[Closed] Now Playing XLVII

i bought this score back when the movie came out, but without having seen the movie. i didnt like the score that much when i heard it for the first time. when the movie came out on dvd i watched it for the first time and i was blown away by the music in the movie. the main motive sounds much better with pictures and the actiontracks had a fantastic impact in these scenes. tracks like Main Titles, Treadstone Assassins, Escape From Embassy and On Bridge Number 9 are clear highlights for me. and all the drum loop music did make sense after watching the movie. a really good score, although the second one is my favourite.

Actually, if it is ANYTHING, it's revolutionary. The "Bourne riff" (the low, steady ostinato with just a two- or three-note harmonic variation on top) is probably the most revolutionary thing in film music in the last 15 years. Not only did copies crop up in action films in the years to come (like Geoff Zanelli's HITMAN), it was -- IMO -- the groundwork that steered mainstream action films away from power anthems (which were already starting to wane by the time of the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN films) and into something more beat-based. Heck, even Zimmer himself seemed influenced by it when he did his BATMAN scores -- of course with his own 'twist' on things -- which again became hugely influential etc.

I love the BOURNE scores myself, but I rarely find myself listening to them.

But I'm not talking about a hypnotic form of minimalism here. I'm talking about action films in Hollywood with fat ground beats and a 16th riff on top. There really isn't anything in TRL that foreshadows BATMAN.

'Fat beats' is really the wrong word. I see that now (it's a better-suited word for EDM). What I meant is a LOW beat, meaning a percussive loop that goes in the lower regions of the soundscape. That's the main pulse of all BATMAN scores. For me, these scores are a development of what Powell started with the BOURNE work. Zimmer added more depth, especially those booming brass outburts that would be parodied from INCEPTION onwards -- but in essence it's the same basic ideas.

While it is true he was noodling around with minimalist ideas in the 90s, it wasn't untill the BOURNE scores that his own action sound changed too. I think there's a definite LINE in film music history going there (at least for mainstream action films), and Zimmer was not immune to what his former student Powell was doing at the time. If TRL was so influential as you say in relation to the BATMAN scores, we would have seen a change in his sound much earlier. IMO -- if there's any influence at all -- it's secondary.

jerk

I think my favorite Bourne score is Ultimatum.

I'm not sure what you would call minimalism in The Thin Red Line, as I can think only of the ostinati of Stone in My Heart in that regard. I do agree that Powell was influential (and largely misunderstood too) in terms of adding minimalist ideas to action scoring, the Bourne theme is obviously a classic example of an ostinato (though not the "classical minimalism"). The thing with the Batman trilogy (I wouldn't say though that it's that much Bourne) is that while it introduced certain ideas he had into a fuller spectrum (I'd argue that the first score to involve ostinati in action scoring more was actually King Arthur and the major staple of Hans' minimalist tendencies is not the Batman trilogy, but rather Da Vinci Code). Hans himself, even if he wouldn't really admit it, would go into the classical minimalism realm to an extent with Frost/Nixon which may feature some Batman ideas (the ascending minor third motif even crops up there!), but is more in the classical sound.

The Thin Red Line is minimal approach to scoring, but I wouldn't say it's a minimalist score. A three-note long-form ascending motif doesn't really qualify as minimalism in terms of what I heard of that tradition. It's restrained, it's not outwardly thematic (though the album does falsify the score in the way that it makes Journey to the Line the main theme and it's the Stone in My Heart theme that is repeated, in variations, but most often).

Inception really pushed the line here and there the ostinati (taken from the Stone in My Heart formula) went a lot further in terms of actually developing the cues.

What if Desplat scored it though? He's so much better than all the rest of them.

Absolutely. But there are other elements in this score that would NEVER have existed if it hadn't been for the BATMAN films, and before that, BOURNE. It's a natural progression.

Agreed -- although I find it to be 20 minutes too long (should be 40 as opposed to 60). But for a moment there, I was afraid you were going to introduce the second part of the sentence with a 'but'.

NP - HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON - John Powell

Decided to give this whole album a spin again today. It's been a while. I've listened to the sequel a lot lately. Going back to this one was SO EXCELLENT. This score is so thrilling, so pulse pounding, so exhilarating! Cue after cue of outstanding music. Is there a better score written in the last five years? Not in my opinion. What a wonderful score.

TTRL4LYFE!!!!

I know. Normally I bring stuff down to 45-60 minutes tops as well.
I tried, but as said: about 96 minutes is the best I can do here without missing out on some prime stuff and, (not unimportantly) really causing some breaks in the musical flow.

Here's mine:


Geoff Knorr
1. The Seeding
2. Beauty in the Eye of the Orbiter
3. Destroyer
4. Lux Perpetua
5. Benedicite Cumberpatch
6. Our New World
7. Acclimation
8. Xenomalleum
9. A New Beginning
10. The Future of Mankind

Grant Kirkhope
11. Solar Collector
12. Dogmatic Engineering
13. Xeno Titan
14. The Signal
15. Deep Memory

Michael Curran
16. Earth's Ambassadors
17. O Muse
18. Deep Space
19. Xenomancer


still, I struggle to hear what all the fuss is about this score.