 |
|
| Bates |
|
|
Conan the Barbarian: (Tyler Bates/Various) Enter a
franchise undreamed of, one of studio wrangling for decades and the
torture of Robert E. Howard's original concept until, alas, a 2011
reboot shames the Hyborian Age with all the promise of a
made-for-television production. Despite the hideousness of the 1984
sequel to John Milus' 1982 classic,
Conan the Barbarian, efforts
had been made ever since then to resurrect the franchise. Even Milius
himself toiled with plans to continue the series, though any hopes of
returning Arnold Schwarzenegger to the big screen as an aged King Conan
were dashed upon the actor's bizarre transition into California
politics. Throughout the rest of the 2000's, the rights of the concept
have been in flux, several productions with multiple studios initiated
but all running into a variety of problems. By the time it ultimately
experienced its last script re-writes and a final director was chosen,
the intent was to reboot the franchise completely and more closely
follow the original Howard stories. In the fresh 2011 vision of
Conan
the Barbarian, the famed swordsman of the Hyborian Age is still
shown undertaking roughly the same career path witnessed previously on
the big screen. His family killed and village destroyed, he grows up in
adverse conditions as a physical specimen and general troublemaker
before settling on his goal to kill the evil warlord responsible for his
village's demise. Along the way, he slays nasty monsters, battles
powerful witches, fends off the mercenary armies of the villain, and, of
course, takes women in ways that fulfilled Howard's personal
perversions. If only he knocks out a llama with his fist someplace in
the resurrection of this franchise, the cycle will be complete.
Expectations for this new
Conan the Barbarian are understandably
low, especially for film score fans. While Basil Poledouris' music for
Conan the Destroyer was a tremendous disappointment for a variety
of reasons outside of the composer's control, his score for the original
Conan the Barbarian remains an unquestioned classic. Its
immensity is equaled by its lyricism, a highly engaging work that is,
most importantly, timeless in its raw expression of romantic brutality
to match the tough allure of Aquilonia. A popular re-recording of
Poledouris' entire score for CD release in 2010 reignited interest in
this triumph of Hollywood's age of sword and sorcery, reaffirming it as
likely the composer's most notable career achievement.
Any number of composers could competently replace
Poledouris, who died of cancer in 2006, in the "Conan" franchise. Tyler
Bates certainly wasn't the first name to come to mind, but the way
Hollywood works these days, his involvement in the 2011 reboot shouldn't
come as a surprise. This despite the fact that he wrote a score for
300 in 2007 that remains the most reported and acknowledged case
of plagiarism in the digital age of film music. His most widely
recognized assignments since have not been greeted with much enthusiasm
from film score collectors. Despite his high profile scores, Bates
remains best categorized as a sound designer and music producer, both
emphases that can be heard in his rather nondescript music for the
blockbuster scene. For
Conan the Barbarian, he was under huge
time constraints, so the mass majority of his cues were co-written with
two assistant composers. Also, he had the misfortune of competing with
Poledouris whether he tried to or not. Certainly, there was the option
to emulate or incorporate the classic, a technique chosen with
surprisingly good results for John Ottman's
Superman Returns.
Bates respectfully admits, however, to taking a completely different
path, tackling
Conan the Barbarian with a sound that will likely
horrify any enthusiast of the Poledouris original. His approach yields
massively symphonic, choral, and electronic sound design, an array of
noisy rhythmic explosions and atmospheric interludes that lose all of
the appealing characteristics embodied by the earlier score. He reminds
of those parents who give their children all the best art supplies in
the world, believing falsely that these tools will help develop those
children into the world's next famous artists. In this case, Bates has
been given all the musical toys one could imagine for such an
assignment: symphony (albeit a small one), choir, a bevy of exotic instruments, worldly
male and female vocals, and synthetic elements that boost the limited players and include an
electric guitar. But does he make art? Absolutely not. Bates' score is exactly
what you'd expect to hear from a sound designer. He has seemingly set
out to devise ways to service the film and impress listeners by
concentrating on the texture of his instrumental layers rather than the
underlying foundation of the entire structure. His themes are weak,
their use to form a narrative is barely adequate, and all of the
romanticism applied by Poledouris through melodic force has been
replaced by useless dissonant crescendos, heaps of cliches layered on
top of each other, and completely anonymous rhythmic slashing and
pounding for the action sequences.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Bates and his
assistant composers' work for
Conan the Barbarian is how he
wasted his vast instrumental palette for the recording. With so many
interesting textures heard throughout the score, it's confounding to
contemplate how poorly they are assembled to create the nonexistent
narrative. A rather dry mix brings all of these elements to the
forefront, and the flat ambient sound of the entire score causes it to
lose whatever majesty it might have had as a composition. Extremely
aggressive, chopping strings are a tired continuation of current
blockbuster scoring tactics, as is the senseless application of
lamenting female (and male, in this case) vocals. Electric guitars offer
muscularity in a supporting role, heard prominently in "Freeing Slaves"
and "Outpost" (and reminiscent of Christopher Lennertz's parody score
for
Meet the Spartans).Wailing trombones descend like passing
truck horns and dissonant crescendos from the full ensemble and choir
rise obnoxiously to close out multiple cues. What interesting elements
can be heard, such as a cimbalom seemingly for the religious aspect of
the story, are underplayed. Thematically, Bates explores two main ideas
but never remains loyal enough to them to form any cohesive arc. There's
the obligatory and simplistic hero's theme, of course, but its
performances in the middle of "His Name is Conan" and ends of "12 Years
Later" and "Conan Returns Home" reveal the theme to be hokey pampering,
lacking genuine resonance to represent the character. More palatable is
the softer identity for the character and his heritage. Opening "His
Name is Conan" and "Egg Race," this idea extends to a pretty statement
in the middle of "Fire and Ice," a momentous but short point of interest
in "Victory," and a subdued reference near the end of "Conan Returns
Home," This secondary theme produces the score's most attractive
harmonic moments, but the theme isn't typically followed long enough for
any truly satisfying experiences on album. As for secondary motifs,
Bates generates a series of four-note motifs for the villain ("Zym's
Demise") and meanders through aimless tonal strings to basically provide
a love theme ("The Kiss"). None of these ideas is stated with any great
length, and their usage is so infrequent that you may not recall them
after the score has concluded. The secondary motifs are especially weak;
many listeners, in fact, may not even notice them. With weak themes,
Bates' attempts to weave their progressions into various situations
outside of their obvious statements prove useless.
Whereas the few performances of Conan's softer theme in
the score yield about two minutes of highlights ("Victory" is likely the
only entire cue worth appreciating, in part because it's only half a
minute long), there's a long list of moments in
Conan the
Barbarian that should be avoided. After what little narrative flow
from the scenes involving Conan's youth dissolves as the adult character
begins his life as a destructor, Bates loses all focus and manages to
stun with several ear-piercing cues in the midst of his battle material.
In three cues in a row, he perhaps exposes his inspiration, too. A
rhythmic sequence late in "Monastery Approach" will annoy James Newton
Howard enthusiasts. Likewise, the string phrases late in "Off With Their
Heads" seems like a very poor emulation of Poledouris' famous "Riders of
Doom" music from the original
Conan the Barbarian. A pounded
series of action motifs in "Horse Chase" stinks of Hans Zimmer's
staccato inelegance from the
Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
Thereafter, however, Bates' score truly goes down the toilet, the
sequences from "Death of a Priest" to "Outpost" and "Oceans of Blood" to
"Wheel of Torture" featuring endless slashing and pounding of completely
mindless and incoherent action material. Even the tonal respites from
these noisy messes, such as "Fever," are vague in their direction.
Specific moments in "The Dweller" and "Skull Mountain" need to be
singled out for their insufferable nature. The former contains terrible
violin figures randomly shrieking and tearing away at your sanity, and
the latter unsettles with a combination of stereotypical Middle Eastern
female voice and metallic synthesizer tones that will test your
tolerance. Overall, Bates' take on
Conan the Barbarian
disappointingly reaffirms why expectations for this score were so low.
His odds of success, in part because of post-production circumstances,
were impossible. But this music goes beyond just the debate about the
Zimmer/Remote Control methodology of blockbuster scoring, sinking below
such mainstream muck by replacing the occasional guilty pleasure appeal
with a greater emphasis on unlistenable sound design. The album
presentation is extremely laborious, running over seventy minutes in
length and nearly impossible to sit through during the abrasive action
sequences in its latter half. Additionally, many of the tracks on that
product seem to be condensed versions of larger cues, several painful
fades in and out (especially the unnatural edits at the very start of
multiple tracks) another annoying aspect of an already obnoxious
listening experience. Film score collectors, don't waste your time with
this trash. And to you, Basil Poledouris, rest in peace... if that's
possible.
* Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download
