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Terminator 2: Judgment Day: (Brad Fiedel) Did
anyone really think that the second
Terminator film would be the
last time we'd see Arnold Schwarzenegger's naked butt rising out of
a funky sphere of lightning? It would have seemed to many that
Terminator 2: Judgment Day would have been a good place for James
Cameron's bleak vision of the future to resolve itself... with perhaps a
small hope that armageddon at the hands of the machines was not
inevitable. The film itself was a technical marvel, with Cameron taking
the liquid-morphing technology he introduced in
The Abyss and
dazzling audiences with his T1000 terminator in this sequel film. With
the original
The Terminator raised to ultimate cult status and
the sequel grossing record profits, it's hard to think of soundtracks
for such high profile films that have raised such little interest. It's
also difficult to say definitively that this lack of popular longevity
of composer Brad Fiedel's two
Terminator scores are due to the
nature of their construct, or perhaps their poor rendering and
execution. But in either case, there was some worry when
Terminator
2: Judgment Day first was announced that Cameron would return to
Fiedel for the job of scoring the sequel, despite experiencing success
(on screen... not necessarily personally) with James Horner and Alan
Silvestri. Indeed, the score that Fiedel would produce for
Terminator
2 is largely a technological update of the first score, utilizing
many of the same motifs and synth effects, and there were positives and
negatives to this retainment. On the plus side, Fiedel does have a knack
for conjuring obnoxiously effective electronic sounds that adequately
represent some of the technological horror you witness on screen.
Additionally, the carry-over of the primary theme and supporting motifs
into any sequel is important, and Fiedel does an outstanding job of
incorporating all of the elements from the first score into the second
one.
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.
**
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
