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The movie Detective Pikachu had the following theme in it: Ryme City. It sounds very similar to L's Theme from Death Note, Tubular Bells, Chocolate Rain and this music from Mass Effect. But it is the most similar to the opening of Attack on Titan.
My question is the following: is this soundtrack based on some theme used previously in any Pokémon movie, anime or game, or is this a case of temp music and it was actually based on one of the songs I have mentioned above?
Thank you for your question, especially for all the links you included as it helped to understand specifically what you were looking at and provide a frame of reference.
The best link was the last one, which explained what temp music was and how it affects what finally ends up in a film's score.
By strict definition then, the answer is no. Temp music is only meant for a director to convey to a composer what he is trying to convey in a specific scene.
Henry Jackman is the English composer who worked on the Detective Pikachu soundtrack/score (and appears in the linked video for temp music as the composer for two the Captain America movies)
He has collaborated in the past with Mike Oldfield, who recorded an album called Tubular Bells, part of which was used to promote The Exorcist but beyond the fact that they are both English and work in the same industry, I couldn't find any other link between the two.
In Score: the podcast, where Henry Jackman mentions some of the inspirations that he had like Stranger Things, Brian Eno and Symphony Orchestra. He mentions "piddling with Ryme City" for 9 weeks. The link is a a brief snippet but has a link to the entire podcast (like an hour that I don't think I'll listen to).
Henry Jackman has worked with the movie's director, Rob Letterman on another film Gulliver's Travels (2010), however.
This is outside of what you were asking but I recently read that the PostModern approach to Art is that Nothing is New and hence we sometimes must find our inspirations where we find them and try to honor them as we incorporate them into our own works, a la Tarantino but some might say that's a bunch of crap...
