The score is adequate, I never said it was a bad score, but it's not very good either. It's serviceable but not memorable and that's not in some "fanboy" opinion but in a musical sense. It's not like this criticism is just from people who watch comic book films, people who post on boards dedicated to film scores have the same opinions.
But as I said before, speaking musically, a film score doesn't HAVE to memorable to work for the film, as audio that enhances the visuals and amplifies the tone. For example, I love Clint Mansells score for 'Moon', which is so damn beautiful and eerie and cool all at once, and that score plays such an important role in setting the tone and mood for that film. Anyone who's seen it can tell you how important atmosphere is to that movie, so you can see it's importance, yet that's not 'memorable' in the sense that people keep talking about. It's not a John Williams type theme you hum as you leave the cinema, but it is CRUCIAL in amplifying the movie, and it's relatively simple as well, again,
musically speaking.
Also, back to the Iron Man score, for a strong, character driven film like that, you don't NEED a heavy duty score. I still prefer the IM score over IM 2 but I respect that IM 2 NEEDED a heavier score since it was a lot more action oriented. That said, the IM score still delivered on the action front, I think, because the whole score from Iron Monger's appearance onwards was great for an action score, and it did have reused familiar themes. When Stark decides to take off and fly straight up, the theme we'd already heard twice kicked in and as an audience we got that familiarity, knowing the character is in control of the situation. And, having just listened to that track, I can tell you it combines about 3 different themes in the one piece, you have Iron Man's theme, the Iron Monger theme and then the more context specific action theme. There's nothing half assed about it.
Also, a lot of you think you're being objective, but you're actually doing the opposite. Saying "I respect that you like it, but the score was incredibly generic" isn't objective at all, you're mixing opinions in there. You're saying you didn't like it, it didn't interest you musically, but to completely discount it's effectiveness as far as how it compliments the movie is really underanalysing it. Neither the instruments or the chord progressions make or break a movie score, and in a movie with so many character moments, having a loud, full textured orchestral score would be more likely to detract and create melodrama rather than the more truthful character development we got from RDJ.
