Let me tell y’all a quick story. The story of how I caught James Newton Howard plagiarizing his own music.
It is not Witcher related, but it is fandom related and hopefully it’ll make you laugh.
Picture this: The year is 2003. I am 7 years old and I have a mad case of undiagnosed ADHD that is beginning to rear its lovely head. This is the year the live action Peter Pan movie comes out, starring Jeremy Sumpter. I see it in theatres no less than three times because my life-long hyperfixation was/still is Peter Pan and all things Peter Pan related (if you want to hear me go buckwild… hmu about my boy Petey).
ANYWAY, I love the soundtrack so much that I absolutely beg my mother to buy it for me on iTunes so that I may 1) burn it onto a disc because it’s 2003 and 2) put it on my shitty Meijer-brand mp3 player. She is gracious enough to do so for me because sometimes she’s cool.
I listen to that soundtrack every. Fucking. Day. Every afternoon after having lunch I take my mp3 player and my aux-cord Hello Kitty speaker out to the trampoline, turn on that music, and pretend I’m Peter Pan by double-bouncing myself and landing flat on my back (a weird attempt at the sensation of flight).
Every. Day. All. Summer.
So by the time my eighth birthday rolled around that August I knew that shit by heart. Every single song.
Cut to 12 years later. My family goes to see Mockingjay Part 2 in theatres because I was 7 in 2003, which means I lived through PEAK Hunger Games popularity (yes I pre-ordered the last book in middle school. I hated the ending so much that I threw it across my bedroom and broke a lamp, but I digress).
As they tend to do, the movie ends, and we’re all standing up to get our shit together when… I hear it.
It’s one of my favorite orchestral pieces from the Peter Pan OST: “Learning to Fly”. I know it’s that song because Wendy and Peter have a whole little moment at this point in the music.
But it can’t be, because this is “Track 19 (Final Credits)” on the Mockingjay: Part 2 soundtrack.
But my ears have not deceived me in the slightest; the proof is still playing right in front of me. Blasting from way too many high definition speakers. James Newton Howard thought he could pull a fast one on his audience. He thought he could just copy one of his own pieces because 12 years is too long for anyone to remember that short 11 seconds worth of music. Right?
WRONG, JIMMY! I REMEMBER. This singular Midwestern bitch with a mad case of ADHD remembers.
And now the rest of you know, too.
