I'm talking about Michael Giacchino. He is really living up to the Goldsmith mantle. Not only has he scored three Star Trek films and is catching up to Goldsmith on that front. But he manages to be tied to some big earners as well as these poor performers. Luckily I don't think this is hurting his career. The man keeps on working year after year and heading up some of the biggest hits of those years. But in 2012 he hit a dud. Man did Disney spend a massive amount of money on John Carter and wow, did no one really care about seeing it. I've seen all kinds of reasons why the movie didn't do well in theaters, most of them revolved around how similar the trailers made it look to the Star Wars prequels. But the few people that I've run into that actually saw the movie said it was a solid bit of fun space opera adventure, just like the books it was based off of.
Michael Giacchino tackled this score with his usual gusto, crafting a theme rich score that certainly reminds listeners of the adventure scores of the 1980s and 1990s. Big orchestral bombast, exciting action music and even a sweeping romantic love them. The score has it all, even a bit of that Lawrence of Arabia feel with all the red desert landscapes. There are plenty of great tracks from the score to John Carter, but I really like this exciting track Sab Pursues the Princess. It drives along with a great intensity and then the heroic John Carter theme kicks in as he leaps in to save the day.
I rather liked “John Carter,” though “rather liked” was a common enough sentiment to be the problem. Disney didn’t get enough bang for its quarter-billion bucks. But it was a good adaptation of ERB’s potboiler “A Princess of Mars” nonetheless, and the music and the music suited the unabashed hero/heroine elements. The earthly conspiracy parts of the movie (which deviate from the book) were an unnecessary and time-consuming distraction, but I imagine those set up things for the sequel that never happened.
ReplyDeleteYeah I want to check this one out some day. I read the novel a few years back and had a good time with it. I couldn't imagine how the movie could have been so poor with Disney following the story and sinking their cash into it. But I can see people getting too much a Prequel vibe from it. I think one of the main reasons the new Star Wars films are doing so well is that they seem very separated from the prequels.
DeleteI enjoyed the movie having read the book, but I can see why the modern teenager audience might not have liked it. Well, who knows really? Am I kidding myself into thinking I know what teenagers think these days? At any rate, the soundtrack sounds pretty generic to me like most soundtracks. If it's a genre, like action or in this case, an epic fantasy like Carter, you get the rousing theme, some bombast and so forth. Hollywood gets pretty predictable a lot of the time.
ReplyDeleteI do like it when they go a different route from expectations like the synth soundtrack of The Black Rainbow, Stranger Things, or The Neon Demon. You don't hear enough jazzy soundtracks too much anymore. Of course that's not going to work with John Carter or perhaps Spider-Man.
It's true, when you get a Giacchino score you know what you're going to get. He was certainly influenced by the scores of the 80s and 90s with John Williams and James Horner being obvious influences.
DeleteNow if you want to hear something a bit different for a superhero movie, Junkie XL composed the score to "Deadpool" which is not like much else you usually hear in the genre. It sounds more like "Mad Max: Fury Road" which is also a Junkie XL creation.
Yeah I like a good mix of listening in my scores. "Neon Demon" is one of my favorite scores from last year and the score to "Nerve" may be even better (I'll have to share that one on this site). Still I don't begrudge Giacchino or folks tackling the large scale orchestral scores. I love that style too much. Surprisingly it is starting to share the spotlight with the Hans Zimmer heavy sound we also get (and he was Junkie XL's mentor, so there is a lot of Zimmer sound in XL's music).