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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The dark and complicated nature of Star Trek: Nemesis opened new doors to Goldsmith. This time around, he'd have the ability to score a larger epic to depict the struggles of the Remus slaves against their Romulan cousins. He would also be able to dig deeper into the well of musical emotions, offering a psychological twist to a series of otherwise straight forward Trek films in the recent past. The introduction of a super villain, Shinzon --a younger, evil mirror of Captain Picard-- his massive warbird, the Scimitar, as well as the unveiling of a beautiful new Romulan warbird design all led to opportunities for Goldsmith to whip up a frenzy of creativity and theme. Likewise, the promotion at last of Commander Riker to his own ship, his long awaited wedding, the loss of a friend, and fate of the Enterprise called, to an extent, for Goldsmith to send off our beloved crew with a culmination of theme consistent with what Cliff Eidelman did with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Everything pointing to this project indicated it as a winning proposition for Goldsmith. The end product, unfortunately, missed nearly every one of these opportunities. It is difficult to say if this is the product of a score poorly presented on album, or if Patrick Stewart's rumblings about wanting to do more Star Trek films has delayed the ultimate send-off. After all, the original crew managed a film with one of its members split off onto another captain's chair. Whatever the reason, the music for Star Trek: Nemesis is loud, suspenseful, pounding, and, ultimately, unoriginal. Given the amount of stimulating action music presented --as promised-- in this effort, the reason for some people's major disappointment with it needs to be delicately analyzed. Goldsmith's Star Trek: Nemesis is a score with all substance and no style. Silly comedies often get away with scores that have all style and no substance (like The 'Burbs) and straight action films often get away with scores that feature all substance and no style (like Rambo III, sticking with Goldsmith examples). But the Star Trek films are a different breed. They have required both style and substance ever since Goldsmith introduced the stylish themes of the first film alongside the substantively creative blaster beam effects and magnificent fanfare. For Star Trek: Nemesis, Goldsmith has created an abundance of substance... hard, driving action cues that will knock around the walls a few times. But the style is minimal, if non-existent. The first half of the score is built around the suspense of an approaching adversary of great horror and power. This underscore is largely uninteresting in its lack of base, lack of strong theme, and lack of creative instrumentation. The latter half of the score is the kind of stale, non-directional action we heard in films like U.S. Marshals and The Last Castle, not the rousing partnership of rhythm and theme that fans heard in The 13th Warrior and even, to an extent, Star Trek: Insurrection. The thematic development for Shinzon, his warbird, and the greater Romulan Empire is restrained to a simple cascading five-note theme that occasionally proceeds onto a 10-note theme of a surprisingly dull simplicity. As opposed to the uniquely devised and performed four-note Borg theme in Star Trek: First Contact, this Shinzon doesn't have the same gripping power or fear-instilling quality. It doesn't receive much attention in variations, which causes it to be restrained to a two-dimensional accompaniment. Likewise, Goldsmith doesn't expand upon or even pay great tribute to the established Trek themes of the past. The title theme for the series (which he created in 1979) is sparsely used, and the end credit sequence is poorly conceived and performed. Goldsmith has been using the same end credit suite format since Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and while some superb sound quality for its performances in the last two films revived its appeal, it sounds stale and awkward in Star Trek: Nemesis. The last three films have had an awkward and sudden drop-off from the fanfare to the secondary theme, and none is so bizarre as this one. Its failure may be due to the fact that its performance is lazy and distinctly too slow. It nearly crawls compared to the previous few films. It is also overshadowed by the incorporation of the popular 1929 song "Blue Skies" to commemorate an emotional turn at the end of the film, in addition to a seemingly out of place performance of beauty for the Shinzon theme. There is no thematic tribute to Romulans, Klingons (sorry, no Klingon theme on this album --not even for Worf), or, for that matter, even the Enterprise herself. For the climactic battle sequences, Goldsmith repeates bolder statements of the recognizable secondary theme from the fifth and eighth films rather than provide a momentous climax with the more important themes. It may be the case, as with Star Trek: Insurrection, that a substantial portion of the music that makes these tributes was simply left off of the commercial album. Even if this is the case, though, the remaining portion that is presented on the album is lengthy enough to determine that Goldsmith took no chances with this project. He injected no new life into the series and ended up with a functionally action-packed but stylistically void result. The frustrating aspect of Star Trek: Nemesis is that it was a perfect opportunity for Goldsmith to take a chance. Think of the power that he could have harnessed had the money been budgeted to use a full chorus for the score, or even a single operatic male voice for the Shinzon character (we all know that Picard likes is musicals and operas). Perhaps a seductive element of lyricism, or even the introduction of something different from the same old zipping electronics, could have played better to the emotions in this installment. It is also possible that producer Rick Berman, who has been known to prefer understated and conservative scores for the series (hence, the involvement of Dennis McCarthy in so much of the Trek franchise), refused to allow for more creative liberties to be taken with the series. Compounding the problem with Star Trek: Nemesis is its considerably dampened sound quality. For a performing group of 80+, the score doesn't vibrate with the same life as the last two Trek scores for Goldsmith. The sound quality on the final track, in particular, is considerably muted. [Note: Listen to this score back to back with the superior recording of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and you'll hear a world of difference... How about Howard Shore for the next Trek film?] The album release is not as attractive as the previous entries by GNP Crescendo. No extra artwork, enhanced features, third-party essays, or production photos for this album are offered, and Varèse Sarabande producer Robert Townson's claims of this score's greatness in the liner notes are very overstated in opinion and offer little extra about the creation process of the score. Overall, this score is all substance and no style. There are no new themes to hum to yourself, no new instrumentation to enjoy, no new creative motifs to explore, no new chances taken to keep the series of scores fresh. Even at the height of the action music in the impressively robust second half of the score, we've heard Goldsmith do better. It's a sign of a master going through the moves and shunning great opportunities for creativity. This score boldly goes nowhere. A major disappointment. **
Insert includes a short note by album executive producer Robert Townson and a list of performers in the Hollywood Studio Orchestra. No extra information about the film or production of the score is provided. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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