X-Men: DOFP - John Ottman's Evolution

I was highly anticipating this movie.  Ever since the first buzz from the comic movie websites, I felt like DOFP was going to be not only THE X-men movie, but maybe even THE comic book movie.  I truly feel that it deserves this title, though I'm sure many would disagree with all the other superhero flicks coming out that are outstanding; Avengers and The Dark Knight Series to single out a few, and all with pretty damn good music too.

They are almost all good.  But there is a special place for X-Men movies.  Like many, my first acquaintances with said mutants was through comics, cartoons and video games.  The story line was and still is compelling and oddly relevant to modern society.  It had arisen from an era of peoples struggling for basic civil rights and fighting persecution, even in their own government.  Granted, real history hasn't involved disenfranchised people wielding superpowers, but stories like X-Men make learning real concepts and quandaries entertaining, for kids and adults alike.  The comic and cartoon got to me the most when I was young.  I remember real emotion and drama in the old Fox X-Men: The Animated Series and harassing comic book store owners for stuff they didn't have.  People used to complain about the cartoon's animation, but I thought it was perfect and faithful to the narrative and aesthetic style of the comic books that spawned its stories.

I have enjoyed all movies involving characters from the X-Men comics, but it was hard to make a decision on which film had the best score.  Michael Kamen's string themes were so fused to the original X-Men movie that its hard to imagine anything else for that first installment.  John Ottman's scoring of X2, was certainly good, but I still hadn't heard themes and leitmotifs that really summed up the spirit of the genre, story and original medium.  Powell's X-Men 3 score had its moments, no doubt, but the X-Men franchise was sadly another film series without the same composer going throughout.  And if you are one of the negative three people that actually reads my blog, you'd probably know (or not) that said continuity problems are, what I think,the biggest disappointment to all lovers of film score.

Henry Jackman did the best job with First Class.  The movie had distinct, discernible character themes and had the echo of the video game and cartoon music, which was an homage to fans of the other media X-Men were in. Hell, it was an homage to every kid that group in the 90's with a comic collection and Sega Genesis.  Magneto's theme, particularly struck me as almost like a boss battle in some console game, and I found that very cool.  Even the training montages were adorned like that sound that gets you pumped while you wait for the game to load.  I was hoping Jackman would come back to score DOFP, but it wasn't him.

Bryan Singer, the guy who I now fully respect to handle this franchise, decided to go back to John Ottman.  A part of me was upset because I wanted to hear what I heard in First Class again, and on steroids, like the action in the movie itself.  I had remembered that Ottman was also an editor of X2 and that still didn't take away from the nostalgic music Jackman provided.  Well, needless to say,  I am glad now. Ottman provided an amazing score. It fully captures both the musical essence of the comic book reader's world and fuses it with the seriousness and suspense necessary in order to make superheros come to vivid life. To make not only the fantasy realistic, but to make the fantasy real.

I want to tell you about how the tracks from the scenes in the future are apocalyptic, like that of the Terminator series but also have a sense of epic magic that you can't help be in awe of.  I also want to tell you that, as he is my favorite character,  Magneto had a distinctive and powerful theme that ran throughout the film and even had elements of Jackman's themes within.  There's so much I want to tell you about this album and its tracks, but I think I'll let Ottman tell you himself.  Clips like this give people an inkling of the work that goes into the music they take for grant, and that we appreciate so much.

Below this clip are my favorite tracks from X-Men: Days of Future Past. Listen and comment.  And feel the superhuman vibe...





"Time's Up"

"Hat Rescue"

"I Have Faith in You - Goodbyes"
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Xmen Goes Back in Time: Even Musically

Just saw Days of Future Past. Since Bryan Singer directed it, I'd only assumed that either Michael Kamen or John Ottoman world compose for him. It turned out to be the latter, and I was impressed much more this time around. The score was more dramatic and less all-over-the-place than X2. More to come.

Win a chance to score a movie with Hans Zimmer.

   Zimmer is pretty active on Facebook and had posted this cool sweepstakes. You have to pay for an entry but it's worth it.    

http://www.omaze.com/experiences/amazingspider-man-2?utm_source=twitter-celeb-hans&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=NotOnOurWatch&utm_content=3

Review: The Hobbit Franchise - Familiar, But Different - Returning to the Shore of Middle-Earth

     http://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/smaug1.jpg

I'm not going to lie that I am a big Lord of the Rings fan, especially as far as the films go.  So when I heard that Peter Jackson was taking on the preceding Tolkien classic with many of the same actors and much of the same feel as LOTR, I understandably became excited.  I also assumed that Howard Shore would be coming back to score this new series of movies and, ever loving of continuity, I was likewise anticipating the soundtrack.

Howard Shore did an incredible job with the LOTR series.  I could write endlessly about just how the movies would not be as epic or as emotional without Shore's compositions. I could talk about the film score for classic fantasy epics like the original Conan movies or new ones like the first remake of Clash of the Titans and how the music was as much a character in those flicks as any actor or CGI effect.  I could even equate the LOTR and the Hobbit musical cannon to what Williams did for Star Wars, score that was not only moving but actually a form of mythology itself.  All of those things I could talk about would fall short of what Howard Shore has added to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings franchise.

The music from the original trilogy was at once haunting and confrontational, almost a kind of magic that transports the viewer (and the listener) from the sweet, simple shire to the vile land of Mordor.  With the use of leitmotifs and themes, Shore made us feel through the music Sauruman's connection to Sauron with tones similar, yet distinctively perverted. Nascent versions of these dark anthems are heard in the Hobbit prequel films when foreshadowing the rise of Sauron, or the Necromancer, as he is known at the time. Then there is the theme of the Ring, which is not quite as overtly dark, but rather a mysterious, lingering song that pervades all of Jackson's Middle Earth movies.  The heroic adventure theme of the Fellowship of the Ring is not present in the Hobbit films yet, even though some of those characters are beginning to emerge.  Howard Shore instills hope and awe in us with tracks like Forth Earlingas from The Two Towers and of course the epic and triumphant Lighting of the Beacons.  The musical repertoire runs the spectrum from mystical elf songs, to Hobbit pub music, to the horrific march of Minas Morgul.

Here are some tracks I suggest:

                Lighting of the Beacons - (best music from 0.45-2:40)

                Minas Morgul - scary track with full brass.

So, in reflecting about music from the LOTR, I asked myself, what more could Howard Shore do in this Hobbit series but re-use or re-work old themes.  The success of the franchise to the average moviegoer is special effects and drama, not necessarily film score.  Nevertheless, Howard Shore developed an extremely impressive score for both An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug.  The premature themes of RingWraiths and Orcs were there, yes, but they came with Dwarvish songs of old treasure and conquest, and with a considerable amount of new and enhanced material.

I'll highlight the track Underhill from An Unexpected Journey. This track definitely had familiar tones with the orcs, trolls and Balrogs of Moria, but Goblintown got its own harsh theme that to me conveyed that fairytale sense of danger and fear.  It was specific, and that is what I love about leitmotifs and theme laden musical canons like Star Wars, LOTR, Star Trek to some degree. The distinctiveness of the tracks makes for so much diversity in listening that it feels like you are being taken on an adventure just in the listening.  Most people don't realize the effect that film score has on their viewing experience, but I think a part of the success of good multiple film series is having the same composer to give it cohesion, and as I said before, a sense of mythology, and ironically sense of reality because of the richness of the music.

The Desolation of Smaug had a riveting soundtrack and there was a lot of new compositions by Shore.  The first that struck me was Flies and Spiders which creepily haunted us while Bilbo and the Dwarf company get ensnared in the webs of the Mirkwood spiders.  It is a poisonous and unsettling track.  I could only wonder how arachnophobes dealt with very realistic looking giant spiders and this song as they spun their webs and stung dwarves.

The Elf themes in this movie were not very different from the prior films, not that this was a bad thing. There was one new emergent theme that struck me though and it seemed to play every time Tauriel saved the day, very prevalent in the track Beyond the Forest.  Tauriel, a character added in just for the movies, had an epic and graceful string theme that seemed to follow her throughout the movie and at times was slowed down to a comforting pace (1:02), almost mirroring the she-elfs ability to both kill and heal.

Next was a theme that came about when the Dwarf and Hobbit company first set sight upon the floating Laketown.  In the track Thrice Welcome, you hear strings that seem almost like they are the musical equivalent of weaving latticework.  The track slows down to include some faint tones of a harpsichord and then picks up again seemingly to convey the pride of the established, albeit destitute town.


Tracks like Inside Information, Smaug and My Armour Is Iron were the most impacting in the whole of this movie.  Perhaps it was because the movie built to the climax of Bilbo's confrontation with the dragon. This was different than the prior Hobbit and LOTR because the reveal was slow and the dialogue driven scene between the Hobbit and Smaug is really tense and builds in a way that scenes in the other films don't.  Smaug's theme is ancient and primal sounding, but at the same time conveyed a level of sophistication, just like the dragon who displays some of the most modern speech and dialogue of any character in Tolkien's universe.  As a composer looking at the screen and trying to develop a score, it must have been really difficult to see such an impressive dragon sequence and create a score that doesn't detract from the tension or visual magnificence of Smaug.  Howard Shore crafted this score perfectly, however.  Every track involving the dragon, be it him simply searching or violently attacking the Dwarvish company seriously accentuated what you as a viewer saw on screen.  Haunting and at times horrifying.


People are always comparing books to the movies made that are based on them.  I did this with the Hobbit as I actually read the entire book years before the first movie came out. It is hard to compare these two, at times very different forms of media and I usually yell at people for saying "it wasn't as good as the book" because there will never be a movie that can match one's literary expectations perfectly.  However, film score is one thing that people do not or cannot necessarily imagine when reading.  And it is the medium of movies where we get to hear something that can enhance our appreciation for a narrative story.  Say what you will about Tolkien's wonderful writing and imagination or your own (and it is amazing in its own right), but to hear the themes of the entire Lord of the Rings saga gives me chills or gets me pumped in a way that reading can't.  I'm not advocating abandoning reading of course, just trying to push back against people that are always pro-book and anti-film.  The culture of Middle Earth almost seems real because of what artisans like Howard Shore, Peter Jackson and Tolkien have given us.

A great article on the composing process

http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/hans-zimmer-film-composer-inside-his-studio?s=mobile

Oblivion OST - Original Music by M83 Score Composed by Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapenese

Oblivion - An Odd Blend

Found that this score helped make the film both surreal and grounded.  What are your thoughts?

Take a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRywL8RKIQE


Original Music by M83
Score Composed by Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapenese

Hopeful Resurrection

I recently came upon an expanded version soundtrack for a movie that came out in 1994 that wasn't that popular to begin with; The Shadow. Seeing this makes me hopeful that other albums will come out with expanded film score so you can hear those tracks that aren't usually put on commercially available albums.  I often find that there is music in movies that is not included on something you can purchase whether it be CDs or mp3 downloads. Jerry Goldsmith's work on this album is a welcome edition and mayhap a sign of things to come.