This is part of a series.
- Here’s the prior post on various 2023 scores - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=131430
- If you want the full set of links, click on my profile.

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For new dad Henry Jackman, 2023 seemed to be a quiet year. The only work with his name on it was Extraction 2, like the first Extraction co-composed with Alex Belcher for the Russo brothers. The sequel score jettisoned its predecessor’s rip-offs of Inception and The Dark Knight but otherwise continued the “gnarly, unthematic, textural music” that dominated the 2020 film, resulting in an hour-long album of undifferentiated chugging rage - and with a third film announced, expect more of the same in a few years. Belcher got sole credit for the Russos’ other streaming project, the ludicrously expensive action series Citadel about amnesic spies. There is some notable orchestral might at times and a few moments where Belcher got to channel his love of Bernard Herrmann’s music, but this is no Kingsman; despite the genre’s potential for snazzy music (“Bond is always hovering over you”), the end result largely played to tired modern conventions, with frequent repeated string patterns and electronic distortions looking back nearly a decade to The Winter Solider, a Jackman score Belcher contributed to. And with Amazon renewing Citadel and financing a global franchise of spin-offs, expect more of the same from this too.

Citadel Season 1 - ** - Alex Belcher; add’l music by Evan Goldman, Antonio Di Iorio, Alex Lu & Antonio Andrade; orchestrated by Stephen Coleman, Michael J. Lloyd, Geoff Lawson & Lewis Meyer

Extraction 2 - *½ - Henry Jackman & Alex Belcher; add’l music by Evan Goldman, Tom Hodge & Jon Monroe; orchestrated by Stephen Coleman, Michael J. Lloyd, Geoff Lawson & Lewis Meyer; piano and conducting by Gavin Greenaway; score technicians Maverick Dugger & Joe Cho

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Zack Snyder’s films are rarely critical darlings, but even by his standards many of the reviews thrown towards the first half of his Netflix space opera Rebel Moon were particularly savage, with some even speculating that the film was released unfinished. Its inclusion of another Tom Holkenborg score seemed a fate worse than death to many score fans given how their collaborations often resulted in music that was the polar opposite of what they liked about scores, some still not having recovered from the assault on the ears that was the album for Army of the Dead two years earlier. But for Tom it was a welcome reunion. “There’s that saying in Hollywood: never change your wedding team. It’s been more than 10 years that we’ve been collaborating. It stays exciting - and challenging. We just go really well together.”

Plenty of those listeners were frustrated when the score came out and featured his trademark abrasive brass blasts, relentless drums, and sound design. But Tom juxtaposed that with homespun fiddle sounds, new age vocals, and choirs of various sizes, the composer looking to balance “futuristic elements” with an “earthy [sound] as Rebel Moon starts on an agricultural planet.” Its thematic narrative was less inspired that Tom’s output in his Adventures With Orchestra days, and it didn’t exactly transcend the Mad Mad: Fury Road template (or its Hans-ian ancestors), but it still ended up being the most palatable of his Snyder scores on album - often indistinctive relative to Tom’s earlier action scores, but rarely obnoxious.

Coming late in a year where the only other notable thing with Tom’s name on it had been an article in The Guardian that portrayed him as an asshole boss, an accusation he denied, Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire signified that the composer was about to return to the limelight. Set to debut in the subsequent twelve months were Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver, the Ubisoft pirate video game Skull and Bones, a sequel to Godzilla vs. Kong, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and a reunion with George Miller on a Mad Max: Fury Road prequel. 2024 is going to be Tom’s world; we’ll all just be listening to it.

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire - *** - Tom Holkenborg; add’l music by Ching-Shan Chang, Dallin Burns, Jack Roberts, Luca Fagagnini & Rafael Frost; orchestrated by Holkenborg, Jonathan Beard, Edward Trybek & Henri Wilkenson; conducted by Gavin Greenaway; solo cello Caroline Dale; violin & viola Max Karmazyn; vocalists Sumudu Jayatilaka, Sam Oladeinde & Giulia Vallisari; steel string acoustic guitar John Parracelli

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For Hans, the year was supposed to be both a victory lap and an extreme challenge, with Dune: Part Two a follow-up to his most awarded music in some time that would also likely trigger his established anxieties over working on sequels to films he scored. But the concurrent writer and actor strikes of 2023 pushed the return to the sands of Arrakis to spring 2024, and so while Hans and his team worked on that score in 2023 the only things of his that the public experienced in the calendar year were his concerts (not a bad consolation prize) and two other films. Neither of those movies was Christopher Nolan’s immensely successful Oppenheimer though. Hans was likely unable to devote enough time to the director’s explosive biopic, with Nolan instead relying on Ludwig Göransson after using him on his time-inverting 2020 movie Tenet, though the longer this separation goes on (6+ years) the more I can’t help but wonder if the challenges of scoring Dunkirk were more disruptive to their partnership than were publicly acknowledged.

The 2023 adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic coming-of-age novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. made for a long-awaited reunion with producer James L. Brooks, the two having not worked together since Brooks’ final directorial effort, the misbegotten 2010 romcom How Do You Know. Hans - with David Fleming likely having an active role given his “produced / additional music by” credit - crafted easygoing music that fit comfortably with his prior charming comedy scores. Despite its recording sessions being featured in a 60 Minutes profile of the composer months before the movie came out, the score was never released commercially. The terrific film wasn’t a financial success despite widespread critical praise, and in the movie the score does have to compete with a number of songs from the era, but it remains shocking that in an age where seemingly anything involving Hans gets an album release that this one didn’t.

The other release was the sci-fi film The Creator. You’d think in the wake of Dune that a futuristic action movie set amidst the backdrop of a war between mankind and artificial intelligence would be an opportunity for synths, strange instruments, and sound design - and The Creator even had Joe Walker, the editor of Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, involved (he was apparently instrumental in getting Hans on board). Electronics were present, but otherwise Hans - and Steve Mazzaro who got the same “produced / additional music by” credit he got on No Time to Die, suggesting he may have had just as significant a role in this score’s creation as he did on the Bond one - gave the film something wholly different, a more symphonic sound blended with choir, organ, and Eastern percussion sounds, the latter calling to mind his soothing material from 1995’s Beyond Rangoon. It was surprisingly emotive music for the concept - but then we are talking about a composer who prides himself on at least trying not to do the expected with every gig.

And yet the most newsworthy thing about the music of The Creator wasn’t the actual composition, as director Gareth Edwards publicly copped to going to an artificial intelligence music company to generate a Hans-like score, claiming he got a “pretty damn good 7 out of 10, but the reason you go to Hans is for 10 out of 10.” Edwards suggested Hans was amused, but I’m sure many in the composing profession, if not the broader music industry, find the disruptive potential of AI a bit less funny. Edwards and his financial backers may not have been able to tolerate a 7 out of 10, but someone else will, and the AI houses will get better and give someone else their version of a 10 out of 10 in the next few years. Also, while the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild were both able to secure protections against AI replacing them in the resolution of their respective strikes, there is no composers guild in Hollywood offering similar protections.

And sure, Hans prevailed in this battle with AI, but can he and his peers win the war? He’s been a disruptor throughout most of his career in Hollywood, but then it's only natural in any industry that disruption should itself be disrupted after some time, and after decades of folks turning to Remote Control (and Media Ventures before it) it’s hard not to see AI as an ever-encroaching existential threat going forward. If facsimiles of Drake and the Weeknd can be put out there by Tiktok users, one can imagine some future studio boss wondering why they should pay Bleeding Fingers to write documentary music when an algorithm can get close enough - and once that domino falls, whither more prestigious gigs? Hans has shown a deft ability to evolve his style over time, and it is probably foolish to bet against him even as he heads into his late sixties, but it remains to be seen if the man who in the last 30 years has gone from a Hollywood neophyte to a veritable film music institution in part thanks to his technological acumen and revolutionary use of samples can stay ahead of this trend or if Edwards’ story is a harbinger of doom for the profession.

The Creator - **** - Hans Zimmer; produced / add’l music by Steve Mazzaro; orchestrated by Oscar Senén; conducted by Gavin Greenaway; choir conducted by Ben Parry; vocalist Stephanie Olmanni; pitched percussion Aleksandra Suklar; woodwinds Pedro Eustache; cello Tina Guo; digital instrument design Mark Wherry; technical assistant Alejandro Moros

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. - ***½ - Hans Zimmer; produced / add’l music by David Fleming; add’l arrangements by Aldo Arechar; orchestrated by Oscar Senén; conducted by Gavin Greenaway; digital instrument design Mark Wherry; digital instrument preparation Raul Vega; technical assistant Alejandro Moros