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The Matrix Reloaded on DVD
• "mind-blowing sound" • Dolby Digital 5.1 More DVD info... |
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The Matrix Reloaded on DVD
• "mind-blowing sound" • Dolby Digital 5.1 More DVD info... |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you were a score fan slightly disappointed by the original The Matrix score and are open to some moderate electronica cues in the mix. Avoid it... if only twenty minutes of Don Davis' pure orchestral score don't justify your purchase of a 2-CD set. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
While Davis was hired to reprise his musical role in The Matrix Reloaded, Warner Brothers had seen fan response to the first film and discovered that Davis' score wasn't necessarily the most popular music in that original project. Fans of the film will recognize the scene with the "woman in the red dress" in which Rob Dougan's "Clubbed to Death" score/song was inserted with great success. Additionally, with the Wachowski brothers' (the writers/directors) interest for electronica and techno music came the desire for a larger influence of that kind of music on Don Davis' base score. Thus, the final result is a score for The Matrix Reloaded that is a collaborative effort. Davis' score is unhindered by electronica elements for much of its duration, with several key cues featuring fully dynamic, orchestral performances. The film opens with the rotating horn motif, a fantastic method of accentuating the mind-numbing visual of seeing and imagining the green numbers that stream down the screen, representing our virtual lives. Continuing to restate that motif throughout its length, the score builds through several coherent and enjoyable cues into an effort that far exceeds Davis' original score for The Matrix. His music is fleshed out, with more interesting instrumentation, a dramatic use of choral accompaniment, and, surprisingly, a decent amount of harmony. This time, as special effects slow during spectacular scenes, Davis responds with grand orchestral and choral gestures, whole notes of power and substance. Gone is the brazenly dissonant approach, and for The Matrix Reloaded, Davis' heads closer to that Enigma sound of elegance and thoughtful underscore. He does incorporate electronics in his solo compositions, but they play only a minor role. So impressive are parts of his choral incorporation that casual listeners will be reminded of Alan Silvestri's The Abyss, which is renown for its massive harmonic and choral integration. In short, Don Davis' strong, awe-inspiring orchestral music for the sequel is what many had wished he would produce for the original. But the story isn't finished there. The Wachowski brothers had decided to hire the electronica group Juno Reactor to score the famed freeway chase scene. Existing in the psychedelic trance and techno scene for a few decades, Juno Reactor's core member, Ben Watkins, has recently shifted the group's efforts away from the repetitive trance genre towards more live musicians and an orchestral accompaniment. Watkins had contributed popular cues to multiple Mortal Kombat films, and his music (as the leader of Juno Reactor) is the desired combination of hard electronica and orchestral depth that the Wachowski brothers sought. The brothers were so impressed with the "Mona Lisa Overdrive" cue that they requested Watkins to also provide that hard-nosed edge to the "Burly Brawl" cue. Compared to Don Davis' contributions, the Watkins/Juno Reactor cues are heavy and electronically persistent. They offer more of the action-packed thrill and less of the awe-inspiring beauty. In an interesting twist of competence in Hollywood, Don Davis was allowed to work with Watkins on these cues, assisting in the large-scale orchestration effort behind the electronic pulsations. Both of Watkins' cues feature Davis's steady orchestra as a powerful assistant. The latter cue, "Burly Brawl," is a perfect blend of the two styles, with Davis' rotating horn motif omnipresent. In addition to Watkins and Juno Reactor, the Wachowski brothers also wished to expand upon the use of "Clubbed to Death" by Rob Dougan in the first film. Thus, they went straight to the source. Dougan is also an artist currently combining electronica with orchestras, and his heavily orchestrated pop music was often compared to soundtrack scores even before this assignment. For the "Chateau" cue, Dougan introduces his rising "Clubbed to Death" theme and expands it into a full-fledged action motif with exciting orchestral accompaniment. While Davis was not a part of this cue's development, Dougan's contribution is another well-placed one in the larger musical attitude of The Matrix Reloaded. Dougan fans should note that he does not use his deep, rich voice in any of the recordings for the score. When pulling back and picturing the soundtrack's different artists in unison, the regular orchestral film music fan will note that there are a small handful of moments when Watkins' music doesn't completely mesh with Davis' score. Davis may have been able to provide the electronica elements for the chase and fight scenes himself, but the outsourcing to achieve the proper talent was handled well enough to result in a coherent score. The standout track is obviously the suite edit of several Davis cues at the end of the album, which simply blows away the rest of the score material by Dougan and Watkins with its magnificent size. Overall, the score for The Matrix Reloaded is less frightening, less dissonant, and less disjointed. It hits most of its major beats in stride, and the weaker portions are forgiven because of their brevity. The album release is an even more interesting case. For The Matrix, fans will remember that the song album and score album were release separately. Both were flawed, with the song album not including some key, popular song uses in the film, and the Don Davis score album short in length. For The Matrix Reloaded, Warner Brothers offers both in one package. Some of the songs on the first album are indeed in the film, and they fall more towards the hard rock and electronica side of the musical spectrum. The score cues by Davis, Watkins, and Dougan occupy the second CD, which is only 40 minutes in length to accommodate the enhanced-CD extras that reside on that second CD. For film music fans, the first CD is a waste, with the Dougan "Furious Angels" track being the only cue tolerable to classical ears (and, honestly, it should have appeared with Dougan's other cue on the second CD). Marilyn Manson's intolerable "This is the Shit" song is not what most Don Davis fans are looking for. Regularly, the forcing of the score fans to purchase both the score and song CDs together would cause the combined album to receive a low rating (as well as a longer rant from this reviewer), but Warner Sunset and Maverick have somehow managed to figure that they will turn a profit while offering the 2-CD set for the price of a single album. Some American retail stores sold the 2-CD album for only $11.99 in its release week. This excuses the bundling of the songs with the score, and even presents a good deal for the score CD alone. Given the popularity of the series, it wouldn't be surprising to see an expanded score CD for The Matrix trilogy at some point in the future. In the meantime, score fans shouldn't be wary of the song-score CD combo, because you'll be getting more than enough good Davis material alone to justify the purchase. ****
Insert includes no extra information about the score or film. It crams its credits information into a completely unreadable mess of tangled text on the insert. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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