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A agree completely. I especially love how Shore creates a musical transition from "Hobbit" to "Rings". I believe he succeeds even better in this regard than Williams did when faced with the same task. And I love the prequel scores.

Volker

Pfffft.... cough... cough.... WHAT?!

-Erik-

Well, I think, the Empirial March had no business being in "Attack". Also the inclusion of choir, that before was exclusive to "Jedi" was a bit irritating then. It made "Phatom" sound bigger that any of the previous scores.

Why not?



You can't be serious.... can you? Actually, there was a choir in Empire as well.

-Erik-

That thought also crossed my mind when writing my post.



Hm ...

Because I changed my mind and because I am in a much better mood now than I was 48 hours ago.

Like a German chancelor once said: "What do I care about what twiggy babble I said yesterday."

I mean, "Duel of the Fates" is scored as if its exactly that, a duel that will somehow determine the fate of the galaxy, or at least a lot of people. And its perhaps the most thrilling action setpiece in the entire trilogy. But what did the duel's outcome actually affect in the end? Maul was simply replaced by Dooku and Grievous, it makes little difference who the generic Sith Lord II is throughout the trilogy, and honestly it would have been more satisfying to have Maul play the part throughout. Qui-Gon's death did little to affect the training of Anakin, he would have ended up trained either way, he would have ended up rebellious either way, killing Qui-Gon just seems like an incompetent way of adding feelings to the end of the film. Again, I think the whole trilogy would have been better had Qui-Gon survived, or at least died in a meaningful way. So the duel ultimately seems fairly pointless to me. It doesn't seem like any essential plot point in the rest of the trilogy would have been meaningfully affected by any possible outcome of the duel. So why write the most thrilling choir piece of the entire trilogy there? It ends up being little more than "a tale, told by an idiot*, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

*Lucas, not Williams, of course.

I'm a writer. Its how my brain works.

Also, Frodo flying in on an eagle would have been a bit too obvious and easily stoppable. There were wraiths on wings, after all; and the whole point of the Council's plan to destroy the Ring was that Sauron couldn't know what they were up to until it was too late. If Sauron had considered the possibility that they might destroy the Ring, he would have been guarding the **** out of Sammath Naur rather than sending all his forces out to destroy Aragorn's decoy army, who in Sauron's mind probably had the Ring with them and was the much bigger threat.

By the way, thank God the plot of LotR actually stands up to most such "what-if" scrutiny, unlike modern popular fantasy that's shotgunned full of plot holes before they ever make it to film form...

From the perspective of normal and mainstream I'm sure I could easily be considered a bit (or even a lot) "psycho", but I don't like to put such labels on anyone.

We're film music fans... there's a little psycho in all of us.



-Erik-

Seriously? I did not know that. Is what Williams wrote for the battle available to the public somewhere?

I don't really feel like we knew any of those characters well enough at that point to justify "Duel of the Fates" being about just their fates, but that's semantics...

This alleged "plot hole" makes me want to puke every time I hear it brought up (although I know you're not being entirely serious with it, Erik ). There are a million and one reasons why that wouldn't work. Mordor's anti-air defenses including Winged Nazguls. The Eye of Sauron being able to see them before they got within a hundred miles of Mount Doom, not to mention Saruman's crows. The fact that the Eagles are quite powerful beings and therefore easily corrupted by the Ring (Hobbits are the least susceptible to it by dint of lacking ambition and pride). The fact that even Frodo wasn't actually able to toss the thing in on his own anyway and the entire plot only worked because of Gollum's intervention at the end. A non-intervention pledge by the Valar - the Eagles being vassals of Manwe and therefore technically neutral and unable to take sides other than some smaller favors for Gandalf. the Fellowship's mission being a stealthy one and big-ass birds not exactly being stealthy. The Eagles possibly being unwilling to fly over Mordor until after Sauron is vanquished - look at how hard it was to get the Ents to fight Saruman. The Eagles being unwilling to approach populated areas in general. There's more, and you can read ithere.

That being said, I'm not a fan of the Eagles; I think they're a pretty weak plot device, and Tolkien has a bad habit of using them for deus ex machina purposes (especially in The Hobbit). Perhaps the best answer to all of this is, indeed, "there would be no story," but he kind of wrote himself into a corner with them regardless.

I'm sure I'm going to get a bunch of comments on how overly seriously I take this stuff. I don't take it seriously, I just love talking about it.

NP : THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLAaaaaauuuhhhh.......


Oh, no I'm not. Got slightly brainwashed there


NP : THE NINTH GATE - Wojciech Kilar



Excellent, thematic, gothic tinged score.

That wasn't me, the "fucks me off" bit.

In any case I was only referring to the lukewarm reception of the Desolation of Smaug score, not the forum as a whole. Obviously we're all here for the discussion and it would only be lukewarm if everyone always agreed with everyone.

NP: The Lord of the Rings (1978) - Leonard Rosenman

That, too, is a very fine score. (For a much underrated film.)

Volker