> This is part of a series.
> - Here’s the last post on POTC 5, Wonder Woman, etc. -
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=118953
> - If you want the full set of links covering the Too Big To Fail era or
> earlier, click on my profile.

> -----------------------

> The Lego Batman Movie (2017) - ****
> Lorne Balfe; produced by Balfe, Max Aruj & Thomas Farnon; score
> technical assistant
> Steffen Thum; orchestrated by Oscar Senén, Joan Martorell & Vladimir
> Tubic; orchestra
> conducted by Christopher Gordon; boy’s choir conducted by Thomas Wilson;
> children’s choir
> conducted by Sam Allchurch; Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers
> featured on drums;
> music production coordinator Queenie Li; ‘Who’s The (Bat)Man’ produced by
> Balfe & Kato Khandwala;
> ‘I Found You’ by produced by Balfe & Aruj with lyrics by Antony
> Genn

> A sequel to the wildly successful Lego Movie was inevitable, though
> it was perhaps surprising that the initial follow-up film focused on the
> supporting Lego Batman character hilariously voiced by Will Arnett. Lorne
> assumed his hiring as composer was due to his additional music
> contributions to the Dark Knight scores and that the music would be
> a parody of that, but was relieved that the filmmakers wanted to instead
> treat it ”as if it was a real live-action movie, and then sometimes we
> added humor to it. Chris McKay pitched the concept as About a Boy
> meets Michael Bay. I thought that sounded amazing.”

> He would craft a score that marvelously synthesized the various styles of
> earlier Batman music - the hip goofiness of Neal Hefti’s contributions to
> the Adam West series, the gothic grandeur of Danny Elfman’s music for the
> Tim Burton films, and the more modern sounds of Hans Zimmer - though Balfe
> would admit that the Hefti elements were his only conscious nod.
> “Batman was very classical, and deadly serious. For animation, you
> shouldn’t write anything cheaper or less than you would for an adult. His
> theme I would happily put into a live action Batman film.”

> A Robin theme, possibly the first in the character’s film and television
> history, would start off sounding like something from one of Zimmer’s
> charming comedy scores but undergo a significant amount of variation. And
> the composer clearly had a good sense of humor about his work, including
> the prog rock ensemble used for the Joker (vs. the punk rock inspirations
> for Zimmer’s take on Heath Ledger’s Joker) and a large choir literally
> singing “The Phantom Zone” during scenes involving that dimension.
> ”That had been an amusing thought of mine for months. I kept singing
> it, and everybody would look at me strangely. I don’t know why! I just
> thought it was obvious to do. As soon as the choir sang ‘The’ we had
> crossed the line. I laughed. I thought it was very funny.”

> Balfe’s earlier work Home had been a marvelous example of the
> composer taking the extra time to make his score coherent with the songs
> in the film. Here he would get the chance to write / produce those. The
> Robin theme would morph into I Found You with help from Balfe’s
> friend Anthony Genn who had also done lyrics for Penguins of
> Madagascar. But the icing on the cake would be the absurd rock
> masterpiece Who’s The (Bat)Man - the funniest score track of the
> year, complete with lyrics like “I 100% am not Bruce Wayne” and bits about
> Batman never skipping leg day, choke-holding a bear, and never paying his
> taxes.
>
>
> Genius Season 1: Einstein (2017) - ***
> Lorne Balfe; main title by Hans Zimmer; score technical assistants Max
> Aruj & Steffen Thum; orchestrated by Oscar
> Senén & Shane Rutherfoord-Jones; digital instrument design Mark
> Wherry; score production coordinator Queenie Li

> TBTF discovery #35.

> The Zimmer brand had been trusted to launch such things as Dreamworks and
> the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it would now be called to launch the
> first original scripted series to air on the National Geographic channel,
> thanks in part to the involvement of Ron Howard as a producer. The show
> would get an energetic title theme by Hans, a step up from the dour one
> done for The Crown, while the episodic scoring would be done by
> Lorne. “We had all worked together. It wasn’t out of the blue.”

> As with the music for Frost/Nixon, there’s often a focus on rhythm
> and momentum rather than themes. “The way viewers watch television now
> is different. People will watch three or four episodes in one day. I try
> to kind of step back and watch two or three episodes at a time, and make
> sure we’re not being overly thematic. I think the audience understands
> it.” That quote would become unintentionally hilarious two years later
> when Lorne wrote perhaps the most densely thematic score on television.

> There are also moments of piano and mallet percussion that strongly
> suggest someone in the production process may have had Thomas Newman’s
> music on their mind. Synths are prominent, perhaps reflecting the
> constraints of television, although there was very little money in the
> music budgets for those aforementioned Howard films. With the exception of
> the emphasis on solo violin, there are not many nods to the era the show
> takes place during, a conscious choice on the filmmakers’ part.
> “[Genre] doesn't matter. We didn't want a period score. You have to
> write [what’s] right. It would be overwhelming to look at him as [an]
> important [figure]. Looking at the human characteristics made it more
> possible to write.”

> Helpful note: there are two albums. An EP seems to contain Balfe’s demos
> while a later album contains the score proper (not too far removed from
> the approach taken for the Musical Anthology albums for the later His
> Dark Materials series).
>
>
> Geostorm (2017) - **
> Lorne Balfe; produced by Balfe & Steffen Thum; score technical
> assistants Thum & Max Aruj; conducted by Aruj &
> Nick Glennie-Smith; orchestrated by Oscar Senén; synth programmers Clay
> Duncan, Kevin Lamb & Jon Aschalew;
> technical score assistants Joseph Cho & Jennifer Dirkes; music
> production coordinator Queenie Li

> TBTF discovery #36.

> The directorial debut of Roland Emmerich’s producing partner Dean Devlin
> (of Stargate and Independence Day fame) was originally
> intended as a 2016 release, but a combination of factors including a poor
> test screening in 2015 led to the release getting pushed as the studio
> ordered costly reshoots supervised by Jerry Bruckheimer and an executive
> producer of his CSI television franchise. Unsurprisingly,
> Bruckheimer wanted music tailored to his preferences, so composer Pinar
> Toprak (for whom the film arguably constituted a big break) was somewhat
> cruelly tossed aside - even with her having a brief background working at
> Media Ventures. “I became the first woman to be hired on a $100
> million-plus movie and the first one to get fired from one.”

> In came Lorne, who was starting to get a reputation for capable
> replacement scores after writing Terminator: Genisys, supporting
> Rupert Gregson-Williams on the first season of The Crown, and
> partially replacing Clint Mansell’s music for Paramount’s troubled
> Ghost in the Shell. Balfe was a known commodity to Bruckheimer
> thanks to being a contributor on Pirates sequels and The Lone
> Ranger. “Jerry was a massive influence. He knows what he wants the
> audience to feel.” Other scores had given Balfe the opportunity to
> tinker with a familiar style, but he probably only had two weeks on this
> one, and in any event this was a classic “what Jerry wants Jerry gets”
> scenario, and the end result suggested Jerry wanted a safe, surprise-free
> reprise of many Remote Control action mannerisms.

> Lorne liked the film, calling it “exactly the type of movie I would go
> to the cinema for an hour and a half of pure escapism.” And
> Bruckheimer clearly loved the partnership as he would bring back Balfe for
> five future films.
>
>
> The Crown Season 2 (2017) - ***
> Rupert Gregson-Williams & Lorne Balfe; produced by Hans Zimmer;
> add’l music by Evan Jolly & Jon Monroe;
> add’l arrangements by Max Aruj & Steffen Thum; orchestrated by Shane
> Rutherfoord-Jones; music coordinator Queenie Li

> Season 1 was covered here:
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=117577

> TBTF discovery #37.

> Rupert: “Having done a few interviews for Wonder Woman, some
> people ask me the question about female superheroes. Of course, I’ve
> covered Queen Elizabeth, and while she’s not a superhero, she’s certainly
> a heroine.”

> Rupert and Lorne would return for the second season of the acclaimed
> Netflix series. Balfe had a supporting credit the prior year but would be
> a co-composer this go-round, with he and his team taking episodes 1-3 and
> 8-9 and Gregson-Williams overseeing the other five episodes, perhaps a
> necessity as composing for the show was in Balfe’s perspective “like
> having to write six feature films in this short space of time.” The
> score still manages to sound coherent in spite of the “your turn, my turn”
> nature of the assignment, and if you liked the music of the first season
> (including the derivative Duck Shoot) you’ll probably like this
> too.

> The show would overhaul its cast as its characters aged, and the music
> would follow suit with Martin Phipps, a veteran of various BBC productions
> including Peaky Blinders and a War & Peace miniseries,
> taking over scoring duties in Season 3.
>
>
> Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) - **
> Steve Jablonsky; add’l music by David Fleming, Luke Richards & Gary
> Dworetsky;
> add’l arrangements by Max Aruj & Steffen Thum; orchestrated by Chris
> Anderson-Bazzoli,
> Rhea Fowler, Walt Fowler, Rick Giovinazzo, David Giuli, Jennifer Hammond,
> Suzette Moriarty &
> Carl Rydlund; conducted by James Sale & Nick Glennie-Smith; music
> production coordinator
> Queenie Li; technical score assistants Joseph Cho & Jennifer Dirkes;
> flute Pedro Eustache;
> thank you to Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams & Bob Badami

> Transformers was covered here:
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=109608
> Revenge of the Fallen was covered here:
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=111761
> Dark of the Moon was covered here:
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=113009
> Age of Extinction was covered here:
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=117220

> TBTF discovery #38.

> “There’s no critic on Earth who’s going to like it. [Bay’s] making it
> for a very specific audience.”

> The final Michael Bay-directed Transformers was far less
> commercially successful than the last few entries, and Bay would later
> concede he probably should’ve stopped making them despite the money being
> good and them being “fun to do.” But don’t let that obscure the
> batshit crazy pleasures of the fifth entry in the franchise. Anthony
> Hopkins as a Transformers-loving historian! Robots fighting Nazis in World
> War II! Earth turning out to be a planet-sized robot!

> The music of the other Transformers sequels tended to reinvent the
> wheel each time and have relatively little to do with each other, so why
> should this one be any different? Steve Jablonsky would make a few
> concessions to the medieval and historical elements in the film, but
> otherwise The Last Knight largely come off like another generally
> competent and inoffensive library of Remote Control music, though
> thankfully not with the kind of in-your-face references to
> Inception and Man of Steel that the prior two scores had.
> And even with Age of Extinction rarely using the well-known themes
> of the first film, it is still shocking how little of the runtime those
> ideas take up in this work, though it’s possible that’s a function of
> Optimus Prime being “evil” until the movie’s final battle.

> At times Jablonsky found the score a challenge almost equal to his
> experiences on Revenge of the Fallen. “There were a lot of
> picture changes. Bay up until the end was really trying to shorten [it].
> The scenes used to have a melodic feel, then [the music became] five notes
> of the theme, then cut to something else. There are so many scenes like
> that. I’d say ‘we’ll use the same idea but we can’t keep cutting it, we
> have to start over,’ but I can’t [rescore] them all. I [didn’t] even know
> all that the editors did until I [got] to the final mixing stage.”

> Muddling matters was how many members of Lorne Balfe’s team were credited.
> Sleuths will note the appearance of his usual assistants Max Aruj and
> Steffen Thum plus his music production coordinator Queenie Li. Perhaps
> this was a function of Jablonsky needing help given the intense time
> pressures, or maybe even a case of Bay liking what Balfe did on 13
> Hours and wanting the composer involved here. Regardless, it brought
> the franchise full circle, as Balfe had been an additional contributor on
> the first film and its 2009 sequel.
>
>
> The Dark Tower (2017) - ***
> Tom Holkenborg; add’l music by Aljoscha Christenhuß & Antonio Di
> Iorio; orchestrated /
> copied by Holkenborg, Jonathan Beard, Edward Trybek, Henri Wilkinson,
> Jamie Thierman,
> Sean Barrett & Ben Hoff; conducted by Edward Trybek; technical score
> engineer Alex Ruger

> TBTF discovery #39.

> After a decade-plus of efforts to adapt Stephen King’s massive book
> series, Sony and MRC finally got a version out, though not without
> struggle. There were acrimonious clashes between the studios, disastrous
> test screenings in October 2016 that suggested the story was confounding,
> and unnamed sources saying director Nikolaj Arcel was in over his head.
> The resulting film was only 88 minutes long, a shockingly small runtime
> for what was supposed to set up a multi-film franchise. A report from
> Variety would claim producer Ron Howard stepped in after those screenings
> to help advise Arcel on the music, though it’s unclear to what extent that
> impacted the score written by Tom Holkenborg or if he was even on the film
> at that time; the earliest date he mentioned his involvement was April
> 2017.

> Holkenborg would characterize his score as “thematically driven,
> whereas some of my other film scores are very sound-driven.” There is
> definitely more traditional orchestral material than any previous
> Holkenborg work (and why wouldn’t there be, what with all the credited
> orchestrators), and even some nicely rousing material in the later tracks.
> But what will dominate in most folks’ minds is the instrumental and sonic
> tinkering that Holkenborg had been talking about since messing with that
> piano on 300: Rise of an Empire. “We used a bunch of really
> outlandish guitar pedals. I made these really weird ambient sounds and
> then we turned that in samples and in hardware to play them a certain way.
> That created a really unique ambiance that you can’t really tell what it
> is.” Behold, Hans’ old Pacific Heights quote, remixed for a new
> generation of composers.

> For some listeners, the score would be more of the same. MMUK would call
> it his best yet but still a “poor-to-middling work,” Movie-Wave
> would give the album its lowest rating, and Filmtracks wouldn’t even
> bother covering it, though it likely would’ve if the film had been more
> successful. But the composer would be unapologetically matter-of-fact
> about his role in the industry in promotional interviews. “For a lot of
> classical music / film score fanatics, [my music is] all rubbish and
> noise. But that's the reality where we are: a lot of directors want to
> take that new approach to film scoring.'

> Despite that, there was evidence that Holkenborg was trying to be taken
> more seriously as a composer and seem less like a DJ. In 2016 his film
> music album covers said either “Junkie XL” or “Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie
> XL.” But on this score’s album, as well as the one for Brimstone
> (also released in 2017), he was now just Tom Holkenborg. “I started my
> production career in 1994 under that name. It was a great time in my life,
> but it’s time to move on to something new. All the future films that I do
> will be under my own name. Junkie XL we'll just leave for what it
> was.”
>
>
> Ferdinand (2017) - ****
> John Powell; score produced by Batu Sener; add’l music by Sener,
> Anthony Willis & Paul Mounsey;
> orchestrated by John Ashton Thomas, Pete Anthony, Rick Giovinazzo, Randy
> Kerber, Andrew Kinney & Jon Kull;
> conducted by John Powell; thank you to Edie Boddicker; dedicated to
> Melinda Lerner & Oliver Powell

> “I used to joke with directors about how crazy the music should be. You
> can be right at the top, which I definitely did on some of the Ice
> Ages. At the other end of the scale, I’m very admiring of Thomas
> Newman’s Finding Nemo. It’s so elegant. So do you bring charm to
> the scene and allow everyone to relax, or do you push the comedy and
> ensure it’s as funny as it can possibly be? I fight with that all the
> time.”

> An animated film about a pacifist bull that was an adaptation of a book
> with anti-fascist overtones was perhaps a note-perfect assignment for John
> Powell (even more so than Stop-Loss). Powell drew some inspiration
> from Spanish-sounding classical music, in essence injecting his mannerisms
> with the flavor of the great Iberian-inflected scores of yesteryear like
> Max Steiner’s Adventures of Don Juan and Miklós Rózsa’s El
> Cid, That was amusing given that the filmmakers were “initially
> worried about anything that’s classically Spanish, because when they were
> trying to temp it they couldn’t find anything. [In] the early 20th
> century, Debussy, Ravel, and Rimsky-Korsakov heard all this amazing music
> from Spain, [and] we ended up with incredible work like Rapsodie
> Espagnole. You probably hear a lot of that in my scores! It could be
> more overt in this film.”

> Even with that, Ferdinand adheres closely to his typical animation
> sound, so even with its memorable themes and Spanish accents it will feel
> a tad familiar to most listeners. The score wasn’t on par with the
> Dragon scores or Pan, and arguably wasn’t even the equal of
> something like Ice Age: The Meltdown, but the whole package was
> still a toe-tapping joy, and anyone who liked the Zorro scores by
> James Horner will find much to enjoy. One can only speculate how much more
> fun it might’ve been even more so if a musical number Powell worked on
> wasn’t cut during the development process (the composer would later say
> the scene didn’t work).

> Alas, it would turn out to be the final film Powell scored for Blue Sky,
> bringing over a dozen years of zany collaborations to a close. Their 2019
> film Spies In Disguise would use Theodore Shapiro, and all other
> projects were scrapped when Disney bought them as part of its Fox
> acquisition, though the continuations of the Ice Age franchise on
> Disney's streaming service in 2022 would be scored by Powell team member
> Batu Sener (a key contributor here) along with a short credits track by
> Powell that was one of the most ridiculous pieces of his career.

> -----------------------

> Next time: “I know why nobody has done it before - because it’s sort of
> impossible.”

Robin has had a theme!

It was first heard in Batman: The Animated Series!