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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
There will be no complaints regarding the lack of thematic interpretation in Davis' newest score. He recognized early on that his score would be very heavily scrutinized by film and score fans, who, inevitably, would compare his work to that of the beloved John Williams. When Williams came into the studio to consult with Davis about how to tackle certain scenes, Davis took a look at Williams' original concepts and realized that he was dealing with an incredibly complex task. The two Jurassic Park scores had included some of the most complex orchestral integration of Williams' career, and even a mere interpretation of that material would constitute and enormous challenge. In the end, though, the most impressive aspect of Davis' score is the careful interpretation of the two main Jurassic Park themes into his score for Jurassic Park 3, not to mention the statement of three or so subthemes of Williams', and an entirely new theme to represent the new characters. The only theme left mostly out in the cold is Williams' title for The Lost World. Fans of Don Davis have long compared his larger orchestral style to that of Williams, and so loyal is Davis to Williams' general concepts in Jurassic Park 3 that a measure of Williams' theme for The Towering Inferno makes a brief appearance at the start of the eighth album track. But, you ask, does it sound any good? Yes and no. In an age when modern sequels rarely include the classic themes of the original film (take the dissatisfaction over the Batman series, for instance), it is a great blessing to hear Williams' work stated in a significant portion of Jurassic Park 3. Both title themes from the original film receive full performances, often with choir. The raptor theme, brachiosaurus motif, opening brass call, and other snippets of Williams chomping action music are littered throughout the score. The downside of these thematic statements, however, is the seemingly poorer performances of the themes. They are often performed at far too fast a tempo, especially in the end credits. The first two scores, recorded on the Sony Scoring Stage in Culver City, had a resounding sound quality, with echoing mixing that enchanced the epic proportion of the scores. Jurassic Park 3 often sounds flat in those performances, which is surprising, because its recording location was the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox, where Jerry Goldsmith has recently recorded some of the best sounding scores of all time. An interesting exception to the sound quality issue is the difference between the performances of Williams' themes and Davis' own. Take, for example, the tenth and eleventh tracks. The tenth track includes a rather two-dimensional performances of Williams' main theme, while the next track features a more vibrant performance of Davis' own theme for the film. The complexity of Davis' score is to par with that of Williams. All three films really tax the abilities of the string section, especially during the frightening chase scenes. The raptor attacks are scored very well, as Davis' intuition for writing darker, more mystical music shows through. On the other hand, the music for Jurassic Park 3 lacks the dynamic and exciting edge that Williams was able to inject into his scores. Davis rarely spices up the orchestra with performances of exotic instruments, with the exception of a few short woodwind performances. Seemingly gone are the impressive percussive arrays that Williams used (especially the timpani and native drums), as well as any form of tinkling piano performances. A painfully flat snare is occasionally used instead. The mixing of the thematic material is often done in haste, too, causing many of Williams' themes to jar with the surrounding cues (perhaps as a result of trying too hard to insert references of Williams' themes throughout). Only a fine tuned film score ear would find much fault with these few integration problems, and a regular moviegoer would certainly not notice such problems. To that end, Davis has created a very effective score for the film. While it may not be award winning, and Williams fans may seek refuge with the original, it serves the purpose of an extended franchise sequel very well. On album, this score, as a product, has many more problems. The first two albums of Williams' music were both 70 minutes in length, and rarely do you hear anyone complain about wanting more music from either film. The duration of the Davis score on this album is only 50 minutes exactly, undoubtedly leaving some controversy for the fans who will want unpressed cues at a later time. The last four and a half minutes of music on the album are a tragedy; no Randy Newman song has any business on a Jurassic Park album. This is a respected horror film/series, folks, and Williams would have been horrified had a ridiculous Randy Newman country song been included at the end of one of his albums. What kind of nonsense is this? The album is an "Enhanced CD" (a feature that, after a flurry of such things in the mid-90s, had been tailing off in recent years). The features are wonderfully presented, but the "Don Davis interview" turns out to be a short text based affair. Although the enhanced features worked very well on both my Macs and Windows machines, the CD has been programmed with a "PC autorun" function, which means that it will automatically take over your computer if you put it in your CD-ROM drive. For those of us who always put a CD into a computer to simply listen to the music, this is an extremely annoying turn of events, because it forces you to wait for the features to load until to can kill it and get back to the music (unless you force it to quit during the loading process, which is always a risky prospect). On the other hand, the packaging doesn't feature pop-up dinosaurs like the silly The Lost World product, so we are grateful for that. Overall, the music will be a joy to hear in the theatre, but on album, a somewhat flat performance and mixing of the music causes Davis' hard work to lag behind that of Williams in terms of majesty and excitement. Even so, it is still a worthy investment for series fans.
Score as Heard on Album: *** Overall: ***
Insert includes extensive credits and artwork, but no extra information about the score or film. The product is an Enchanced CD with numerous extra features as a CD-ROM for your computer. Included in these extra features is a short, text interview with Don Davis. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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