This is part of a series.
- Here’s the last post on Solo - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=119564
- If you want the full set of links covering the Too Big To Fail era or earlier, click on my profile.
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The World of Hans Zimmer: A Symphonic Celebration (2018) - ****½
Curated by Hans Zimmer; music director Gavin Greenaway; add’l arrangements Steve Mazzaro; add’l programming
Steven Doar; orchestrated by B&W Fowler/Moriarty, Kevin Kaska & Carl Rydlund; technical score consultant Chuck Choi;
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Neue Wiener Stimmen & Insingizi & Friends conducted by
Martin Gellner; soloists including Pedro Eustache & Lisa Gerrard; Vienna performance released in 2019
The 2000 Ghent concert was covered here: https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=108077
Hans Zimmer Live was covered here: https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=118180
TBTF discovery #56.
Why have one branded concert series when you can have two? Intended as a more orchestral counterpoint to Hans Zimmer Live, the tour called The World of Hans Zimmer would launch under the direction of conductor and onetime Zimmer crew member Gavin Greenaway. Backed by several of Zimmer’s famed instrumental contributors and light shows that incorporated images from the films, the show started in Germany, ended up in Austria for the 2018 iteration of the Hollywood in Vienna concert series, and is still touring the globe to this day. The concert would largely cover different territory than what the concurrent rock-adjacent tour was featuring, including some Zimmer pieces that had rarely been performed or been unfairly forgotten: a rousingly symphonic take on Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, King Arthur, Best Friends from Madagascar (complete with whistling!), Kung Fu Panda, To Every Captive Soul from Hannibal (the loveliest track in the show), and even an energetic suite from The Holiday.
Zimmer had once referred to his first pass at the later parts of The Da Vinci Code as a “27 minute mini-symphony,” and here much of that suite would get performed as such, with Chevaliers de Sangreal bringing the first half of the concert to a terrific close. Most of the other material throughout the performance was arranged to take advantage of the ensemble, although the suite from Rush amusingly didn’t sound that different from the budget-conscious approach taken for its original score. On the whole, World was a decidedly different experience than Live; the music entertains in equal measure, though it is a tad less fun to watch the performance than it is to see Zimmer and his buddies shredding on stage.
Two additional things to note as it pertains to the Vienna concert. First, Zimmer was in attendance to receive an award, and actually ended up playing guitar on a few of the tracks. Second, Tom Cruise appeared via a prerecorded video and told the audience that Hans would be joining Harold Faltermeyer in scoring his upcoming Top Gun sequel, which was due to start filming the next year and ended up being one of the most fascinating scoring stories of Zimmer’s career. More on that later.
Zimmer’s sole score from 2018 was worlds away from the style of this concert series.
Widows (2018) - *½
Hans Zimmer; add’l music by Steve Mazzaro; orchestrated by Shane Rutherfoord-Jones;
technical score engineers Chuck Choi & Steven Doar; conducted by Robert Ziegler; percussion
Luis Jardim; digital instrument design Mark Wherry; Cynthia Park & Nicole Jacob as Zimmer’s assistants
12 Years a Slave was covered here: https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=116951
TBTF discovery #57.
Not only did Hans Zimmer score director Steve McQueen’s 2018 female crime drama Widows, he had also been in the orbit of the original TV series version when he was assisting Stanley Myers in the 1980s. “I was probably in my second week as [his] tea boy. It was the first time I was allowed near anything going on.” For this iteration of the story, Zimmer took somewhat of the same unintrusive approach he took on McQueen’s earlier 12 Years a Slave. “The picture itself was the melody, and my job was to do a little bit of orchestration. The moviemaking and the performances are so strong, you don’t want to clutter it up uselessly with music. The heist part was easy. Tough is how to show a strong woman grieving and vulnerable and on her own without getting sentimental to not rob her of her strength. Music automatically steals loneliness - it gives the character a companion - so I had to go against that in a way.”
The minimalist score exists in two moods: sparse strings and piano occasionally hinting at a simple theme and chugging contemporary rhythms. The latter element occasionally included some bluesy bass but largely (and frustratingly) came off like an indistinctive cross between The Dark Knight and Harry Gregson-Williams’ electronic thriller scores, though Zimmer would claim the recording for the short score was entirely acoustic. As with 12 Years a Slave, despite McQueen’s love of music one got the sense that Widows could’ve functioned without any original score at all, so it’s perhaps commendable that Zimmer and team came up with something that worked, even if it was nondescript. “There’s not a lot of music, but it feels like there’s an appropriate amount. The editor uses sound to journey to the next scene.” At least it wasn’t as distracting in context as the Thin Red Line / Inception rip-off McQueen had Zimmer put in his prior film. Perhaps that’s progress of a sort.
And one got the sense that Zimmer was completely fine with working on a quality film even if its narrative music wasn’t overly demanding or tuneful. “My mother was a very strong woman, and she had to be. The world was against her. Refugee from Nazi Germany, surviving my father’s death, and being a woman in a male-dominated world looking after her child. I first-hand saw the struggle of one particular woman. It just felt appropriate to go and do this film. Plus, what a cast!”
Tomb Raider (2018) - ***½
Tom Holkenborg; add’l music by Aljoscha Christenhuß & Antonio Di Iorio; orchestrated & copied by
Holkenborg, Jonathan Beard, Edward Trybek & Henri Wilkinson; conducted by John Ashton Thomas
TBTF discovery #58.
The two adaptations of the Tomb Raider video games featuring Angelina Jolie in the aughts both had messy composer situations. Graeme Revell publicly apologized for the quality of his rush job on the first film after Michael Kamen departed, and Alan SIlvestri had only a few weeks to work on the 2003 sequel after nearly all of Craig Armstrong’s material was tossed. So perhaps it was some comfort to Tom Holkenborg that this 2018 reboot of the concept lacked that messiness. He and director Roar Uthaug got along right from the start thanks to their common experiences playing in 80s metal bands. “I had a good relationship with Warner Bros. [already], and [Roar] wanted to work with me because I tend to have this raw approach to films. We discussed sound design, percussion, a real feeling of survival of the fittest, but also orchestral writing when the emotional pieces needed to be addressed.”
Holkenborg’s penchant for tinkering continued, with the composer ordering custom-made drums, manipulating animal noises into percussive effects, and having string and brass “treated electronically to give it a really weird sound.” There were BWAMs and moments of truly ear-splitting noise at times, but also a detailed jungle soundscape complete with bits of awe and wonder and a few affecting character moments that were primarily orchestral. At times it felt generic (chopping strings rhythms of the post-Bourne variety, plus frequent unison brass outbursts that are very ersatz Hans), but in others ways it was the most sophisticated Holkenborg score to date, and it was also perhaps his first major assignment that went beyond “hey, just do your Man of Steel / Mad Max thing again.”
There was evidence that the artist formerly known as Junkie XL was pushing himself in a few new directions, especially if you view this score as a next step in his composing evolution after The Dark Tower. But the prevalence of electronics and remixed percussion still made several traditionalist score critics dismiss this work when it came out (with several in an aggressively condescending tone). Those critics might’ve been more forgiving of his next effort if any of them had bothered reviewing it.
Mortal Engines (2018) - ***½
Tom Holkenborg; add’l music by Antonio Di Iorio; orchestrated by Holkenborg, Jonathan Beard, Edward Trybek &
Henri Wilkinson; orchestra conducted by Conrad Pope; choir conducted by Karen Grylls; add’l synth programming
by Emily Rice, Jonas Friedman & Max Karmazyn; technical score engineers Alex Ruger & Jacopo Trifone
TBTF discovery #59.
“In 2003, I came to L.A. wanting to be a film composer. Now, 15 years later, I've collaborated with Peter Jackson, George Miller, Tim Miller, Zack Snyder. It's amazing.”
The Peter Jackson-produced adaptation of the Mortal Engines book series turned into a colossal flop, but it gave Holkenborg an opportunity to translate his bludgeoning action sound (harsh brass tones, relentless percussion, etc.) into more of a symphonic style. Tom would describe the job as making “sure that we feel the emotional ride of the main character throughout the film. Focus on the outside and the craziness of the world when it's appropriate, but focus at all times on what Hester’s looking for. In big action scenes, sometimes the music is very small because it just follows her.”
There are elegant woodwind solos, vaulting brass fanfares, and haunting operatic vocals no one had really asked of the composer before. There are thrilling hints of Richard Wagner’s famed Ride of the Valkyries, unsurprising as Holkenborg claimed he “listen[ed] to an awful lot of classical music” including that work and Berloiz’s Symphonie Fantastique. And the clarity with which individual instrumental groups could be heard in a track like No Going Back was a fascinating glimpse into the kind of hybrid orchestral music the composer could produce when he wasn’t burying his mix in sonic wallpaper - much closer to Harry Gregson-Williams’ output than Man of Steel. “It really feels like you’re living in an alternate universe when you’re [in New Zealand]. It reinforced the creative process, being around such beauty and such talented people.”
Tom’s penchant for tinkering would continue. “Mortal Engines involves a lot of repurposing of objects they found from the past for something else. I [tried] to [use] for something they weren’t meant for in the first place - strings into drums, guitars into strings.” Most of this isn’t terribly noticeable in the final mix of the score, save perhaps for the obnoxious repeated tones for the metal man pursuing Hester which were a mix of brass and garbage truck noises that Tom thought of while sitting at a dental appointment. Yet even that sound design was arguably a dramatic necessity for the film as “Shrike needed to be something completely different from the rest of the score.” On the whole, the score was a nice change of pace for a composer many traditionalist score fans had dismissed for years.
Holkenborg’s evolution would continue with another blockbuster released only a few months later…
Alita: Battle Angel (2019) - ****
Tom Holkenborg; add’l music by Antonio Di Iorio; orchestrated by Holkenborg, Edward Trybek, Henri Wilkinson
& Jonathan Beard; orchestra conducted by Conrad Pope; choir conducted by Jasper Randall; technical score
engineers Alex Ruger & Emily Rice; synth programming by Jacopo Trifone, Jonas Friedman & Max Karmazyn
TBTF discovery #60.
Before his life was taken over by Avatar sequels, James Cameron had planned to direct an adaptation of this 90s Japanese comic book series; he would remain as a producer when Robert Rodriguez took over. Holkenborg wasn’t exactly a left-field composer choice for the film, what with his background on teched-out futuristic action films (Divergent, for starters), but his music would turn out to be surprisingly orchestral, full of instrumental colors and occasional moments of lightness and wonder that went beyond even his evolved style from the prior year’s Mortal Engines. Holkenborg would tinker with electronics at the start of his process but ultimately go in a more symphonic direction. “We all agreed that [Alita’s] theme needed to be organic and acoustic to emphasize her humanity. The audience needs to lean in to her, not lean back, which usually happens when you use purely electronic music. It could have been a choice! But we felt that would have been the wrong one. It’s probably my most orchestral score [to date].”
It would also be the first score in a long time where Holkenborg didn’t talk about sonic manipulation or messing around with instruments. There is little of the heaviness or abrasiveness that had defined much of his post-Man of Steel output. Holkenborg seemed to get a kick out of working on a stretch of films where his collaborators were asking him to do something very outside that wheelhouse. “When something really sticks, studios and directors want to hear a little bit more of that. After Deadpool or Black Mass or Mad Max, they would say, ‘can we do a version of that for this film?’ Sometimes that leads to a score that is somewhat similar to what you have done. But it also makes your brand stronger, so it’s like a catch-22. There’s always a give and take between having something unique and creating a style that’s recognizable.” Justifiably proud of the score, he would devote over two hours of videos on his YouTube channel to walking fans through how he went about creating and evolving his various character themes.
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) - ***
Tom Holkenborg; add’l music by Antonio Di Iorio; orchestrated / copied by Holkenborg,
Edward Trybek, Henri Wilkinson & Jonathan Beard, add’l synth programming Jacopo Trifone,
Steve Silvers, Shwan Askari & Jarrod Royles-Atkins; technical score engineer Sara Barone
TBTF discovery #61.
Only four years after its re-reboot Terminator Genisys had disappointed critically and commercially, Paramount would attempt a hybrid re-re-reboot / legacyquel by bringing back Linda Hamilton, the star of the original films helmed by James Cameron. But this entry would also underperform at the box office, leading director Tim Miller to later admit that while he thought he’d made a good movie it seemed that the audience felt the franchise was creatively tapped out. Miller’s involvement likely explained the choice of Holkenborg as composer, as the two had collaborated three years earlier on Deadpool, plus Tom had already proven himself with Cameron on his recent Alita film.
Whereas Tom’s previous three scores had been increasingly orchestral, Dark Fate would be somewhat of a logical pivot back to his earlier days of being more known for relentless percussion, electronics, and sound design. That’s not to say he skimped on the acoustic side or any resemblance of an orchestra, but more that (to borrow a phrase from Lorne Balfe) you don’t try to impress your orchestration teacher on a Terminator film. One could imagine Henry Jackman, a composer arguably more comfortable toggling between symphonic and contemporary realms, taking a similar approach if he got the job. Holkenborg would provide pleasant Spanish guitar material related to the girl Dani who much of the story centers around and some mighty material for the action finale. There were even several intriguing adaptations of ideas from the first film; Tom said he wanted to use more legacy material but was blocked by its composer Brad Fiedel. But a lot of the music felt like a safe compromise between Tom’s Alita and Fury Road with a lingering sense that going harder in either direction would have resulted in more memorable music.
Tom’s “adventures with orchestra” would continue in 2020.
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Next time: “It was tricky. He wanted to go one way and I wanted to go the other.”
(Message edited on Thursday, February 2, 2023, at 6:23 a.m.)
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