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Michael Giacchino and his Many Puns

Michael Giacchino is one of Hollywood's most in demand composers who has worked on massive franchises like Planet of the Apes, Star Trek and huge studios like Pixar and Marvel. He's next big project is the score for Matt Reeves' The Batman. What you might not know is that Giacchino loves to uses puns when he gives titles to his scores…


Giacchino's big movie break came with The Incredibles and on the whole has fairly typical titles for it's soundtrack. It's final track which plays over the title credits is 'The Incredits'.

It's 2009's Star Trek where the puns really come out with tracks including 'Enterprising Young Men', 'Nice to Meld You' and 'Does It Still McFly?'. Giacchino also got a lot of mileage out of the character Nero using his names for tracks entitled 'Nero Sighted', 'Nero Death Experience' and 'Nero Fiddles, Narada Burns'. He received quite a lot of criticism online for these titles with fans saying he wasn't taking the job seriously but a pun title doesn't mean he wasn't taking the composing seriously. Giacchino didn't let it bother him and continued with the puns for the soundtracks to Into Darkness and Beyond with titles such as 'Hitting the Saucer A Little Hard', 'Crash Decisions' and 'Par-tay for the Course'.

Giacchino has worked with Pixar numerous times and some of his best puns come from their output: Ratatouille gives us 'Granny Get Your Gun', Up has 'Kevin Beak'un' and in Coco there's 'Miguel's Got an Axe to Find' and 'A Family Dysfunction'. His best punning for Pixar comes in The Incredibles 2 with the likes of 'Helen of Ploy', 'Jack Splat', 'A Bridge Too Parr' and 'Hydrofoiled Again'.  

 For Marvel Studios Giacchino has given us 'Hippocratic Hypocrite' in Doctor Strange, 'On a Ned-To-Know Basis', 'No Vault of His Own' and 'Pop Vulture' in Spider-Man: Homecoming and 'The Magical Mysterio Tour' in Spider-Man: Far From Home.

The more you look the more you find. For example Jurassic World has 'Owen You Nothing' and 'Indominus Wrecks'. For me Giacchino's best titles come from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: 'Along Simian Lines', 'Caesar No Evil, Hear No Evil', 'Monkey See, Monkey Coup', 'Close Encounters of the Furred Kind' and my favourtie 'The Lost City of Chimpanzee'.

Even when he's not punning he's having fun with his titles. The first Lost album has a track entitled 'World's Worst Beach Party'. It's nothing special but any major fans of the Lost soundtracks might notice that there's also 'World's Worst Landscaping' on the second Lost album and 'World's Worst Car Wash' on the soundtrack for the final season. Searching through Giacchino's back catalogue will lead to endless further examples:

  • 'World's Worst Last 4 Minutes to Live' (Mission: Impossible III)
  • 'Galaxy's Worst Sushi Bar' (Star Trek)
  • 'World's Worst Field Trip (Super 8)
  • 'World's Worst Parking Valet' (Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol)
  • 'World's Worst Animal Shelter' (Zootopia)
  • 'World's Worst Road Rage' (Speed Racer)
  • 'World's Worst Water Feature' (Spider-Man: From Home)
Giacchino has also made a few cameos on screen- he scored Tomorrowland and played an operator of 'It's a Small World' (which might explain his later track 'It's a Small Jurassic World'). Also in 2015 he appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as First Order Stormtrooper FN-3181 and later reprised the role- not in another Star Wars film but in Ralph Breaks the Internet.
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