[Closed] HANS ZIMMER

Oh Yes!!!!

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Except Walker didn't work in A league of their own. The orchestrator was Bruce Fowler.

Of course his favorite score from his own works, is THE THIN RED LINE. He will never be able to surpass it, from what it seems.

Glad to hear it. It's my all-time favourite score (in the movie too) and the reason why I have been faithful to Hans Zimmer as my favourite composer since day one (I started to listen to film scores in 1996 with The Rock, but the first soundtrack I've ever got was The Lion King and I ended up listening to the score more than the songs).

I am just thinking about the state of film music and the Zimmer influence on it. I must say that except some stuff, I like his approach to movies. Many people say he's dumbing down film music (in movies) to the lowest common denominator and I must disagree. I think he is not simplifying movies and in some cases his over-intellectualizing of movies leads to some of his biggest scoring blunders (Da Vinci Code, namely. How can you score three people talking in a house as if Apocalypse was happening on Earth? The movie didn't help either, that's not quite the most suspenseful premise ever brought to cinema, that's why Angels and Demons worked to me as a movie - the time issue made it cinematic and pushed the story forward). A highly praised composer who dumbs down movies to me is James Horner often. I feel that he tends to make scenes overly saccharine, though the fact that he emphasizes the orchestration too much. While he is a great thematic writer and his orchestral prowess is amazing, I think he thinks too much of the orchestration than the big picture and in the end his (on album wonderful) ideas of bringing the woodwinds the way he does (unlike anyone in the industry, John Williams maybe is not more restrained, but definitely more, hmm, mature) make the movies ultimately saccharine (through oboes and flutes mostly) to the point they shouldn't.

Where I think Zimmer is better than Horner? I am very serious here and I know that everybody here will stop treating me seriously as a director after I say it, but whatever. Let's throw the self-references aside, because everyone does that in Hollywood (Goldsmith and Williams too, Rozsa, Alfred Newman too) and the level of it is nothing to discuss when it comes to movie approach (even though Michael's remarks about four-note motif taking him out of the cinematic experience of Avatar were interesting). Let's also put the complexity of the thematic material aside. What sometimes bothers me with Horner as a film composer is that he tends to state his themes in full from reel one. Zimmer does it better movie-wise at times, especially when he tends to build up to the main theme through giving snippets of it and then blasting it in full. OK, John Barry did the same thematic approach for his movies - stating themes in full from reel one, but with him it works much better, because he understood silence. His scores were usually very brief in their movies and each use of the theme had a thought-out meaning. If we are supposed to have our scores all the time in the movie, I'd rather have the theme developed before its main statement.

That's what I think and I think that, while I am all for intelligence, musicianship and restraint when it comes to the usage of score (another composer of choice for me for some projects is certainly Desplat), I would love to collaborate with Zimmer.

The other half started with Gladiator I guess (or Pirates of the Caribbean)

Well, if you took a board such as FSM ( I use it as an example because of the amount of active members there ) I think you'd find that people starting with Zimmer would be in a minority and you'll find most people came into film music through John Williams ( As you already rightly mentioned ), John Barry, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, Miklos Rozsa and a host of others. The Zimmer route seems to be filled with a much younger crowd which is certainly evidenced at this board.

There's many of us who started earlier, mine is the Barry scored Bond movies / Morricone Spagetti westerns, in my experience there seem to be a lot of film score fans of my age who came into the medium by that route.

John Williams garnered many fans in different decades, Jaws / Star Wars and later Jurassic Park and probably again with Harry Potter.

A lot of fans through Elfman's Batman too.

And as has been mentioned here, Zimmer's The Rock seems to have been a launching point for many.

Indeed, most people come through Williams And Goldsmith, younger generations of fans come through Zimmer and most of them later move on. It's very surprising to observe only the most positive and strongest reactions to Zimmer's material - which gives birth to general interest and questions on his music and film music in general, when i teach and play them via examples at the college, among irrelevant-to-film-music young audiences.

No!

I would say that it was a mix bag of early 90s movies that did me in. Bad Boys and The Lion King had a very strong influence on me, along with the earlier appeal of Batman TAS and Star Trek TNG march. But they all kinda hit a peak with The Rock opening title music. I was a huge fan of Elfman's Mission Impossible at the same time that I gushed over Crimson Tide and Drop Zone. Ah.. the high school years....

Just imagine what it would be like with something good!

Well, the thing is that it IS good! Seriously, watching the White House / Washington on fire while you shoot from an helicopter with a Zimmer power anthem in the background is pretty impressive.

I completely agree with on this Jordi. Excellent points indeed!

Let me sing Lullaby for you. Sleep well, Timmy!

Of course!