Buy it... if you have long ago lost patience with the insipid, mundane trash usually recorded for blockbuster disaster films, in which case Christopher Young's score for The Core will impress you with surprising intelligence in its sustained volume.

Avoid it... if you can't handle being challenged by a composer who tosses aside the notion of easy, harmonic statements of a bold theme in every action cue and instead offers the kind of robust "wall of sound" that will overwhelm you with its transcendent structures.

Young

The Core: (Christopher Young) Is the 2003 Jon Amiel disaster flick The Core so bad that it's actually unintentionally funny? For some critics, the only entertainment value with which to redeem the production came from its plethora of scientific fallacies, over-performing cast members, and downright ludicrous dialogue. Even amongst its peers in the apocalypse genre at the time, the story of The Core is unsalvageably silly, based on the premise that an evil government weapon meant to cause earthquakes anywhere in the world accidentally stops the rotation of the core of the Earth. The crew of a radical digging machine is forced to descend far into the planet and deliver a nuclear payload that will hopefully restore the planet's original electromagnetic energy and prevent further magnificent scenes of destruction in iconic human cities. What was in novel form meant to be a somber, intimate, submarine-style tale eventually became a bloated Hollywood blockbuster, exhibiting all the worst traits of the genre's stereotypes. It should suffice to say that the death count in this film is unrestrained. Paramount had originally intended for The Core to be released in late 2002, but in an effort to hide its deficiencies from the public, it delayed the debut until early 2003 and poured $30 million into an advertising campaign meant to gloss over the wretched product and push to recoup its money through the force of audience curiosity. That plan failed, however, with The Core's press coverage so terrible that Paramount did not retrieve even half of the film's $85 million budget domestically (worldwide grosses didn't account for the cost, either). The evolution of this film, from Amiel's far different concept to the embarrassing result, caused an equally challenging period of development for the director's trusted collaborator, Christopher Young, when it came to decide upon an appropriate type of score for The Core. Already facing an impossible deadline to finish before the film's original release date, Young not only went through a variety of trial themes with Amiel (all the way back to pre-production), but he was still fiddling with thematic structures in the time during which he needed to be writing over 100 minutes of music, his longest career score at that time.

Like the film itself, the score for The Core ended up sounding much different from Amiel's original intent. He was not seeking bombastic blockbuster music with a massive symphonic sound, but that's eventually what the film demanded, and it became a breakthrough assignment artistically for Young. The recording was not only long, but it contained extended periods of action sequences that required the composer to enter uncharted territory in terms of sustained volume. The orchestral ensemble for the project was as ambitious as any in Young's career. Roughly 120 musicians, including the most muscular brass section he had ever used for an entire recording, were augmented by an adult chorus of over 40 members, extending the momentous depth heard in portions of Hellraiser II and Hard Rain out to the majority of The Core. Slight electronic embellishments include an occasional electric guitar and thumping or tingling loops usually in the bass region; the latter are slightly obnoxious in a couple of cues, but overall Young managed to keep these accents tasteful. He somewhat de-emphasized the role of his themes in The Core, refraining from making simplistic fanfare statements of his primary identity and instead choosing to intelligently develop it over the course of the film. Once it is provided extended treatment over the end titles, by which point it exposes the clear development of a secondary march-like interlude that has also been slowly revealing itself as the score progresses, the primary thematic identities are gloriously harmonic and conventionally satisfying. The leading brass theme consists of a pair of similar three-note figures, the second preceded by two bridge notes, and this theme, along with some rhythmic flair from snare and violins, will remind listeners of Jerry Goldsmith's 1970's action works (and especially Capricorn One). Other thematic material includes an ominous minor-key expression that often accompanies the awe-inspiring shots in the tale, and this idea, particularly when aided by choir, will recall the majesty and descending movements of Hellraiser II. A more hopeful, flowing string theme of descending and ascending malleability (closer to vintage James Horner territory) addresses the romantic element of human perseverance and the sensitivity that accompanies the various death scenes.

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Ultimately, though, the themes in The Core aren't the selling point. What attracts so many listeners to this score is its relentless depth, with lines of activity so creatively robust that the score becomes a delight to study as a composition. Young, in fact, confesses to using three or four cues from the score when instructing his own students when teaching. The unconventional techniques may be disruptive to the flow of the listening experience on album, but the ambitious spirit of the score foreshadows Drag Me to Hell in intensity. For some listeners, the experience could be considered a "wall of sound," mainly due to Young's choice not to place too much weight on lengthy expositions of the themes. It is, in the end, a score of high quality that requires the listener to dig into its many action and suspense sequences to uncover the composer's interesting and often highly complex layers of activity, including very subtle applications of the themes. After the score was bootlegged immediately in 2003, Young generously paid for a promotional release of The Core and surprised collectors with a complimentary copy when they ordered his score for The Tower through Intrada Records in 2004. That promo mirrored the 2-CD bootlegs in quality and contents, with the exception of one alternate 4-minute cue available only on the bootlegs, and eventually fetched high prices on the secondary market. In 2011, Intrada officially returned with a double CD set of similar contents for $30 in a limited release of unknown quantity. Young personally rearranged this presentation and included a fair number of alternate takes to boost the overall time by another fifteen minutes. While his arrangement of cues is completely out of chronological order, the album's insert includes details of where each recorded take was placed and Young's result is, surprisingly, quite well done. Sound quality, an important element given the subtleties engrained in this canvas, has always been outstanding with The Core, the depth of the ensemble very well maintained without resorting to additional reverb. The 2011 listening experience benefits from Young's choices and the edits are well executed, though an avid enthusiast of the film (if such a person exists) may find the presentation frustrating. For most listeners, though, any of the releases will be an impressively robust representative of Young's talents. Expect to be overwhelmed by the composer's intelligent response to the array of insipid, mundane trash usually recorded for similar films. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Christopher Young reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.3 (in 23 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.99 (in 7,951 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.