I figured out what was bothering me

In my recent review of "The Batman," I took time to, once again, dump on the talented composer Michael Giacchino who, like the way Otto Octavius describes Peter Parker in Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man 2," can be "brilliant but lazy." As I've noted before, Giacchino's work in 2004's "The Incredibles" was absolutely brilliant, showcasing his range and his ability to blend two genres of music—the spy genre and the superhero genre—into a single, coherent score. But when Giacchino is given an already-established intellectual property to score, he gets lazy. Remember his limp score for "Rogue One," which was part of the already-known Star Wars franchise? His score for the three new Spider-Man films, which build upon the collaboration between Sam Raimi and Danny Elfman (who did not score "Spider-Man 3")? I had the same reaction when I heard Giacchino's latest with "The Batman"—sort of a we've been here before reaction because Giacchino's score went for the same dark, brooding-yet-epic part of the brain targeted by Elfman and Hans Zimmer. And as Giacchino did with the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, he created one major leitmotif for "The Batman" and promptly beat it to death, playing it over and over again throughout the movie. So I was already not predisposed to liking Giacchino's score on that level, but something else was gnawing at me—something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then it hit me.

The leitmotif for "The Batman" was one I'd heard before. I'm not saying Giacchino consciously plagiarized the leitmotif; I think there's plenty of room for coincidence, here. But the leitmotif—or at least a form of it—does appear elsewhere, and in that other context, it serves the same purpose of conveying a sense of crushing inevitability.

Watch this clip from "The Batman" and listen to the BUM-ba-bum-bum leitmotif:

Now listen to this clip from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," especially as V'Ger's torpedo is about to hit the last Klingon battle cruiser:

Okay, granted, the music isn't quite the same, but you have to admit it's close, and that in both cases, the leitmotif serves to convey a feeling of impending doom. Maybe this doesn't bother you as much as it bothers me, but it bothers me a lot. And I hate being this critical of Giacchino because I think the man truly is talented when he's given free rein and doesn't lazily rely on the works of others as a template for his film scores.