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Waterworld: (James Newton Howard) What could $200
million buy you in 1995? If you were Universal pictures, it bought you
the pounding and immense headache known as
Waterworld. Plagued by
production problems ranging from sinking sets to a disgruntled crew, the
futuristic Kevin Costner sci-fi adventure on the high seas was in the
news for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't even immune to rumors of
Costner's infidelity with a cast extra on the set. Visually and
conceptually,
Waterworld had some intriguing ideas; its premise
was based on a "
Mad Max on the ocean" scenario in which the land
masses of the world have been mostly swallowed up by rising seas.
Humanity lives on boats and atolls on this vast expanse, mostly unaware
of the remnants of great civilizations on the bottom of the relatively
shallow waters. Costner's "Mariner" character is the first human to
evolve and use gills to breathe underwater, and he becomes a somewhat
unwilling participant in the search for dry land. Like any really
stretched action flick, however, Dennis Hopper and his oil tanker full
of baddies pillages and maims on the high seas, giving
Waterworld
a distinctly dumb side to its otherwise nifty concept. One of the many
problems with the project was Mark Isham's score, which took an
introspective and restrained approach to the bleak futuristic setting.
With an opening date fast approaching, Universal threw out most of
Isham's music (the music box source material heard in the film is his,
though) and commissioned James Newton Howard to write an emergency score
for the project. With time scarce, Howard managed to assemble enough of
an ensemble of synthetic, orchestral, and choral musicians to record a
score far more common to blockbuster expectations. The science-fiction
elements of the story would be addressed by Howard's collaboration with
the Porcaros of Toto fame, creating a variety of synthesized percussion
noises to populate the film. Structurally, it's probably not surprising
that Howard's score is rather simplistic, relying in cliches in the film
scoring business to provide what Universal needed on short notice. The
resulting score is predictable to some extent, but has enough guilty
pleasures in its ranks to exceed expectations.
It is ironic to think that
Waterworld was
considered one of Howard's top scores at that point in his career. As
diverse and thematically entertaining as the score may be, its eclectic
moments are too few and its action is a tad anonymous. But it still
works, and the reason it makes for good compilation consideration is
because of its abundance of individual highlights. Two themes service
the score sparingly. First, the theme for the "Mariner" debuts during
his escape from the atoll and appears again in "Helen Frees the Mariner"
before sending us off with the happy ending in the final two cues. The
second theme represents both the little girl containing the map to dry
land and the land itself; performed often by solo woodwind, this theme
matures in "Dry Land" with a remarkably satisfying full ensemble
treatment. A synthetic rhythm is used several times for the mystery and
technology of the story, blasting its percussive and flute-blasting
motif with significant bass power at the very outset of the film and in
"Speargun." An electric xylophone effect is altered for a wet,
underwater sound in several ethereal cues, accompanied by a layered solo
female voice in the soothing "Swimming" cue. Perhaps the most impressive
moments of the score can be attributed to the accompaniment by the
chorus. Its sense of wonderment in the underwater exploration scene
(heard in "The Bubble") mirrors the majesty of a handful of cues in the
later
Atlantis animation score. The choral outbursts in
Waterworld are few and far between, but when they occur, they
pack a punch equivalent in depth to the concurrent
Cutthroat
Island by John Debney. The straight orchestral action pieces are
somewhat generic, with short noteworthy bursts begging for rearrangement
into a suite. The snare-driven rhythm at the end of "Arriving at the
Deez," extending into a rambunctious string variant and brass subtheme
in "Deacon's Speech," is a highlight. Overall, however,
Waterworld suffers from lengthy sequences of electronic monotony
and uninteresting orchestral meanderings, and outside of the final eight
minutes, you'll need to cut and paste sequences into your own suite to
make for twenty or so minutes of top notch, guilty pleasure fun.
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| Bias Check: | For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.31 (in 53 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.16
(in 58,041 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert notes include extensive credits, but no extra information about the film or score.
