AC/DC: From Maximum Overdrive to Iron Man 2

Photo by Rennie Ellis Photography

Iron Man director John Favreau has announced that he loves AC/DC so much, he’s going to stock the whole of the Iron Man 2 soundtrack with tracks from their back catalogue. Yeah, there’ll also be a score released (by John Debney, for those interested), but the official soundtrack will be made up of 15 classic tracks featuring  ‘Back in Black’, ‘TNT, ‘Let There be Rock’ and ‘Highway to Hell’.

As AC/DC have always resisted issuing a best of album, some desperate journo’s out there are hailing this as their unofficial greatest hits. Those fools must be smoking the rock to think that any AC/DC best of would be issued without ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’ sitting in the tracklisting!

Some people think Favreau has lost his marbles, including me. But he’s not the first director to be so hung up on Australia’s greatest export that he’s decided to turn the whole soundtrack to his movie over to them.

Back in ’86, horror scribe Stephen King decided to try his hand at directing one of his own stories. The result was the awesome Maximum Overdrive, starring Emilio Estevez as the leader of a group of average Joe’s trapped in a truckstop cafe by fleet of murderous trucks sent wild by a mysterious green mist that envelopes the Earth for 24 hours.

The film is fantastic, featuring some superb machine vs. human battles including steamrollers, lawnmowers, vending machines and the leader of the fleet that terrorises the diner crew, the Happy Toyz Co. Truck, which has a giant Green Goblin mask fastened to the front grill.

King also hit upon the idea of shoe-horning his favourite band in to the project, with the subsequent soundtrack released as the AC/DC album ‘Who Made Who’.

But looking back, it really seemed to work. Probably because the 80’s was the decade of anything goes, but also because you believe that Stephen King really did want his favourite band to soundtrack his first movie. Favreau bringing them in from nowhere to soundtrack what is likely to become one of the biggest movie franchises’ in years?  There’s a deal been done somewhere alright. While it may line everybody’s pockets, it’s cheapened one of the greatest rock bands in history.

Don’t agree? Check out the album cover.