Although 2016 will not be remembered as a fruitful year
for classic new film scores, it produced more than the usual amount of
really strong music of the four-star variety from start to finish. Many
of the most satisfying scores belonged within franchises, but these
entries managed to steer the sound of those concepts towards
intelligently fresh realms.
Multiple four-star scores cracked the top five this year, and it's safe
to say that none of this year's best could have competed favorably
against the triumphant winner of 2015, John Williams' Star Wars: The
Force Awakens. But the selections offered here, while weighted
towards the genres of magnificent visceral appeal, still represent
outstanding music from all corners of the globe, especially Scandinavia
and the Far East.
The leader of the nomination count in 2016 is industry workhorse John
Debney, his four nominations well deserved and yielding a "Best
Composer" win. Earning three nominations apiece are Michael Giacchino,
James Newton Howard, and Panu Aaltio. Both Danny Elfman and Naoki Sato
enjoy multiple nominations as well. The year is a rare and final
instance in which John Williams, James Horner, Danny Elfman, and Hans
Zimmer will all be nominated together.
Far from being a "consensus year" like 2015, this
year produced a wide disparity in leading critic choices for the top
position. While Justin Hurwitz's musical,
La La Land, swept all
the major mainstream awards, the best music put to film in 2016 existed
for a comparatively little known Finnish nature documentary. Aaltio's
Tale of a Lake transcends its limited budget with incredible
melodic grace, delightful orchestrations, and a masterful recording mix.
The nominations for Aaltio this year are his first at Filmtracks.
Coming in a strong second place is Debney's
The Jungle Book,
an extremely gratifying modernization of an old favorite into the modern
adventure genre sound. Of nearly the same appeal are Howard's
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Elfman's
Alice
Through the Looking Glass, two scores exhibiting the prime fantasy
mode of their composers. Rounding out the top five is
Assassination
Classroom: Graduation by Sato, who produced an insane amount of
music for various media in 2016; his sequel to this manga concept
supplied an unnecessarily engaging personality for its oddball topic.
All of these other four composers had previously been nominated in this
category. It is Elfman's seventh "Top Film Score" nod without a win,
by far the most such near-misses in Filmtracks history to date.
The unexpected runner-up of 2016 is Klaus Badelt's ethnically grand
Queen of the Desert, an epic failure of a film that technically
opened in 2015 but received its widest release a year later as studios
struggled to salvage the project. Just a step behind is another
resounding selection unreleased on album as of the time of these awards,
Debney's roaring and fun
League of Gods. Rounding out the top ten
as honorable mentions are
Moana, the best Disney musical in many
years, courtesy of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa'I, and Mark Mancina,
The Last King (Birkebeinerne), the Norwegian historical
adventure/drama scored with evocative vocals and thunderous orchestral
tones by Gaute Storaas, and
The Light Between Oceans, Alexandre
Desplat's agonizingly precise blend of tumult and tenderness.
Most listeners pointed to Michael Giacchino for
this award in 2016, and he certainly achieved a stellar year of fantasy
music by the time he tackled
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story at the
last minute. But Giacchino, the "Top Composer" winner from 2015, was
edged out by Debney's magnificent tandem of
The Jungle Book and
League of Gods in 2016, supported by overachieving entries for
The Young Messiah and
Ice Age: Collision Course, the
former a clever expansion of his famous
The Passion of the Christ
score.
No stranger to this category is Howard, whose year was magically
punctuated by
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them after
impressing with
The Huntsman: Winter's War, both large-scale
efforts once again proving the composer's unquestionable value to major
franchises. Newcomers to this category are Fernando Velázquez,
whose productive year was topped by the affable children's adventure
Zipi y Zape y la Isla del Capitán and the stoically
dramatic
Gernika, and Aaltio, whose
Tale of a Lake is
joined by the flighty Finnish children's fantasy,
Rölli and the
Secret of All Time.
Like 2015, there was an abundance of extremely worthy
cues to consider for 2016, about 25 true contenders narrowed down to the
maximum of twenty choices. No single score produced two cues on the
list, though the year's "Top Film Score" contenders each came close to
achieving that honor.
Ultimately vying for the "Top Film Cue" award this year were Bear
McCreary's eerily powerful melodic summary "10 Cloverfield Lane" from
10 Cloverfield Lane, Elfman's clever expansion on his prior
themes in "Alice" from
Alice Through the Looking Glass (based on
2010's "Top Film Cue"), Brian Tyler's equally impressive adaptation of
previous material into "Now You See Me 2 Fanfare" for
Now You See Me
2, Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe's stunningly beautiful (but terribly
butchered in the film) "The Panda Village" from
Kung Fu Panda 3,
and the final winner of the category, Sato's emotional powerhouse
"Goodbye/Killing Me" from
Assassination Classroom: Graduation,
the composer at his dramatic finest.
Nearly as competitive are Howard's dynamically diverse "A Man and His
Beasts" from
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and
Giacchino's attractive, otherworldly duo of "Strange Days Ahead" from
Doctor Strange and "Night on the Yorktown" from
Star Trek
Beyond. Aaltio's bittersweet "The Birds' Farewell" from
Tale of a
Lake and Debney's lovely "Elephant Waterfall" from
The Jungle
Book are among many highlights from those scores, as is the
infectiously bright "Reverie" from
Pete's Dragon by Daniel Hart
and the solemnly beautiful finale, "She is the Uncrowned Queen of the
Desert," by Badelt for
Queen of the Desert. From Jo Yeung-Wook's
The Handmaiden is the classically romantic "My Tamako, My
Sookee," and from the same string-based sense of trepidation and a hint
of despair comes Desplat's "The Dinghy" from
The Light Between
Oceans.
In the next tier of competition in this category for 2016 was John
Williams' typically masterful suite of
The BFG themes in "Sophie
and the BFG," Hurwitz's rowdy instrumental rendition of the song
"Another Day of Sun" in the "Credits" of
La La Land, Philipp F.
Kölmel's propulsive and cool "Practice Makes Perfect" from
Emerald Green (Smaragdgrün) (Kölmel has earned a "Top
Film Cue" nomination in this franchise before), Debney's modern fantasy
explosion in "Main Title" from
League of Gods, Simon Franglen's
heartbreaking arrangement of James Horner's material for "Faraday's
Ride" from
The Magnificent Seven, and Steven Price's
appropriately troubled but addictive love theme, "Harley and Joker,"
from
Suicide Squad.
The five runner-ups that barely missed the cut this time around were
Marco Beltrami's immense guilty pleasure, "Coronation," from
Gods of
Egypt (something of a source cue given all the drum-banging and
horn-blaring on screen), the defiantly powerful vocalizations of
"Birkibeinar Titull" from Storaas'
The Last King (Birkebeinerne),
Mancina's gorgeous adaptation of the song melodies of
Moana
into the victorious "Toe Feiloa'i," the optimism of Aaltio's closing
"The Water Cycle" from
Tale of a Lake, and Velázquez's
redemptive and spirited "Hasta Siempre, Amigos Míos" from
Zipi
y Zape y la Isla del Capitán.
Eliminated earlier in the process of determining these nominations but
still worth mentioning are Christopher Young's "Bailongma, The White
Dragon Horse" from the solid sequel score
The Monkey King 2, Ilan
Eshkeri's swashbuckling "The Flying Boat" from
Swallows and
Amazons, Dario Marianelli's pretty "Hanzo's Fortress" from
Kubo
and the Two Strings, Aaltio's boisterous "The Whole Story" from
Rölli and the Secret of All Time, Velázquez's beefy
"Gernika Under the Bombs" from
Gernika, Sato's customary piano
elegance in "Hontouha - Boku No Rie Chan Nan Da!" from
Rudolf the
Black Cat, John Ottman's monumental "The Transference" from
X-Men: Apocalypse, and Abel Korzeniowski's creepy and nostalgic
"Wayward Sisters" from
Nocturnal Animals. Dropped in favor of
superior cues from the same scores were Howard's whirlwind "Main Titles"
from
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Sato's melodramatic
"Assassin and Target" from
Assassination Classroom: Graduation,
and Elfman's exciting "Saving the Ship" from
Alice Through the
Looking Glass.
