Dog Days Archives - This is All Donnie Darko's Fault: Hollywood Needs to Get Over 'Dark' Covers of Your Favorite Retro Hits

The new 'Willy Wonka' has me thinking of this piece from two summers ago.

After going to the movies two weeks in a row with Mission: Impossible - Tom Cruise, Cinema Saver Part One and Barbie, I feel like I’ve gone a decade back in time. It is quite the feat, considering I went to the movie theater maybe three times total since good ol’ 2020 (I learned my Indy lesson with Kingdom of the Crystal, so that movie isn’t getting me back).

With Barbenheimer pacing blockbuster numbers we rarely see these days, it might seem like a trip to the cinema is back in fashion. But I don't see that being the case between the studios being on the wrong side of the writer’s strike while continuing to spew out IP fodder.

Another old habit that the studios and movie trailer creators can’t help but return to is regurgitating old classics to soundtrack trailers and hopefully pulling you into a story you’ve seen a million times. With 28 million YouTube views, I’m sure you’ve already seen the Wonka trailer.

If you live in a cave, which, good for you, here’s an update. Warner Bros./Discovery/Shark Week/Flavortown Purveyors Corp. is sending studio man Timmy Chalamet to Diagon Alley this December. Since this version of the Potterverse features Willy Wonka, the trailer includes a swelling orchestral version of “Pure Imagination” from Gene Wilder’s classic outing, meant to send chills up your sentimental spine. It may have worked on me, but that could have been the air conditioner kicking in. Oooh, yeah, the real reason to take in a summer movie.

This got me thinking back to an article I wrote about this phenomenon two years ago, about how Donnie Darko kickstarted this industry plague. My brain is boiling, so please enjoy this piece from the archives.

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We’ve all been there before: you come across a new movie trailer, and as the studio logos pass by, the sound of softly tickled piano keys sets in. “This melody sounds familiar,” you think to yourself. Then, feminine or choir vocals sing with dread, “We don’t need no education.. we don’t need no self-control.”

Godammit, it’s another edgy ‘dark’ cover of a pop song.

Hollywood lives on tropes, and this trend is one of the worst offenders on the scoring side of the industry. Sure, the New Mutants trailer was made three years before this throwaway studio film was released and when this trend was going full steam, but Hollywood can’t get enough.

This column was already in motion when I woke yesterday to the news that Marvel’s Black Widow will score its opening scene featuring a new ‘dark’ cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

I emphasize “new” because even the artist that covered this updated version thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. Per singer Malia J’s interview with former music site turned millennial Us Weekly, Consequence.com:

“We honestly thought it was a joke and didn’t immediately respond,” she says. “A different version of this cover has been circulating in the TV/film industry since 2015, and I can only speculate that someone from their camp was a fan and wanted to put it in the movie!”

Tori Amos released a piano cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” back in 1992, and almost 30 years later, we’re still feasting on the same old tripe. The only time this song is done correctly is by The Muppets:

The decade has been prime for this ‘dark’ pop cover trend, but one has to go back to 2001 to find its roots.

While scoring the low-budget cult classic Donnie Darko, the composer Michael Andrews wanted to include a vocal cover that would fit the film’s instrumental score. Recruiting former bandmate Gary Jules, the duo recorded a slow piano cover of Tears for Fears’ 1982 smash hit “Mad World.”

The mummy’s curse had been released from its tomb.

While I have come to resent this cover, especially when someone throws it on the jukebox and kills the vibe (this happens more often than you think), I can appreciate Jules’ and Andrews’ cover working for the movie’s atmosphere. It was made at a time when this wasn’t a dead horse-beaten meme. However, the Donnie Darko version pulls out all of the 80s oddity and enthusiasm that made the Tears for Fears song a classic while birthing this relentless trend.

This dismal attempt remained a unique approach until 2009 when The Last House on the Left remake included a ‘dark’ cover of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine.” From here, the trend took off with Scala & Kolacny Brothers turning in mopey covers of “Creep” by Radiohead and “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica in The Social Network and Zero Dark Thirty trailers, respectively.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” isn’t alone in multiple uses of the same cover. Jetta’s cover of Ten Years After’s Vietnam classic “I’d Love to Change the World” is used for Terminator: Genysis, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and Nightcrawler, another Jake Gyllenhaal vehicle. Or, how about Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” featured in Geostorm, Dolittle, Insurgent, and the Netflix show, The OA? Impending doom noted, folks.

Hollywood has ‘dark’ pop cover fever. For some reason, studios and trailer houses believe nothing says “see this movie” like a drab, apathetic piano tapping out something you’ve heard a million times. A decade-plus is more than enough, and there must be another solution.

Maybe include the original hits if you want pop music in your movie?

James Gunn successfully loaded Guardians of the Galaxy with old vinyl hits. The soundtrack to the first film is the third highest-selling record of the last decade, only behind the dorm room classics of Abbey Road and Dark Side of the Moon. Quentin Tarantino has always approached his soundtracks in this organic way. His last compilation of golden age rock hits and AM radio commercials led to the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood soundtrack charting for nine weeks.

A simple request, though. Please don’t substitute ‘dark’ pop covers with more Hans Zimmer BRAAAMS.

If you disagree and have a ‘dark’ cover that made a film better, let me know in the comments.