Alien vs. Predator: (Harald Kloser) Just about every
casual movie-goer would probably agree that both the
Alien and
Predator franchises had already exhausted their welcome and brought
themselves to a natural close several years ago. But comic book collectors
know better, with a very popular and long-running spin-off comic series
pitting the two notorious creatures against each other. It seems as though
20th Century Fox had resisted this concept as a film during the run of the
comics, although the profitable pairing of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees
in last year's
Freddy vs. Jason proved that just about anything is
worth a shot (and can make money) these days. Writer-director Paul W.S.
Anderson's
Alien vs. Predator debuted well financially despite a
plethora of poor critical and audience reviews (the studio knows what it's
doing when it doesn't even provide press screenings). The plot really isn't
important in flicks such as this, but for the sake of context, the only
thing you really need to know is that there is a secret pyramid under the
Antarctic in which those nasty alien creates are bred in captivity so that
adolescent predators can be shipped in to Earth to "come of age" and prove
their battle skills against the aliens. Why it had to be Earth, nobody
knows, but it does conveniently explain away the predators' previous
involvement on the planet and the existence of some irritating humans as
auxiliary characters in this movie. As hard as it is to fathom, the
predators are as close to being the good-guys as any party can get, and the
musical approach taken for the film by composer Harald Kloser follows the
history of the predators' music on the big screen far more than the aliens'
music. That said, Kloser's score still doesn't resemble or make strong use
of themes from either franchise, instead relying on his own brand of music
beefed-up from
The Day After Tomorrow and presented as a stand-alone
entry in both series.
Starting with the basic musical ingredients of
The Day
After Tomorrow and beefing them up is a good thing, for that score's
weakness was its rather tepid tone and lethargic sense of movement. Whether
you accept
Alien vs. Predator as a movie premise or not, Kloser has
done a more reasonable job with the score than anyone might have expected.
Largely orchestral, Kloser combines the same symphonic sound with a chorus
and an array of slashing and grinding electronic sound effects. His theme
for the film carries over the anthemic qualities from
The Day After
Tomorrow --after all, this is serious material for comic book
collectors!-- and performs it in a similarly slow style with emboldened
brass and an enhanced choral presence. It may be tongue in cheek to an
extent, but the most enjoyable cues in
Alien Vs. Predator are those
during which Kloser instills the story with a sense of epic sweep and
awe-inspiring realization. The opening and closing titles, along with the
"History of the World" cue --a great snare-driven moment of bombast--
provide enough interesting harmonic material to make the whole score
worthwhile. The entire effort is surprisingly pleasant, with only four or
five cues of downright battle music and several cues dedicated to
choral-laced melody for moments of discovery and intrigue. Kloser does make
an interesting distinction between the predators and aliens in his sound
effects: the predator makes a metallic slashing sound for the wrist-worn
blades it uses in battle and the alien produces a more extended, swishing
and scraping sound that imitates its distinctive cry and whipping tail. With
these two effects alternating in the fight cues, Kloser takes much more time
to generate a coherent score than was probably necessary. The entire score
for
Alien vs. Predator produces the same response; the score is
nothing spectacular, but it offers far more than was expected given the
cheesiness of the film's concept. If at the very least, the project confirms
that Kloser is serious about projecting his career in the direction of
largely orchestral action efforts, with results so far that may be
simplistic and wasted on poor films, but show considerable promise in their
intent.
***
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
