Overuse of background music in Oppenheimer

[u/CoverZealousideal876]

Just finished watching Oppenheimer and while I generally liked it (at least at first), what really started to bother me as the movie progressed was the seemingly never-ending background music. At first I thought "cool, some visionary shit happening and epic music" but it just kept going on and on and on... Then I started paying more attention to it, which just took me out of it and kind of destroyed the movie for me.

Close to every single scene has background music - I think if there's 20 minutes of the movie's total 3 hours running time without any that would already be much. It was so excessive that near the end I started longing for a moment where I could just hear people talking without annoying noise lingering in the background. The right music at the right time can elevate a scene and even an entire movie and make it so much greater, but when it's there literally all the time I find it self-defeating. Am I the only one that was bothered by this?

[u/Marvel_Fanatic_]

This is such an interesting take because the score elevated the film for me, Ludwig Göransson is now one of my favorite composers.

[u/EliteACEz → u/Marvel_Fanatic_]

yeah honestly the music is one of my favourite things in the film and if it didn't have much of it at all I know I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I do.

[u/CoverZealousideal876 → u/Marvel_Fanatic_]

And it also did for me at first, but when you use music and try to evoke emotion all the time, it stops enriching and just becomes exhausting. At least that is what it did for me in this movie.

I'm not saying the music was bad btw, not at all. There was just too much of it, if that makes sense.

[u/Jake11007 → u/CoverZealousideal876]

That’s my favorite part, works perfect for me, everyone’s different. It’s a big reason I love Nolan films.

If it doesn’t work for you though it doesn’t work, no problem with that, it’s dumb that you’re getting downvoted.

[u/JPVSPAndrade1]

for me the score made the movie even better

[u/CartmanAndCartman]

That’s how Nolan movies are. You should watch tenet.

[u/KiwieKiwie]

You are definitely in the very small minority who didn’t like it. Fair enough you didn’t enjoy it. Most people did.

[u/superslider16]

I think it does affect some scenes - in particular I think it undercuts Damon’s delivery of the line about how it’s the most important project in the history of the world, as the music and the dialogue are about at the same level in the mix at that point.

[u/LoverOfStoriesIAm]

No.

[u/WasabiAficianado]

And that’s a sign the sound guy can’t make sense of the film. Can you?

[u/Edward_LeWard]

Yeah and the trombones are overused, think about it though, if they took away the background music during those imagine how goofy it would sound😭

[u/korach1921 → u/Edward_LeWard]

Months and months ago I took the Blu-Ray and extracted the center channel out (Nolan usually has super clean center channels) and it was so much easier to follow and more engaging without the score