{"id":2599,"date":"2026-06-26T16:08:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2599"},"modified":"2026-06-26T16:08:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:08:24","slug":"composer-john-powell-on-his-minions-monsters-score-overwrought-overplayed-overwritten-everything-was-over-exclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2599","title":{"rendered":"Composer John Powell on His \u2018Minions &#038; Monsters\u2019 Score: \u201cOverwrought, Overplayed, Overwritten. Everything Was Over\u201d (Exclusive)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<svg><\/svg> <span>Logo text<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<p>\n\tIt\u2019s the boiling point scenario every film composer sweats: playing your ideas\u00a0for the director for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2597\">MS NOW Shaking Up Weekend Lineup In Shift Toward Podcasts and Partnerships<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn many modern cases, it can be over the phone or over Zoom. For John Powell, who was on this day in early January sitting feet away from Pierre Coffin, the lead director of Illumination\u2019s <em>Minions &amp; Monsters<\/em>, it was in person.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a very dangerous moment,\u201d Powell says of the pivotal minute. \u201cIt can go so horribly wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tCoffin reached out to Powell, one of the preeminent animation composers known for his scores for <em>How to Train Your Dragon <\/em>and<em> Shrek<\/em>, to work on his first <em>Minions<\/em> movie. It was going to be the first feature in the <em>Despicable Me<\/em> franchise not scored by Heitor Pereira. Powell had flown to Paris and met with Coffin\u00a0at Illumination\u2019s offices, heard his wants and needs, spotted the movie, then started to write. Powell, remaining in the city, emerged a week later with some\u00a0musical\u00a0cues.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI said to him, \u2018OK, it\u2019s probably time you come and listen to some things,\u2019\u201d Powell recounted. \u201cAnd that moment is the difference between talking about music and then listening to music.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt\u2019s a moment either magical or embarrassing, where it\u2019s thumbs-up or back to the drawing board. And as to why he was subjecting himself\u00a0to\u00a0in-person\u00a0judgment, it was to make sure that\u00a0Coffin\u00a0was giving his honest assessment. \u201cHe could have been saying one thing and his body language would have told me how uncomfortable he was if it wasn\u2019t really working for him and if he was trying to be polite. And we didn\u2019t really have time for that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tPowell needn\u2019t have worried;Coffin loved what he heard. In early April, just under three months before the movie\u2019s July 1 release , Powell was on the Sony lot\u2019s Barbara Streisand Scoring Stage, giving direction and feedback as he commanded an army of recording engineers, mixers, orchestrators and music editors.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>Minions &amp; Monsters<\/em> sees the pint-sized yellow troublemakers in 1920s Hollywood trying to make a creature feature. The movie is \u201cwall-to-wall music\u201d according to Powell, and it let the composer indulge in various styles and eras he normally wouldn\u2019t be able to. Powell tried to capture Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age\u00a0and\u00a0its\u00a0musical\u00a0traditions\u00a0into one score, name-checking Franz Waxman (<em>Bride of Frankenstein, Sunset Boulevard<\/em>), Max Steiner (<em>King Kong, Gone with the Wind<\/em>), Carl Stalling (<em>Looney Tunes<\/em>), Bernard Hermann (<em>Psycho<\/em>) and John Williams (<em>Star Wars<\/em>)\u00a0as inspirations. And sure, why not throw in some Alexander Borodin and\u00a0Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky?<\/p>\n<p>\n\t(While he wasn\u2019t able to staff players who worked on those movies, obviously, he is pleased that he had some players who did music on <em>Animaniacs <\/em>and<em> Freakazoid!<\/em>, which had music by Stalling successor Richard Stone.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2595\">Michael J. Fox and Creator of Nickelodeon Green Slime Recognized in Order of Canada List<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tPowell then cranked everything to 11.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cOverly emotional, overwrought, overplayed, overwritten. Just over. Everything was over,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cIt helps elicits laughs [but] would be very dangerous if I was doing a serious film.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tPowell notes that\u00a0in\u00a0Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age, very dramatic music was the norm. Now, 70\u00a0to\u00a080 years later, the language of cinema has changed, and so has the audience\u2019s understanding of it.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cSo you come to this point where you have to do it very carefully now,\u201d he notes, speaking about the overblown music. \u201cUntil you get a call from Pierre who said, \u2018I want you to do that thing,\u2019\u201d And I said, \u2018You sure?\u2019 \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Oh yeah, absolutely.\u2019 It\u2019s not like any other <em>Minions<\/em> movie.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt was a massive music session, a rare sight on a Hollywood studio lot in a time\u00a0when\u00a0much of the scoring\u00a0had\u00a0moved not only out of Los Angeles but out of the country due to tax credits and other economic factors. For about three weeks, pure decadence in movie music time frame, the stage was filled with upwards of 80 musicians (30 violinists alone!) who played and replayed and replayed cues. On some days, an extra 25 brass\u00a0players\u00a0were brought in. Some days had extra percussion. Then there were the days with a 60-piece choir.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI hope everybody who reviews the score uses the word \u2018indulgent\u2019 because by God, it was,\u201d he says, laughing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAnd, he says, the recording of this score could only have been done\u00a0in Los Angeles, where talented movie musicians can be found in one place.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cOne of the things I said to the musicians at the very end was, \u2018Thank you for your time.\u2019 And I was saying this very much for everybody in the booth as well. It\u2019s like, we didn\u2019t just pay you for your time these\u00a0(three)\u00a0weeks. We paid you for the years and years and years and years and years it took for you to get to be good enough to be here. And that was the value.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2594\">Winners &amp; Losers: \u2018Supergirl\u2019 Crashes Out, \u2018House of the Dragon\u2019 Remains Meh<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tCheck out a featurette the <em>Minions &amp; Monsters<\/em> score below.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minions &amp; Monsters composer John Powell gives an Interview on his music for the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1817,2039,147,2040],"class_list":["post-2599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-minions","tag-minions-monsters","tag-music","tag-pierre-coffin"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Composer John Powell on His \u2018Minions &amp; Monsters\u2019 Score: \u201cOverwrought, Overplayed, Overwritten. Everything Was Over\u201d (Exclusive) - US Property Moves<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2599\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Composer John Powell on His \u2018Minions &amp; Monsters\u2019 Score: \u201cOverwrought, Overplayed, Overwritten. 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