Buy it... only if you seek a souvenir from a film that, like the score, addresses your senses for the awe and thrill of the moment rather than the greater, cohesive intelligence of the original concept.

Avoid it... if you demand that your superhero film scores create a lasting identity through development of theme, instrumentation, or any other uniquely consistent element.

Bates

Watchmen: (Tyler Bates) Of all the superheroes that have leapt, flown, blasted, and punched their way to the big screen in the last twenty years, perhaps no adaptation of an existing concept was as tricky as Alan Moore's 1986 graphic novels involving the Watchmen. It's easy to see why so many directors came and went on this project through the years; the narrative of this set of colorful characters is so unique and intermingled with real-life geopolitical events that an accurate translation into a sensible motion picture was a daunting task. As such, it's not surprising that Moore refused to associate himself with director Zack Snyder's 2009 film Watchmen, a promising, but ultimately muddled treatment of a subject that was simply too immense to tackle in one film. Sporting a cast of relative unknowns and dwelling upon painstaking loyalty to the look of the comics, Watchmen failed to reinvent the superhero genre on screen as it had on paper. Its premise is different that those of better known concepts, examining the role of a variety of flashy characters with special powers against the backdrop of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union in the mid-1980's (with Richard Nixon serving a fifth term over a beleaguered American population). The production tried so hard to remain faithful to the novels that it lost sight of the larger picture, and with the finer portions of the story sacrificed, the nuances that made the concept so appealing were lost. Not serving Watchmen with the kind of intelligence that it deserves are Tyler Bates' score and the plethora of contemporary songs littered throughout the picture. Bates in particular had been a punching bag in the film music collecting community, and rightfully so. His borrowing of Elliot Goldenthal's Titus for Snyder's wildly popular 300 caused enough trouble for the studio to force disclaimers on copies of the DVDs and soundtracks for that film (crediting Goldenthal for inspiring the soundtrack). Bates' music for other mainstream films, lead by the poor remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still in late 2008, has often underachieved, failing to define the pictures with memorable sonic identities while only barely producing enough of an appropriate atmosphere to justify his paycheck. Of Bates' work for Watchmen, Snyder uses the words "iconic and beautiful." This description is truly baffling, for this music is deserving of neither word.

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Instead, Bates once again writes bland, uninspiring music that functions in its basic duties without advancing the film with anything truly iconic or beautiful. There seems to be a working philosophy in some corners of the industry (and one could dare say that Hans Zimmer is partially to blame for this studio mentality) that the scores of modern blockbusters are best applied with a wall of impressive sound. Simply put, if you create a sonic wallpaper of symphonic, choral, and electronic tones of magnificent intent and creative recording techniques, you don't really require intelligence in subtle layers. Bates is riding this wave of aimless noise, writing music that generates terrific amounts of gothic power and contemporary coolness without yielding anything remotely memorable enough to recall ten minutes after the conclusion of the film or album. There are individual moments of significant potential in the music for Watchmen, and for sparse sequences spread throughout the work, you hear cues that would function as outstanding filler material. But there is no distinct thematic or instrumental direction to any of that music. Bates' motifs are haphazardly arranged and badly in need of consolidation, barely registering in even a close examination of the music when separated from the film. Sure, allowing each of the five main heroes a musical identity is perhaps too ambitious for any composer, but Watchmen has no overarching identity either. Its pleasant interludes of harmonic, slightly dramatic character development, as in "Just Look Around You," are lovely at best, anonymous at worst. The action material aims to exhilarate with its frantic pacing and ripping personality rather than any particular construct of note. Some of these cues try so hard to adopt hip, electronica spirit into their ranks (such as "Prison Fight") that they completely separate themselves from the remainder of the work. The juxtaposition of the extremes in Watchmen compounds the identity problems already existing because of a crumbling foundation. Overall, it's difficult to fathom how so much effort in the performances of over 100 players and singers can be wasted in a production with so much potential. At the very least, Bates avoids explicitly quoting other composers (with the possible exception of Trevor Rabin in "I Love You"). But his original constructs are so undemanding, unorganized, and devoid of convincing style that his continued assignment to major studio films should be questioned. A score-only album of 45 minutes of material meanders between genres indiscriminately, likely limiting its appeal to concept loyalists. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download