> I love Hans Zimmer. I love his music and I think he's a great composer. I
> listen to film scores all the time. I just have something for the
> reviewer, you are wrong about Hans Zimmer composing the first Pirates of
> the Caribbean movie. His prodige, Klaus Badelt, was credited for the
> release of the soundtrack. Zimmer was only part of the process, so if you
> want to play the blame game on someone for the fault of the soundtrack, it
> wasn't just him. It's not that I want to put the blame on Badelt though, I
> thought the soundtrack was great, and he made beautiful melodies and great
> themes to use later on too. It was well played out.
It's fairly widely known that Zimmer wrote most of the themes for the first Pirates of the Caribbean film and then handed those to a very large committee of composers to turn into the score (including Klaus Badelt, but also Ramin Djawadi, Steve Jablonsky, Geoff Zanelli etc.). In fact, considering the number of "additional music" composers there are on the latter three scores, I'm guessing he did the exact same thing for PIrates scores 2-4. The only reason Badelt was slapped on the cover of Curse of the Black Pearl is because Zimmer was contractually obligated not to take credit for anything else while he was working on The Last Samurai.
> I would also have to disagree with your opinion of the soundtrack. I
> thought it was a cool idea to have another composer and musician come and
> put a new style of music for the soundtrack. I will admit that I felt
> there were too many remixes within the soundtrack, but it didnt make it
> bad. The soundtrack itself was well written and so much better than having
> to listen to synthetic music. The score sounds wonderful and I hope to
> play it one day. I enjoy his music and playing it, for I am a musician
> myself.
It wasn't well written. There's two new themes, which are thrown into a hopelessly muddy mix of randomly applied themes from the other movies. There's no development of the new themes like we heard in Dead Man's Chest and At World's End...
> As I read the review I wondered what it is about Hans Zimmer that is
> unlikable. As I know, he seems to have alot of passion for music and just
> writes good music, and just lets the sound and the movie mix together. It
> all falls into place. Zimmer's passion is shown through the music and, yes
> he reuses some ideas from other soundtracks, but what composer doesn't? It
> is how they write and it works. It's like saying that Alan Menken is
> reusing too much of his disney movie music material. It works and their
> just ideas to fill in, it's not like its the whole song. The music in
> question fits with the movie and is made with the same complexity he uses
> for all his compositions, like Sherlock Holmes, which was one of my
> favorite compositions he has ever done. This is just my opinion, but it
> seems there's alot of hate for Zimmer.
I'm sorry, but what "complexity" exactly are you talking about? Hans Zimmer writes some of the most simplistic film scores in existence. I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing and I really enjoy Zimmer's music sometimes, but it's a simple musical fact that it is not complex. If you want to hear truly complex music, listen to the works of John Williams, for example the immensely layered battle cues from the Star Wars prequels.
As for your "what composer doesn't reuse" argument, again, you've got a point, but the absolutely lazy wholesale reuse of theme after theme in On Stranger Tides, slapped down in places where that theme had absolutely no reason for being there (Davy Jones' theme during the London carriage chase, East India Trading Company theme throughout, Will and Elizabeth's love theme from At World's End at the end of the movie etc.), neatly and inarguably disproves the passion you're trying to make a case for. You can hear passion in many of Zimmer's works, including Sherlock Holmes which you mentioned, but On Stranger Tides is absolutely not one of them. The first three Pirates scores were good fun and enhanced their movies well, especially the third (with that killer, passionate love theme), but this one just felt like a soulless rehash of the first three scores assembled with a minimum of effort from Zimmer and his many associates. The only good thing to be said for this new score is the "Mermaids" track, and I suppose Blackbeard's theme is catchy enough, but that's ten minutes of good music amongst a ton of rehash, some unnecessary solo guitar work and an overload of remixes which are so incredibly inappropriate in the environment of Pirates of the Caribbean, it's reduced to pathetic unintentional comedy.
I used to love Zimmer as much as you do. But he has made some terrible choices over the past few years and I am extremely uneasy with the path he seems to be following. He seems to have spent more time arranging artists to do remixes than composing a score here, and that is quite simply the most misguided thing I've heard in a long time.
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