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The Rocketeer: (James Horner) There was hope in the
ranks of Walt Disney Pictures during the initial production phases of
The Rocketeer that a film franchise could be made out of the
beloved comic book hero. At a time when superhero films (and franchises)
based mostly on Marvel characters were being launched with far darker
sensibilities,
The Rocketeer represented the innocent,
straight-forward days of American fantasy in the late 30's and early
40's. In the story, a test pilot is given the opportunity (by an old
inventor) to experiment with a rocket pack and, in the process of
astonishing audiences with the new device, becomes a target of the
Nazis, who want the technology for several reasons, Howard Hughes, and a
few shady mafia characters. Throw in a beautiful girl and table is set
for a typical Disney adventure. Unfortunately, the movie bombed, partly
because of the exact kind of innocence that the film was trying to
convey. The black and white distinctions in the film made it bland, and
not even a rousing score by the ever-increasingly popular James Horner
could salvage Disney's hopes. While the film slacked off at the box
office and has been forgotten, Horner's score continues to soar. One of
the composer's truly outstanding efforts,
The Rocketeer is a
stylistic bridge between his early, brass heavy fantasy scores and his
later trend towards the favoring of broadly melodic string romance and
drama themes. It's too serious of a score to be classified along with
Horner's long list of great works for animated features, but it also has
an undeniable touch of magic that reminds us of the light, comic book
origins of the story. It is this light-hearted, tingling feeling of
magic which makes
The Rocketeer a score that has withstood the
test of time. While originality was an issue for the concurrently bright
score for
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Horner only
references his own standards for
The Rocketeer, occasionally
taking stylistic inspiration from his previous scores. And when he does,
he often improves upon those sounds, adding to
The Rocketeer's
appeal over time.
Two primary themes and one auxiliary motif for Timothy
Dalton's villain are used almost constantly in the work. The title theme
embodies the magical elements of the rocket and its aviator, serving as
the basis for almost every action cue. With concert arrangements of this
theme bookending the score, its consistent, extended statements do beg
for some variation, and Horner provides some changes in tempo in the
score's two ambitious action highlights. In "The Flying Circus" and
"Jenny's Rescue," Horner offers the kind of explosive thematic
expositions that made
Willow so engaging. Here, he augments the
brassy statements of the theme with an active percussion section, using
cymbals, chimes, tambourines, triangles, and other light metallic
elements to highlight the positive spirit of the story. In "The Flying
Circus," the action motifs mirror Horner's early
Star Trek
writing, but translate them into their most flighty forms. Late in that
cue, some hoedown attitude from
Fievel Goes West appears in the
form of banjo, fiddle, and other instrumentation meant almost as a
parody of such sounds. For your money, however, "Jenny's Rescue" is
easily the more enjoyable cue, partly because of the bass-staggered
performance of the title theme two minutes in. The more fluid
performances of the title theme in the opening and closing suites
feature more of the magical atmosphere, however. The tingling sensation
starts immediately, accompanying the film's opening take-off sequence
with an elegant combination of light electronic tones (closer to Jerry
Goldsmith's style than Horner's) under a gorgeous solo piano
introduction of the theme. The storybook personality would continue
through both suites; Horner's theme is so fluid and aerodynamic that
it's built upon drawn-out peaks and valleys meant to accentuate the
thrill of flying. Detractors often attack the perpetual use of this
theme in the suites and beyond, though Horner does adequately shift its
performances between all four corners of the orchestra, often with grand
results. More troubling would be the "trademark" Horner finale at the
end of the film, a progression first introduced with a bang at the end
of
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, although its performance
concluding
The Rocketeer is among the better variants.
The love theme in
The Rocketeer also soars with
innocence, and easily eclipses the quality of many of the romantic
string themes that Horner would provide for films later in the decade.
Heard in the form of short interludes in the two suites and during the
action cues, this theme receives a lengthy performance in "Jenny." From
the solo horn to the full string ensemble, this theme moves as
gracefully as any in Horner's career, and its strikingly gorgeous
layering amidst so much enthusiastic action material will remind of the
same role the love theme played in Horner's early score for
Krull. Its appeal in
The Rocketeer is much the same,
serving also as a tie to the source music of the era that is performed
on screen by the love interest herself. The villain's theme (for Neville
Sinclair) is perhaps one of the weaker points of the score, never
developing with the kind convincing menace that you would hope from a
score that delineates good and evil to such extremes. The theme is led
by a rising four note motif that barely registers in the bland
underscore in "Neville Sinclair's House" and makes an impact only in the
latter half of "Zeppelin," in which the theme's layering is reminiscent
of the Queen Bavmorda material from
Willow's climax. Overall,
critics often lump
The Rocketeer in with
Willow and
The
Land Before Time as simple, adventuresome children's music of
significant orchestral volume. But there is one major difference between
The Rocketeer and those other efforts.
The Rocketeer is a
larger-than-life comic hero, and therefore falls under a different
classification of fantasy. Horner appropriately bloats every element of
his score to create the needed level of comic-based fantasy; the brass
play a little louder, the strings perform themes at a slower tempo, and
the percussion section is absolutely exhausted of every metallic
resource imaginable. Together, part of
The Rocketeer seems
slightly exaggerated, and that is the key to its success. A relatively
short album with only 50 minutes of score and the two decent recordings
of vintage jazz vocals ("Begin the Beguine" is as fluffy as it gets) was
a rarity in the early 1990's but re-pressings have made this superior
Horner score available once again. Only a flimsy villain's theme and the
inevitable lack of variation in tone keep
The Rocketeer from the
highest rating.
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