This is part of a series. The last entry in the 2008-10 set is here - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=112580

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The end of the first part of the Remote Control era would, in some respects, be years of ascendancy. Lorne Balfe would get more opportunities as the face of the work. Henry Jackman and Trevor Morris would jump into blockbusters. And Ramin Djawadi’s last-minute rescue job on an HBO series would turn into one of the most consequential television scoring assignments of all time.

They were also years of huge success, as 6 of the 15 films that grossed over $650M worldwide in these two years had music from an MV / RC veteran. But 2011-12 could also be seen as the burnout years. Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell, two of the most seasoned guys in this musical lineage, would both take year-long sabbaticals after this period.

It’s hard to find a trendline in Zimmer’s work during this time because his output was such a mixed bag, possibly a function of almost every work the reinvention-obsessed composer was the headliner on being a sequel. One such score was a total triumph. One was the best of its series, though it was questionable how much of it he wrote. Another showed he was having tons of fun but made for an incongruous album. One was functional but arguably overshadowed by its marketing hype and ancillary gimmicks. And one was a lazy failure that was perhaps the worst film score he’d had a hand in so far, though admittedly that may have been the result of nervous studio heads asking him to repeat himself.

The only non-franchise thing he delivered was the main theme for a video game involving the purple cartoon dragon Spyro, a curious move after years of avoiding games (and only finally saying yes to Modern Warfare 2 in the late aughts) that seems to have been entirely influenced by the ages of the kids he had with his second wife. Funny enough, that game would itself become a franchise with five more sequels in the next five years.

And…we’re off!

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Season of the Witch (2011) - ***
Atli Örvarsson; add’l music arrangements by David Fleming, Matthew Margeson & Bobby Tahouri;
orchestrated by Julian Kershaw, Dallas Almer, Jessica Dannheiser, Tim Davies, Vladimir Podgoretsky
& Jeff Toyne; vocal solos Thorhildur Örvarsdottir & Azam Ali; electric cello Martin Tillman;
hand percussion Satnam Ramgotra; thank you to Hans Zimmer & Bob Badami

RC discovery #74.

“In the beginning I think the director wanted to do an artistic-looking film. Somehow it didn’t transition properly from this moody, brooding beginning into full-blown horror-action-adventure. The score wasn’t working, so they said ‘make it a horror film.’ I’d already recorded a lot of the music at this point. But trying to make it scary didn’t work, so the decision was made to go into an action/adventure vibe. The whole beginning was reshot. Out of the three Season of the Witch movies I scored, the last one is by far the best.”

Despite being retooled several times, Season of the Witch would be dumped into theaters in January and greeted with rancid reviews, and perhaps represent the inflection point where Nic Cage’s appearances would regularly feel like self-parody. For composer Atli Örvarsson, it represented yet another genre film that was a production nightmare (coming only a few years after Babylon A.D.). His score certainly wasn’t the most original effort; shades of the choral tones from Zimmer’s Langdon scores and King Arthur would pop up, the action music would lean towards the “edgy” modern feel of the prior year’s Clash of the TItans, and one ascending heroic theme would lean awfully close to an idea from David Arnold’s Godzilla (probably just a coincidence). But the score was serviceable, rarely dull, occasionally rousing, and ultimately leagues better than its movie deserved.


The Eagle (2011) - ***½
Atli Örvarsson; add’l music by David Fleming; orchestrated by Julian Kershaw; conducted by Andy Brown; folk music
sung by Thorhildur Örvarsdottir & Allan Macdonald; ethnic percussion Satnam Ramgotra; thank you to Hans Zimmer

RC discovery #75.

“I have no idea what music sounded like in 1140. [But] some musicians [showed] me instruments that had been dug up or recreated.”

This, the fourth adaptation (and first feature film version) of the 1950s Roman army adventure novel The Eagle of the Ninth, would be marched into theaters in early 2011. Despite featuring ascendant star Channing Tatum, the movie would get about the same reception the Romans got in Scotland. Composer Atli Örvarsson would go in a very different direction from his prior medieval score, delivering music more shrouded in atmosphere and eclectic instrumental additions including Irish fiddles, a ram’s horn that Örvarsson recorded himself in a Scottish church, folk vocals, and an obscure Russian wind instrument, the latter because “we’ve already heard the shakuhachi, the ney, the duduk, [so] as composers we’re always looking for a new ethic flute.”

The resulting album would certainly have several passages of chugging strings and resilient chord shifts common to Zimmer-adjacent material in this era (“there was temp track love to deal with”), but it would also suggest the more “authentic” Scottish music composer Bear McCreary would deliver for the television series Outlander a few years later, as well as the abrasive tonal experiments in Austin Wintory’s trilogy of Banner Saga video game scores. At the time, Örvarsson would rightly call it one of his more successful collaborations. Those not driven batty by random outbursts from horns or archaic winds would likely agree.

“The final battle [was] one of the last cues I wrote. Something happens, when you have two weeks left and 20 minutes to write, you either panic and bury your head in the sand or you go into another gear. One of the good things that happens at that point - thought goes away and you follow your instincts. I think the great thing I learned from Mike Post is to remove any doubt or hesitancy and just write. But with Hans that would be unthinkable. Hans thinks about things intensely and takes a long time formulating ideas.”


Crysis 2 (2011) - *** for Slavov and Sillescu portion & **½ for Zimmer and team portion
Borislav Slavov with orchestrations by Victor Stoyanov; Tilman Sillescu with orchestrations by David Christiansen;
Hans Zimmer & Lorne Balfe with add’l music by Andrew Kawczynski, add’l arrangements
by Jacob Shea & Nick Delaplane, and ambient music design by Clay Duncan

This video game sequel from EA was acclaimed for its graphics, if not so much its story and gameplay. Game composer Inon Zur (known for his music for the Dragon Age franchise) had scored the first game in the series, but for the sequel Borislav Slavov and Tilman Sillescu were brought in to tackle the roughly five hours of music required. At some point the creative team decided to incorporate some Remote Control elements, so five months into the composition process Slavov and the game’s production leads went out to Zimmer’s studio to introduce the composer to the game and what they’d written so far.

The resulting compositions are almost hilariously mismatched. Slavov and Sillescu separately wrote some adequate and occasionally quite entertaining modern orchestral action music. Zimmer and team didn’t even bother writing something similar, instead basically creating an ersatz Bruckheimer action theme and adding pulsing Batman synths, some morbid dread from The Dark Knight, a sickening guitar wail, and hints of the rhythmic energy from Broken Arrow. One gets the sense that either approach would’ve been sufficient, though thankfully the mix of the two ends up only being puzzling instead of problematic.

The score was issued as 3 digital albums as well as a 2CD release, with 15 minutes attributed to Zimmer.


Ironclad (2011) - ***
Lorne Balfe; orchestrated by Bruce Fowler & Kevin Kaska; orchestra conducted by Balfe;
choir conducted by Csaba Somos; sequencer programming by Andrew Kawczynski; percussion
by Satnam Ramgotra; thank you to Rupert Gregson-Williams, Henning Lohner, and Hans Zimmer

RC discovery #76.

Amazingly, Robin Hood wasn’t the only Magna Carta-centric medieval film to come out in the 2010s. This hyperviolent take on King John’s siege of Rochester Castle would only see theatrical releases in Europe and fail to even make its small budget back. However, its music was significant in that it was among the first solo works written by Lorne Balfe, who had spent the last several years getting prominent co-composer or additional music credits on Zimmer joints. Balfe had less than two weeks to write the entire score. Comparisons to Zimmer’s King Arthur were made at the time, but now the score feels more like an extension of Ramin Djawadi’s Clash of the Titans style, with lots of rhythmic energy coming from a mix of low strings and solo cello, as well as some of the repeating patterns from Sherlock Holmes. Still, Balfe would also utilize chamber ensembles, period instruments, what sounds like traditional Scottish vocals, and plenty of large-scale choral support, all which contribute to an interesting soundscape that help the work somewhat transcend its more familiar trappings.


Mars Needs Moms (2011) - ****½
John Powell; add’l arranging, MIDI orchestration & programming by Paul Mounsey, James McKee Smith,
Michael John Mollo, Beth Caucci & Victor Chaga; orchestrated by John Ashton Thomas; Dave Metzger, Rick Giovinazzo,
Pete Anthony, Brad Dechter, Randy Kerber & Germaine Franco; conducted by Pete Anthony; technical assistant Daniel Lerner

Arguably the biggest financial disaster in Disney animation history, Mars Needs Moms would confirm that audiences just weren’t exactly thrilled with producer Robert Zemeckis’ efforts at motion capture-produced animation and their resulting “zombie eyes” effect, at least when they didn’t come attached to holiday fate like The Polar Express. Zemeckis would never return to animation. Director Simons Wells (coming off of The Time Machine) would never helm another film. About the only person who emerged unscathed from the project was composer John Powell, whose music was the sole part of the film to earn near-universal praise.

As he did with How To Train Your Dragon, Powell would put a less manic spin on his animated style, delivering an enormous sci fi adventure sound that had no qualms about leaning into genre conventions (namely the electronic theremin, an early sci fi staple) and crossed the spectrum from impressive lengthy action stretches to more personal statements of tragedy (the solo piano use here is quite effective). There are (possibly coincidental) stylistic nods to the works of James Horner and Jerry Goldsmith which are great fun, although some Men In Black-like electronics suggests some temp track love on the filmmakers’ part. And then there’s the mambo track at the end of the album that makes such tracks from Powell’s Ice Age scores seem quite tolerable by comparison. Still, on the whole the work was largely a triumph that sadly wasn’t matched to a better film.


Rango (2011) - ***
Hans Zimmer; score arranged by Lorne Balfe, Tom Gire, Michael Levine, Dominic Lewis,
Adam Peters, Heitor Pereira, John Sponsler & Geoff Zanelli; orchestrated by B&W Fowler/Moriarty,
Liz Finch, Rick Giovinazzo & Kevin Kaska; technical score engineers Phill Boucher, Thomas Broderick,
Chuck Choi, Dave Fleming, Jason Goldberg & Andrew Kawczynski; synth programming Nick Delaplane &
Jacob Shea; ‘Welcome Amigo’, ‘The Bank’s Been Robbed’ & ‘La Muerte A Lellago’ by Rick Garcia, Kenneth Karman,
Gore Verbinski & James Ward Byrkit; ‘Lizard For Lunch’ by Jose Hernandez, Anthony Zuniga & Robert Lopez;
‘Walk Don't Rango’ performed by Los Lobos & Arturo Sandoval and written by John Thum & David Thum;
‘Rango Theme Song’ performed by Los Lobos, written by John & David Thum, and produced by Zimmer & Verbinski;
‘El Canelo’ produced by Los Lobos & Verbinski; thank you to Bob Badami, Atli Örvarsson & Jasha Klebe

RC discovery #77.

Director Gore Verbinski surprisingly pivoted from Disney’s Pirates sequels to doing an animated film about a pet lizard who gets lost in the desert, pretends to be a tough guy, and accidentally gets pulled into a water conflict as well as into references to a number of classic Western films. The film was a commercial success and was recognized as the year’s best animated film by many awards bodies. It would feature a mix of original Latin-inflected songs (several featuring contributions from Verbinski) and an original score by Hans Zimmer and his team. It apparently wasn’t the easiest score to figure out; Michael Levine would claim that “halfway through Gore suddenly changed direction, threw almost everything out, and we started over”. As a result, Zimmer would only get sole compositional credit on a six-minute suite and less than a minute of the score, while an army of eight arrangers helped get the rest of the music to the finish line. The score would be the halfway point between some of Zimmer’s “epic” mannerisms of the 90s and his Morricone-adjacent Sherlock quirkiness, with some Madagascar 2-like parodies thrown in for good measure. It made for a sometimes frustrating album experience (lots of short tracks and plenty of dialogue), but was still a nice bit of derivative fun with some catchy themes and its tongue firmly planted in its cheek.


Rio (2011) - ***½
John Powell; add’l arranging, MIDI orchestration & programming by Paul Mounsey, Michael Mollo, Ben Caucci,
Victor Chaga & Dominic Lewis; orchestrated by John Ashton Thomas, Dave Metzger, Rick Giovinazzo, Andrew Kinney,
Randy Kerber, Germaine Franco, John Kull & Benjamin Wallfisch; conducted by Pete Anthony; flute solos Pedro Eustache;
‘Real in Rio’ by Powell, Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown, & Mikael Mutti; ‘Let Me Take You To Rio’ by Ester Dean, Brown
& Mutti and produced by Dean & Powell; ‘Sapo Cai’ by Mendes, Brown & Mutti and arranged by Powell; ‘Copacabana Dreams’
by Mendes & Powell; ‘Pretty Bird’ by Powell, Jemaine Clement, Yoni Brenner & Mike Ross; ‘Funky Monkey’ by Siedah Garrett,
Brown & Mutti and also produced by Powell; ‘Mas Que Mada’ by Jorge Ben and produced by Mendes & Powell; ‘Forro Da Fruta’
by Brown & Mutti and also produced by Mendes & Powell; ‘Balanco Carioca’ by Mutti; ‘Hot Wings’ by will.i.am,
‘Fly Love’ by Brown & Garrett and also produced by Powell; ‘Market Forro’ by Brown & Mutti

Director Carlos Saldanha - “I told John ‘I want you, the British guy, to do the music for my Brazilian movie.’”

Rango wasn’t the only film from 2011 about a domesticated animal that gets lost in the wilderness. Director Carlos Saldanha had originally thought about the idea in the 90s for a penguin, but with the rampant success of Happy Feet he would switch the protagonists of Rio to macaws. The amiable, song-heavy animated movie would do very well at the box office and win praise for its flying sequences that took full advantage of 3D technology. It would be no surprise that John Powell was along for the ride, not only because of his enduring association with the studio but also because he was responsible for the aforementioned penguin movie’s music. The composer had indulged in Latin components in prior scores, but here he was dealing with a movie where those elements couldn’t at all be accused of being anachronistic; the movie is mostly set in Brazil and features a Carnival parade.

Saldanha - “We rocked Fox! We brought in 30 percussionists. People were coming from all over the studio to watch the guys play.”

Powell would team up with some heavy hitters in Latin music, including Brazilian bossa nova musician Sergio Mendes and singer/producer Carlinhos Brown, as well as will.i.am and Jamie Foxx to create a set of songs aligned with the film’s funky party atmosphere. Most are enjoyable, although the hip hop bent of Hot Wings and whatever the heck Funky Monkey is will be challenging for some score fans. Powell would extend many of the song melodies into his score, far more so than he did in Happy Feet. The opening song Real in Rio would morph into the main theme and feature into many of the score’s highlights as Powell played the idea in both delightfully exotic settings as well as more bombastic variants. A nefarious motif from the song Pretty Bird would function as the villain’s theme. Elements of Market Forro would reappear in moments of chaos, as would parts of Funky Monkey for those animals. A catchy idea for the protagonist Blue would be the only primary melody created apart from the songs.

Powell - “Morning Routine [the first score track] is as decidedly not-Brazilian as we could make it. They’re in a little town in Minnesota. When Tulio came in we could make it Brazilian, but until then it had to be Americana.”

As if there weren’t already enough comparisons to Happy Feet, Rio also had two albums. A soundtrack release would cover the songs in the movie, other songs, and the climactic Carnival music. A separate score release would come two weeks later and feature most of the rest of the score, including the sections where Powell extended or adapted the song melodies. Like Horton three years earlier, the score does lean heavily in the direction of “antics”, and the ideal program would combine the best of both albums, though score fans should be advised that doing this will subject them to Jesse Eisenberg’s singing voice.

“Ester Dean’s a tiny little girl and Carlinhos looks about 7 and a half feet high with his afro. Those two in the studio was great fun.”

With the titanic success of Powell’s music for How To Train Your Dragon and the positive reception to Mars Needs Moms, fan expectations for a Powell animated score were irrationally high when Rio came out. I recall at the time thinking Powell was getting the opportunity to write something on par with Jerry Goldsmith’s Under Fire and being disappointed that what we got was “just” another Powell animated romp. But time’s been kind to the score - it’s no classic, but it’s still an above-average good time.

“Carlos had a huge Brazilian music background. It kept me on the straight and narrow. When I was heading into territory that was not Brazilian, he’d say ‘hmm…sounds a bit Caribbean.’ It meant ‘what the hell, that’s generic Latin’. It was a real education.”


The Borgias Season 1 (2011) - **
Trevor Morris; add’l music by Steve Davis & T.J. Lindgren

RC discovery #78.

“Each episode is like a mini-movie, which suits my style. I make a great effort each episode so that it’s not 27 individual pieces of music. It’s motifs that string together and pay off.”

Another period Showtime series (this one boasting Neil Jordan as a showrunner and starring Jeremy Irons) meant another Trevor Morris score. The music wouldn’t be too removed from the sound of his earlier works for The Tudors and The Pillars of the Earth. It was sufficient for its show, but on album the largely sampled music felt hazy and abstract, working as an atmospheric stream-of-consciousness listen without really grabbing you at any one particular moment. For some, it’ll be the Bore-gias.

The show would receive two more seasons (one short of Jordan’s planned narrative), though only this one got an album release.


Game of Thrones Season 1 (2011) - ***½
Ramin Djawadi; add’l music by Bobby Tahouri; technical score advisor Brandon Campbell; thank you to Hans Zimmer

“Daenerys’ theme is very minimal in the beginning, because she plays such an insignificant role. We planted the theme in the first two episodes and it doesn’t even strike you so much. And that’s what is beautiful about the shows — that there’s room to grow.”

Hollywood has a history of unreleased creations (Jerry Lewis’ fiasco The Day The Clown Cried for starters), but perhaps none is more infamous than the originally filmed pilot of HBO’s eventual smash hit adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels - almost a catastrophe of Star Wars Holiday Special proportions. Directed by Tom McCarthy (who would later helm the Best Picture winner Spotlight), the rough cut would confound those who saw it, both in terms of its plot (making it unclear that the characters having an incestuous relationship were actually siblings, for starters) and misuse of its expensive location shoots in Northern Ireland and Morocco (“We could have shot this in Burbank”). Martin would later joke he was “under penalty of death if I ever show it to anyone”. HBO would eventually pony up to partially recast and reshoot the episode, an ultimately lucrative decision for them. One casualty of this was original composer English Stephen Warbeck, perhaps still best known for doing the music for Shakespeare in Love; none of his music has ever leaked out and he appears to have not spoken about the assignment since.

Evyen Kean, a longtime music supervisor for various HBO shows, would have a key role in setting the new musical direction for the show. ”‘Can you go meet with Dan and Dave, the showrunners, and talk about composers?’ I pitched the idea that they needed someone like Ramin Djawadi. They looked him up and listened to some of his music. Everyone felt that it was a great fit although Ramin initially had reservations because he had a couple of projects going on that overlapped. It took several conversations with me convincing him that the project was really good that we understood his situation.” Djawadi would claim Medal of Honor and Clash of the Titans were primarily responsible for him getting the job - “the themes, a lot of ethnic influence, percussion-driven music.”

The musical style would hew very close to Djawadi’s Remote Control influences as well as his cello-dominated Clash of the Titans. There was an edict that Djawadi should “not use any flutes”, which is tempting to blame on Jerry Bruckheimer’s wide impact on the industry until you think back in history and remember examples like Howard Hawks’ demand for “no violins” in Hatari! back in 1961. Some would lament the migration of episodic fantasy television into the Zimmer framework, especially with the notable repeated string figure in the aforementioned main titles piece, but that would suggest a selective memory about what that first season was, which was essentially a British medieval period drama with a slightly bigger effects budget that heavily underplayed its fantasy elements until its final shot. Virtuosic music or some gigantic opus would’ve overwhelmed this talkfest, never mind that a television show (even one backed by HBO) didn’t have the budget for that sort of thing. “David and Dan didn’t want to go in the direction of like Lord of the Rings or Gladiator; [no] solo vocal. They wanted to try a completely different tone.”

Ramin was hired only about two months before the first episode would air, so some decisions had to be made for convenience’s sake. “It would have been too complicated to give everyone his or her own musical theme. That's why we decided to only write themes for individual plots and specific families.” Ultimately this worked to the show’s benefit, with notable identities and/or soundscapes for House Stark, House Baratheon, the northern Wall, and the horseriding Dothraki continuing throughout the series - not to mention the simple-yet-memorable series identity that played over the memorable animated map sequence in the main titles. And it wasn’t as if Djawadi completely avoided character themes - that aforementioned minimalist identity for the exiled princess Daenerys would build to enormous heights by the series’ end.

The first season’s album isn’t short on atmosphere (shades of Djawadi’s pre-Iron Man career as a maker of sound design-adjacent works come to mind), and it is definitely more on the understated side for much of its runtime. And there’s a painfully sampled feel to some of the score’s bigger moments, namely during the Baratheon arrival at the Stark home in the first episode. But Djawadi succeeded in spite of the producers’ stylistic constraints and his abbreviated schedule, and the memorable score was a step up from former studiomate Trevor Morris’ early Tudors seasons.

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Next time: “It’s all about harmony and orchestration, and has nothing whatsoever to do with cool noise and production.”

(Message edited on Wednesday, August 17, 2022, at 5:57 a.m.)

> The end of the first part of the Remote Control era would, in some
> respects, be years of ascendancy. Lorne Balfe would get more opportunities
> as the face of the work. Henry Jackman and Trevor Morris would jump into
> blockbusters. And Ramin Djawadi’s last-minute rescue job on an HBO series
> would turn into one of the most consequential television scoring
> assignments of all time.

> They were also years of huge success, as 6 of the 15 films that grossed
> over $650M worldwide in these two years had music from an MV / RC veteran.
> But 2011-12 could also be seen as the burnout years. Harry
> Gregson-Williams and John Powell, two of the most seasoned guys in this
> musical lineage, would both take year-long sabbaticals after this period.

> It’s hard to find a trendline in Zimmer’s work during this time because
> his output was such a mixed bag, possibly a function of almost every work
> the reinvention-obsessed composer was the headliner on being a sequel. One
> such score was a total triumph. One was the best of its series, though it
> was questionable how much of it he wrote. Another showed he was having
> tons of fun but made for an incongruous album. One was functional but
> arguably overshadowed by its marketing hype and ancillary gimmicks. And
> one was a lazy failure that was perhaps the worst film score he’d
> had a hand in so far, though admittedly that may have been the result of
> nervous studio heads asking him to repeat himself.

> The only non-franchise thing he delivered was the main theme for a video
> game involving the purple cartoon dragon Spyro, a curious move after years
> of avoiding games (and only finally saying yes to Modern Warfare 2
> in the late aughts) that seems to have been entirely influenced by the
> ages of the kids he had with his second wife. Funny enough, that game
> would itself become a franchise with five more sequels in the next five
> years.

While the quality of these write-ups is as high as ever, it seems like engagement with the posts has dropped a little, and I wonder if it has something to do with what you described here. There are some amazing scores and exceptions, but the combo of Zimmer's significantly more miss than hit output, HGW getting fewer big opportunities, Powell focusing on animation scores that appealed less, and the ascendant composers all producing less impressive music than their predecessors, makes 2009-ish through 2018-ish feel like the RC dark ages to me.

Also, didn't you post recap at the end of the earlier series? Are you planning to do that again or saving it now until the end? Would be curious to see how you relatively rank some of these scores and eras (think I mentioned the latter before).

> Mars Needs Moms (2011) - ****½

Major disconnect with me here. It's a good score, but one step shy of the best possible rating? Your brief write-up does seem to imply it's on the lower end of the 4.5's, I guess? (Or maybe reviewing 100s of scores requires you to save time somewhere, heh.)

> Game of Thrones Season 1 (2011) - ***½

> Hollywood has a history of unreleased creations (Jerry Lewis’ fiasco
> The Day The Clown Cried for starters), but perhaps none is more
> infamous than the originally filmed pilot of HBO’s eventual smash hit
> adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels - almost a catastrophe
> of Star Wars Holiday Special proportions. Directed by Tom McCarthy
> (who would later helm the Best Picture winner Spotlight), the rough
> cut would confound those who saw it, both in terms of its plot (making it
> unclear that the characters having an incestuous relationship were
> actually siblings, for starters) and misuse of its expensive location
> shoots in Northern Ireland and Morocco (“We could have shot this in
> Burbank”). Martin would later joke he was “under penalty of death
> if I ever show it to anyone”. HBO would eventually pony up to
> partially recast and reshoot the episode, an ultimately lucrative decision
> for them. One casualty of this was original composer English Stephen
> Warbeck, perhaps still best known for doing the music for Shakespeare
> in Love; none of his music has ever leaked out and he appears to have
> not spoken about the assignment since.

I somehow knew none of this backstory, so thanks. Would be fascinating to see/hear.

> The musical style would hew very close to Djawadi’s Remote Control
> influences as well as his cello-dominated Clash of the Titans.
> There was an edict that Djawadi should “not use any flutes”, which
> is tempting to blame on Jerry Bruckheimer’s wide impact on the industry
> until you think back in history and remember examples like Howard Hawks’
> demand for “no violins” in Hatari! back in 1961. Some would
> lament the migration of episodic fantasy television into the Zimmer
> framework, especially with the notable repeated string figure in the
> aforementioned main titles piece, but that would suggest a selective
> memory about what that first season was, which was essentially a British
> medieval period drama with a slightly bigger effects budget that heavily
> underplayed its fantasy elements until its final shot. Virtuosic music or
> some gigantic opus would’ve overwhelmed this talkfest, never mind that a
> television show (even one backed by HBO) didn’t have the budget for that
> sort of thing.

I don't remember exactly how the dialogue played out back then, and fair point about a big fantasy score, but I also remember thinking that even as a medieval period drama it could've gotten much more interesting music. Which is a trend during these years - lots of competent and rarely brilliant scores, the sort of music that makes you say, "It works, but what else?"

> While the quality of these write-ups is as high as ever

Thanks!

> it seems like engagement with the posts has dropped a little, and I wonder if it has something to do with what you described here. There are some amazing scores and exceptions, but the combo of Zimmer's significantly more miss than hit output, HGW getting fewer big opportunities, Powell focusing on animation scores that appealed less, and the ascendant composers all producing less impressive music than their predecessors, makes 2009-ish through 2018-ish feel like the RC dark ages to me.

It's a fair question. I have to a certain extent moved past the nostalgic era of this rundown (or rather the nostalgic ones for me), leaving behind a lot of scores that came during my formative years of fandom where some of the research I did provided revelatory context or 'aha!' moments. A lot of the regular commenters seem to either be in my age range or have a similar affinity for that 2000 to 2007ish range, so I may have just left my target demo behind. The absence of any major Trevor Rabin scores going forward is a pretty good example of that for one person.

BUT...at the same time I've had a busy summer (work-wise and fun-wise), and I'm assuming others have as well, so with time being zero-sum it may be easier for folks to jump to other, less verbose posts with their free time. I'm not going to take it personally when I get a lack of engagement relative to, say, the Burger posts.

> Also, didn't you post recap at the end of the earlier series? Are you planning to do that again or saving it now until the end? Would be curious to see how you relatively rank some of these scores and eras (think I mentioned the latter before).

Good catch! I did a recap at the end of the ENTIRE Media Ventures era, and I will do the same for 2005-2012. In fact, it'll probably be the last thing I do in this series before I head off for a two-week vacation.

> Major disconnect with me here. It's a good score, but one step shy of the best possible rating? Your brief write-up does seem to imply it's on the lower end of the 4.5's, I guess? (Or maybe reviewing 100s of scores requires you to save time somewhere, heh.)

You're on the right path. Lower-end 4.5-star score (would round down to **** without half stars) in the same tier as Happy Feet but definitely below KFP.

I actually listened to this one a lot in the last month-plus relative to how much I ended up writing about it. I struggled to have something new to say and decided it was better to be succinct and move on. It's not like Powell had a lot to say about the movie on the record anyway...

And yes, the sheer volume of material is forcing some efficiencies in the process. There are still some Trenta-sized score perspectives to come (including the one that was originally planned to end this post), but I shouldn't spend more time writing about, say, a seventeen-minute video game expansion score than I did listening to it.

> It's a fair question. I have to a certain extent moved past the nostalgic
> era of this rundown (or rather the nostalgic ones for me), leaving behind
> a lot of scores that came during my formative years of fandom where some
> of the research I did provided revelatory context or 'aha!' moments. A lot
> of the regular commenters seem to either be in my age range or have a
> similar affinity for that 2000 to 2007ish range, so I may have just left
> my target demo behind. The absence of any major Trevor Rabin scores going
> forward is a pretty good example of that for one person.

Good point, I was correlating that nostalgic era with higher-quality scores...but I don't think that's entirely unjustified! It's all subjective, but I don't think I could be convinced that, say, Zimmer's 2010's scores were superior to his 2000's scores, in terms of effectiveness in their respective films.

> BUT...at the same time I've had a busy summer (work-wise and fun-wise),
> and I'm assuming others have as well, so with time being zero-sum it may
> be easier for folks to jump to other, less verbose posts with their free
> time. I'm not going to take it personally when I get a lack of engagement
> relative to, say, the Burger posts.

I don't actually feel like engagement on the burger posts has been high, although their reach has been. Now I'd be curious to have Christian share when the board is most active throughout the year.

> Good catch! I did a recap at the end of the ENTIRE Media Ventures era, and
> I will do the same for 2005-2012. In fact, it'll probably be the last
> thing I do in this series before I head off for a two-week vacation.

Ah, great! My clickbait-/top-10-list-trained brain is very much looking forward to those comprehensive rankings. Not to suggest more work for you, but it'd be very cool to see a final recap of the whole thing - top scores, biggest surprises, etc.

> They were also years of huge success, as 6 of the 15 films that grossed
> over $650M worldwide in these two years had music from an MV / RC veteran.
> But 2011-12 could also be seen as the burnout years. Harry
> Gregson-Williams and John Powell, two of the most seasoned guys in this
> musical lineage, would both take year-long sabbaticals after this period.

> It’s hard to find a trendline in Zimmer’s work during this time because
> his output was such a mixed bag, possibly a function of almost every work
> the reinvention-obsessed composer was the headliner on being a sequel. One
> such score was a total triumph. One was the best of its series, though it
> was questionable how much of it he wrote. Another showed he was having
> tons of fun but made for an incongruous album. One was functional but
> arguably overshadowed by its marketing hype and ancillary gimmicks. And
> one was a lazy failure that was perhaps the worst film score he’d
> had a hand in so far, though admittedly that may have been the result of
> nervous studio heads asking him to repeat himself.

The 2010's is definitely a very uneven time for Zimmer with a near equal hits and misses going on, that is, from my memory and personal exploration. That said, his associates would quickly become the Hollywood 'go-to' kids which has given us some amazing work... and a lot of 'replaced by Lorne Balfe'. Having turned 30 this year, my nostalgia and preferred Zimmer & Co. period is definitely the 90's-2000's, but I still their 2010's output to be fascinating at times... even if not for the most positive of reasons.

> And…we’re off!

BalfeisintheleadcloselyfollowedbyJackmanandDjawadi.What'sthis?OHNO!Powelltakesthelead!!

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

> Season of the Witch (2011) - ***

I really need to explore Orvarsson's work more. Remember being pleasantly surprised by Mortal Instruments but never really kept up with him afterwards.

Also, still need to check out this turkey of a film. Looks like it might be a fun time with a bad movie.

> Mars Needs Moms (2011) - ****½

Never got around to checking this one out. Also need to explore Powell's work more in-depth. I do remember the nightmare fuel that was the character animations from the trailers...

> Rango (2011) - ***

Watched this many years ago and enjoyed it well enough. I own the DVD, which I need to give a rewatch to. Always found the album situation highly frustrating, though.

> Game of Thrones Season 1 (2011) - ***½

So... I've never listened to nor watched GoT outside of seeing various clips from the show and of course hearing the Main title theme. I really should explore Djawadi's music, though I'm not sure if I'll ever watch the show or not. The pervasive sexual violence is a rather major turnoff for me (same thing with Outlander).

(Message edited on Wednesday, August 17, 2022, at 3:48 p.m.)

I am more interested to see what you think about GOT Seasons 2-8. There is a lot of debate which season is the strongest. I think Season 6.

Six is the most well rounded (thematically/melodically, pacing, soundscape, and presentation), but seven is the one I return to most.

Top notch write-up, sir! It’s easy to take for granted just how far-reaching this series is, and your opinions are always very well articulated. I’m continually surprised by how many of these scores I’ve heard OF but never explored, so it’s great to have the context. Question: Are you compiling a list of the top scores to recommend from this series?

> This is part of a series. The last entry in the 2008-10 set is here -
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=112580

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

> The end of the first part of the Remote Control era would, in some
> respects, be years of ascendancy. Lorne Balfe would get more opportunities
> as the face of the work. Henry Jackman and Trevor Morris would jump into
> blockbusters. And Ramin Djawadi’s last-minute rescue job on an HBO series
> would turn into one of the most consequential television scoring
> assignments of all time.

> They were also years of huge success, as 6 of the 15 films that grossed
> over $650M worldwide in these two years had music from an MV / RC veteran.
> But 2011-12 could also be seen as the burnout years. Harry
> Gregson-Williams and John Powell, two of the most seasoned guys in this
> musical lineage, would both take year-long sabbaticals after this period.

> It’s hard to find a trendline in Zimmer’s work during this time because
> his output was such a mixed bag, possibly a function of almost every work
> the reinvention-obsessed composer was the headliner on being a sequel. One
> such score was a total triumph. One was the best of its series, though it
> was questionable how much of it he wrote. Another showed he was having
> tons of fun but made for an incongruous album. One was functional but
> arguably overshadowed by its marketing hype and ancillary gimmicks. And
> one was a lazy failure that was perhaps the worst film score he’d
> had a hand in so far, though admittedly that may have been the result of
> nervous studio heads asking him to repeat himself.

> The only non-franchise thing he delivered was the main theme for a video
> game involving the purple cartoon dragon Spyro, a curious move after years
> of avoiding games (and only finally saying yes to Modern Warfare 2
> in the late aughts) that seems to have been entirely influenced by the
> ages of the kids he had with his second wife. Funny enough, that game
> would itself become a franchise with five more sequels in the next five
> years.

> And…we’re off!

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

> Season of the Witch (2011) - ***
> Atli Örvarsson; add’l music arrangements by David Fleming, Matthew
> Margeson & Bobby Tahouri;
> orchestrated by Julian Kershaw, Dallas Almer, Jessica Dannheiser, Tim
> Davies, Vladimir Podgoretsky
> & Jeff Toyne; vocal solos Thorhildur Örvarsdottir & Azam Ali;
> electric cello Martin Tillman;
> hand percussion Satnam Ramgotra; thank you to Hans Zimmer & Bob
> Badami

> RC discovery #74.

> “In the beginning I think the director wanted to do an artistic-looking
> film. Somehow it didn’t transition properly from this moody, brooding
> beginning into full-blown horror-action-adventure. The score wasn’t
> working, so they said ‘make it a horror film.’ I’d already recorded a lot
> of the music at this point. But trying to make it scary didn’t work, so
> the decision was made to go into an action/adventure vibe. The whole
> beginning was reshot. Out of the three Season of the Witch movies I
> scored, the last one is by far the best.”

> Despite being retooled several times, Season of the Witch would be
> dumped into theaters in January and greeted with rancid reviews, and
> perhaps represent the inflection point where Nic Cage’s appearances would
> regularly feel like self-parody. For composer Atli Örvarsson, it
> represented yet another genre film that was a production nightmare (coming
> only a few years after Babylon A.D.). His score certainly wasn’t
> the most original effort; shades of the choral tones from Zimmer’s Langdon
> scores and King Arthur would pop up, the action music would lean
> towards the “edgy” modern feel of the prior year’s Clash of the
> TItans, and one ascending heroic theme would lean awfully close to an
> idea from David Arnold’s Godzilla (probably just a coincidence).
> But the score was serviceable, rarely dull, occasionally rousing, and
> ultimately leagues better than its movie deserved.
>
>
> The Eagle (2011) - ***½
> Atli Örvarsson; add’l music by David Fleming; orchestrated by Julian
> Kershaw; conducted by Andy Brown; folk music
> sung by Thorhildur Örvarsdottir & Allan Macdonald; ethnic percussion
> Satnam Ramgotra; thank you to Hans Zimmer

> RC discovery #75.

> “I have no idea what music sounded like in 1140. [But] some musicians
> [showed] me instruments that had been dug up or recreated.”

> This, the fourth adaptation (and first feature film version) of the 1950s
> Roman army adventure novel The Eagle of the Ninth, would be marched
> into theaters in early 2011. Despite featuring ascendant star Channing
> Tatum, the movie would get about the same reception the Romans got in
> Scotland. Composer Atli Örvarsson would go in a very different direction
> from his prior medieval score, delivering music more shrouded in
> atmosphere and eclectic instrumental additions including Irish fiddles, a
> ram’s horn that Örvarsson recorded himself in a Scottish church, folk
> vocals, and an obscure Russian wind instrument, the latter because
> “we’ve already heard the shakuhachi, the ney, the duduk, [so] as
> composers we’re always looking for a new ethic flute.”

> The resulting album would certainly have several passages of chugging
> strings and resilient chord shifts common to Zimmer-adjacent material in
> this era (“there was temp track love to deal with”), but it would
> also suggest the more “authentic” Scottish music composer Bear McCreary
> would deliver for the television series Outlander a few years
> later, as well as the abrasive tonal experiments in Austin Wintory’s
> trilogy of Banner Saga video game scores. At the time, Örvarsson
> would rightly call it one of his more successful collaborations. Those not
> driven batty by random outbursts from horns or archaic winds would likely
> agree.

> “The final battle [was] one of the last cues I wrote. Something
> happens, when you have two weeks left and 20 minutes to write, you either
> panic and bury your head in the sand or you go into another gear. One of
> the good things that happens at that point - thought goes away and you
> follow your instincts. I think the great thing I learned from Mike Post is
> to remove any doubt or hesitancy and just write. But with Hans that would
> be unthinkable. Hans thinks about things intensely and takes a long time
> formulating ideas.”
>
>
> Crysis 2 (2011) - *** for Slavov and Sillescu portion & **½ for
> Zimmer and team portion
> Borislav Slavov with orchestrations by Victor Stoyanov; Tilman Sillescu
> with orchestrations by David Christiansen;
> Hans Zimmer & Lorne Balfe with add’l music by Andrew Kawczynski, add’l
> arrangements
> by Jacob Shea & Nick Delaplane, and ambient music design by Clay
> Duncan

> This video game sequel from EA was acclaimed for its graphics, if not so
> much its story and gameplay. Game composer Inon Zur (known for his music
> for the Dragon Age franchise) had scored the first game in the
> series, but for the sequel Borislav Slavov and Tilman Sillescu were
> brought in to tackle the roughly five hours of music required. At some
> point the creative team decided to incorporate some Remote Control
> elements, so five months into the composition process Slavov and the
> game’s production leads went out to Zimmer’s studio to introduce the
> composer to the game and what they’d written so far.

> The resulting compositions are almost hilariously mismatched. Slavov and
> Sillescu separately wrote some adequate and occasionally quite
> entertaining modern orchestral action music. Zimmer and team didn’t even
> bother writing something similar, instead basically creating an ersatz
> Bruckheimer action theme and adding pulsing Batman synths, some
> morbid dread from The Dark Knight, a sickening guitar wail, and
> hints of the rhythmic energy from Broken Arrow. One gets the sense
> that either approach would’ve been sufficient, though thankfully the mix
> of the two ends up only being puzzling instead of problematic.

> The score was issued as 3 digital albums as well as a 2CD release, with 15
> minutes attributed to Zimmer.
>
>
> Ironclad (2011) - ***
> Lorne Balfe; orchestrated by Bruce Fowler & Kevin Kaska; orchestra
> conducted by Balfe;
> choir conducted by Csaba Somos; sequencer programming by Andrew
> Kawczynski; percussion
> by Satnam Ramgotra; thank you to Rupert Gregson-Williams, Henning Lohner,
> and Hans Zimmer

> RC discovery #76.

> Amazingly, Robin Hood wasn’t the only Magna Carta-centric medieval
> film to come out in the 2010s. This hyperviolent take on King John’s siege
> of Rochester Castle would only see theatrical releases in Europe and fail
> to even make its small budget back. However, its music was significant in
> that it was among the first solo works written by Lorne Balfe, who had
> spent the last several years getting prominent co-composer or additional
> music credits on Zimmer joints. Balfe had less than two weeks to write the
> entire score. Comparisons to Zimmer’s King Arthur were made at the
> time, but now the score feels more like an extension of Ramin Djawadi’s
> Clash of the Titans style, with lots of rhythmic energy coming from
> a mix of low strings and solo cello, as well as some of the repeating
> patterns from Sherlock Holmes. Still, Balfe would also utilize
> chamber ensembles, period instruments, what sounds like traditional
> Scottish vocals, and plenty of large-scale choral support, all which
> contribute to an interesting soundscape that help the work somewhat
> transcend its more familiar trappings.
>
>
> Mars Needs Moms (2011) - ****½
> John Powell; add’l arranging, MIDI orchestration & programming by
> Paul Mounsey, James McKee Smith,
> Michael John Mollo, Beth Caucci & Victor Chaga; orchestrated by John
> Ashton Thomas; Dave Metzger, Rick Giovinazzo,
> Pete Anthony, Brad Dechter, Randy Kerber & Germaine Franco; conducted
> by Pete Anthony; technical assistant Daniel Lerner

> Arguably the biggest financial disaster in Disney animation history,
> Mars Needs Moms would confirm that audiences just weren’t exactly
> thrilled with producer Robert Zemeckis’ efforts at motion capture-produced
> animation and their resulting “zombie eyes” effect, at least when they
> didn’t come attached to holiday fate like The Polar Express.
> Zemeckis would never return to animation. Director Simons Wells (coming
> off of The Time Machine) would never helm another film. About the
> only person who emerged unscathed from the project was composer John
> Powell, whose music was the sole part of the film to earn near-universal
> praise.

> As he did with How To Train Your Dragon, Powell would put a less
> manic spin on his animated style, delivering an enormous sci fi adventure
> sound that had no qualms about leaning into genre conventions (namely the
> electronic theremin, an early sci fi staple) and crossed the spectrum from
> impressive lengthy action stretches to more personal statements of tragedy
> (the solo piano use here is quite effective). There are (possibly
> coincidental) stylistic nods to the works of James Horner and Jerry
> Goldsmith which are great fun, although some Men In Black-like
> electronics suggests some temp track love on the filmmakers’ part. And
> then there’s the mambo track at the end of the album that makes such
> tracks from Powell’s Ice Age scores seem quite tolerable by
> comparison. Still, on the whole the work was largely a triumph that sadly
> wasn’t matched to a better film.
>
>
> Rango (2011) - ***
> Hans Zimmer; score arranged by Lorne Balfe, Tom Gire, Michael Levine,
> Dominic Lewis,
> Adam Peters, Heitor Pereira, John Sponsler & Geoff Zanelli;
> orchestrated by B&W Fowler/Moriarty,
> Liz Finch, Rick Giovinazzo & Kevin Kaska; technical score engineers
> Phill Boucher, Thomas Broderick,
> Chuck Choi, Dave Fleming, Jason Goldberg & Andrew Kawczynski; synth
> programming Nick Delaplane &
> Jacob Shea; ‘Welcome Amigo’, ‘The Bank’s Been Robbed’ & ‘La Muerte A
> Lellago’ by Rick Garcia, Kenneth Karman,
> Gore Verbinski & James Ward Byrkit; ‘Lizard For Lunch’ by Jose
> Hernandez, Anthony Zuniga & Robert Lopez;
> ‘Walk Don't Rango’ performed by Los Lobos & Arturo Sandoval and
> written by John Thum & David Thum;
> ‘Rango Theme Song’ performed by Los Lobos, written by John & David
> Thum, and produced by Zimmer & Verbinski;
> ‘El Canelo’ produced by Los Lobos & Verbinski; thank you to Bob
> Badami, Atli Örvarsson & Jasha Klebe

> RC discovery #77.

> Director Gore Verbinski surprisingly pivoted from Disney’s Pirates
> sequels to doing an animated film about a pet lizard who gets lost in the
> desert, pretends to be a tough guy, and accidentally gets pulled into a
> water conflict as well as into references to a number of classic Western
> films. The film was a commercial success and was recognized as the year’s
> best animated film by many awards bodies. It would feature a mix of
> original Latin-inflected songs (several featuring contributions from
> Verbinski) and an original score by Hans Zimmer and his team. It
> apparently wasn’t the easiest score to figure out; Michael Levine would
> claim that “halfway through Gore suddenly changed direction, threw
> almost everything out, and we started over”. As a result, Zimmer would
> only get sole compositional credit on a six-minute suite and less than a
> minute of the score, while an army of eight arrangers helped get the rest
> of the music to the finish line. The score would be the halfway point
> between some of Zimmer’s “epic” mannerisms of the 90s and his
> Morricone-adjacent Sherlock quirkiness, with some Madagascar
> 2-like parodies thrown in for good measure. It made for a sometimes
> frustrating album experience (lots of short tracks and plenty of
> dialogue), but was still a nice bit of derivative fun with some catchy
> themes and its tongue firmly planted in its cheek.
>
>
> Rio (2011) - ***½
> John Powell; add’l arranging, MIDI orchestration & programming by
> Paul Mounsey, Michael Mollo, Ben Caucci,
> Victor Chaga & Dominic Lewis; orchestrated by John Ashton Thomas, Dave
> Metzger, Rick Giovinazzo, Andrew Kinney,
> Randy Kerber, Germaine Franco, John Kull & Benjamin Wallfisch;
> conducted by Pete Anthony; flute solos Pedro Eustache;
> ‘Real in Rio’ by Powell, Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown, & Mikael
> Mutti; ‘Let Me Take You To Rio’ by Ester Dean, Brown
> & Mutti and produced by Dean & Powell; ‘Sapo Cai’ by Mendes, Brown
> & Mutti and arranged by Powell; ‘Copacabana Dreams’
> by Mendes & Powell; ‘Pretty Bird’ by Powell, Jemaine Clement, Yoni
> Brenner & Mike Ross; ‘Funky Monkey’ by Siedah Garrett,
> Brown & Mutti and also produced by Powell; ‘Mas Que Mada’ by Jorge Ben
> and produced by Mendes & Powell; ‘Forro Da Fruta’
> by Brown & Mutti and also produced by Mendes & Powell; ‘Balanco
> Carioca’ by Mutti; ‘Hot Wings’ by will.i.am,
> ‘Fly Love’ by Brown & Garrett and also produced by Powell; ‘Market
> Forro’ by Brown & Mutti

> Director Carlos Saldanha - “I told John ‘I want you, the British guy,
> to do the music for my Brazilian movie.’”

> Rango wasn’t the only film from 2011 about a domesticated animal
> that gets lost in the wilderness. Director Carlos Saldanha had originally
> thought about the idea in the 90s for a penguin, but with the rampant
> success of Happy Feet he would switch the protagonists of
> Rio to macaws. The amiable, song-heavy animated movie would do very
> well at the box office and win praise for its flying sequences that took
> full advantage of 3D technology. It would be no surprise that John Powell
> was along for the ride, not only because of his enduring association with
> the studio but also because he was responsible for the aforementioned
> penguin movie’s music. The composer had indulged in Latin components in
> prior scores, but here he was dealing with a movie where those elements
> couldn’t at all be accused of being anachronistic; the movie is mostly set
> in Brazil and features a Carnival parade.

> Saldanha - “We rocked Fox! We brought in 30 percussionists. People were
> coming from all over the studio to watch the guys play.”

> Powell would team up with some heavy hitters in Latin music, including
> Brazilian bossa nova musician Sergio Mendes and singer/producer Carlinhos
> Brown, as well as will.i.am and Jamie Foxx to create a set of songs
> aligned with the film’s funky party atmosphere. Most are enjoyable,
> although the hip hop bent of Hot Wings and whatever the heck
> Funky Monkey is will be challenging for some score fans. Powell
> would extend many of the song melodies into his score, far more so than he
> did in Happy Feet. The opening song Real in Rio would morph
> into the main theme and feature into many of the score’s highlights as
> Powell played the idea in both delightfully exotic settings as well as
> more bombastic variants. A nefarious motif from the song Pretty
> Bird would function as the villain’s theme. Elements of Market
> Forro would reappear in moments of chaos, as would parts of Funky
> Monkey for those animals. A catchy idea for the protagonist Blue would
> be the only primary melody created apart from the songs.

> Powell - “Morning Routine [the first score track] is as decidedly
> not-Brazilian as we could make it. They’re in a little town in Minnesota.
> When Tulio came in we could make it Brazilian, but until then it had to be
> Americana.”

> As if there weren’t already enough comparisons to Happy Feet,
> Rio also had two albums. A soundtrack release would cover the songs
> in the movie, other songs, and the climactic Carnival music. A separate
> score release would come two weeks later and feature most of the rest of
> the score, including the sections where Powell extended or adapted the
> song melodies. Like Horton three years earlier, the score does lean
> heavily in the direction of “antics”, and the ideal program would combine
> the best of both albums, though score fans should be advised that doing
> this will subject them to Jesse Eisenberg’s singing voice.

> “Ester Dean’s a tiny little girl and Carlinhos looks about 7 and a half
> feet high with his afro. Those two in the studio was great fun.”

> With the titanic success of Powell’s music for How To Train Your
> Dragon and the positive reception to Mars Needs Moms, fan
> expectations for a Powell animated score were irrationally high when
> Rio came out. I recall at the time thinking Powell was getting the
> opportunity to write something on par with Jerry Goldsmith’s Under
> Fire and being disappointed that what we got was “just” another Powell
> animated romp. But time’s been kind to the score - it’s no classic, but
> it’s still an above-average good time.

> “Carlos had a huge Brazilian music background. It kept me on the
> straight and narrow. When I was heading into territory that was not
> Brazilian, he’d say ‘hmm…sounds a bit Caribbean.’ It meant ‘what the hell,
> that’s generic Latin’. It was a real education.”
>
>
> The Borgias Season 1 (2011) - **
> Trevor Morris; add’l music by Steve Davis & T.J. Lindgren

> RC discovery #78.

> “Each episode is like a mini-movie, which suits my style. I make a
> great effort each episode so that it’s not 27 individual pieces of music.
> It’s motifs that string together and pay off.”

> Another period Showtime series (this one boasting Neil Jordan as a
> showrunner and starring Jeremy Irons) meant another Trevor Morris score.
> The music wouldn’t be too removed from the sound of his earlier works for
> The Tudors and The Pillars of the Earth. It was sufficient
> for its show, but on album the largely sampled music felt hazy and
> abstract, working as an atmospheric stream-of-consciousness listen without
> really grabbing you at any one particular moment. For some, it’ll be the
> Bore-gias.

> The show would receive two more seasons (one short of Jordan’s planned
> narrative), though only this one got an album release.
>
>
> Game of Thrones Season 1 (2011) - ***½
> Ramin Djawadi; add’l music by Bobby Tahouri; technical score advisor
> Brandon Campbell; thank you to Hans Zimmer

> “Daenerys’ theme is very minimal in the beginning, because she plays
> such an insignificant role. We planted the theme in the first two episodes
> and it doesn’t even strike you so much. And that’s what is beautiful about
> the shows — that there’s room to grow.”

> Hollywood has a history of unreleased creations (Jerry Lewis’ fiasco
> The Day The Clown Cried for starters), but perhaps none is more
> infamous than the originally filmed pilot of HBO’s eventual smash hit
> adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels - almost a catastrophe
> of Star Wars Holiday Special proportions. Directed by Tom McCarthy
> (who would later helm the Best Picture winner Spotlight), the rough
> cut would confound those who saw it, both in terms of its plot (making it
> unclear that the characters having an incestuous relationship were
> actually siblings, for starters) and misuse of its expensive location
> shoots in Northern Ireland and Morocco (“We could have shot this in
> Burbank”). Martin would later joke he was “under penalty of death
> if I ever show it to anyone”. HBO would eventually pony up to
> partially recast and reshoot the episode, an ultimately lucrative decision
> for them. One casualty of this was original composer English Stephen
> Warbeck, perhaps still best known for doing the music for Shakespeare
> in Love; none of his music has ever leaked out and he appears to have
> not spoken about the assignment since.

> Evyen Kean, a longtime music supervisor for various HBO shows, would have
> a key role in setting the new musical direction for the show. ”‘Can you
> go meet with Dan and Dave, the showrunners, and talk about composers?’ I
> pitched the idea that they needed someone like Ramin Djawadi. They looked
> him up and listened to some of his music. Everyone felt that it was a
> great fit although Ramin initially had reservations because he had a
> couple of projects going on that overlapped. It took several conversations
> with me convincing him that the project was really good that we understood
> his situation.” Djawadi would claim Medal of Honor and Clash
> of the Titans were primarily responsible for him getting the job -
> “the themes, a lot of ethnic influence, percussion-driven music.”

> The musical style would hew very close to Djawadi’s Remote Control
> influences as well as his cello-dominated Clash of the Titans.
> There was an edict that Djawadi should “not use any flutes”, which
> is tempting to blame on Jerry Bruckheimer’s wide impact on the industry
> until you think back in history and remember examples like Howard Hawks’
> demand for “no violins” in Hatari! back in 1961. Some would
> lament the migration of episodic fantasy television into the Zimmer
> framework, especially with the notable repeated string figure in the
> aforementioned main titles piece, but that would suggest a selective
> memory about what that first season was, which was essentially a British
> medieval period drama with a slightly bigger effects budget that heavily
> underplayed its fantasy elements until its final shot. Virtuosic music or
> some gigantic opus would’ve overwhelmed this talkfest, never mind that a
> television show (even one backed by HBO) didn’t have the budget for that
> sort of thing. “David and Dan didn’t want to go in the direction of
> like Lord of the Rings or Gladiator; [no] solo vocal. They wanted to try a
> completely different tone.”

> Ramin was hired only about two months before the first episode would air,
> so some decisions had to be made for convenience’s sake. “It would have
> been too complicated to give everyone his or her own musical theme. That's
> why we decided to only write themes for individual plots and specific
> families.” Ultimately this worked to the show’s benefit, with notable
> identities and/or soundscapes for House Stark, House Baratheon, the
> northern Wall, and the horseriding Dothraki continuing throughout the
> series - not to mention the simple-yet-memorable series identity that
> played over the memorable animated map sequence in the main titles. And it
> wasn’t as if Djawadi completely avoided character themes - that
> aforementioned minimalist identity for the exiled princess Daenerys would
> build to enormous heights by the series’ end.

> The first season’s album isn’t short on atmosphere (shades of Djawadi’s
> pre-Iron Man career as a maker of sound design-adjacent works come
> to mind), and it is definitely more on the understated side for much of
> its runtime. And there’s a painfully sampled feel to some of the score’s
> bigger moments, namely during the Baratheon arrival at the Stark home in
> the first episode. But Djawadi succeeded in spite of the producers’
> stylistic constraints and his abbreviated schedule, and the memorable
> score was a step up from former studiomate Trevor Morris’ early
> Tudors seasons.

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

> Next time: “It’s all about harmony and orchestration, and has nothing
> whatsoever to do with cool noise and production.”

> Are you compiling a list of the top scores to recommend from this series?

YUP. Comprehensive end-of-phase rankings will be out next week. I had honestly forgotten about the worst one, which I heard back in a medical waiting room in April (would've been thematically perfect if it was the MRI-heavy Battleship, but it's not).

There will also be some kind of 'tie a bow on this' post whenever I'm done (nonzero chance that's in 2023), which I'm sure will include a top scores breakdown.

> YUP. Comprehensive end-of-phase rankings will be out next week. I had
> honestly forgotten about the worst one, which I heard back in a medical
> waiting room in April (would've been thematically perfect if it was the
> MRI-heavy Battleship, but it's not).
Haha! If only...

> There will also be some kind of 'tie a bow on this' post whenever I'm done
> (nonzero chance that's in 2023), which I'm sure will include a top scores
> breakdown.
Keep it up, man!