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| Kloser |
Alien vs. Predator: (Harald Kloser) Just about
every casual movie-goer would probably agree that both the
Alien
and
Predator franchises had already exhausted their welcome and
brought themselves to a natural close several years prior to studio
efforts to merge the two iconic creatures into one epic battle story.
Comic book collectors knew better, however, with a very popular and
long-running spin-off comic series pitting the two notoriously ugly
creatures against each other. It seems as though 20th Century Fox had
resisted this concept as a film during the run of the comics, although
the profitable pairing of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees in 2003's
Freddy vs. Jason proved that just about anything is worth a shot
(and can make money) these days. Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson's
Alien vs. Predator debuted well financially despite a plethora of
poor critical and audience reviews (the studio knows what it's doing
when it doesn't even provide press screenings). The plot really isn't
important in flicks such as this, but for the sake of context, the only
thing you really need to know is that there is a secret pyramid under
the Antarctic in which those nasty alien creatures are bred in captivity
so that adolescent predators can be shipped in to Earth to "come of age"
and prove their battle skills against the aliens (why not simply use a
dedicated "game planet?" Oh that's right, the writers took a few more
years to devise that idea). In the meantime, why the pyramid had to be
on Earth, nobody knows, but it does conveniently explain away the
predators' previous involvement on our planet and the existence of some
irritating humans as auxiliary characters in this movie. As hard as it
is to fathom, the predators are as close to being the good-guys as any
party can get, and the musical approach taken for the film by composer
Harald Kloser (this time without major credited help from his usual
assistant, Thomas Wanker) follows the history of the predators' music on
the big screen far more than that of the aliens. It's rather easy to
reference the predators with simple, raw percussive brutality and thus
maintain continuity with Alan Silvestri's music for them. But the aliens
have had multiple musical identities through the years, and only in the
final "Showdown" cue here does a hint of James Horner's action material
from
Aliens influence Kloser's work. Otherwise, the themes from
both franchises were apparently off limits, Kloser instead relying on
his own brand of music beefed up from
The Day After Tomorrow and
presented as a stand-alone entry in both series.
Starting with the basic musical ingredients of
The
Day After Tomorrow and beefing them up is a good development, for
that previously released 2004 score's weakness is its rather tepid tone
and lethargic sense of movement and impact. Whether you accept
Alien
vs. Predator as a movie premise or not, and even in the absence of
the franchise's individual motifs, Kloser did a more reasonable job with
the score than anyone might have expected. Largely orchestral, Kloser
combines his usual symphonic sound with a chorus and an array of
slashing and grinding electronic sound effects. His theme for the film
carries over the anthemic qualities from
The Day After Tomorrow
and is performed in a similarly deliberate style with emboldened brass
and an enhanced choral presence. It's nothing as impressive as the depth
he would conjure for
10,000 BC a few years later (plagiarism and
all), but it's a solid step in that direction. The tone may be tongue in
cheek to an extent, but the most enjoyable cues in
Alien Vs.
Predator are those during which Kloser instills the story with a
sense of epic scope and awe-inspiring realization. The opening and
closing titles, along with the "History of the World" cue (featuring a
great snare-driven moment of bombast), provide enough interesting
harmonic material to make the entirety worth some casual investigation.
The overarching personality of the effort is surprisingly pleasant, with
only four or five cues of outward battle music and several cues
dedicated to choral-aided melody for moments of discovery and intrigue
(perhaps a nod to Silvestri's space theme for his original
Predator, but that's a stretch). Kloser does make an interesting
distinction between the predators and aliens in his sound effects: the
predator receives a metallic slashing sound for the wrist-worn blades it
uses in battle and the alien produces a more extended, swishing and
scraping sound that imitates its distinctive cry and whipping tail. With
these two effects alternating in the fight cues, Kloser takes much more
time to generate a coherent score than was probably necessary. The rest
of
Alien vs. Predator solicits the same response; the score is
nothing spectacular, but it offers far more than was expected given the
cheesiness of the film's concept. At the very least, the effort
confirmed that Kloser, also a writer and producer for cinema, was
serious about projecting his career in the direction of largely
orchestral action efforts, with results that may be simplistic and
wasted on poor films but show considerable promise in their intent. That
said, nothing he generates in
Alien vs. Predator can compete with
the more muscular, strikingly hyperactive, and technically superior
composition by Brian Tyler for
Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem in
2007. It's all relative.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Harald Kloser reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.56
(in 9 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.54
(in 3,752 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
