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Masters of the Universe: (Bill Conti) When you
think of people who might have the Power of Greyskull, composer Bill
Conti just isn't one of them. Then again, the same could be said of
Menahem Golan and Yorum Globus of B-rated Cannon Films or first time
director Gary Goddard, whose credits included the creation of Universal
Studios' mythical kingdoms "Kong on the Loose" and "Conan." The film's
fatal flaw was that lead actor Dolph Lungdren didn't seem to have that
power either, forever sealing the fate of the franchise on the big
screen. After four years on the small screen,
He-Man and the Masters
of the Universe proved to be a formidable competitor to
Thundercats,
G.I. Joe, and
The Transformers.
Mattel's action figures were everywhere, and their legacy remains on the
small screen through 2000, with various spin-off ideas maintaining the
legend of Eternia well past the a run of the original show that expanded
to a hundred and thirty animated episodes. Warner Brothers decided three
years after the cartoon's debut that the time was right to make a
live-action film, but with only a budget of $17 million, some of the
more exotic characters had to be jettisoned, and with money running out
at the end of production, a final battle scene between He-Man and
villain Skeletor was axed and the film's ending failed to make sense.
The film grossed well initially, but only barely covered its production
costs in the end, so a promised sequel never materialized.
The budget restrictions forced the filmmakers to
necessitate that much of the story be shot on Earth rather than Eternia,
and with Lungdren bumbling through his lines without any respect to the
character of the original television series, more than a few people
complained. Interestingly, the perverts of the world were disgruntled
because many of the muscle-bound characters who were always showing
thunder thighs or washboard abs in the cartoons were over-clothed in the
film. Among the few highlights of the film for movie-going masses was
the fact that the project was the second appearance of actress Courney
Cox on screen, but true Eternia fans were only impressed with Meg Foster
(and her striking pale eyes) in the underutilized role of Evil-Lyn and,
of course, Bill Conti's original score. From its massive scale, it's
safe to say that sufficient money was stashed away at the start of
production to pay for Conti and such a large ensemble. Conti himself was
coming off of his remarkable success for
The Right Stuff and the
Rocky scores. To his credit, he pulls out all the stops in his
effort to plagiarize Holst's "The Planets" and John Williams' own
adaptations of said piece in already famous fantasy fanfares. The
brassy, snare-driven score rarely stops to breathe in between extended
performances of the title theme and Skeletor's "Mars"-like subtheme, and
for the lumbering Lungdren, the music really has to be so propelling to
keep all of our attention off of his dialogue. The problem arises in the
fact that nearly every aspect of these themes seems contrite to a
certain degree, almost stumbling into parody territory. Is this a score
in which Conti is just trying to adapt himself to the exact sound the
producers wanted, or did he intentionally attempt a
Star Wars
knock-off? Or both?
The music is consistently upbeat, even in statements of
the villain's theme, leaving you with an all-too-fresh feeling of the
Star Trek IV theme that seems just a tad out place. Never does
the music indicate the true peril is ensuing, nor do the
character-building subthemes for woodwinds stand out as anything
special. Only occasionally does Conti utilize varied percussion to
represent the world of Eternia and its eclectic characters, and thus,
the traditional orchestral sounds are almost too patriotic for the
subject matter. This score contains parts that sound as though they're
composed by John Williams (without the intricacies of his writing) for
the Olympics, or a typical IMAX score for a subject of grand vistas. As
bold and ambitious as Conti's music is in all of its thunderous cymbal
crashes and timpani rolls, the themes and underlying constructs are
stale renditions of Williams'
Superman music, and despite the
harmonic pleasures that the music delivers, significant deficiencies in
inspiration drag the score down. The fatal blow to Conti's score is the
total disregard of the theme from the television show; even the
equally-flawed
Transformers film used the television show theme.
The absence of the original "He-Man" theme here is simply inexcusable.
On album, the score is still considered by many to be a triumph for
Conti, and has been released twice. The original 42-minute 1987 album
released by Varèse Sarabande concurrently to the film was a very
early CD and fell out of print within a few years. A 1992 re-release by
Silva would add 27 minutes in five major cues, and was temporary
available to collectors before itself falling out of print. Overall,
fans of the original shows will be disappointed in Conti's lack of
loyalty to the established franchise, and other score collectors could
find its hopelessly optimistic and stale fanfares to be tedious after
half an hour.
**
The 1992 Edel album's insert includes a note about the score from Conti.
