Does anyone else miss truly great soundtracks?

[darkwing_duck1]

I've noticed a trend, I think. Film and TV scores just aren't what they once were, esp in sci-fi projects.

I know, the economy, etc. Scoring for TV and films has been withering on the vine for some time before the Recession though.

Does anyone else wish a show would come along with a really good, iconic score that can stand the test of time, like say a Williams or classic Goldsmith score?

 

[JacksonArcher]

The Lord of the Rings scores are pretty iconic and I think Howard Shore created some very memorable melodies and a very distinct theme that will be identifiable with that franchise for quite some time.

I know some people might not enjoy them as much as Danny Elfman's scores, but I've come to appreciate Hans Zimmer and James Newton-Howard's collective work for Nolan's Batman films, especially their score for The Dark Knight where I felt like they really nurtured, progressed, and evolved the themes from the first film. I can't tell you how many times I've put the Dark Knight score -- and by extension Zimmer's Inception score -- on continuous loop.

I really loved Michael Giacchino's Star Trek score. Especially his complete, expanded score that he released earlier this year. I thought it was fantastical and epic and grandiose just as Star Trek should be. While I felt it definitely embraced its fantasy side more than its science-fiction side, I still thought it was a worthy successor to the likes of the compositions that Courage and Goldsmith have done in the past for the series. I think if Giacchino gets the time and opportunity to nurture his themes and motifs his work could be as revered as either of those composers' contributions to the franchise.

Also, I love John Williams' score for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I guess I'm biased because that is also my favorite film in the series, but Williams really delivered a fantastically quirky, fun, dense work that I've enjoyed many listens.

Clint Mansell's contributions to the science-fiction genre also need to be noted. I absolutely adore his emotional and poignant score for The Fountain as well as his understated score for Moon. They may not be as bombastic or as instantly memorable as any one of John Williams' compositions, but they are extremely infectious and noteworthy pieces of music that are really affecting and moving. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for a bombastic Williams score; sometimes I want moody and heartfelt music and composers like Mansell deliver that in spades.

Also, I can't leave this post without mentioning Bear McCreary's contributions to the science-fiction music world. His music for Battlestar Galactica is unanimously epic, heartfelt, genuine and soaring all at once and he has been the best composer since Brad Fidel to make the Terminator music work as displayed in The Sarah Connor Chronicles (probably because he had more of an opportunity and chance to expound on Fidel's original work, whereas other composers like Marco Beltrami and Danny Elfman each had one film).

 

[Admiral_Young]

It all depends on a definition of what you think are truly great soundtracks I suppose. I would second most of if not all of the scores that JacksonArcher listed, I'm also a huge fan of Murray Gold's scores for "Doctor Who" which in my opinion are borderline epic. Bear McCreary is another great example of someone who has composed an epic score for television series. Christophe Franke from B5 did some great stuff. Christophe Beck scored "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and composed some epic music as well.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, these days, I am pretty pleased with any soundtracks done by Howard Shore, Clint Mansell, Harry Gregson-Williams, or Bear McCreary.

 

[FPAlpha]

What i find most displeasing is to be able to instantly recognize a composer without even having read his name anywhere within the movie and i'm no music buff at all.

"Worst" example off the top of my head would be Hans Zimmer.. since Gladiator all his soundtracks sounded kind of similar with little variances to fit into the theme or location of the movie.

Not so much with the old guard like John Williams who somehow always seem to reinvent themselves.

 

[TheBrew]

Bear McCreary blows the OP's argument out of the water. Truly great stuff.

 

[sojourner]

^James Horner definitely fits in that category.

Edit: doh! simultaneous post! I am actually referencing FPAlpha's post.

 

[Lindley]

I actually exclaimed out loud when I saw "Music by Bryan Tyler" in the credits of The Expendables.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

I dunno. With regards to TV, as people have said, people like Michael Giacchino on Lost and Bear McCreary on BSG have done some superb work in recent years. If anything, TV soundtracks might have got better - back in the the nineties, Star Trek at least had rather bland music, I think. Chris Franke did some good work on B5 in that era and I'm sure there are other examples, but I really can't complain about recent genre soundtracks on TV.

 

[Rii]

Big fan of Clint Mansell here. Doesn't hurt that he and Aronofsky seem to be joined at the hip.

 

[Myasishchev]

The Lord of the Rings scores are pretty iconic and I think Howard Shore created some very memorable melodies and a very distinct theme that will be identifiable with that franchise for quite some time.

I know some people might not enjoy them as much as Danny Elfman's scores, but I've come to appreciate Hans Zimmer and James Newton-Howard's collective work for Nolan's Batman films, especially their score for The Dark Knight where I felt like they really nurtured, progressed, and evolved the themes from the first film. I can't tell you how many times I've put the Dark Knight score -- and by extension Zimmer's Inception score -- on continuous loop.

I really loved Michael Giacchino's Star Trek score. Especially his complete, expanded score that he released earlier this year. I thought it was fantastical and epic and grandiose just as Star Trek should be. While I felt it definitely embraced its fantasy side more than its science-fiction side, I still thought it was a worthy successor to the likes of the compositions that Courage and Goldsmith have done in the past for the series. I think if Giacchino gets the time and opportunity to nurture his themes and motifs his work could be as revered as either of those composers' contributions to the franchise.

Also, I love John Williams' score for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I guess I'm biased because that is also my favorite film in the series, but Williams really delivered a fantastically quirky, fun, dense work that I've enjoyed many listens.

Clint Mansell's contributions to the science-fiction genre also need to be noted. I absolutely adore his emotional and poignant score for The Fountain as well as his understated score for Moon. They may not be as bombastic or as instantly memorable as any one of John Williams' compositions, but they are extremely infectious and noteworthy pieces of music that are really affecting and moving. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for a bombastic Williams score; sometimes I want moody and heartfelt music and composers like Mansell deliver that in spades.

Also, I can't leave this post without mentioning Bear McCreary's contributions to the science-fiction music world. His music for Battlestar Galactica is unanimously epic, heartfelt, genuine and soaring all at once and he has been the best composer since Brad Fidel to make the Terminator music work as displayed in The Sarah Connor Chronicles (probably because he had more of an opportunity and chance to expound on Fidel's original work, whereas other composers like Marco Beltrami and Danny Elfman each had one film).

This deserves to be quoted in full because it is full of right.

Film and TV scores are at least as good as they have ever been.

 

[zakkrusz]

Considering I just heard an awesome one on Inception a few weeks ago I'd be inclined to say no.

 

[Starbreaker]

I thought Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Children of Dune, and lots of other movies had great soundtracks. Danny Elfman, on the other hand, needs to quit reusing the same theme for every music. Spider-man sounds just like Alice in Wonderland.

 

[davejames]

Big fan of Clint Mansell here. Doesn't hurt that he and Aronofsky seem to be joined at the hip.

Definitely agreed. His themes for Moon and Sahara were catchy as hell.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

I will admit I'd completely forgotten about the Lord of the Rings uberscore. VERY much old school and very memorable. Definitely goes on my top 5 list right alongside Williams's 80s scores and Goldsmith's TMP score, to name a couple of my chart toppers. I suppose that Independence Day would also be up there, but that was quite a while back.

Bear I could do without. He has a few good cues (most of them re-arranges of classic G cues), but his general style on Galactica most of the time left me just...meh. I heard on the commentary track for the final nuG ep that the producers had to fund Bear out of their own pocket on the final ep scoring, because he didn't have the money to bring in the orchesta in his budget.

A lot of scoring is now done mostly or entirely on keyboards with "sample" arrays plugged in. Nice for composing I suppose, but real orchestras are better for the actual recording.

Giaccomo's Trek score was in the end utterly repetitive and forgettable. I got SO sick of hearing his "Enterprise" theme over and over and over again. It's not that good once...5,6 7 time? Ugh.

The rest I either haven't heard, or was so underwhelmed I couldn't tell you what they sounded like.

Stop and think, really, for a minute. Nearly any score that has made it to the status of being somewhat publicly recognizeable is probably from prior to the year 2000. How many people (general populace, not us film geeks) could recognize the theme for Lost or nuG, but I bet they'd recognize (if not actually name) MASH, Star Trek (classic), A-Team, Knight Rider, etc (to use only tv themes).

 

[Harvey]

I will admit I'd completely forgotten about the Lord of the Rings uberscore. VERY much old school and very memorable. Definitely goes on my top 5 list right alongside Williams's 80s scores and Goldsmith's TMP score, to name a couple of my chart toppers. I suppose that Independence Day would also be up there, but that was quite a while back.

I'm rather partial to the Starship Troopers score, which is wonderfully bombastic and even over the top (intentionally so).

Giaccomo's Trek score was in the end utterly repetitive and forgettable. I got SO sick of hearing his "Enterprise" theme over and over and over again. It's not that good once...5,6 7 time? Ugh.

I'd agree that he makes overuse of the theme, but the expanded 2-disc release of the score demonstrated that it had a lot more nuance than initially heard on the first soundtrack release.

Stop and think, really, for a minute. Nearly any score that has made it to the status of being somewhat publicly recognizeable is probably from prior to the year 2000. How many people (general populace, not us film geeks) could recognize the theme for Lost or nuG, but I bet they'd recognize (if not actually name) MASH, Star Trek (classic), A-Team, Knight Rider, etc (to use only tv themes).

If you're talking about television themes, that's probably due to a couple of factors. One, the television audience has become much smaller. "Hit" shows in 2010 receive a small fraction of the viewers who tuned into "hit" shows in 1990. People won't widely recognize something that's not being widely watched. Two, a lot of television series have abandoned the extended main title sequence altogether. As a result, audiences aren't having the main themes of shows drummed into their heads in the same way that older television shows allowed. If shows DO have main title sequences today, they're often shorter than their counterparts from 20 or 30 years ago.

If you're talking about film scores, it's awfully easy to blame the predominance of Hans Zimmer and the composers that have come out of his Media Ventures company. I heard an excerpt from Zimmer's score to "Drop Zone" (1994) that sounded just like the main theme in "Pirates of the Caribbean" (a Klaus Badelt score, technically, though Zimmer is given the awfully vague title of "overproducer" and scored the sequels himself) yesterday, actually. And that's not an isolated example, either.

 

[Caliburn24]

With a few exceptions, many of them already mentioned, soundtracks today are not as memorable or hummable as those from a few decades ago.

But it is not because the composers today are any less skilled, it is because directors and producers are more sophisticated. Pacing, editing, atmosphere, all of those things are emphasized in movies and TV today. And composers are asked to organically add to that. But it can and does create a very "sonic wallpaper" type of sound quite often. The score for the Dark Knight is the best example I can think of off the top of my head. It works beautifully in the film, hitting all the beats it needs to hit, conveying emotion when needed and atmosphere and foreboding always. But pull that score out of the film and listen to it on its own, it is just not terribly interesting.

And I think it is a fairly strong trend in film composing today. Technically soundtracks are better fitted to their films then ever before, they don't pull you out of scenes in general or divide your attention from where the director wants it. Older film soundtracks will pull your attention away sometimes with bombastic or jarring choices. I love stuff like Goldsmith's 13th Warrior score and Poledouris' Starship Troopers score, but within those films the scores are over the top(in the latter case, deliberately) and don't really hit the right emotional beats.

What it means to me is that older stuff is almost always more enjoyable to listen to on its own, while newer stuff(with the exception of Murray Gold and Bear McCreary) is much more boring when pulled out and listened to on its own.

 

[JediKnightButler]

Interesting thread. I'd have to say that many (not all but many) scores don't seem to stand alone like some scores in the past. The best example of some of the best of the past scores would be like (most of) John Williams' scores for the Star Wars Saga, particularly the OT, which are almost like a "co-star" in the films and can be enjoyed both in and outside of the movie and if you're just listening to the music, you can pretty much watch the movie in your head ;-) The same can, at least for me, be said for the awesome synth-rock scores that Vince DiCola composed for Rocky IV and, particularly Transformers The Movie (1986). I'm frankly surprised that he hasn't done any major scores for movies since Transformers but I guess the whole synth-rock-based scores never really caught on?

Most of the scores for the Star Trek movies were pretty good though Jerry Goldsmith recycled a lot of the same material for all but one of the TNG movies. The best scores IMHO were James Horner's scores for TWOK and TSFS. Giachiano's score for the new Star Trek movie was pretty good but the only track I really wanted off it was the End Credits (which weaved in the original Star Trek theme around the main motifs from the movie)
The best contemporary scores in recent history were John Williams scores for Harry Potter 1-3 (the rest of the movies have had severely lackluster scores), Howard Shore's scores for the LOTR movies and even Twilight:Eclipse had a pretty good score, and Hans Zimmer's scores for the POTC movies, particularly "Dead Man's Chest", which had the powerful and awesome "Kraken" theme.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

As long as Michael Giaccino, Bear McCready and John Williams are on the job, I'm happy with the film score situation.

Nearly any score that has made it to the status of being somewhat publicly recognizeable is probably from prior to the year 2000. How many people (general populace, not us film geeks) could recognize the theme for Lost or nuG, but I bet they'd recognize (if not actually name) MASH, Star Trek (classic), A-Team, Knight Rider, etc (to use only tv themes).

Now you're talking TV themes, which is totally different from movie scores. TV in general has become a much narrower cultural phenomenon because audiences are becoming smaller and more specialized as the number of shows increases and allows them to target exactly the shows they like. My favorite theme of all time is on TV right now: Dexter. But only 2M people watch Dexter out of a population of 300M, so of course it isn't recognizable like the shows in the olden days when you had three networks and that's it. Mad Men also has a great theme, and a similarly tiny audience.

The two soundtracks I play the most (to the point of obsession, really) are SW: ESB and Dexter.

 

[darthraidr]

Giacchino has done some amazing film work for Pixar with the Incredibles and Up

i also really enjoyed Hans Zimmer's work on Sherlock Holmes (the end credits are great)