Movie Music Musings: The Goldsmith Award 2013

Time for another Goldsmith award, where I take a look at a movie that may have bombed, but at least it gave us some good film music. 2013 had its share of poorly reviewed films, and a lot of them had some pretty uninteresting scores to boot. But the biggest money loser when compared to its original budget turned out to be Disney's attempt to reboot The Lone Ranger.

Just like the winner of the 2014 Goldsmith award, I'm not sure who was clamoring for a reboot of this franchise. Last time Hollywood tried this back in the early 1980s the film bombed then too. It is also a Western, a genre that just doesn't pull in the viewers like it used to. But Disney figured that their creative team that managed to rake in the Aztec gold from Pirates of the Caribbean would be able to do it again.

Besides none of us are sick of seeing Johnny Depp in white faced makeup acting oddly, right? Because I'm not sick of that... not. At. ALL!

Anyway, since we had the same creative team at work here, that mean Hans Zimmer and his crew were on hand to provide the music. The Lone Ranger gave Zimmer an opportunity to have some fun with a genre he's never really tackled before. Zimmer is also a huge fan of Ennio Morricone, who scored every other spaghetti western back in the 60s and 70s. So we were all kind of expecting a Zimmer take on that sound.

All told the score is entertaining, but really the best track is Finale (William Tell Overture) which is an modern film score take on the classical piece with all of Zimmer's trademark synth overlays and aggressiveness added to the music. Its really a great show stopping track and one of the best of 2013. So crank this one up and enjoy Zimmer and his team unleash some bullet ballet from The Lone Ranger.