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Review of Alien vs. Predator (Harald Kloser)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if ten minutes of generic but pleasing choral expressions of intrigue and majestic orchestral anthems are alone worth the price of the album.

Avoid it... if you expect truly kick-ass, rhythmic action material that was absent from this spin-off franchise until Brian Tyler's superior score for Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

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.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 35:04

• 1. 1904 (1:15) • 2. Alien vs. Predator Main Theme (3:28) • 3. Antarctica (2:43) • 4. Bouvetoya Island (2:08) • 5. Down the Tunnel (1:08) • 6. Hanging Bodies (1:45) • 7. Southern Lights (1:40) • 8. Predator Space Ship (1:11) • 9. The Pyramid (1:11)

• 10. Temple (1:10) • 11. Dark World (2:56) • 12. History of the World (3:20) • 13. Alien Fight (3:14) • 14. I Need This (1:45) • 15. Weyland's End (0:56) • 16. Alien Queen (1:37) • 17. Showdown (3:23) • 18. The End... Or Maybe Not (3:30)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.

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