Like a few other people in this crazy world, I went off and saw the latest Marvel film, Thunderbolts*, in an honest-to-Lincoln movie theater. And since it was an Alamo Drafthouse, and since I got there early, I got to see their neat little reel of pre-movie entertainment, videos and interviews and clips that went with the film I was about to see. And among interviews with the stars and Red Guardian's limo service ad and a surprisingly Mad Hatter-less recap of Sebastian Stan's acting career, there was a music video for Starship's song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now."
From 1987.
And I wondered, why would you include this track in a montage about Thunderbolts*? After all, as the music video clearly shows, this was a song that was most associated with the comedy film Mannequin that also came out in 1987. The music video makes no sense in general, but makes even less sense when you realize it's the band Starship actually interacting with scenes from Mannequin. Why was this in my Thunderbolts* pre-show?
Then I watched the movie and right at the end, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship plays over the credits. And there I was, sitting in a theater in May of 2025, watching a movie that was released in 2025, spotlighting a song that's just shy of 40 years old. In fact, it's one of only two songs on the soundtrack with vocals, the other being Ginuwine's "Pony" that was released in 1996. That one's 29 years old.
Here's the fact you can't escape: with some very high-profile exceptions, Marvel makes movies that are targeted at older audiences. Hell, I'm going to say it: Marvel makes movies that are targeted at old people, and their choice of soundtracks reflects that.
And here's my thesis statement: Marvel movies have soundtracks that use established older track — even when they don't make sense thematically — to appeal to Boomers, Gen X, and older millennials (people with income to spend) rather than younger audiences. Again, with a few notable exceptions, Marvel movies are clearinghouses for old tracks and the occasional bone thrown to the youth by recording something new specifically for the film. It's odd. It feels like someone bursting into your rave shouting, "Don't you kids just LOVE jazz records? Wanna hear some more JAZZ?"
(And that's with me loving jazz, but I appreciate that it is of its time and isn't appropriate for tha club.)
It wasn't always like this either. The '90s and '00s were famous for their soundtrack albums that included the bleeding edge of music, music so new that it wasn't even included in the movie itself. It was the time of "music from and inspired by the motion picture" which is just fancy talk for "Hey, we have these unused tracks by artists the label is trying to promote, and we have 40% of an album to fill." We got some killer tracks back then — the Batman Forever soundtrack gave us both "Kiss from a Rose" by Seal and "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," the only song by U2 I can stand.
It made sense that 2008's Iron Man included the song "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath, because, well, people have long associated it with the character. That song gets a pass, but it was 38 years old when the film was released. The big showpiece song was "Back in Black" by AC/DC, which was a spry 28. Suicidal Tendencies' "Institutionalized" made it to the soundtrack at age 25. Marvel could be applauded for putting a Ghostface Killah song in the film, however it was written specifically for Iron Man and namechecks Tony Stark and RECAPS THE PLOT OF THE MOVIE. Also, Ghostface was probably chosen for this honor because he released an album called Ironman twelve years prior in 1996.
2010's Iron Man 2 followed up on this with three more AC/DC tracks, two of which came out before I was born in 1980, two Clash songs which were collectively 59 years old, and spring chicken "California Love" by Tupac, which was 14. And the trends continued through the first wave of Marvel films. 50% of the songs in 2011's Thor were from 1980, which is because there were only two songs in the film and one was the Foo Fighters' "Walk" which can be argued was written to coincide with the film (Thor released in May, the single for "Walk" released a month later).
Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 was pure Boomer bait, with a soundtrack compiled by James Gunn that only used songs that were released pre 1980, making the entire soundtrack a minimum of 44 years old. Fans loved it, it was pure nostalgia. It was 100% in line with the K-TEL "greatest hits by the original artists" albums that…were released in the 1970s. People rediscovered bands like Redbone and Blue Swede. In this case, the age of the tracks was excused by the plot of the film: the main character left Earth before any newer songs were released, so everything had to be oldies.
But just three years later, disaster struck in the form of Spider-Man: Homecoming. Here was a movie about teenagers, in high school, acting like high schoolers, doing high school things like going to dances and on field trips. This was the movie that was supposed to appeal to the youth of the world and say "Hey kids! We see you! Here's a superhero just for you!"
Here's what we got, and the age of the song at the time of the film's release in 2017:
- The Rolling Stones, "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" - 46 years old
- Traffic, "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" - 46 years old
- The Ramones, "Blitzkrieg Bop" - 41 years old
- The English Beat, "Save It For Later" - 35 years old
- A Flock of Seagulls, "Space Age Lovesong" - 35 years old
The only song that would have been just slightly current with the high schoolers of 2017 might be Spoon's "The Underdog." That came out in 2007, and just maybe those kids had parents who were big into Spoon when they were about 7 years old. At age 10, it was the most current song ON AN ALBUM ABOUT KIDS. The two oldest of these tracks were three times the age of a high schooler in 2017.
The follow-up film, Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019 was just as bad. Another Ramones track, "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" was 43 years old, "Town Called Malice" by The Jam was 37, the same as "Vacation" by the Go-Go's. Whitney Houston's 1996 cover of "I Will Always Love You" was 27, the Dolly Parton original marking the calendar at 45 years old. Once again, AC/DC's 39-year-old anthem "Back in Black" makes an appearance.
Amidst all of this, Marvel figured its shit out. In 2018.
The soundtracks for the animated Spider-Man films Into the Spider-Verse in 2019 and Across the Spider-Verse in 2023 broke the tradition. These albums would shock the Boomers and Gen-Xers expecting more Traffic and the Ramones. (It should be pointed out that Traffic's "Dear Mr. Fantasy" opened Avengers Endgame in 2019, a song so good that it's still being used in films 52 years after its first release) Here we had songs written and recorded specifically for these films by today's stars, names like Nicki Minaj, Post Malone, and Jaden Smith. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse debuted at the fifth spot on the Billboard top 100, with Post Malone's single "Sunflower" reaching number one.
The follow-up album, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, didn't replicate the massive success of the first, but still, here were today's artists putting out music that reflected today's trends and styles. This was a conscious decision from Marvel to feature artists that reflected the Black/Latinx background of the movie's hero, Miles Morales.
2018 also saw the release of Black Panther, with another soundtrack that leapt to the top of the Billboard charts. The globe-spanning sound combined musicians from across Africa and Saudi Arabia with acts like The Weekend, SZA, and SOB X RTE. This was all headed up by Kendrick Lamar, Sounwave, and frequent Ryan Coogler collaborator Ludwig Göransson, who took home an Oscar for it (Lamar, Sounwave, and SZA were nominated as well). This was a modern triumph and another massive step away from Marvel's live-action music output.
But it was a lesson in success that Marvel didn't learn. The same year as Black Panther, Marvel released Ant-Man and the Wasp, containing songs from the past like "C'mon Get Happy" (the 1970 Partridge Family theme), "Spooky" (a 1967 Classics IV song recorded a year later by Dusty Springfield), and two songs by Morrissey (one being 30 years old). Avengers: Infinity War landed at the tail end of the year and contained literally a single song, "The Rubberband Man" by the Spinners, a song that was 42 years old in 2018.
What Marvel is saying, in essence, is that some films are not for everyone. If they were, hip-hop tracks would be peppering the mainstream Marvel live films. Instead, in the year of our Lord 2025, we're getting "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" as the big climactic song in Thunderbolts*, probably the least offensive track ever to star in a Marvel movie. I've seen it said online that oh, using a stale '80s hit for this collection of past-their-prime backup heroes is supposed to be some kind of ironic reflection, but when it's fucking par for the course with EVERY SINGLE MOVIE YOU RELEASE that argument falls flat. Grace Slick and the rest of Starship get a payday and once again the audience gets another moldy oldie dragged out of dad's record collection.
I embedded it again because the video absolutely sucks.
And I want to be clear: I don't think the songs themselves are bad songs. There's something to be said for timelessness, and hey, I listen to Traffic, the Ramones, the Rolling Stones, and the Clash. I'm also 45 years old. I was there for the '90s resurgence of the psychedelic '60s with Woodstock '94, the backlash to pop punk that re-elevated the Clash and the Ramones, and the post-ironic reassessment of '80s pop that we laughed at for years. Who was the soundtrack to Spider-Man: Homecoming supposed to be for, if not for people who are 45 and older? What is that saying about who Marvel thinks their audience is?
I don't think it's a matter of pointing a finger at any one person. These things do get decided by committee and Disney is famous for having such committees micromanaging every aspect of a film. But it begs the question, "Has the person in charge of scoring Marvel films heard any music from the past 10 years?" Because the evidence suggests that they haven't, that they're coasting on musical knowledge gained up until a certain point, then handing "certain projects for certain audiences" over to someone who knows who Lil Wayne is. Is it a lost opportunity? Almost certainly. Is it playing the game so safe that you risk coming off as a dinosaur? Entirely.
The audience does nothing but age, that can't be stopped. By continually reaching back for these older touchstones, Marvel just keeps making tame films for older generations, while relegating any newer music to projects designed for specific audiences (read: Black, Latinx audiences of the animated Spider-Verse films), even when the chart performances and critical acclaim of those soundtracks prove that there is a clear desire for music outside of the oldies playlist on Spotify.
The Spider-Verse films were amazing. They looked great and they sounded great. After that soundtrack album for that first film dropped, I listened to it in the car on repeat on long road trips. It had an immediate attraction, a bite to it that I am never, under any circumstances, ever going to get with "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," a song that, I remind you, was originally released to accompany a 38-year-old movie where a man falls in love with a department store mannequin.
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