When Music Becomes the Unseen Character in a Fairy Tale
Imagine a film where the score doesn’t just accompany the story—it breathes it. Where every note feels like a whispered secret from the characters’ souls. That’s the promise of Kris Bowers’ work on Netflix’s Steps, a film that’s not just redefining animated fairy tales but also challenging how we experience emotion through sound. Let me tell you why this matters more than you might think.
The Composer Who Treats Music as Emotional Archaeology
Kris Bowers isn’t just scoring a movie—he’s excavating feelings. His approach to composition isn’t technical; it’s almost primal. When he sits at the piano, he’s not noodling around with melodies—he’s digging into the psychological bedrock of characters, translating their inner chaos into audible heartbeats. This isn’t background noise; it’s musical x-ray vision. And for a film like Steps, which hinges on the messy complexity of sisterhood and identity, his process feels revolutionary. Because here’s the thing: most animated films use music to amplify action. Bowers uses it to dissect psychology.
Why Fairy Tales Need a Villain Makeover—And What It Reveals About Us
Let’s talk about the elephant in the kingdom: why are we so obsessed with redeeming villains? Steps isn’t the first to do this (see: Wicked, Maleficent), but it might be the first to frame villainy through the lens of sibling dynamics and cultural alienation. The twist here isn’t just narrative—it’s existential. When Lilith and Margot’s story mirrors director Alyce Tzue’s own experience of feeling like an outsider growing up Taiwanese in New Jersey, suddenly this becomes less about fairy tales and more about the universal ache of not fitting into someone else’s storybook. The real magic? How this reflects our collective fatigue with binary morality. We’re tired of "evil" as a fixed identity. We want redemption arcs because we’re all secretly hoping for our own.
Abbey Road, Emotional Road: The Recording Sessions That Changed Everything
Recording at Abbey Road Studios isn’t just a vanity move. There’s symbolism here. That space—the birthplace of sonic innovation—became a pressure cooker for Bowers’ vision. Imagine tracking an animated comedy’s score in the same rooms where Lennon and McCartney argued over chord progressions. The technical specs matter less than the atmosphere: when you record in a place soaked in musical history, does the environment itself bleed into the composition? I’d argue yes. The London sessions weren’t about logistics; they were about spiritual osmosis. And if you listen closely to the Steps score, you might hear ghosts—not of Beatles past, but of every outsider who ever found belonging through art.
Animation’s Quiet Revolution: Netflix’s In-House Bet
This being Netflix’s first fully in-house animated feature isn’t just a corporate footnote—it’s a cultural pivot point. Streaming giants aren’t just disrupting distribution; they’re rewriting creative hierarchies. By keeping everything internal, they’re creating a parallel universe to Disney/Pixar dominance. But here’s the risk: without the checks and balances of established animation houses, does "creative control" become a double-edged sword? Steps suggests Netflix might’ve cracked the code by hiring filmmakers who treat personal stories as Trojan horses for universal themes. It’s not just about pretty pictures; it’s about who gets to control the narrative machinery now.
The Unspoken Truth About Reimagined Classics
Let’s get real: we’re in an era where every fairy tale remake is secretly a therapy session. Steps wears this on its sleeve. By making the stepsisters the protagonists, it’s not just flipping the script—it’s questioning why we needed villains in the first place. The deeper implication? Our obsession with "twisted" fairy tales mirrors society’s growing discomfort with inherited narratives. We’re all waking up to the fact that the stories we grew up with were curated by people with agendas. The real revolution isn’t in telling new stories; it’s in exposing the cracks in the old ones.
Final Thoughts: Why This Score Matters Beyond the Screen
Here’s what gets me: Bowers’ ambition to make listeners "remember the entire journey" just through music isn’t nostalgic—it’s radical. In an age of algorithm-driven playlists and skip-button culture, he’s betting that emotional resonance can still be cinematic. And if Steps works, it’ll prove something profound: that animation isn’t just for kids, and redemption isn’t just for villains. Sometimes, the most subversive act in a fairy tale isn’t slaying dragons—it’s daring to suggest that the dragon might’ve had a point all along.
