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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you're open-minded about the whole franchise, and you don't want to fork over the cash for a superior Batman & Robin score in bootleg form. Avoid it... if Elfman is your man, and you consider the original Batman score to be the pinnacle of the series. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Replacing Elfman was an equally stylistic composer, Elliot Goldenthal. In fact, many fans cross over between the two composers given their similar interest in bizarre mutations of orchestral instrumentation and rhythms. Goldenthal had been known for some dark works himself, and as a logical choice for the continuation of the franchise, he fit into the project with ease. To his credit, Goldenthal took one action that was very admirable in his score for Batman Forever: he constructed a theme that was slightly more complex than Elfman's title theme, but when you boil it down, Goldenthal's has the same major key, two-note rise that Elfman used. Thus, for the average listener, the themes sound similar enough in styles to pass as the same, even if Goldenthal's theme wanders a bit in the process of getting there. So intent on inserting this two-note shift throughout his score, Goldenthal adapts Elfman's theme (which was probably as legally similar as it could get) so often that it ceases being a subtle use and borders on the irritating. With that chord progression repeating in the jazzy, electronic, carnival, and action motifs throughout the score, Goldenthal's use of that adaptation is tiresome by the film's conclusion. Aside from that attempt to adapt Elfman's theme into Batman Forever, there is really little positive to say about Goldenthal's score. It is a schizophrenic carnival of noise, shifting from one set of bizarre instruments to another with no regard for consistency or power. Negative critics of Interview with a Vampire will state that the problems were foreshadowed in that score, and correctly so. Batman Forever reaches an all-time low with the insufferable female voice and knock-off theremin at the end of "Nygma Variations." By allowing his music to become a mess of unorganized noise, Goldenthal completely deflates the Batman character, with only the fanfares at the beginning and end saving the character from dissolving into total mediocrity. At every cue there's a different sound, a reinvention of the score's attitude and instrumentation. It is creative to a fault, forced to follow the wild turns of color and flash in the film instead of maintaining any consistency. It is difficult to say if the failure of Goldenthal's score is due to the film's crazed pace or if the blame rests to a degree on Goldenthal's shifty variations from cue to cue. Certainly, Batman Forever as a film is horrid and that is party responsible, but Goldenthal also uses several techniques that are hardly listenable. First and foremost, he kills the horns with his whining, blaring brass trills --something he did in other scores at the time, and it's certainly not the favorite sight on the sheet music for the horn players. Second, his use of electronics is overbearing and equally thrashing. Some of the carnivalesque cues for the Riddler and Two-Face need a wired listener just to be tolerated, and they do a great injustice to Goldenthal's more consistent, if not enjoyable romantic and film noir underscore. Overall, Goldenthal thankfully did his best to incorporate Elfman's Batman theme without crossing legal boundaries, but he also created a wild, eclectic, and unorganized mass of noise that is unlistenable when heard apart from the film's similar, indecisive cinematography. There is, after all, a reason why Elfman's original theme is still heard in all Batman-related trailers, commercials, and theme park shows a decade after Goldenthal's theme hit the screens. **
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