First impressions are not always the most reliable and accurate source of opinions. When the score for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 came out, I was so excited. I snatched it up and skimmed through the score as I used to do in the day (yeah, it wasn't that long ago). My impressions: "this sucks!"
Okay, now don't go on ranting to me. There are some who would agree with me and others who absolutely love it. It is an acquired taste, and for those who have actually seen the film, there is an extra plus. I believe that one more easily falls in love with a score once they have seen the film because they understand it more. "Why did he do this? Why didn't he do that? What is that?"
I can say that I have listened to this score all-the-way-through! You may think that I'm crazy that less than half the scores I have are from films that I have actually watched. I just love music, and that is why.
When listening closely to the music by the amazing Hans Zimmer and The Magnificent Six, I did actually end up enjoying it. I found it very fascinating with some resemblances to Zimmer's previous work on Inception. There is much more electronic music here, but it gives an epic feel that probably fits what is happening on the screen. I must say that this is very different from James Horner's score from the original film.
Oh, and while I am on the subject, I would like to take a moment and commemorate James Horner. On this day in 2015, James Horner was killed (61) in a plane accident. As one of the most influential film composers of the century, I found it very sad when I heard of this incident. So if you are a fan, listen to the first Amazing Spider-Man today, and the next one tomorrow. I recommend it anyway, since it gives you a good understanding of how different these scores are.
Now, whether it be the captivating Harry's Suite, or the loud and restless Electro Suite, Hans Zimmer and his friends did an excellent job on this score. I would not say that it is my absolute favorite, But I enjoyed it very much. It took me a whole 3 days to listen to it through! I need some alone time. Anyway, if you do not have this score already, Check it out on YouTube or Amazon below.
I briefly listened to Hans Zimmer's most recent score for Interstellar. First Impressions: it is definitely not what I was expecting at first. You can hear an organ play throughout it, which is why one person said made it "spiritual." It is not all music, but includes sound effects as well which is interesting. You may listen to the entire score below.
Even though it wasn't exactly what I was expecting, I ended up enjoying it. Here is a very interesting interview with Hans Zimmer found on denofgeek.us.
Den of Geek: The organ is probably my favorite instrument ever, so when I heard the organ filling up the Chinese Theater a couple of weeks ago that was very exciting to me.
Hans Zimmer: Was it unexpected?
Yes. It was unexpected.
Because what I really, really, really, really tried to do and we nearly slipped up on our first teaser because we had a little bit in there. And then we decided I didn’t want anybody to hear what we were doing until they saw the movie. Commercially I have completely shot myself in the foot by not releasing the soundtrack two weeks ahead which is what everybody does. But I so believe in that idea that you would walk in and you didn’t know what to expect and, you know, at the end of the day I make this for the audience. And so I wanted you to have the sort of "what is this?" experience. A lot of people I just don’t think realize what it was.
This is the fifth time you and Christopher Nolan have worked together. What is the process like at this point?
Well look, I shouldn’t say this and he’s probably going to kill me. There are two Chris Nolans. There’s the Chris Nolan that you might encounter in an interview or you hear him speak publicly. He’s very deliberate and very thoughtful. I’ve created this environment in my studio which is very rock and roll and very collegial and, you know, musicians float in and out and people pick up instruments and start playing. And so when Chris comes down he’s part of the band. I mean people say, "Why do you write such good scores for Chris Nolan?" Well it’s really simple. The answer is Chris Nolan and the way we work together. We get breathless with throwing ideas at each other and we cross all the lines. It’s like Chris will be talking about music and I'll be talking about story.
There was a point where Chris was running some of the (scoring) sessions alone because we had too much. I mean we just decided very early on that this whole thing was going to be about throwing caution to the wind. We had a really strong idea of how we wanted this to sound and we wanted to go and experiment. So we were working on the one hand with the organ and the string section going on in Temple Church and on the other end of town, as far away as you can get, was pianos and brass going on. So we just had to go and share the burden of who was running the sessions. Very often Chris would end up running the organ sessions at Temple Church. And it was quite infuriating when I would get back and he got far more work done that if I had been there, you know.
And that's now part of the way you work together?
The only way I can describe it is it’s very much like having a band. And yeah, I write the notes but what is really important to Chris is I try to set up a place for him to feel completely free and candid and he can say any idea however preposterous it is. Because that’s how we get to the thing. All the good ideas you hear in the room usually start with somebody saying this might be a really bad idea but together we figure out what the thing is itself. And for Chris it’s really, really important to set up an environment for me to work in where my imagination isn’t constrained by the mechanics of filmmaking.
This time, he just gave you a scene to read before you started composing.
Exactly. Without telling me what the movie was about. And we just kept that sort of shape going, you know, whereby I would be working simultaneously while he was shooting in Iceland. I locked myself away. It was like method composing. I locked myself away in my apartment in London. I just wouldn’t go and see anybody. It was very much like I was out in space and the rest of the world was very, very far away. I’d just be working on these ideas and there were scenes he would describe to me over the phone and I’d just go and write them.
I remember one scene in particular where I was going, "You know, Chris, I don’t think I can just write this because the timing is so critical on all these. I have to hit this, I have to hit that, I think you better send me over the footage." And he said, "No, you know, we’ve been so in sync in our storytelling over the years and our sensibilities. Just write it -- if we have to adjust it later we’ll just adjust it later." And I wrote it and I sent it over to him. And I said, "So how is it? He goes, "It hits right to the frame. It hits everything to the frame. Then he paused and he said, "Yesterday when I said to you we seem to have a similar sense of temper and timing, you know, afterwards I actually thought that was really reckless."
It sounds like there’s a tremendous amount of trust there between the two of you after ten years.
Well it has to be, you know. This journey he sent me off on, from that first day of writing, was about my relationship to my children. When you and I speak right now we’re speaking in words and I hide behind them. When I play you a piece of music for the first time it truly is from the heart -- the only place I know how to write from. I have no musical education. And so I was emotionally very fragile when I played this piece for the first time...I wrote it, I phoned him, he came Sunday night, 9:30 at night, you know. It wasn’t business hours. It wasn’t about that. It was just two friends meeting and me playing him this piece going, "Well what do you think?" And him going, "Well I'd better make the movie now." Then I asked him what the movie was.
So you wrote this piece of music without knowing what the full movie was about, just knowing what emotions Nolan wanted to channel.
But by having this piece of music as an anchor, he actually said to me, "I now know what the heart of the movie is." That was the conversation we would always return to. So it’s like, that set the tone and subtext for everything.
What I love about the use of the organ is that it's both mournful and spiritual. Mournful in the sense that it’s sort of mourning the possible end of humanity. But also it’s got that spiritual feel because you’re entering this church of the universe in a sense.
And it’s amazing technology. It’s amazing science and I was thinking how great, you know, centuries ago there were huge human endeavors to build things to sound magnificent, to build amazing musical instruments. They invested an amazing amount of time and effort to make something sound beautiful. And then the other thing which I thought was that a big pipe organ does look like a rocket.
That's a great metaphor.
The image fit the subject. But also, the only way it can make a sound is if there’s air going through it, if it breathes. And I just loved hearing that. You know even when Roger Sayer wasn’t playing you just hear it. It’s like the giant asleep under the Earth. You just hear the air pushing up against the pipes. So it’s a magnificent beast that just waits to be unleashed. And at the same time you can get these incredibly intimate and, as you say, mournful sounds out of it.
I have this crazy theory about science fiction. I think all science fiction movies are inherently nostalgic. I think Blade Runner is one of the most nostalgic movies you can think of. Gattaca is incredibly nostalgic somehow. So with this nostalgia, they become weirdly personal. And that got me back to where we were starting which was by going as far away from humanity and Earth as we possibly could in this movie. Every moment needed to remind us of who we are or question of who we are or make us an ache for who we left behind.
I think as the movie goes on...I’m trying to celebrate all that’s good about humanity. I’m trying to celebrate scientists. I mean I love that Chris was making a movie where scientists were front and center. They were the stars. They weren’t the geeky sidekick. That’s my world. My dad was a
scientist. I want on my tombstone, "He was a geek, he was a nerd and he loved it."
That band vibe you spoke about, is that in your DNA from being in bands early on? (Zimmer started his career with groups like Krakatoa and, most famously, the Buggles of "Video Killed the Radio Star" fame.)
Absolutely. Plus there’s this other thing. You know, I’m a foreigner everywhere. I mean we speak in English right now and really my mother tongue is German. But I’m not German anymore, you know. I mean I left when I was 13 so I’m sort of on this endless journey where I've gone to places like Africa and Slovakia where we didn’t have words in common but we could just sit down, start playing and four hours would go by and we’d think it was 10 minutes. We had these amazing conversations without using words. Sometimes language isn’t as important to us as just the experience you get to have, you know.
What are some of your favorite science fiction scores?
Well, Blade Runner. I love Sunshine. I think John Murphy is such an underrated composer. I just love that score. I think it’s really hard to beat Alien just for its sheer elegance and what Jerry Goldsmith did. Brazil, you know. But weirdly I mean one of the things was I couldn’t watch any of these movies for the last two years because I needed to make our movie. Yes we talked a lot about 2001 and 2001 was really daunting to me for a while.
The thing about 2001 is when the audience first saw it they probably knew “The Blue Danube.” They knew that piece of music. A great percentage of them might have known “Also Sprach Zarathustra” even though they couldn’t pronounce it. But the rest of the music, none of them had heard before. And so I just thought what Kubrick did very successfully was that he just went, "I just need good music for this." I remember saying to Chris at one point that what made this job hard was not that 2001 and all these things have happened before us. It’s just the simple mandate. You’ve got to write good music.
You’re going back into the world of superheroes with Batman v Superman, and I just read that you're getting Junkie XL involved. So what can you say about the approach to this one?
It’s not even like I’m being secretive. It’s just when Zack (Snyder) said to me, "I’m going to have Batman in this one..." -- people forget that what we do isn’t careers. It’s our life. Chris and I spent nine years of our lives invested in that character of Batman and treating it with great respect. And suddenly I’m going, "So I need to go chuck all this out and sort of reinvent it." But I don’t want to go betray our last nine years. And that’s how it felt to me -- like I was going to betray Christian Bale in a funny way by going, "Whatever you did, that was just my practice run." But it wasn't. It was nine years of my life.
So I thought, just like on the first one, Batman Begins, where I had James Newton Howard come in and it became this collegial thing, let me bring someone else in. And I’ve been working a lot with Junkie over the last couple or so years. And the thing that I know that you guys don’t know I’ve heard some of his Mad Max: Fury Road work and it’s phenomenal. So I said to him, you’ll have a completely new fresh slant on this. Let me deal with all the other characters. And Zack loved the idea because Zack loves Junkie.
So he’s working more on Batman.
I’m going to confine him to the Batman side and since there might be some conflict between the two characters I’m going to be quite adversarial while we’re doing it. You’d better watch out.
I am so excited about the release of The Amazing Spiderman 2. This title is
composed by Hans Zimmer and a few others including Pharrell Williams. Hans Zimmer had a few contests in the past months in excitement for this score. I hope that this ends up becoming what I'm eagerly expecting. This
score is expected for release on May 2, 2014. Here's a preview from the score that I found:
Another score that I think will be great is Maleficent by James Newton
Howard. This is expected for a release on May 30 of this year.
I’m listening to How to Train Your Dragon right now by John Powell, so I am
also very eager for the release of the sequel, also done by John Powell. I don’t
think that we should expect this score until June though.
This title only has about a 3 1/2 star rating as a movie, but as a soundtrack, I think it did well, almost a perfect score. Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (an Italian Composer from 1792–1868) originally composed the well-known theme that makes us all think of the Lone Ranger in his William Tell Overture. The Lone Ranger, composed by Hans Zimmer, is a well done score. I think that it easily goes on the list of greatest film scores of 2013. I really like the way each track blends into each other. When I say these songs blend into each other, I mean there is a little bit of music that keeps playing. This music carries on into the next track, making it seem like it is all one track. I also love the different themes presented in this masterpiece.
One of my favorite tracks is “Finale”, which is put together very well. Hans basically summarizes all of the themes into one long track, but the way he blends them into it, the transitions to each theme, is amazing. Listening to a part of this score isn’t enough, it hooks you in. I find it hard to listen to parts of it, I have always listened to it entirely (It’s very short anyway). The overall mood of this is a little down (sad), but it is brought up often with a unique combination of instruments, lightening it a little. This temporary sadness is introduced in the first track, “Never Take off the Mask”. I like the gradual intensity in “Absurdity”, which dissipates slightly to lighten the mood a little, but it then throws you back into it. The violin work in this score (which is phenomenal) makes it sound old, great for the time period. In “Silver”, much of it is a violin, which is the best track for violin music.
“Ride” is another impressive track. The cellos in the background sound amazing, just like you are, well, going on a ride. This doesn’t last very long though, because it then becomes relatively quiet. Close to the end it goes back up again into the main theme of The Lone Ranger. “Red’s Theater of the Absurd” is light and crazy music. One part of this track sounds quite similar to the beginning of Sherlock Holmes where Sherlock is going to the ritual.
“The Railroad Waits for No One” Is a good track if you are looking for action intense music. The track “You’re Just a Man in a Mask” is interesting. It is relatively quiet and sounds a little tragic (like something very sad happened). The transition from this track into the next, which is “For God and for Country”, is fantastic! This is where the album hits another high in intensity. There’s nothing else I can really say except when you finish this, you will be craving for more. I have yet to find a legitimate extended soundtrack. When I do find one, I will share it here. For now, enjoy the original soundtrack!
1. Never Take Off the Mask 1:08
2. Absurdity 4:58
3. Silver 4:00
4. Ride 4:17
5. You've Looked Better 3:09
6. Red's Theater of the Absurd 3:02
7. The Railroad Waits for No One 3:09
8. You're Just a Man in a Mask 4:14
9. For God and for Country 4:53
10. Finale 9:51
11. Home 6:55
