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. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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. ** Track Listings:
Total Time: 53:41
All artwork and sound clips from Terminator 2: Judgment Day are Copyright © 1991, Varèse Sarabande. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/24/96, updated 8/13/06. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1996-2005, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
