Air Force One: (Jerry Goldsmith/Joel McNeely/Randy
Newman) There was a period in Hollywood when depictions of the president
of the United States on the big screen showed men younger and skilled
with weaponry, and perhaps the most ridiculous overreach of these
fantasies came with Wolfgang Peterson's shamelessly patriotic
Air
Force One in 1997. The summer blockbuster gave audiences Harrison
Ford as the leader of the free world, Glenn Close as his vice president,
and Gary Oldman as the sinister Russian-aligned rebel who hijacks Air
Force One on a return trip from Moscow with some improbable inside help
from a troublesome secret service agent. The plot is relatively simple,
the plane itself receiving more than its due share of glory, and the
film cruised to lofty earnings and high approval from actual
then-President Bill Clinton. Like many intentionally over-the-top action
scenarios,
Air Force One requires the suspension of logical
thought from start to finish, and in an effort to accomplish some
semblance of believability, a dead serious action score is mandatory.
Unfortunately for the director, his employment of composer Randy Newman
for the assignment was a woeful mistake. Newman was indeed revered for
his ability to capture the essence of "Americana" in his scores, from
The Natural and
Avalon through
Pleasantville and
beyond. But his reputation had been built and maintained in the realm of
his children's film scoring and the lighter drama genres, with the
success of
Toy Story and Newman's plethora of quirky and jazzy
songs defining his career. It should have come as no surprise to
Peterson that Newman would write a somewhat silly, mocking score for
Air Force One; he had never tackled an action film of this
blockbuster size before, and he obviously looked at the genre with a
sense of amusement rather than one of serious intent. Newman's score
still managed to offer a significant amount of viable action material in
parts, using the logical choices of brass and snare to lead his fully
orchestral ensemble over a few lightly synthesized effects. But these
action cues fell into the trap of comedy action writing more akin to
1980's Elmer Bernstein music, attempting to move from motif to motif,
rhythm to rhythm far too quickly for the accompanying scene to receive
the sense of gravity it required.
Randy Newman's action music for
Air Force One makes
for an interesting listening experience apart from the film, and,
surprisingly, it has been highly praised through the years. Composer
Hans Zimmer once indicated that he considered these cues superior to any
he had written at the time. Several distinct sequences seemingly
inspired Basil Poledouris in his forthcoming score for
Starship
Troopers. Film music critics awarded significant praise to Newman's
score when it was leaked almost immediately as a bootleg CD to the
collecting community. But there are significant weaknesses in Newman's
score outside of a handful of the more consistent action cues. His
themes, simply put, are atrocious for the genre. His concoction for the
president includes a rollicking rhythm and jovial fanfare that places
the film just one step away from your local carnival. Used in full
during the early motorcade and hostage-freeing scenes, this theme would
have been horrifyingly trivial in its futile attempts to infuse any
sense of sincerity into the office of the president or his plane. In
both structure and frivolous character, the theme mirrors the identity
of David Newman's
Galaxy Quest to a substantial degree. Equally
dumb in a mock fashion is Randy Newman's theme for the Russians and
their general, nearing the realm of parody in its prancing movements.
His theme for the first family is adequate though inconsequential. On
the whole, his score is embarrassingly inappropriate in tone, despite
the quality of a few individual action cues. Newman recorded an hour of
material for the film before getting cut off by Peterson, who, with the
release date of the film fast approaching, must have been experiencing a
serious case of butt-puckering upon hearing Newman's recordings. There
is no indication that Newman recorded music for either the opening
credits or the final fifteen minutes of the film and end credits. With
only twelve days in which to record a replacement score, action veteran
Jerry Goldsmith pledged to make an attempt to save Peterson's film.
Knowing that he couldn't accomplish the task alone, Goldsmith initially
asked his son, Joel, to assist him in providing some of the music. Being
unavailable, Goldsmith turned to rising composer Joel McNeely for
assistance, and he received superior results. McNeely was tantalizingly
close to mainstream break-out at the time, and he was more than capable
and willing to closely follow Goldsmith's lead in providing music for
the scenes that the veteran declined to tackle himself.
After the rushed insanity of writing and recording
Air
Force One, Goldsmith claimed that he would never again attempt such
a last-minute effort. And yet, by almost all accounts, the work that he
and McNeely provided for
Air Force One is exactly what Peterson
was looking for. Despite its effectiveness, though, Goldsmith's
no-nonsense action style is derivative of his other works; originality
wasn't a luxury afforded by time. He wrote all of the themes and motifs
for the film and passed them on for McNeely to interpret as necessary
for certain cues. The three concepts for which Goldsmith wrote themes
mirrored the choices made by Newman, but they're executed in a far more
conventional way. The main theme is a somewhat transparent re-working of
the primary theme for
Star Trek: First Contact from six months
prior, replacing the stark nobility of the earlier theme with a touch of
Rambo: First Blood Part II instrumentation in a more patriotic
slant. Its blatantly heroic statements are the polar opposite of
Newman's leading theme in attitude and distinction, and while they may
be slightly obnoxious in their unflappable patriotism, they match the
flamboyant displays in the film quite well. Goldsmith would have been
horrified to know that this theme eventually became a common anthem for
stage arrivals of American Republican presidential candidates John
McCain and Donald J. Trump, the latter using this theme for rally
entries through the end of his term. Also owing a page to
Star Trek:
First Contact is the construct of the softer, somewhat anonymous
woodwind-based family theme heard most prominently in "No Security" and
in a few of the resolution moments later on. The Russians are given two
motifs that eventually blend into one spectacular moment of General
Radek's death near the end of the film, and these ideas are arguably the
highlight of
Air Force One for veteran Goldsmith collectors.
First introduced in the latter half of "The Parachutes," this material
evolves into a grim snare march under stereotypically rigid Russian
progressions for low strings and brass in the film's latter half.
Goldsmith rarely wrote for Russian settings, with the only other
memorable use late in his career coming in
The Sum of All Fears,
but McNeely on the other hand provided a lavish, heavily choral Russian
piece for the little know film
Virus not long after
Air Force
One, leading some to incorrectly believe that McNeely was the
original source of this music in
Air Force One. The idea,
however, was indeed Goldsmith's, even though McNeely did interpolate the
material at times.
Ever since his music for
Star Wars: Shadows of the
Empire featured some fantastic adaptations of John Williams' style,
McNeely had been known as a composer talented enough to mirror the style
of anyone, which is partly why he made such a competent conductor of
re-recordings in the subsequent decade. The bulk of McNeely's
contributions to
Air Force One came in the second act, and
contrary to rumors, some of these cues are major action pieces,
including all the scenes in which the plane is fired upon by friend and
foe. The impression that McNeely handled the table scraps is incorrect;
his impact on several scenes late in the film is significant, and many
of the bland moments of underscore during dialogue and suspense scenes
are actually Goldsmith's work alone. McNeely's adaptations of
Goldsmith's themes for
Air Force One are outstanding, even if
they were simply extending the style of Goldsmith's stock 1990's action
material. He uses all of Goldsmith's themes, including the family theme
and liberal usage of the Russian material. He also does a very competent
job of altering the rather static main theme to some interesting
variants by using key shifts and note substitutions worthy of praise.
During the hectic recording sessions, Goldsmith even joked with the
younger composer that he was putting in too much effort and complexity
for a cue like "The Dogfight." As for Goldsmith's own material, the
combined "Hijacking" cue is among his more interesting 1990's action
music, though much of the rest sounds like typical insertions from the
same library of study. He uses very few synthetic elements in
Air
Force One, though, a rarity at the time for Goldsmith. Woodwind-like
effects join their organic counterparts in "Empty Hall, Downstairs,
Hanging About" to foreshadow equivalent cues in
The Haunting.
McNeely utilizes a slight electronic rhythm-setter at the outset of the
attack by Russian planes. The finale cue of "Welcome Aboard" takes
substantial structural inspiration from the finale of
Rudy,
sharing the same feel-good attitude down to the precise instrumentation
and tone of performance. Other small references can be made to the
harsher brass usage in
The Shadow. On the whole, the score has
few truly standout Goldsmith moments, including "The Hijacking" and
latter half of "The Parachutes" (the closing chimes are a nice touch),
but the rest fails to attract much attention when compared to
Goldsmith's standard output at the time. The truly interesting action
material to be considered is indeed McNeely's, as well as the
development of the effective Russian motifs fleshed out by both
composers.
The album situation for
Air Force One was for
many years a source of much ridicule from film score collectors, the
score long begging for some kind of expanded treatment in honor of the
now-deceased Goldsmith. The Randy Newman score, as mentioned before, was
leaked for public consumption not long after the film's release, and its
presentation features two dozen tracks that were initially unlabeled but
have since been given their proper cue titles. The sound quality on the
pseudo-promo turned bootleg is decent enough not to be an issue for all
but the most discerning listeners. The 1997 commercial Varèse
Sarabande release of the final score for
Air Force One was a
touchy subject, both for fans and for the label. The ridiculed release
contained only about one-third of the recorded music from the film and
presented its limited contents out of order. Additionally, though
stating on the packaging that there exists "additional music in the
picture by Joel McNeely," none of that material made it onto their
album. While the two major action pieces of length highlighting the
score are present on the 35-minute Varèse product, most of the
Russian material is absent. This includes the extremely popular choral
rendition of the Russian theme as General Radek is ceremoniously
released from jail and then immediately killed. (The preceding tune sung
by the inmates is a traditional piece not written by any of the
composers for the score; it does not appear on any album associated with
the score.) Given that
Air Force One really needed at least a
45-minute album (but more likely a 60-minute one) to provide all of the
noteworthy thematic material, the Varèse album was derided online
and in feedback directly to them for years. This is an obvious sore
point for the label, which consistenly claimed that it could not afford
the hefty union-based re-use fees on any more of the Los
Angeles-recorded music, especially the choral piece. Not surprisingly,
the fans discarded that reasoning and took care of their own problem by
defying Varèse with a double CD bootleg that famously circulated
around the collector's market starting in 1999. While being complete,
its sound quality of the bootleg was always its primary issue. The
Goldsmith material lifted from Varèse's album, as well as
McNeely's contributions (which had been leaked on his own promo of sorts
not long after the film's release), sounded great. In fact, the McNeely
portions were nothing short of spectacular in mixing quality. But the
additional Goldsmith material was badly muted and difficult to enjoy.
This includes the famed choral piece, which continued to elude
collectors in its pristine form.
In 2019, Varèse finally pressed a full
presentation of the Goldsmith and McNeely score as part of their limited
CD Club series, and this album solved all ills with the album situation.
The sound quality is magnificent throughout the product, and the label
even re-created the edited "End Credits" arrangement. The late 1990's
was a time when Goldsmith's scores often sounded incredible in their
spread and reverb, and
Air Force One, while not as dynamic as the
composer's 1998 and 1999 recordings, is still quite resounding in its
original mix. As almost to punctuate their achievement, Varèse
appended "(With Chorus)" to the title of the "Radek's Release" track
which, finally, provides the cue in all its magnificent glory. (In
retrospect, McNeely's lifting of this idea for
Virus is probably
more entertaining.) The extension of this theme in "Sign It!" is another
highlight of the expanded album. Twenty-five minutes of alternate takes
are included on the album, some of them mixed in with the primary
presentation, leaving the film versions for the section of bonus tracks
at the end. The alternate takes are not significantly varied from their
film version counterparts, mostly supplying redundancy to the album. The
expanded presentations, whether on the bootlegs or on the limited
Varèse product, do expose some of the score's weaker suspense
passages, a cue like "Hostage President" offering a few notable glimpses
of the Russian material but otherwise rather underwhelming. On the other
hand, "Air Force One in Trouble" contains excellent, melodramatic
alterations to the main and family themes to afford weightier drama to
the equation, including another woodwind-led performance of the latter
identity. In the mass of 15 previously unreleased tracks ending the
first CD of Varèse's set, "Dumping Fuel" is another attractive
moment of heavier drama tinged with the Russian shades. Interestingly,
the only cue in the score solely credited to McNeely without any
adaptation of Goldsmith's themes is the quite decent "Fuel's On Its
Way." Overall, Varèse's 2019 set is the proper and definitive
presentation of this score, and both the 1997 commercial product and the
Randy Newman bootlegs should be ignored. From an intellectual
standpoint, the final score will remain an affable, comfortingly
recognizable staple of Goldsmith's 1990's output even if it's mostly
redundant, and McNeely's contribution needs praised at every moment
possible. There remains an undeserved level of hype for both scores,
however, Newman's work awkwardly inappropriate for the premise and
Goldsmith's main and family themes failing the originality test despite
the fame the former has acquired since becoming a symbol of making
America great again.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Music as Written by Randy Newman for the Film: **
- Music as Written by Goldsmith/McNeely for the Film: ****
- Music as Heard on the 1997 Varèse Sarabande Album: **
- Music as Heard on All Bootlegs: ***
- Music as Heard on the 2019 Varèse Sarabande Album: ****
- Overall: ****
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29
(in 113 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.32
(in 145,175 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The inserts of the 1997 Varèse Sarabande and bootleg albums include no
extra information about the film or scores. That of the 2020 Varèse album
includes detailed notes about both.
