If you've seen Darren Aronofsky's intense, brilliant and horrific Requiem for a Dream, you'll be familiar with the soundtrack: terrifying violins heralding nothing good, performed by the Cronos Quartet.
Chances are though, even if you haven't seen it, you'll know the music. One of Clint Mansell's pieces from Requiem, called 'Lux Aeterna', has been remixed and redoubled and reused in any number of trailers and films. I noticed it this evening in a trailer for Sunshine, and it was also in The Da Vinci Code and Zathura. It's haunting when just performed by Cronos, but still works well with the full orchestra and chorus added for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
It's a wonderful piece of music, thoroughly worthy of being reheard often, but its regular appearance in other films does seem rather lazy, a way of summoning the fear of Requiem without any of Aronofsky's skill.
Requiem has the theme running through the whole film, frequently with variations and mutations, to accompany the steep descent into hell. It really makes you think of the characters rushing downwards to their fates, with its sliding strings and fast tempo.
But just as action movies' trailers are all scored with generic sub-Carmina Burana choirs shouting over a crashing orchestra, so do science fiction/fantasy/eventful dramas now appear all to be Lux Aeterna'd. The piece loses most of its nightmarish connotations when it is reused, now merely standing for 'loud' and 'frightening'.
It's hard to judge for yourself unless you've seen Requiem and felt the pit of your stomach fall away every time the theme appears. Still, here it is, used in a fan's recut trailer which gives some sense of the madness:
And here it is used in Sunshine's trailer.
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