This is part of a series.
- Here’s the last post on Army of Thieves, No Time To Die, etc. - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=122490
- 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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Dune (2021) - ***
Hans Zimmer; add’l music by by David Fleming, Steve Mazzaro, Andrew
Kawczynski, Steven Doar & Omer Benyamin; technical score engineer Chuck
Choi; technical assistants Alejandro Moros, Fabio Marks & Aldo Arechar; synth
design Kevin Schroeder, Matt Bowdler & Howard Scarr; orchestrated & prepared by
Booker White, David Giuli, Jennifer Hammond & Johanna Melissa Orquiza; digital
instrument design Mark Wherry; additional digital instrument programming: Mario
Krušelj; digital instrument preparation Taurees Habib & Raul Vega; digital instrument
preparation assistants Soya Soo, Jacob Moreno, Alfredo Pasquel, Michael Gloria &
Jeremy Katz; featured vocalist Loire Colter; vocalists Suzanne Waters, Lisa Gerrard,
Stephanie Olmanni, Michael Geiger & Edie Boddicker; instrumental soloists including
Pedro Eustache, Guthrie Govan, Tina Guo, Satnam Ramgotra & Chas Smith;
Cynthia Park as Zimmer’s assistant; thank you to Czarina Russell & Klaus Schulze

Blade Runner 2049 was covered here: https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=119141

Hans, talking to editor Joe Walker in November 2021 about their experiences with this film - “You did say, ‘Maybe we can move away from D minor for just a little bit.’”

Me, describing this film in 2021 - “DOON”

-----------------------

Frank Herbert’s famed science fiction novel has a long history of adaptations either not getting off the ground or resulting in so-so final products. So for director Denis Villeneuve to not only make a new version but to have it be generally considered competent was a minor miracle, and in fact his Lawrence of Arabia-sized spectacle covering the first half of the story emerged to solid box office and significant awards consideration. Its music ended up being one of its most awarded components, but even if that hadn’t been the case it still would’ve stood out for another reason: its fracturing of the partnership between Hans and director Christopher Nolan. Production on Nolan’s time-inverting Tenet overlapped with work on Dune, and in July 2019 Hans acted like he had to pick one and went with Dune owing to his decades-long love of the book and his affection for Denis and editor Joe Walker, saying reuniting with the Blade Runner 2049 crew “feels like family. It doesn’t matter how high the stress gets. Denis leads with unspeakable kindness.” The exhausting process of composing for Dunkirk was never mentioned, but it’s hard not to wonder if that played a part; maybe Hans and Chris needed a break.

Hans, who never saw the infamous 1984 film version or heard its music by the band Toto, claimed that for decades he’d had a vision in his head for decades of the score he’d write for a Dune film. “I must have seen Star Wars not that long after I read Dune. Look, John Williams is my hero, the music of Star Wars is undeniably a masterpiece, but with the hubris of a teenager, as I was reading ‘in a galaxy far far away…’ I was going, ‘Wait a second, why are we hearing trumpets and cellos?’” He’d already gone down the opposite path before lockdowns struck. “Denis and I wanted a score where the instruments weren’t the instruments of now, [but] the consistent, recognizable thing should be the female voice. The motor that drives the story forward is women. [Dark Phoenix vocalist] Loire Colter came over, and [she] and Edie Boddicker and Suzanne Waters were trying out ideas. We made the architectural plan.” But then COVID hit, and then Zimmer got a very serious case of the virus, and even after he’d recovered the musical landscape was still impacted. “I couldn't work in my normal way, so I turned my sitting room into my studio. The only other person allowed in was my assistant. [The band] was people I'd been playing with for a long time who can all record at home.”

And thus began months of remote brainstorming with Hans throwing out a bunch of odd ideas and seeing what interesting things emerged. Guitarist Guthrie Govan said Hans requested he “sound like sand” for one cue. Chas Smith would build instruments out of items like saw blades and space engine material. Hans and team experimented with bamboo flutes, Irish whistles, guitar distortions, and other things for as long as they could before the filmmakers made them score to picture, an approach perhaps aided by the film’s multiple pandemic-related release delays. At some point Hans even wandered into a desert for a while to get a sense of “listening to nothing. It’s not method composing, but I’d know there was something missing had I not done it.” Perhaps no score had its sound more impacted by COVID than this one, but Hans had a decades-long penchant for not doing the expected, never mind that he’d been injecting non-Western sounds into Hollywood films you wouldn’t think asked for them since Rain Man, so it’s possible this was exactly what his teenage vision for the music had been.

Hans would also come to see this approach to making music as altruistic. “Guthrie, his life is being on tour or being social in the pub. Guthrie was stuck at home. This movie saved a lot of people’s sanity by giving them purpose.”

-----------------------

Going off of the demo album released to coincide with the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival a month before its wide release, Dune was going to be all the Hans scores, and also none of them - a host of familiar elements used in very different ways (not too far from what the music of Avatar was for James Horner). Synths ranging from Vangelis-inspired to the high-pitched stuff of Hans’ early days to the rumbling bass of his later years. Skittering electronics. A gong. A duduk, though here a supersized version built by Pedro Eustache. Brass-like sounds in unison. Bad guys backed by low repeated patterns. Very slow tempos. Awe-inspiring minor key dramatic builds and crescendos. An aversion to high strings. Race car sounds. Even the vocals: striking outbursts from his pre-Media Ventures days, operatic solos from the aughts, the ensembles of his Langdon scores, and various ethnic and tribal elements heard since The Power of One. But the defining element remained Loire Colter, who from her closet recorded a mix of Jewish song, vocal percussion, laments, throat singing, saxophone imitations, and other influences. “She’s making the sound that reaches across the desert. She sang one note, and it tore the enamel off my teeth.”

Hans and his team would then manipulate almost every sound, even going as far as to deconstruct a Tibetan horn in Cubase - “electronic chamber resonators” - and layer Tina Guo’s cello over it. Each percussion instrument was computerized to sound unlike drums “you could buy at a shop” and to generate “rhythms which were humanly impossible to play,” the latter quote showing how far Hans had moved from the days of using orchestrators like Bruce Fowler to make sure whatever he’d programmed could be played by real instruments. It was the ultimate expression of the pride he took on Pacific Heights over 30 years earlier about crafting music where the listener couldn’t easily discern what instruments they were hearing. “Being abstract in the instrumentation helped. You didn’t have the safety net of a violin. There are things in there that you’ve never heard before.”

Those aspects were perhaps the main reason this score didn’t work for many traditionalist score fans. And we haven’t even gotten to the bagpipes yet! Denis’ suggestion to use them in a fanfare for the protagonist’s family seemed crazy even to Hans, but he came around to it. “There hasn’t been a radical development in bagpipe technology. It will be the same 10,000 years from now. It’s ancient and timeless at the same time, [and they] aren’t just Scottish or Irish. The Middle East is full of [them]. Wherever you find a goat and some wood, you can build bagpipes.” The end result - a mix of 30 Scottish pipers, Guthrie Govan’s guitar, and Pedro Eustache blasting into a woodwind called a zurna - would be the ultimate love-it-or-hate-it aspect of the sketchbook release. You’ll either find House Atreides a headbanging prog rock joy or an unholy din summoning the “bagpipe PTSD” that Hans’ daughter experienced.

The demo album was a truly uncompromising collection of ideas. Many weren’t even designed to be enjoyable, including raspy gasps right at the start and the ear-splitting noise that dominates the Mind-killer track. Hans acknowledged “it’s pretty provocative. It barks at you, and then it bites you.” He’d frequently referred to many of his suggestions for earlier scores as revolutionary or dangerous or crazy or insane or bold, only for the end product to not be that far removed from the bounds of normality, but those proclamations were rather accurate at times with this work. Hans even did staggeringly complicated things with harmony, though not in easily discernible ways. Few really knew what to make of the demo album. I first listened to it while nursing a massive hangover the morning after a friend’s wedding, which may have been the best way to absorb this alternatingly soothing and abrasive creation. I found it both astonishing and confounding, though I knew even in the midst of my gradually diminishing headache that there was no sense in rendering an opinion about the work until I heard the actual music written to picture. It would turn out to deviate in several ways from the sketchbook album, and not always for the better.

-----------------------

First, it devoted substantially more of its runtime to the undulating theme that was ostensibly for House Harkonnen but was also applied to other darker parts of the film. “It’s my deepest, blackest heart, and all it takes is a German and a fuzzbox to do that one.” It wasn’t a bad theme, but it also wasn’t that far removed from bad guy ideas from earlier Hans scores (think Commodus in Gladiator or the villain material in the Langdon films), which made its frequent use a minor disappointment in what was framed as a wildly different creative enterprise.

Second, the loose thematic attribution would carry over into other parts of the film, thus extending the ambient approach to music Denis had wanted on Blade Runner 2049. “It felt more interesting to, like an impressionist painter, come up with different colors as opposed to the normal, ‘here’s the love theme, here’s one for the car crash.' Lady Jessica might not be in the next scene, but her words might echo into [it].” (In a funny way, that last point makes this work somewhat of a sequel to Crimson Tide, where the near-omnipresent choir was used by Hans to suggest the distant but deadly Russian threat) The score was a perfect fit for the director’s aesthetic, but maybe too perfect; in having intentionally alien sounds float across the movie in an occasionally abstract fashion, Hans’ music seemed to reinforce the audience’s emotional distance from the characters.

Third, the score felt grimmer and darker on average than the sketchbook did. That’s not to say it was a quieter score by any stretch of the imagination; it is arguably the most colossal contemplative score in cinema history. But the more operatic, serene, and shimmering aspects of Hans’ demo ideas seem to have been largely discarded in favor of doubling down on brutal, stark music that matched the barren landscape - drones n’ tones, if you will. The prog rock joys of the bagpipes are largely relegated to source music in an early scene and a brief quote in a midfilm battle. Not to mention that there’s an obnoxious thumping heartbeat effect in a few passages, which may have been appropriate for the film but spoils every album track it appears in.

Fourth, while nearly every theme idea from the sketchbook is carried over, few of them really evolve, which makes the back half of the long score album (and especially its largely drifting and hazy last 20 minutes) a challenge, as the music is basically sitting in the same place that it was at the beginning. As with Zack Snyder’s Justice League and a few other works covered in this rundown, it’s an open question if playing the 22 tracks on the album at random would really change one’s perception of the score’s narrative. For all the thought and weird new sounds, the end product was at times surprisingly predictable for Hans and occasionally quite dull. It suggested that the composer was operating with the same kind of logic he’d applied to assignments like Widows in this era where he thought the filmmaking was so high quality that he didn’t need to do as much melodically or narratively as he would on a more mid-tier film. Additional music compiled for an album meant to accompany a book about the filmmaking process would take that ambience to its absolute extreme.

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Dune was the natural endpoint - or for all we know just a midpoint - of the evolution of Hans’ approach in this era towards creating soundscapes instead of more traditional theme and variation scoring. It was no surprise how divisive the music was. It had its supporters, including those in the IFMCA who gave Hans a nomination for best film score for the second straight year, but also plenty of frustrated film score fans and websites like Filmtracks which lamented that (just like with Blade Runner 2049) the score seemed laser-focused on ambient sound design aligned to a visual aesthetic at the expense of hitting on other elements of the narrative or doing any of the other normal functions of film music. Yet unlike Man of Steel, where reactions to the music seemed to fall into one of two ardent camps, the score for Dune seemed to leave plenty of folks in the middle; both MMUK and Movie-Wave published reviews that suggested their authors were equal parts fascinated and perplexed.

The studio’s decision to simultaneously release its major 2021 films both in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming platform would rankle Hans, perhaps more than the same studio’s decision to dump Wonder Woman 1984 direct-to-streaming in 2020 did. “I don’t mind streaming. I love television. But when you look at a big screen, the eye takes a long time to wander. While if you’re cutting something for television, the eye takes everything in. I don’t know anyone who’s had an experience watching on their iPhone. The way Joe cuts, you stay on a shot for a longer time. Had you said, ‘We’re streaming this,’ I would’ve written quite a different score.”

There was much promotional work done to get Hans an Oscar for Dune, including a lengthy interview with Vanity Fair that went into detail on various instrumental and vocal forces the composer had used. Hilariously, despite all that effort Hans wasn’t actually at the ceremony when he won the award! With diminished COVID restrictions now enabling his tours to get back on the road, there was little incentive for him to fly back to Hollywood for a minute-long speech, and even less so once the Academy made the absurd decision to not televise several awards including the one for Best Original Score. Instead of the exquisite outfit he had on when he won his first Oscar for The Lion King, Hans would now be wearing pajamas and a hotel bathrobe when his daughter woke him up at 2am in Amsterdam to go celebrate in the hotel bar. There Hans would credit the members of his touring band, many of whom had played on Dune. “Had it not been for most of these people in this room, this would never have happened.”

You’d think three albums would be enough for one creative enterprise, but Hans would also record songs with actor Josh Brolin as his character sings in the book, though those elements didn’t make the final cut or any of the music releases. And by early 2022 Hans had already written an hour and a half of new music for the upcoming sequel. “Denis is writing Part Two. Rather than sending him bottles of alcohol, which probably would work, I keep sending him little tone poems that might inspire him.” Goodness knows how much music we’ll get if the director fulfills his ambition to adapt Herbert’s Dune Messiah as well.

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Next time: “It just wasn’t right.” “Massive change in direction.” “I wish we could have spent more time together.” “I’m not convinced any of my work will make it through to release.” “A yes used to be a yes.” “I'm not very amused.” The post I’ve been working on for four months; it’s the most deeply-researched and longest score write-up of this rundown, and also its most insane story.

I happened to like the score more than most here - it was in my top five of the year if not higher, though I considered it a weak year. I think your assessment is broadly very fair; I don't see the bagpipes as at all incongruous - House Atreides don't seem to me Middle-Eastern at all, rather, modelled on the British Empire or even the Americans, and at least the former has a long tradition of army regiments using the pipes to accompany marches, arrivals or even battles, right across the empire. Whether I actually enjoy their particular manipulation by Hans, I'm less sure haha.

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

> Next time: “It just wasn’t right.” “Massive change in
> direction.” “I wish we could have spent more time together.”
> “I’m not convinced any of my work will make it through to release.”
> “A yes used to be a yes.” “I'm not very amused.” The post
> I’ve been working on for four months; it’s the most deeply-researched and
> longest score write-up of this rundown, and also its most insane story.

Why can't I think what this is...

> Whether I actually enjoy their particular manipulation by Hans, I'm less sure haha.

Gotta be honest - standing around a dog park on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago while revisiting the sketchbook album...the bagpipes were kind of fun.

> Why can't I think what this is...

Not helping matters is that several of those quotes had to be translated from foreign language publications, so it may very well be the first time they've appeared in English anywhere.

> Why can't I think what this is...

Top Gun? Got to be some explanation for the bizarre credits on that score.

> Top Gun? Got to be some explanation for the bizarre credits on that score.

I'd say you can't explain it succinctly, but Christian's review hits on some of the high-level points. So perhaps it's better to say that the detailed explanation is just so much more fun.

The Jon Burlingame write-up in Variety that came out right after the film - which accurately called the whole process messy - only scratched the surface...10% tops. Almost every article I read about the topic had another jaw-dropping revelation.

While I get all your points, they don’t stop me from absolutely despising this score. Zimmer’s biggest turd bomb since Dunkirk, and even Dunkirk had one decent cue. One of the only scores I’d give a 0/5.

> While I get all your points, they don’t stop me from absolutely despising this score. Zimmer’s biggest turd bomb since Dunkirk, and even Dunkirk had one decent cue. One of the only scores I’d give a 0/5.

There is some hilarity in me being in the middle, the first respondent loving it, and the second respondent (you) hating it.

> There is some hilarity in me being in the middle, the first respondent
> loving it, and the second respondent (you) hating it.

This amused me as well. It also prompted me to go find my original thread about the score. Haven't revisited so I guess those are probably still my opinions on it.
https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=100495&expand=1

> While I get all your points, they don’t stop me from absolutely despising
> this score. Zimmer’s biggest turd bomb since Dunkirk, and even Dunkirk had
> one decent cue. One of the only scores I’d give a 0/5.

I don't think there's really a legitimate argument to be made for this being an entirely worthless score, to be honest. And I'm far from its biggest fan. But it's got plenty of individual cues I like way more than "Supermarine" (assuming you mean "Supermarine").

> Hans would also come to see this approach to making music as altruistic. “Guthrie, his
> life is being on tour or being social in the pub. Guthrie was stuck at home. This movie
> saved a lot of people’s sanity by giving them purpose.”

"Giving them purpose..." What. A. Pompous. Fool.

There are moments when Zimmer gets this "world-or-people-saviour" mode that strikes me as incredibly and overbearingly grandiose. How very German, too.

Dude, you compose music for films. Often amazing music. You're influential and rich beyond measure. But you're neither re-inventing the wheel, as you so often opine, nor are you saving people's lives. That "divergence" of practical humility, opposed to his professed humility or how others describe him, is very off-putting.

There's something about his modus operandi of "I'll break the mould so that I have something to fix" that I find weird, even though I get what he means by "Wait...why are there cellos and pianos?". I also get this is what Horner once said about "expressing yourself as an artist". I just feel that Zimmer's words are increasingly at odds with both the facts and his actions.

And seeing as a bookshelf collapsed on me yesterday, you may point to this if the above doesn't make much sense.

I'll give League of Their Own a spin now, because it's so darn much fun, and as such the opposite of, heh, DOON!

Mario

> And seeing as a bookshelf collapsed on me yesterday, you may point to this if the above doesn't make much sense.

I wasn't paranoid about that before I built a cube bookshelf at my last house and noticed parts of it were going very Leaning Tower of Pisa on me. Then the cats started climbing it. Now I secure darn near everything.

Hope no serious injuries occurred.

> I'll give League of Their Own a spin now, because it's so darn much fun, and as such the opposite of, heh, DOON!

I'm glad my very dumb joke still has legs over a year later.

League of Their Own remains another 'man, I shouldn't have skipped that' entry - not only because of its quality but also because of its importance with the Hans supporting cast as it was the first of his film scores that Ladd McIntosh orchestrated. Something to fix this summer.

> 'Giving them purpose...' What. A. Pompous. Fool.

> There are moments when Zimmer gets this 'world-or-people-saviour' mode
> that strikes me as incredibly and overbearingly grandiose. How very
> German, too.

> Dude, you compose music for films. Often amazing music. You're influential
> and rich beyond measure. But you're neither re-inventing the wheel, as you
> so often opine, nor are you saving people's lives. That 'divergence' of
> practical humility, opposed to his professed humility or how
> others describe him, is very off-putting.

> There's something about his modus operandi of 'I'll break the mould so
> that I have something to fix' that I find weird, even though I get what he
> means by 'Wait...why are there cellos and pianos?'. I also get this is
> what Horner once said about 'expressing yourself as an artist'. I just
> feel that Zimmer's words are increasingly at odds with both the facts and
> his actions.

> And seeing as a bookshelf collapsed on me yesterday, you may point to this
> if the above doesn't make much sense.

> I'll give League of Their Own a spin now, because it's so darn much fun,
> and as such the opposite of, heh, DOON!

> Mario

You hit the nail on the head for what I was trying to say. Well put!

I have to say that this is a score that I learned to like. When I first heard it, I thought it was boring and abrasive. But after watching the film, I found myself drawn to some of the themes and ideas and I explored them more on album. Ultimately, I agree with your 3 stars score. It is not a great score to me. But it is a good score that deserve some attention for the radical ideas it presented. I still think Interstellar should have won the Oscar instead of this and that is Zimmer's finest interpretation of the sci-fi genre.

This was a fun and informative writeup! I know we're in for something really good when it's a one-score post. Disclaimer: have not seen the film.

> Dune (2021) - ***

This was a score where Hans' ego really hurt my opinion of the work in the abstract, even if I would still rate it highly. The thing is, what I like about it is something that Zimmer was trying to *avoid*. He wanted something completely alien, whereas I found a thread of humanity embedded in the soundscapes. It's enjoyable and interesting and inventive, but it seems like Zimmer was more interested in experiments than making a film score (and that vast list of collaborators begs the question of, in jam band approaches, who deserves top-line credit). In the end, I think I would rate the project overall solid three-and-a-half stars without Zimmer's comments (on album, where it accompanied my reading of Bart Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted), but I understand why others are more lukewarm. The score itself, three stars. So much fun material not used or badly underplayed.

To expand: Zimmer's comments on Star Wars are kinda my problem with his self-re-invention. He can make an argument for why he wants to be different, but he completely missed why Star Wars sounds like it does. Depending on what the film is going for, the music needs to provide the familiar in contrast with a far-away plot, or accentuate the alien-ness (or a mix). Not to mention the music being a deliberate throwback to WWII airplane combat movies and Erroll Flynn swashbucklers. It's like, he needs his work to not just be cool and inventive and different, but *brilliant*. I dunno, it's hard to articulate why his attitude rubs me the wrong way.

That you didn't comment on The Art and Soul of Dune is probably for the best. Dull as dishwater, and ironically (for something intended to read to), it was so boring that I set down my Ehrman to fast-forward through the vast stretches of desolate nothing! It's rare that I look at an album and go "I will never voluntarily revisit this!" (I was also struck by how much better the concept album sounded than the score itself).

(I would also counter that no one ever had An Experience on their phone screen. I watched most of the 2019 She-Ra series on mine, and it hit hard at times!)

I am rabidly interested in the next entry based on your teaser, and I have absolutely no clue what it could be.

> That you didn't comment on The Art and Soul of Dune is probably for the best.

I listened to it - or rather I played portions of each track. The one sentence I spent on it was all it really deserved.

> I listened to it - or rather I played portions of each track. The one
> sentence I spent on it was all it really deserved.

I skipped around on it, and... yeah, out of nearly two hours of music, there were maybe 20 minutes of okay material. Echoes of dregs from the other albums, if that,

Interesting tid-bit about the reading! I just finished reading Ehrman's "How Jesus Became God", fascinating read.

> Dune (2021) - ***

This is a stellar write-up, one of your best.

That said, I have this nagging sense that a score like Dune doesn't really deserve to be treated to such a detailed analysis any more than many, many other scores that have as much thought put into them. Zimmer has made himself such a lightning rod and built such an effective hype machine that we can't help but agonize over his scores and whether they're masterpieces or transforming film music as we know it (and whether that's good or bad), when the reality is often that they're far less innovative or distinct or varied in quality than they seem at first.

Setting aside my "rating" of Dune (I think it's fine/solid, like you), there's not really anything all THAT truly remarkable about it (in terms of things worth dissecting in a deep dive analysis), at least in comparison to lots of other scores that try to tailor techniques to their film's narrative/world and have interesting stories behind their creation. And yet, it's Dune, Dunkirk, Blade Runner, Interstellar, Inception, etc. that have gotten a far greater amount and depth of analysis than any other scores from the past decade+ - from people who like and dislike them, and everyone in between. It "makes sense" - he's the most important composer of the last 30 years, he's got a huge public profile, he's scoring each year's biggest films, he's bridged the gap between film and pop music, there's more available/relevant information out there about him and his scores to build upon, etc. - but I would love to see more (from you or anyone) of this level and quality of analysis for non-Zimmer scores.

If it isn't clear this isn't any knock against you. This is an absurd undertaking and the result has been so impressive, including this bit on Dune. But all of this is why your Solo write-up was so enjoyable: that truly was a unique moment in time, for Powell, for Williams, for the biggest film score(s) of all time, and the result stands alone - not just in terms of quality, but in terms of the characteristics of the end result, especially in comparison to past Star Wars-extension scores, and as part of the new trend it signaled, extending the sound of the universe - so insight into how it came to fruition is fascinating. (Although, part of me feels similarly about how much discursive oxygen Star Wars eats up.) And that sort of writing on scores doing as many if not more interesting things than Zimmer's would be awesome - some recent ones that come to mind are Black Panther, The Green Knight, The Last Duel, and Arrival.

It's not a zero-sum game, of course, and it's funny to raise this now, after you just spent months spending an inordinate amount of time analyzing scores that were never given the time of day (or at least not recently), countering the whole point of this post. But it's something I've thought more and more when I see debates about Zimmer's scores, so I thought, why not share it now!

> This is a stellar write-up, one of your best.

Thanks!

> That said, I have this nagging sense that a score like Dune doesn't really deserve to be treated to such a detailed analysis any more than many, many other scores that have as much thought put into them. Zimmer has made himself such a lightning rod and built such an effective hype machine that we can't help but agonize over his scores and whether they're masterpieces or transforming film music as we know it (and whether that's good or bad), when the reality is often that they're far less innovative or distinct or varied in quality than they seem at first.

It's perhaps the logical progression of the various 'look at how we made this!' videos for Man of Steel. So much of the attention spent on the score was examinations of its component parts - and less so its viability as music or its impact on the narrative.

In a weird way, there are also parallels with how Leo won his Oscar for The Revenant. There, a lot of the conversation was about how the actor actually got wet and ate a real raw fish and whatnot - and there's a similar undercurrent of 'look at what he went through!' with the rationale behind Hans getting this award.

> Setting aside my 'rating' of Dune (I think it's fine/solid, like you), there's not really anything all THAT truly remarkable about it (in terms of things worth dissecting in a deep dive analysis), at least in comparison to lots of other scores that try to tailor techniques to their film's narrative/world and have interesting stories behind their creation. And yet, it's Dune, Dunkirk, Blade Runner, Interstellar, Inception, etc. that have gotten a far greater amount and depth of analysis than any other scores from the past decade+ - from people who like and dislike them, and everyone in between. It 'makes sense' - he's the most important composer of the last 30 years, he's got a huge public profile, he's scoring each year's biggest films, he's bridged the gap between film and pop music, there's more available/relevant information out there about him and his scores to build upon, etc. - but I would love to see more (from you or anyone) of this level and quality of analysis for non-Zimmer scores.

It's a fair point. ALL THIS ATTENTION for something that's ***, vs. the more limited real estate for scores I like more, isn't quite 'something is rotten in the state of Denmark', but it is proportionally odd nonetheless. But I'd also say this is also a function of how Hans has been covered in the Too Big To Fail era. There are so many more quotes and pieces about this - and more interesting tidbits in the public domain about how it was created - than, say, Spanglish, for which I had a red carpet interview and maybe a few other brief comments to work off of.

And I'd counter that given the popularity of Dune, its awards attention, and the propaganda machine that assembled behind it (an ad I saw on Facebook when the film came out had a producer saying it was maybe the greatest thing Hans had ever written, something I would've assuredly quoted and mocked in my piece if I could've found it this year) me justifying why I didn't love it probably merits being more wordy - just as was the case with Man of Steel.

Funny enough, I'd call this a pretty short post for something like Dune. If I'd written this all in one go instead of whittling down individual sections as I went, I'd venture the first draft would've clocked north of 4,000 words. And editing this one actually wasn't a huge challenge; for that, look to the Holkenborg 2021 post which took ages to cut down to its final sub-3,000 word form (heck, the Snyder Cut portion was over that threshold in its initial incarnation).

It would admittedly be interesting to go back once this is all done and see how the word counts break down across what I've covered.

> This is a stellar write-up, one of your best.

> That said, I have this nagging sense that a score like Dune doesn't really
> deserve to be treated to such a detailed analysis any more than many, many
> other scores that have as much thought put into them. Zimmer has made
> himself such a lightning rod and built such an effective hype machine that
> we can't help but agonize over his scores and whether they're masterpieces
> or transforming film music as we know it (and whether that's good or bad),
> when the reality is often that they're far less innovative or distinct or
> varied in quality than they seem at first.

> Setting aside my 'rating' of Dune (I think it's fine/solid, like you),
> there's not really anything all THAT truly remarkable about it (in terms
> of things worth dissecting in a deep dive analysis), at least in
> comparison to lots of other scores that try to tailor techniques to their
> film's narrative/world and have interesting stories behind their creation.
> And yet, it's Dune, Dunkirk, Blade Runner, Interstellar, Inception, etc.
> that have gotten a far greater amount and depth of analysis than any other
> scores from the past decade+ - from people who like and dislike them, and
> everyone in between. It 'makes sense' - he's the most important composer
> of the last 30 years, he's got a huge public profile, he's scoring each
> year's biggest films, he's bridged the gap between film and pop music,
> there's more available/relevant information out there about him and his
> scores to build upon, etc. - but I would love to see more (from you or
> anyone) of this level and quality of analysis for non-Zimmer scores.

> If it isn't clear this isn't any knock against you. This is an absurd
> undertaking and the result has been so impressive, including this bit on
> Dune. But all of this is why your Solo write-up was so enjoyable: that
> truly was a unique moment in time, for Powell, for Williams, for the
> biggest film score(s) of all time, and the result stands alone - not just
> in terms of quality, but in terms of the characteristics of the end
> result, especially in comparison to past Star Wars-extension scores, and
> as part of the new trend it signaled, extending the sound of the universe
> - so insight into how it came to fruition is fascinating. (Although, part
> of me feels similarly about how much discursive oxygen Star Wars eats up.)
> And that sort of writing on scores doing as many if not more interesting
> things than Zimmer's would be awesome - some recent ones that come to mind
> are Black Panther, The Green Knight, The Last Duel, and Arrival.

> It's not a zero-sum game, of course, and it's funny to raise this now,
> after you just spent months spending an inordinate amount of time
> analyzing scores that were never given the time of day (or at least not
> recently), countering the whole point of this post. But it's something
> I've thought more and more when I see debates about Zimmer's scores, so I
> thought, why not share it now!

I both Dune and Solo can have a long write up, but I disagree that Dune doesn't deserve a long write up. It was Zimmer's second Oscar. Dune is a critically acclaim movie that has a sequel coming up. Zimmer made a lot of comments about the scoring process so it makes sense to compare it to the end result. Also, Dune is an interesting score to write up because of how polarizing it is. IFMCA nominated for score of year, but Filmtracks and some users absolutely hates the score. That is what makes a great write up.

From lasting impact perspective, Solo doesn't deserve a long write up. The movie was a failure. People probably already forgotten about its existence. The score was popular among film music circles only. With that said, I think the most interesting thing about Solo is how Powell and Williams work with each other and adapting the themes. And that itself certainly could be a write up.

In short, I think are multiple variables that make for an interesting write up beyond what you think the quality is.

> I both Dune and Solo can have a long write up, but I disagree that Dune
> doesn't deserve a long write up.

My point was not that it doesn't deserve a long write-up, but that it's virtually guaranteed to get one because it's by Zimmer, unlike other scores that are just as interesting in terms of their conception and production.

> It was Zimmer's second Oscar.

And yet we've seen nowhere near the same level of analysis of other recent Oscar winners (including Black Panther, which I mentioned).

> Dune is a critically acclaim movie that has a sequel coming up.

There are many, many films that meet this criteria and don't get the same level of attention.

> Zimmer made a lot of comments about the scoring process so it makes sense to compare it to the end result.

Yes, I mentioned in my post that because Zimmer does a lot of PR about his scores, there is more available and relevant information to enable deeper analysis. It's unfortunate we don't have more on other scores.

> Also, Dune is an interesting score to write up because of how
> polarizing it is. IFMCA nominated for score of year, but Filmtracks and
> some users absolutely hates the score. That is what makes a great write
> up.

As I said, I think polarization is too often a primary reason Zimmer's scores get this level of attention, and I also think the polarization is an overblown product of the hype machine and reputation Zimmer has cultivated for himself, rather than a true reflection of what's happening in the music/film.

> From lasting impact perspective, Solo doesn't deserve a long write up. The
> movie was a failure. People probably already forgotten about its
> existence. The score was popular among film music circles only.

I think maybe you missed the whole point of my post? Which is that Zimmer scores dominate film score discourse and get the greatest amount and depth of analysis because he's the most popular and influential composer alive - which, like I said, 'makes sense' - and it often feels like the music itself doesn't earn that in comparison to scores that have as or more interesting stories behind them. Solo's worthiness for critical analysis has nothing to do with its box office performance or legacy - it's purely because of what a unique artifact it is as a film score, and the process that led to its creation.

> In short, I think are multiple variables that make for an interesting
> write up beyond what you think the quality is.

I explicitly said all of that in my post, including that this has nothing to do with the quality of any of the scores in discussion. I also said Jon's write-up was in fact a great analysis and read. My point, again, is that although Zimmer's scores, in terms of music and creative process, don't deserve that depth of analysis any more than many other scores, they most often are the ones that get it (because of all the factors you and I both mentioned), and that's a shame.

(Message edited on Thursday, April 13, 2023, at 5:10 p.m.)

> My point was not that it doesn't deserve a long write-up, but that it's virtually guaranteed to get one because it's by Zimmer, unlike other scores that are just as interesting in terms of their conception and production.

I was gonna write a response on why there is value in historical and critical analysis of Hans' consequential scores even when I don't like them that much, but then I realized Werner Herzog said it better about Wrestlemania over a decade ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kl2dFGshro

> I was gonna write a response on why there is value in historical and
> critical analysis of Hans' consequential scores even when I don't like
> them that much, but then I realized Werner Herzog said it better about
> Wrestlemania over a decade ago.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kl2dFGshro

I don't think we're at risk of "looking away" from Zimmer's scores anytime soon. And with ancient cave paintings, volcanoes, and prisoners on death row as recent subjects of his films, I think Herzog empathizes with the desire to shine a spotlight on things outside the mainstream cultural discourse

> Dune (2021) - ***

> Hans, talking to editor Joe Walker in November 2021 about their
> experiences with this film - “You did say, ‘Maybe we can move away from
> D minor for just a little bit.’”

> Me, describing this film in 2021 - “DOON”

Was the whole 'DOON' thing something you came up with or was it from something? Remember getting a mild kick out of seeing you constantly refer to the movie/score as that.

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

> The demo album was a truly uncompromising collection of ideas. Many
> weren’t even designed to be enjoyable, including raspy gasps right at the
> start and the ear-splitting noise that dominates the Mind-killer
> track. Hans acknowledged “it’s pretty provocative. It barks at you, and
> then it bites you.” He’d frequently referred to many of his
> suggestions for earlier scores as revolutionary or dangerous or crazy or
> insane or bold, only for the end product to not be that far removed from
> the bounds of normality, but those proclamations were rather accurate at
> times with this work. Hans even did staggeringly complicated things with
> harmony, though not in easily discernible ways. Few really knew what to
> make of the demo album. I first listened to it while nursing a massive
> hangover the morning after a friend’s wedding, which may have been the
> best way to absorb this alternatingly soothing and abrasive creation. I
> found it both astonishing and confounding, though I knew even in the midst
> of my gradually diminishing headache that there was no sense in rendering
> an opinion about the work until I heard the actual music written to
> picture. It would turn out to deviate in several ways from the sketchbook
> album, and not always for the better.

When everyone else was losing their minds over the concept album and even reviewing It already, I held firm to 'I'll withhold final judgment until I hear *the film score*'. Turns out, what eventually made it into the finished picture was far FAR better than the tedious cluster of noise that was the concept album.

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

> First, it devoted substantially more of its runtime to the undulating
> theme that was ostensibly for House Harkonnen but was also applied to
> other darker parts of the film. “It’s my deepest, blackest heart, and
> all it takes is a German and a fuzzbox to do that one.” It wasn’t a
> bad theme, but it also wasn’t that far removed from bad guy ideas from
> earlier Hans scores (think Commodus in Gladiator or the villain
> material in the Langdon films), which made its frequent use a minor
> disappointment in what was framed as a wildly different creative
> enterprise.

> Second, the loose thematic attribution would carry over into other parts
> of the film, thus extending the ambient approach to music Denis had wanted
> on Blade Runner 2049. “It felt more interesting to, like an
> impressionist painter, come up with different colors as opposed to the
> normal, ‘here’s the love theme, here’s one for the car crash.' Lady
> Jessica might not be in the next scene, but her words might echo into
> [it].” (In a funny way, that last point makes this work somewhat of a
> sequel to Crimson Tide, where the near-omnipresent choir was used
> by Hans to suggest the distant but deadly Russian threat) The score was a
> perfect fit for the director’s aesthetic, but maybe too perfect; in
> having intentionally alien sounds float across the movie in an
> occasionally abstract fashion, Hans’ music seemed to reinforce the
> audience’s emotional distance from the characters.

> Third, the score felt grimmer and darker on average than the sketchbook
> did. That’s not to say it was a quieter score by any stretch of the
> imagination; it is arguably the most colossal contemplative score in
> cinema history. But the more operatic, serene, and shimmering aspects of
> Hans’ demo ideas seem to have been largely discarded in favor of doubling
> down on brutal, stark music that matched the barren landscape - drones n’
> tones, if you will. The prog rock joys of the bagpipes are largely
> relegated to source music in an early scene and a brief quote in a midfilm
> battle. Not to mention that there’s an obnoxious thumping heartbeat effect
> in a few passages, which may have been appropriate for the film but spoils
> every album track it appears in.

> Fourth, while nearly every theme idea from the sketchbook is carried over,
> few of them really evolve, which makes the back half of the long score
> album (and especially its largely drifting and hazy last 20 minutes) a
> challenge, as the music is basically sitting in the same place that it was
> at the beginning. As with Zack Snyder’s Justice League and a few
> other works covered in this rundown, it’s an open question if playing the
> 22 tracks on the album at random would really change one’s perception of
> the score’s narrative. For all the thought and weird new sounds, the end
> product was at times surprisingly predictable for Hans and occasionally
> quite dull. It suggested that the composer was operating with the same
> kind of logic he’d applied to assignments like Widows in this era
> where he thought the filmmaking was so high quality that he didn’t need to
> do as much melodically or narratively as he would on a more mid-tier film.
> Additional music compiled for an album meant to accompany a book about the
> filmmaking process would take that ambience to its absolute extreme.

The hazy thematic applications was one of the major 'eeehh' factors for me but I don't consider it too much of a detriment. House Atredis, House Harkkonan (sorry if I butchered the spelling) and the Main theme/Paul theme are distinct enough to carry much of the score in my opinion. Also, I had already made peace with the fact that hazy, minimalist soundscapes was what Villeneuve always wanted so we probably weren't getting 'Lawerence of Arabia in space' despite my little soundtrack loving heart going pitter-patter at the idea.

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

> Dune was the natural endpoint - or for all we know just a midpoint
> - of the evolution of Hans’ approach in this era towards creating
> soundscapes instead of more traditional theme and variation scoring. It
> was no surprise how divisive the music was. It had its supporters,
> including those in the IFMCA who gave Hans a nomination for best film
> score for the second straight year, but also plenty of frustrated film
> score fans and websites like Filmtracks which lamented that (just like
> with Blade Runner 2049) the score seemed laser-focused on ambient
> sound design aligned to a visual aesthetic at the expense of hitting on
> other elements of the narrative or doing any of the other normal functions
> of film music. Yet unlike Man of Steel, where reactions to the
> music seemed to fall into one of two ardent camps, the score for
> Dune seemed to leave plenty of folks in the middle; both MMUK and
> Movie-Wave published reviews that suggested their authors were equal parts
> fascinated and perplexed.

And then there was me, who once again found himself at the seemingly opposite end of the reviewer spectrum of unabashedly liking DOON. Currently re-listening to the soundtrack album and yep, I'd still give this the rating I did in 2021.

My review of Dune (2021):
https://soundtrack-universe.blogspot.com/2021/09/dune-speed-review.html

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

> Next time: “It just wasn’t right.” “Massive change in
> direction.” “I wish we could have spent more time together.”
> “I’m not convinced any of my work will make it through to release.”
> “A yes used to be a yes.” “I'm not very amused.” The post
> I’ve been working on for four months; it’s the most deeply-researched and
> longest score write-up of this rundown, and also its most insane story.

Oh, clearly this is referring to The Son.

(Message edited on Thursday, April 13, 2023, at 3:46 p.m.)

> Was the whole 'DOON' thing something you came up with or was it from something? Remember getting a mild kick out of seeing you constantly refer to the movie/score as that.

I don't know if I truly originated it, but I don't recall anyone else doing it before me.

> Oh, clearly this is referring to The Son.

I was tempted to make that joke earlier! Snap...