the characters had to be cut out and repositioned, and then blended back smoothly into whatever's behind it, which takes some time. 

Fortunately the final design was relatively painless. I basically kept the same basic fonts through most of these, though I always spend hours going back and forth doing minor adjustments in placement, color, outlines, shadows, etc. to find what feels right for the specific artwork it's accompanying. I did find that adding a red drop-shadow to the "Age of Ultron" subtitle made it pop nicely in several images. Ironically, with artwork this good, there's still plenty more covers I could make, but I have to draw the limit somewhere, gang. Hope you enjoy. 

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