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Star Trek: (Michael Giacchino) After ten motion
pictures and over 700 hours of television episodes, it was perhaps
inevitable that Paramount would eventually succumb to the temptation to
"reboot" the lastingly popular "Star Trek" franchise. If ever necessary,
perhaps the late 2000's was the right time, rekindling the fire before
the embers had died off completely after the concept's life on
television had been extinguished with an unceremonious abbreviation to
the "Enterprise" series a few years prior. With so much lore memorized
by adoring fans, the "Star Trek" franchise reboot was a tricky prospect,
potentially alienating the very viewership from which Paramount wished
to milk solid grosses once again. For this endeavor, the studio turned
to wildly successful television director J.J. Abrams, a non-Trekkie, to
ensure that a fine balance between loyalty and revitalization was
achieved. And, for the most part, Abrams has once again succeeded; while
a certain amount of annoyance was stirred amongst concept die hards due
to a few liberties taken with the history of the franchise's oldest back
stories, enough major connections and trivial nods were employed in the
script and other production values to please mainstream audiences at the
very least. It is somewhat unfortunate that this restarting of the
franchise could not exist without the paradoxes of time travel and a
singularly one-dimensional villain (who some would say is too similar to
the archrival in the previous film,
Star Trek: Nemesis). These
aspects, as well as some dubious art direction seemingly dialed in
through time by the contemporary designers of Apple, didn't stop the
film from earning over $76 million in its opening weekend, 50% greater
than Paramount had hoped. From $4 million in pre-midnight screenings on
the night before its opening to $8 million in IMAX showings during the
same weekend, a consensus of positive reviews assisted in solidifying
the studio's prior inclination to immediately green-light production of
a twelfth
Star Trek film for 2011 (utilizing, obviously, the
rebooted crew and, if possible, an enthusiastic Leonard Nimoy, who
quickly expressed interest in a continued role of some kind). Along for
the ride a second time, in all likelihood, will be composer Michael
Giacchino.
At 42 years of age, Giacchino is among those who grew up
with the William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy films of the 1980's, himself
an admitted fan of the music to come from those films. As Abrams'
regular collaborator, his involvement in 2009's
Star Trek was
never really doubted. Hopes for his approach to the reboot were high for
a number of reasons, foremost being the amount of talent the
Oscar-nominated composer has exhibited from the "Medal of Honor" video
games to Pixar features and several franchise and concept reboots
already in his career. Anyone familiar with his creative adaptation of
his "Medal of Honor" music into both his "Lost" television and
Ratatouille film music realizes his capability to smartly
incorporate existing material (even if sometimes with a tongue in cheek
attitude). For a few film score collectors, there was a wish to revisit
Cliff Eidelman in the franchise. While his career in Hollywood never
achieved the success that many had believe was inevitable in the early
1990's, Eidelman's music for
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered
Country represents an extremely compelling single entry in the
franchise that adeptly closed the Kirk and Spock era with a keen balance
of gothic menace and heroic fanfare. With the legendary Jerry
Goldsmith's death and an assumption that none of the previous composers
(on screens big or small) would be involved in the eleventh picture,
Giacchino is among the best alternatives, serving as a capable and young
voice for this franchise with the same potential for fruitful longevity
in the concept that David Arnold has proven to be for the James Bond
films since 1997. Perhaps not surprising are the numerous similarities
between the intentions behind Giacchino's work for
Star Trek and
Arnold's highly acclaimed music for
Casino Royale, the Bond
franchise's equivalent reboot. Both scores utilize a familiar canvas for
their basic atmosphere, not rocking the boat (as, for instance, the
producers of "Enterprise" had decided to dabble with by employing a rock
song incongruous to the series' underscores), and both were
intentionally constructed without overt connections to the franchises'
previous music until the maturation of the characters at the end of
their initial stories. The fact that Giacchino's score sounds, in many
places, more appropriate for a Daniel Craig era Bond film, however, is
most likely an odd coincidence.
Therein lies the most intriguing aspect of this
soundtrack. The lack of obvious references to themes by Goldsmith or
James Horner isn't necessarily a detriment, and the withholding of
Alexander Courage's fanfare and theme from "The Original Series" isn't
particularly bothersome. "J.J. and I decided to hold off on that famous
theme as long as we could," said Giacchino at the film's debut. "And,
when we do use it, it's almost a reward for everything the characters
have gone through." After the success of Arnold's unhindered performance
of Monty Norman's original Bond theme at the end of
Casino
Royale, nobody can really fault Giacchino for withholding the same
kind of popular connection in
Star Trek. But far more interesting
about Giacchino's music for this film is the fact that it doesn't exude
any of the deeper, atmospheric characteristics of a
Star Trek
venture. It plays as though its personality is 70% focused on adventure
and 30% focused on drama, and nowhere to be heard at any point is the
concept of fantasy. At the heights of the Goldsmith, Horner, and
Eidelman scores, there was an intangible element of awe that accompanied
the concept of "the final frontier." In the scores of those three
composers, this idea manifested itself in the form of majesty. Slow
tempi, broad strokes, and a deeply resounding sense of impact. Perhaps
Horner's title theme best represents this sense of larger than life
fantasy, though Goldsmith's original 1978 score certainly poured on this
element outside of its own fanfare. For Eidelman, a certain reliance on
Gustav Holst's "The Planets" provided this feeling. Despite
Giacchino's assertion that he did work some inspiration from these
scores into his own music, that connection seems buried in mostly
obscure progressions. Instead of addressing the element of fantasy as
any strong score in this franchise has done before, the composer has
instead created a straight forward adventure score that would be, with
only a touch of jazz, a competent James Bond entry. A lack of any
significant role for electronic rhythms or other effects contributes to
this feeling, and it is possible that the extremely fast-paced narrative
of the film precluded any notion of expansive majesty in this entry. On
the whole, however,
Star Trek doesn't fit in any tangible way
with its predecessors, much like Leonard Rosenman's strikingly different
tone for
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Fortunately, Giacchino's work for
Star Trek is
infinitely better than Rosenman's insipidly positive and underpowered
distraction. It may largely defy the musical canon of the franchise, but
it's an entertaining score in its own context. The 107-piece orchestra
and 40-member choir produces enough bombast to please almost any
adventure fan, though the recording doesn't feature the truly dynamic,
wetter mix that became standard with Goldsmith's later entries. Upon
cursory evaluation,
Star Trek could very well seem like a
monothematic score, for Giacchino's employment of his new title theme is
so engrained in a multitude of cues that it's difficult to shake after a
while. The progressions of that theme aren't particularly dazzling,
contorting in familiar phrases that mimic the most pleasing portions of
Arnold's
Casino Royale, Danny Elfman's
Batman, and even a
few simplistic, token Hans Zimmer neo-classical favorites. Both the
structure of the theme and its repetition, not to mention several
performances truly rich with low brass accompaniment (a bass trombone
and three tubas do make a substantial impact), give the impression of
ballsy style that roots the title theme closer to Bond territory than
traditionally for Captain Kirk. The almost overbearing use of the theme
is somewhat of a disappointment; it literally does exist in nearly every
major cue, changing its instrumentation and pacing but never questioning
its own strongly cemented identity. It's also a theme that doesn't
really function well in fragments. Goldsmith always handled this by
utilizing the first four notes of his "friendship" theme (alternately
representing Starfleet at times) as an alternative to breaking up and
over-exposing his title fanfare. Some listeners may find Giacchino's
theme to be too simplistic or one-dimensional to hold dear to heart,
even if it is so prevalent that they can't help but hum the tune as they
exit the theatre. By comparison, the explosion of Courage's fanfare and
theme in the ten-minute finale and end credits sequence is so blatantly
out of place that it could ruin the application. Some intelligent
counterpoint in the opening sequence of the "End Credits" may not save
the awkwardly forced use of the classic theme in this loyal, but
comparatively badly dated rendering. Unlike the ultra cool bursting of
the Bond theme at the end of
Casino Royale, the "Original Series"
theme here holds little viable continuity in terms of style.
The score's two major subthemes vary greatly in their
originality. Giacchino's ideas for the vengeful villain, Nero, the
Narada (Nero's ship from the future), and the treachery of the Romulan
race on the whole are a bit predictable. The progression of his
pounding, deep brass theme (for Nero, essentially) uses minor thirds and
a descending construct that is not too dissimilar to Goldsmith's
handling of the similar villain in
Star Trek: Nemesis.
Thankfully, he also chose to apply a wicked array of percussion to the
character and his species, and for this task, he went in search of
unconventional sounds. His journey took him to a Los Angeles warehouse
of unusual drums and other noise-making objects, from which he decided
upon the banging of a 10-foot Coca-Cola sign, among other things, to
accentuate the static, rhythmic propulsion of the character. On album,
both the Nero theme and this bizarre percussion can be heard clearly in
"Nero Sighted," though listeners expecting to hear a sound as brazenly
unique as Goldsmith's "Blaster Beam" from
Star Trek: The Motion
Picture will be disappointed by how pedestrian most of the effects
sound in the final mix. A combination of whacking on metallic, folding
chairs and unconventional use of snare and cymbals (as Horner did in
The Missing) would have yielded an equal result. Conversely, the
third theme by Giacchino for
Star Trek is its saving grace.
Representing Spock and the Vulcans is a lovely, yearning piece that
surprisingly defies the cold logic of the species by conveying the
greatest, most sympathetic heart. Given that they are a primary target
for genocide in the story, this isn't perhaps too much of a shock, but
when you have to seek the tenderness in the Vulcan portions of any
Star Trek score, despite Horner's second entry bordering on that
idea, you know you have an unusual personality for your music in this
franchise. Conveying this theme is the two-stringed, Chinese erhu,
reminiscent of a human voice and, in this case, altered electronically
to represent the problematic relationship between the Vulcans and their
Romulan offshoots. With gorgeous harmonic resonance and the blurring of
the ethnicity with synthetic processing, this theme's dedicated
performances would sound at home in Klaus Badelt's
The Promise.
As striking as these performances are, Giacchino's other two primary
themes seem mechanically stale by comparison.
The straight action sequences in
Star Trek are
also impressive in their own context, but once again they defy the sound
you usually encounter in a film of this franchise. The frenetic density
of many of the action pieces, not missing even a role for shrieking
flutes on top, will remind listeners of the composer's early music for
the "Medal of Honor" games, a style that earned him many comparisons to
John Williams' later action music of thick layers. As such, much of this
material would instead be better suited for a
Star Wars film. In
the truly apocalyptic portions of the score, culminating in "Nero Death
Experience," Giacchino utilizes a technique only used briefly by
Eidelman and Goldsmith in the franchise: massive choral outbursts. By
the time the 40 singers start chanting their doomsday cries,
Star
Trek starts emulating the primordial, Middle Earth tones of Howard
Shore's famous
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's effective
music, but once again stands apart from the norm in the franchise and
plays rather predictably in the realm of standard summer blockbusters.
Giacchino, with all of his talent, surely could have conjured something
more unique than this. All of this said,
Star Trek is still a
very engaging and consistently developed score from start to finish,
loyal in its own associations and well orchestrated. The album release
for
Star Trek is problematic in its brevity, though. In tough
economic times, it's hard to fault Varèse Sarabande for pressing
only 45 minutes of music, but that presentation unfortunately cuts out a
wealth of material from the middle portion of the film. As such, those
who enjoyed the Spock/Vulcan theme will need to take solace in the
beautiful "That New Car Smell," easily the highlight of the album. The
"End Credits" are well rounded in that they touch upon all of the major
ideas, but despite their good juxtaposition of the new title theme with
Courage's original, the tone of the older theme is as misplaced and
potentially obnoxious as
Speedracer was for some Giacchino
listeners. Ultimately, abstract cover art and cute track titles couldn't
save the album from immediately drawing ire from fans, and while most of
the time those fans demand too much, this album is indeed lacking. At
least the missing opening cue is largely reprised in the exhilarating
"Enterprising Young Men." Overall,
Star Trek is a very strong
score, but it's hard to shake that nagging feeling that Giacchino
somehow missed the mark in creating this orphan.
****
| Bias Check: | For Michael Giacchino reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.64 (in 12 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.37
(in 7,223 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes a list of performers and a note from the director.
