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Serenity: (David Newman) When at first you don't
succeed, try, try again, and hopefully the big screen will afford you
the success that witless television studio executives failed to allow
you in their own venue. Such is the story with writer and director Joss
Whedon, who was buoyed by his success of
Buffy, the Vampire
Slayer on television after it was thrashed in its initial big screen
debut. This time, the equation is thrown the other way around, with
Whedon having created the science fiction action series
Firefly
for television only to see it cancelled before the end of its first
season (and, to make matters even worse, having the few episodes made
shown out of sequence by the network). Luckily for Whedon, his success
on
Buffy (and the subsequent
Angel) would give him the
opportunity for Universal Studios to finance a big-screen film based on
Firefly. Renamed
Serenity, but retaining most of the cast
and concepts from the television show, Whedon delves further in the
mind-reading, space battle prone universe in which the
government/citizen relations are strained much in the same way Orwell
might have imagined. The film may not have made total sense for viewers
who hadn't followed the series on television (and thus have failed in
generating enough interest to extend the concept beyond this one film),
but its eye candy made it a serviceable project. Composer David Newman
came onto the project by the suggestion of Universal music executives
because of Whedon's request for a composer who writes to several
different eras and genres. Newman has composed for nearly every type of
film imaginable, including the
Galaxy Quest parody of
Star
Trek. But serious sci-fi is an area in which Newman doesn't have
extensive credits, with most of his work seemingly revolving around
completely pointless comedies. Given that he's been stuck in this dumb
comedy rut for so long, a project like
Serenity is exactly what
many of his thin following have hoped for over the past ten years.
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One of the frustrating aspects about
Serenity is
whether its failure as a score is due to David Newman's own inability to
capitalize on the opportunity or Whedon's insistence on an utterly
bizarre soundscape for the film. The director encouraged Newman to be as
varied and unusual as he could, avoiding the typical space opera music,
and Newman responded in kind. Unfortunately, the score is a jumbled mess
of otherwise fine ideas, never executed with any kind of sincere
development. From the erhu to the electric guitar, Newman touches every
culture and instrumental manipulation. With a decent ensemble of
strings, brass, percussion, and soloists (the director made a point
about the lack of woodwinds for some reason), blasts of rhythmic
excitement are often completely chaotic in structure; in "Space Battle"
in particular, Newman makes the cue so dense with conflicting sounds
that this technique becomes distracting. A fine opening snare rhythm in
"Jayne & Zoe" is prematurely cut short. Other cues suffer from Newman's
choice to electronically alter the instrument after the recording, such
as the unnatural reverb added to the strings in "Crash Landing."
Backwards edits, distorted slashing guitars, and sudden orchestral hits
with a metallic edge are mixed in between promising orchestral ideas
that never take flight. Only in the final cues does Newman save
Serenity; from "Funeral" to "Love" he offers acoustic guitar and
string solos that are highly melodic and enjoyable. It's hard to say
what Newman could have exactly done to pull
Serenity together as
a more cohesive score; perhaps a female voice out of his fine
The
Affair of the Necklace score would have provided the River character
with an identity and the score with a direction. Better placement of the
decent title theme may have helped as well. The softer cues will likely
not be redeeming on behalf of the rest of this score, and as frustrating
as it is to say it,
Serenity is to David Newman what
Earthsea was to Jeff Rona half a year earlier (and also on the
Varèse Sarabande label)... an enormously wasted opportunity.
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| Bias Check: | For David Newman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3 (in 11 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.27
(in 18,255 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers and a note from the director about the score and film.
