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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.
