Over the weekend, my brother and I were laughing in the Hard Rock Cafe on Market Street because Aerosmith’s “Dream On” was playing. While some people were jamming out to the song, we were laughing because it has been immortalized in a recent meme. For those of you who don’t know, this song is played over a clip from God of War on the PlayStation 2 in which Kratos jumps off a cliff and plummets menacingly. The captions vary from post to post, but this is the post that began it all, coming from user Psychological-Ice519 on the subreddit r/Chadposting:
From there the meme template grew into different things before ultimately getting overused and dying out (as they always do). However, this got me thinking about some leap of faith anthems. It reminded me of the incredible scene in 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse where Miles Morales’ journey of becoming Spider-Man culminates in a leap of faith. He hears the words of advice from his family and mentors before getting ready to leap off a building. The second he makes that leap, “What’s Up Danger” by Blackway and Black Caviar plays, filling every viewer with enough adrenaline to run out of the theater and jump off a building (don’t do that).
But what makes a song a leap of faith anthem? Why do these choices work so well in their respective scenes? Could it be the relatively light opening to the song before an inevitable beat drop followed by some high energy music? Maybe. Or maybe not. Whatever the case may be, I attempted to capture this in a playlist of what I would consider to be leap of faith songs, whether that be a Miles leap or a Kratos plummet.
Featured image credited to Abhijit M via Unsplash.
