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Terminator 2: Judgment Day on DVD
• "Strong Ambience" • Dolby Digital 5.1 More DVD info... |
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Terminator 2: Judgment Day on DVD
• "Strong Ambience" • Dolby Digital 5.1 More DVD info... |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you want two muscular, superior performances of the title theme from the first film. Avoid it... if you're asking for headache by sitting through Brad Fiedel's library of screeching and grinding metallic sound effects over pounding, brutal percussion. Original Review, by Christian Clemmensen
Whether you agree with Fiedel's bleak style and harsh musical accompaniment for the movie is an entirely different affair. Wherever you fall in that debate, it's widely agreed upon that Fiedel seemed more comfortable in this environment that he did in the orchestral one for Cameron's otherwise successful True Lies a few years later. If you enjoyed the stark, groaning atmosphere of the first Terminator score, then Terminator 2 will surely impress you. The memorable title theme is expanded upon in two fuller performances, and the distinctive, staggering five-note motif introducing that theme makes its triumphant return. Several of the rhythmic progressions from the first film's chase scenes, including the fake orchestra hits over the top, return immediately in "Sarah on the Run." Fiedel also proves himself the master of slashing and grinding metallic sound effects, conjuring a new screeching sound for the T1000's morphing that is a distinctive motif for the villain. The pacing of the score is also effective, setting the nonstop chase to a bed of pad thumps and various percussion. The problems with the Terminator 2 score are numerous, however. The film has a significantly more human element than the first, and yet the score has become even colder. For a film about two machines relentlessly tearing at each other, this score is sufficiently emotionless and brutal. But for the future of humanity, embodied by the young John Conner and the transformed Sarah (whose ripped biceps deserved a subtheme alone), Fiedel treats them with no regard. Scenes in the desert, in Sarah's narration, or those in which the older style terminator is conversing with the boy, are scored with absolutely no warmth. No new thematic ideas are explored for them. The mechanical chase scenes are more effective in these regards, but a lengthy cue such as "Escape from the Hospital" is built to thrill you with sheer noise and sound effects rather than intelligent music, and that cheap method can easily cause you an instant headache. As effective as this score is in parts --and some of Fiedel's ideas truly are useful and intriguing in the picture-- this score gets the point across by pounding you into submission rather than exploring the infinitely diverse landscape presented by Cameron. Not only is its one-man performance team cheap in its limited instrumentation, but it's also cheap in its application. For a film of such immense size, it's still hard, fifteen years and another sequel later, to imagine the score for Terminator 2 as anything other than a wasted opportunity. That doesn't mean that the score needed to be a big orchestral affair... it means that even in the electronic realm, there were so many possibilities for a great synthetic score wasted. Only three tracks are listenable on the album, and they are not unsurprisingly the only three full renderings of the original film's theme. The title cue, the tingling "John & Dyson into Vault," and the emotional "It's Over" cue are all fuller electronic performances of the great theme, and are all worthy of compilation consideration (especially the final track). That theme serves as perhaps the most significant evidence that Fiedel (and maybe Cameron) missed the boat with this score. When you step back an examine it, the Terminator theme is a hopelessly optimistic one in its rising, romantic structure. Even when masked by the electronics that are performing it, the theme conveys the hope that humanity will survive the onslaught of the machines and venture forward. And yet, nothing in the rest of Fiedel's score utilizes this appropriate emotional response, leaving listeners to only contemplate the ways in which his sound effects mirror the slashing and screeching of the machines themselves. Marco Beltrami would succeed no better in the third film of the franchise, providing an orchestral/synth mix that would also fall well short of the demands of the film. Despite its dated sound and questionable performances, the original Terminator score remains the best balanced. **
Review #2, by Faisal Juma
Terminator 2: Judgment Day: (Brad Fiedel) I've always thought that James Cameron displayed an amazing since of intuition when it comes to hiring the right composer for the right film. It could be argued that after the success of the first Terminator film, he could've enlisted the help of almost any of the top 5 composers in the industry. But he did not. What Cameron noticed was that Brad Fiedel's music did not just merely exist to underscore the action and drama displayed on screen. Fiedel's work melted and fused with the whole Terminator universe, that future struggle between the forces of steel/hydraulics/electronics and Mankind. I cannot imagine for a second the main antagonist, the T1000, barreling down a street without Fiedel's electronic motif, a sound best described as that of an 18-wheeler racing out of control down a highway. This striking motif that shows up a number of times throughout the score is akin to what Williams did for the shark in Jaws. On a psychological level, the motif triggers an almost automatic response and in midst of even explosions and gun fire, you instantly recognize it and know what's coming next. A good portion of the score for Terminator II combines traditional synthesizer pads (basically synthetic strings) with unconventional percussion. Everything from the sound of metal-stamping Press to the hiss of hydraulic brakes. Some of the tracks, like 'Sarah's Dream', use swirling pads of strings that meander and crescendo to violent dissonant explosions of a female choir, leading up to, in this track, the bright flash of a nuclear detonation. 'I'll Be Back' contains one of the best action cues I've heard in a long time, certainly in a synthetic score. Fiedel starts the cue with a series of low percussion hits and slowly builds up the tempo in anticipation for the main part of the cue, which is a repeating pattern of powerful sounding synthetic strings in the lower-register. Overlaid on top of everything is a nice variation of the main theme. The second last track 'T1000 Terminated' ends with a beautiful transition to the End Title, which is in my opinion the best version of the main Terminator theme in both scores.
Brad Fiedel manages to blend unmusical sounds of industrial equipment
and modified percussion samples with style, rhythm, and harmony that
at times to me is baffling. On one level it is jarring to any
listener whose used to conventional orchestral passages, hence it is
ridiculously easy to dismiss almost everything in this score except
for the infamous Main/End Titles. Maturity might allow enjoyment
beyond that first cursory reaction, but maturity might also get in the
way and cause you to throw this CD against the wall and exclaim 'What
is this sh*t!?' I hope not, because you might miss the best purely
synthesized score ever composed for a film, and I've heard almost all,
both orchestral and synthetic. *****
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