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Review of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Mark Snow)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you ever wondered what Mark Snow's music for The
X-Files would sound like if expanded in scope to a full-fledged
fantasy score with the assistance of a small orchestra and choral
effects.
Avoid it... if nothing about this cheap and freaky television adaptation can escape the misfortunes of its budget, for Snow's rendering of the music occasionally fails in its ambitious attempt to mirror a fully symphonic score.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: (Mark Snow) In 1997,
there was not just one television adaptation of Jules Verne's classic
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but two within a short span of each
other. Neither could compete with Disney's original from the 1950's, and
both were considered monumental failures amongst the crowded field of
classic literary adaptations reaching television in the late 1990's. The
second of the two adaptations that year was B-rate director Ron Hardy's
version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for ABC, starring Michael
Caine as Captain Nemo. It's hard to list all the problems with this
production, but let's start with an absolute mutilation of the original
story. In fact, very little remains unscathed. Not only is Nemo a cyborg
in this version --that's right, he's got super-mechanical hand
strength-- but he has a lovely daughter on board for the young,
shipwrecked professor to toy with and, in the process of killing off the
major characters at the end, the Nautilus explodes. That all sounds like
it would be loads of fun if not for the fact that every single aspect of
the production was cheap. This was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
on a college film budget, and it's amazing that a rather bored-looking
Michael Caine even agreed to be a part of it. The special effects were
the doom of the film, which labored through three hours over several
nights without one spectacular effects shot to salvage the whole
viewing. Terrible acting, nonsensical lulls in the action, and an MTV
style of haphazard cuts in the shooting were all laughable, and the film
was so bad that Warner Brothers, the unfortunate distributor of the
miniseries, took almost ten years to eventually crank it out
unceremoniously on DVD. Commonly considered to be the only redeeming
aspect of the production was the exemplary score by veteran television
series and miniseries composer Mark Snow. Snow had already won six Emmy
awards for his orchestral work on television, and his separate solo work
for The X-Files kept him extremely busy for much of each year
during its run.
Snow's music for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea would blend the symphonic and synthetic together, creating the kind of score that fans of The X-Files have often pondered in the famous series. As conceived, the score is massive in scope and sound. Snow obviously was one of the few members of the production who received the memo about the film's intended spectacle. Pipe organs, chorus, and a rich orchestra are merged with Snow's typical electronic sound of the era with a unique style. In the process of using the synthesizers to provide resonance on top of a small Utah studio recording group, Snow's music here does not rely on cliches and will not distract you with temp track adaptations. This style, for much of the running time of the score, does really sound like a romantic and harmonious expansion of that of The X-Files, even down to the keyboarded solos. To represent the sea, Snow stays from conventional Hollywood wisdom (there are no moments of Korngold swashbuckle to be heard here) and instead pulls at all the strings of great science fiction and fantasy, including an abundance of extremely satisfying harmonic progressions. He adds the swishing noises of water and bubbling of air in great depths at times to serve as built-in sound effects. The strings, sometimes backed by synthetic counterparts, sway as if lost at sea, and the choral accompaniment adds a majestic touch of beauty and awe. Brass cues accentuate the darker, urgent moments of peril when the Nautilus is attacked by giant monsters of the deep sea, and while these cues sound like the work of Alan DerMarderosian and dozens of other composers rendering similar scores on their equipment, Snow succeeds beyond all others in this endeavor. Thematically, the score has several motifs that seemingly represent characters and situations, though with the running time of the score trimmed to 45 minutes on album, it's difficult to narrow down some of their meanings. No catchy, specific theme exists to carry the series over between commercial breaks and overnight waits in the broadcast. The score does have singular moments that will remind of other composers. In the gorgeous "Sitting Down to Dinner," the delicate balance of piano and choral effects will pull at the same emotions as an early Danny Elfman score. Some of the more adventurous cues, such as "Train Station," will remind of Lee Holdridge's Westerns of the same era. A few of the underwater exploration scenes are reborn from John Barry's Raise the Titanic. The climax of "Shooting the Captain" resembles the progressions of David Arnold's Stargate. The score's weaknesses are clearly evident in the action music. The loud sea monster and shipside attack cues simply cannot muster the energy necessary from the orchestral ensemble, and Snow's electronics cannot provide a frenetic enough environment to compensate. Perhaps a wetter mix, with some of those choppy movements blurred into a haze, would have sufficed. Where Snow works his magic is in the pure fantasy element. The fluid movement with full ensemble and choral effects in "Main Title," "Sitting Down to Dinner," "Midnight Arctic Walk," "Exploring New Worlds," "Shooting the Captain," and "Finale" make for a suite that alone merits five stars for a television production with such a tight budget. Snow, if anything, proves that he is capable of producing extremely satisfying results on a scope as large as this despite budgetary constraints. The album is a short representation at only 45 minutes, and it was released only as a specialty product through Prometheus. Before you search it out, you can hear one of the better cues from the film ("Midnight Arctic Walk") on the 1999 Sonic Images "Snow Files" compilation. Some orchestral purists will be disappointed by the clear mix of symphonic and electronic elements in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but give the circumstances, it's hard to imagine a score as richly engaging as this. The fact that Snow has not had the opportunity to adapt music like this for a full ensemble in a blockbuster film setting in the following ten years remains reason for lament, though pieces of this material would expose themselves in the later, more harmonic years of his music for The X-Files. A very pleasant surprise in a highly unlikely place. *****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 44:31
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert contains information about the film and Mark Snow's career to date.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are Copyright © 1997, Prometheus Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 10/18/97 and last updated 2/18/08. |
