> Harry on the other hand had only one 2024 score, but it was the kind that
> demands singular dedication: Ridley Scott’s long-awaited follow-up to his
> 2000 hit Gladiator. That movie got one of the most iconic scores of
> the Media Ventures era, but while you’d think it would be a slam dunk for
> Hans to return to the franchise for Gladiator II he instead was
> apparently a pretty quick no, telling reporters that he felt he already
> did a good job and that he feared he wouldn’t be able to match himself.
> This may indeed have been the whole of it; Hans had scored plenty of
> sequels over the last 20 years but no legacy sequel (legacyquel) to a film
> he’d done the original score for, and while he had plenty of nice things
> to say publicly about working on Disney’s 2019 CGI remake of The Lion
> King it’s rumored that his time on that wasn’t wholly satisfying.
> Perhaps even the troubled experience of having another go at the Caped
> Crusader on Batman v Superman was still on his mind. Left unsaid
> was that Hans and Ridley hadn’t completed a score together in over 20
> years, as well as that Hans - often juggling many projects and frequently
> on the road for concerts - probably didn’t have the capacity to spend
> months focused on only one movie (which was why he’d backed out of Gore
> Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness).

> But Harry - having contributed additional music for the director’s
> Prometheus and Exodus: Gods and Kings plus full scores for
> Kingdom of Heaven, The Martian, The Last Duel, and
> House of Gucci - was all for having another job with Ridley, even
> with some admitted anxiety about following in his former boss’ footsteps.
> He summoned an impressively diverse and evocative array of instrumental,
> vocal, and electric sounds (“my colors for the palette that I was going to
> use”) for his score, experimenting with ancient instruments including an
> ancient carnyx war horn and pulling in collaborators both new and old, the
> latter including electric instrumentalists Hugh Marsh and Martin Tillman,
> vocalist Grace Davidson, and his former boss and frequent woodwind
> contributor Richard Harvey (all were kept save for the falsetto tones of
> Israeli singer Lior Attar which Ridley found “beautiful, but too much,”
> though Harry still managed to feature him in the end credits). There was
> unsurprisingly some carry-over from The Last Duel, both with
> Davidson’s voice and the ancient-sounding viol ensemble and also with a
> slurring sound for Denzel Washington’s “slippery” character that evoked
> the howl that Harry used for Adam Driver’s character in the earlier film.

> Harry implied that in the early stages they tried to get closer to the
> anthemic sound Hans had provided for the earlier film, but “it really
> bogged things down. It would’ve been in advance of what the story actually
> was. [The main character] Lucius becomes the person we need him to be
> [only] near the end of the film.” Whereas the early scenes of
> Gladiator feature muscular battle music for Russell Crowe’s general
> that shifted to dreamier new age material by the film’s end, the story of
> Gladiator II required Harry to invert that progression and only
> elevate his new protagonist Lucius’ theme (often only performed in
> fragments throughout the movie) to rousing heights in the final scenes.
> That made for an appropriately subtle style that rewards repeat listening
> on its album, though for those who liked the obviousness and occasional
> bigness of Hans’ Gladiator music that was bound to be a
> disappointment.

> That didn’t mean Harry completely abandoned everything about the prior
> score though. Sure, Heitor Pereira’s guitar wasn’t around (no protagonist
> nicknamed Spaniard this time), but Lisa Gerrard’s voice was newly
> recorded, and a new theme often performed on a ney flute - sounding like a
> cousin of the ethnic flute theme that opens the Gladiator score
> album - functioned as a “DNA theme” that provided a sense of the original
> film without explicitly restating prior tunes. The most intelligent aspect
> was how Harry picked up on the descending seventh interval between the
> third and fourth notes of Hans’ Maximus theme (atypically for a heroic
> theme “it had a bit of tragedy to it, which really appealed to me”). Harry
> used it as an occasional element of his own Lucius theme and also deployed
> the two-note progression as its own motif for another way to signify both
> past and present events. For fans of musical cleverness and evocative
> instrumental textures, Harry’s score should be rather satisfying - perhaps
> not quite the instant classic that Hans’ Gladiator was for many,
> but likely one that time will still be kind to. That it came for a flawed
> film nowhere near as good as its predecessor was a minor miracle.
>
>
> Gladiator II - **** - Harry Gregson-Williams; arrangements by
> Ryder McNair & Ho Ling Tang; orchestrated by Stephen Barton; conducted
> by
> Harry Gregson-Williams; ancient instruments Abraham Cupeiro;
> ethnic woodwinds Richard Harvey; electric violin Hugh Marsh;
> electric cello Martin Tillman; vocalists Ayo Adeymi, Lior Attar,
> Antonio Lizana, Grace Davison, Lisa Gerrard & Susan Legg

Great review of the score that probably left me the most conflicted in 2024. I can't tell if I'm being too harsh on the score and film because both do not match the excellence of their predecessors, but I also can't deny that there is still some very good and very interesting material in them.

On a side note, I decided to revisit Scott's Robin Hood film a few nights ago and found myself enjoying it much more than I remembered. I was also surprised how much Streitenfeld's score had me thinking of HGW's Gladiator II score, more for their similarities in approach and style than anything else. As much as I like HGW's style for these types of film, I can't help but wish it was just a bit more like the first Gladiator score, especially with the action music.