Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you accept generic blends of orchestral, vocal, and industrial metal that pander to the lowest common denominator of blockbuster action music for topics set in times long past. Avoid it... if you have respect for the music of Elliot Goldenthal, Hans Zimmer, Gabriel Yared, James Horner, Vangelis, and Paul Haslinger, as well as Macedonian folk music and garbage can lids, all of which abused by Tyler Bates in this, the most famous acknowledged case of plagiarism in modern film music history. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
300: (Tyler Bates) If you accept all the more highly publicized faults of the 2007 film 300, including but certainly not limited to glorified gore, questionable history, poor character development, desaturation of colors, insufferable pacing, and stolen music, then you finally get to the real issue of the production: false abdominal muscles. That's right, fake abs! The best debates about 300 involve whether the ridiculously chiseled muscles you see in the place of the normal spare tires on the finely exhibited bodies in the cast were (a.) painted on with a bronzing agent, (b.) enhanced with CGI in post-production, (c.) faked completely with plastic front pieces, or (d.) some combination of all of the above to suit the needs of the individual actors and whether they're closer to the blue screen than the camera. The answer is mostly (a.), though credit the production with finding a Scotsman in great shape to play, naturally, King Leonidas of the Spartans. Sean Connery could have starred in 300 at his age, too, and the production would have assigned him the appropriate look of rock hard abs. In all reality, the appeal of 300 exists in its entire visual package, though the sculpted, minimally clothed bodies caused the film to be embraced by a wide range of sexual preferences and fetishes that included crowds of mesmerized homosexual men. Rest assured that 300 is an equal opportunity production, though, balancing female nudity along with bare male asses in prominent placements. The sexuality of the film in general is as striking as any of its other elements, all of which owing some measure of success to a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the graphic novel by Frank Miller. Director Zack Snyder so thoroughly captures the essence of Miller's illustrated imagination that 300 did indeed achieve the desired effect of translating that specific imagery to screen. The blue-screen shooting of 300 allowed for every scene to be layered with backgrounds of various distances that very specifically imitate each illustration of the comic. Realism wasn't the intention here, and the viewer is never in doubt that he or she is watching a moving comic rather than a traditional film. To this end, Snyder succeeds even better than the adaptation of Miller's Sin City, catapulting the latter film to its surprising $200+ million earnings at the box office. The plot of 300 is really not that important. The Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. is the focus, but the confrontation between King Leonidas' 300 Spartans and King Xerxes' significantly larger Persian force (as well as the introduction of Xerxes' downfall at the Battle of Plataea the following year) only serves the basic purpose of providing a minimal level of compelling action for the rendering of the characters. Those characters are only as three-dimensional as Snyder allows them to be, glazing over their humanity with the same copper-toned shades (with the production's distinctive flashes of red, of course) as the water and skies in each scene. The pacing of the film is incredibly slow, intentionally pausing on specific shots as to suggest another frame in the novel. During the time the actual ultimatum is delivered to Leonidas at the end, an average viewing couple could have wildly satisfying sexual intercourse in three rooms of the house and fix a couple of sandwiches in the time it takes for the Scotsman's character to toss aside his armor, drop to his knees, and contemplate the glorious nature of his impending death. Seeing fake blood dripping from actors' mouths has never been so tedious. The same could be said about David Wenham's obnoxiously interfering narration. The role of Tyler Bates' music in this entire equation was not of particular interest either, at least at the time of the film's debut. The score was just another culmination of ideas already tested in similar epics and fantasy films of a decade past. When Bates was nailed first by the public and then by the lawyers for plagiarism in the work, though, his music for 300 then entered the realm of infamy. In retrospect, all anybody familiar with film music recalls about 300 is precisely the shameful copying and pasting that was revealed in Bates' writing, but it's also important to remember that this score served the dumb masses just as well as Steve Jablonsy's music for the Transformers films. There is an audience for predictably recycled and repackaged crossover music such as this, as evidenced by the fact that the 300 album exploded to 40,000 unit sales with no trouble at all and Warner Brothers over-saturated the market with no less than three versions of CD soundtracks for the film. The fact that the studio's music arm saw fit to treat 300 with "special" and "collector" editions on album indicates how highly they sought to maximize their profits from this crowd pleaser. There are two ways to look at Bates' efforts for 300: with the plagiarism angle and without. It's not much different from looking at Jablonsky's Transformers music from the disparate intellectual and mainstream angles. For mainstream readers and listeners not concerned with the recycling issues, 300 will sound as stylishly enticing as the film's visuals. Bates treats the slow motion photography with a sense of melodramatic self-importance that meets or exceeds their expectations with satisfyingly familiar shades of orchestral, electronic, and vocal elements. The harmonious parts are often simple and unclouded by potentially compromising counterpoint. An ensemble of London orchestral performers is joined by vocalist Azam Ali, with whom Bates had collaborated on the artist's solo works. Several specialty instruments are employed, though most exist in the lowest registers of the percussion section, not a surprising move given the typical intent on accompanying masculine movies with overpowering bass in their music. The use of Taiko drums is especially prominent, though while a few other ethnically diverse elements are incorporated, Bates largely foregoes the Mychael Danna route (an unfair comparison, granted) and instead opts for a fair amount of electronic manipulation of more frequently heard symphonic instruments. Also making a substantial impact are the rock sounds, embodied by driving electric guitar and an intimidating, alienating industrial metal tone that largely defines the score. The "coolness" factor contributed by the guitars closes the film in "To Victory," the accompaniment for the comic-like end credits sequence, while the industrial effect is inseparable from most of the action and suspense sequences in the film. Why Bates chose to employ this harsh metal edge into 300 rather than use more creative traditional instruments in dissonant patterns to create a more appropriate sound for the film is obvious, though given his tendency to employ the same techniques in The Day the Earth Stood Still and Watchmen, perhaps this sound represents the limits of his abilities. When he uses these textures to define a mythical element as in "The Wolf," the result is tiring, reminding of the kind of mundane material that Paul Haslinger pumps out for films of Underworld quality. At times, Bates almost employs guitars like a wild duduk, and as a supplemental performance aspect, this would have been fine. Leading a cue like "No Mercy," however, it's simply noise. Bates does work two recurring themes of importance into the score. The first is a choral chant with clanging and banging percussion meant to represent the power and bravery of Leonidas and his group, heard clearly in "Returns a King" and with greater depth in "Come and Get Them." The timpani-pounding, deliberate exclamations by male chorus in these cues are certainly rousing, though their tone is so over the top that even Conan the King couldn't live up to this amount of pomp. The second theme conveyed by Bates is one for the overwrought love story in 300, accompanying Lena Headey's performance of the Queen and the Gladiator-like scenes of dreamy and ethereal wheat fields involving her. This theme offers a combination of Ali's exotic vocalizations, solo cello, and various flutes, all expressing fantastic beauty in "Goodbye My Love" and "Message for the Queen." Utilizing wailing female vocals of an extremely melancholy tone is a tried and tested cliche in Hollywood, but it seems to, once again, please the crowds. The freaky-looking Xerxes in 300 is given a musical voice by electric guitar, oddly enough, presented in a combination of slapping metal percussion loops, wildly tearing guitars at random pitch, and vaguely Middle-Eastern progressions on strings; his representations in "The Hot Gates" and "Xerxes' Tent" are damn near intolerable. There's a big difference between the sound of a foreign menace and the sound of unrelenting metal trash that uses volume to frighten rather than structure. The entirety of the 300 score suffers from the same terrible affliction. George Carlin once termed it "frothing at the crotch," but in film music terms, it's "frothing at the manipulator." In other words, Bates handles every scene on a basic emotional level rather than an intellectual one, a choice (or necessity caused by lack of talent, his detractors would say) that forces his score for 300 to be held together by its overbearing simplicity rather than any deep sense of thought. The themes aren't developed well enough to carry the narrative and most of the instrumentation is too manipulated in tone or pitch to serve this purpose either. Thus, listeners are left with a few individual highlights and a general sense of metal mayhem when departing this listening experience. The score is, like so many of those that come from the clones of Hans Zimmer's operation, so engrossed in the masculine editing of its parts that all sense of nuance is lost. Don't seek interesting textures outside of the dissonant metal-grinding and guitar-wailing that dominates the treble region. In sum, without any consideration of Bates' more serious transgressions in the assembly of 300, the resulting music is a two-star effort. It panders to the lowest common denominator of blockbuster action music for topics set in times long past. Bates has claimed that the lack of overarching structural coherence in a thematic sense was intentional, stating, "To be honest with you that's not really the direction I like to go with scoring so much. When somebody comes on the screen and you hear their theme all the time, it's just not my sensibility." He even admits that "What I wanted to do was create certain motifs that supported a mindset, or an emotion, or a circumstance that we're experiencing dramatically for the film." To that end, he succeeded to a basic degree. The problem for the young composer arose when it came to balance his own research with the temp track that was obviously used in various places throughout the picture. The composer maintains (correctly, given the nature of the graphic translation of the topic) that a direct application of traditional sounds would not have functioned in 300, though he did supposedly look backwards for some inspiration. "I definitely researched a lot of choral work and it's very difficult to find any reference to anything before the 5th Century," Bates continues. "I knew that I wanted voice to be a part of it, but it's just my nature to probably always do something that is a hybrid of sorts." Somewhere along the line, however, he got thoroughly tripped up by the temp track placed into the film, thus transitioning this review into its second (and necessary) half. Temp tracks have been around since the earliest days of cinema. Before there were early film scores to play to the photography of new productions, directors would play classical music on phonographs in synch to the projected rough edits, giving the studio composer some insight into what the director wanted. This process has evolved to a level that is so grotesque that it has restricted many composers from the liberty of producing what could be fine film scores if not for filmmakers' insistence on mimicry. There's something actually quite satisfying when a director simply goes ahead and spares the composer the headache of imitating a temp track by simply licensing the music from a previous film for use in the new one. Accomplished composers like Jerry Goldsmith would roll their eyes at the temp track and simply take the assignment into the direction of their choice, usually resulting in superior results. Others simply do their job, earn their pay, and move on. When a composer replaces his or her own creativity with the editing skills of a temp track arranger, a piece of their soul, as the saying goes, is indeed lost to the studio. A man like John Debney has made a career out of such endeavors. Music editors heeding the whims of filmmakers have become an all too common and unfortunate occurrence in today's society, as pointless and irritating an occupation as animal talkers who double as pet psychologists and professional organizers who live out of suitcases and charge $90 per hour. Cleansing the soul in such manners has its price, however, and for Bates, his debacle over 300 has brought him financial fortunes but also significant ridicule that will likely kill any chance of widespread respect for his music in the future. Plagiarism happens in film music, and in the last thirty years, no composer has stirred discussions about this fact more than James Horner. The difference between Horner and Bates, however, is that Horner has proven his ability to write masterful music without the need for inspiration from the past. Bates' music for mainstream films in the 2000's outside of 300 has amounted to a steamy pile of sonic feces, artistically underachieving at every turn despite satisfying a select few in the industry. A tremendous amount of disdain has rained down upon him for his transgressions involving 300, and as much as you pity any composer who is trying to earn a paycheck by writing the right music for the wrong expectations, there is no excuse for his plagiarism in this instance. In the few years prior to 300, most of the plagiarism-related talk in the film music industry revolved around the challenges against Zimmer's Gladiator, for which the composer had been sued in court. Bates' problems in 300 make Gladiator look inconsequential, leading to the unprecedented move by Warner Brothers to acknowledge very publicly that Bates' music is not entirely original. After the wrangling of lawyers, the studio added an asterisk to Bates' name in the movie poster (and DVD) credit section, followed by "*Derived in Part from Preexisting Compositions Not Authored by Tyler Bates." Furthermore, the studio issued a statement in August of 2007 that stated, "A number of the music cues for the score of 300 were, without our knowledge or participation, derived from music composed by Academy Award winning composer Elliot Goldenthal for the motion picture Titus. Warner Bros. Pictures has great respect for Elliot, our longtime collaborator, and is pleased to have amicably resolved this matter." Collectors of Elliot Goldenthal's music had already picked up on the clear plagiarism long before. The Leonidas/Spartan theme (in "Returns a King" and "Come and Get Them") is clearly identical to "Victorius Titus" in Titus, not only in the progression of the vocalized theme, but even in the style of the slapped and pounded percussion in that cue. This is truly film score plagiarism at is most inexcusable. Why couldn't Bates have done what most of his peers have accomplished and made enough subtle changes to stay legal? Less obvious but still definitely connected are Bates' "Remember Us" and Goldenthal's "Finale," and similar fragmented hints exist elsewhere in the score. These similarities are well documented because of Goldenthal collectors' great affinity and respect for Titus, but the problems don't end there. Bates also managed to anger another entire segment of the population: Macedonians! As early as April of 2007, it had been revealed by Macedonian reporters that the lovely theme for the Queen in 300 was actually derived in full from the regional folk song "Zajdi, Zajdi Jasno Sonce" (Set, Set Bright Sun), a piece that traditionally defines Macedonia apart from the larger Yugoslavia. While the song was credited in arthouse productions like Powder Keg and Savior, no such acknowledgement was made in 300, and Bates was even forced to address these reports specifically with the rebutment, "I can't say there is a specific source of inspiration for the cue." Additionally, the application of Ali's vocals in these cues and elsewhere, including the wavering of pitch one note above or below key, is highly reminiscent of Gabriel Yared's rejected score for Troy. Film music collectors have pointed out several other connections to previous scores, all of which damning the sum of Bates' work for 300. These include Horner's replacement work for Troy, Vangelis' Alexander, a few Zimmer scores outside of Gladiator (led by Black Hawk Down), and, as previously mentioned, a handful of Haslinger scores in the industrial segments. It is perhaps fitting that Christopher Lennertz conjured an extremely effective parody score of 300 for Meet the Spartans that quite literally made explicit fun out of all of these references. It shouldn't be surprising that Lennertz's take on the same ideas is infinitely superior in terms of its structural coherence and instrumental intellect, too. Meet the Spartans, in playing the topic seriously (as any good parody score should), is therefore a much more entertaining listening experience out of context. The most inexcusable aspect of Bates' handling of 300 is that it was completely unavoidable. There were many ways to give the film a unique aural texture to match its striking visuals. Much was said about the different pacing of various elements in the blue-screen and special effects layers of the film's final visual mix. To coincide with characters in the foreground moving in slow motion and surrounding action whizzing by at faster than normal speeds, Bates could have written two layers of music at equally striking differences in pace and layered them like Goldsmith did in The 13th Warrior and Ennio Morricone accomplished in The Mission. Such intelligent juxtaposition of tempo could have offered 300 the kind of intellectually satisfying sense of originality without sacrificing the hard-nosed industrial and masculine tone of the music. Ironically, the mix of the music in the film isn't always that spectacular anyway, with much of the final battle sequence, from "Xerxes' Final Offer" to "Glory," buried in the sound effects edits. The score experienced deluxe treatment from Warner Brothers before the Goldenthal issue thankfully put an end to the parade of 300 CD products pushed at fans with too much expendable income. A regular CD and a "special edition" were released together in March of 2007, the latter featuring the same music but providing lifeless fans with a 16-page booklet and three trading cards. Just days before Warner's admission of the plagiarism, its music branch dropped a "collector's edition" into stores, a product with a 42-page case-bound book complete with the "Blood Spatter" art debossed and foil-stamped on the cover. Unfortunately, in between the Corniche Silk end sheets (seriously, do people really care about this nonsense?), there are only two pages devoted to notes about the score, leaving the rest for photography from the film that will probably be used by some men for masturbatory purposes. Three additional original score tracks and a nasty remix of "To Victory" await your $40+ for a new copy of this product, and none of these cues adds anything significant to the other 25 tracks of previously available music (though "First Battle Push" is a somewhat decent summary of the score's other action material). In the end, Bates' 300 isn't worth any of these albums, proving that intelligence from composers now comes at a premium. He said at the time, "I have as much respect for a garbage can lid as I do for the orchestra. Both of them can be entirely useful and important in the scope of a movie, if you look at them the right way." That's a wise statement, but it's completely irrelevant unless you can actually use that garbage can lid in a manner that doesn't break the law.
The Score With Consideration of Plagiarism: FRISBEE Overall: * Track Listings (Regular and Special Editions):
Total Time: 59:45
Track Listings (Collector's Edition):
Total Time: 74:15
All artwork and sound clips from 300 are Copyright © 2007, Warner Brothers Records (Regular Edition), Warner Brothers Records (Special Edition), Warner Brothers Records (Collector's Edition). The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/13/09, updated 9/13/09. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2009-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. Slashed mouth or no slashed mouth, doesn't matter... Leonidas missed the freaky bastard. |
2007 Regular Edition
