: (Jerry Goldsmith) It has
always been strikingly unfathomable that a storyline as tightly woven as
that of James Patterson's popular novel somehow became twisted into Lee
Tamahori's ridiculously incoherent 2001 adaptation,
. Technically a prequel to
, Morgan
Freeman returns as detective Alex Cross, and that fact alone is really
the only highlight of this senseless abduction thriller. He returns from
retirement in this plot to track down the abducted daughter of a U.S.
senator, teaming with the Secret Service agent tasked with protecting
the family. The kidnapper seeks notoriety by committing crimes against
famous politicians, but he ultimately proves to be a red herring.
Critical reactions to the film were poor, and even moderate box office
success couldn't save the franchise. As unremarkable as the film's
supposed "surprise" ending is Jerry Goldsmith's extremely pedestrian
score for Tamahori, with whom the veteran composer had collaborated on
1997's
. After a variety of very strong scores in 1998
and 1999, the composer entered the 2000's in extremely underwhelming
fashion. At the outset of the prior decade, Goldsmith introduced the
first glimpses of how he would score modern suspense and horror films. A
perfect example of this was
, an otherwise meaningless
score that happened to have a haunting end title theme. As the 1990's
progressed, Goldsmith began repeating his trademark motifs of this genre
of scoring into his music for dramatic and adventure films, leading to a
late-era, "modern Goldsmith sound" that became less and less interesting
with each incarnation. Disappointments such as
, despite whatever guilty pleasure material exists in
the minority of those works, caused veteran Goldsmith fans, those who
embraced
Concern about the substandard originality of Goldsmith's
last few years of output does not necessary entail that these efforts
were becoming less effective in their roles within the films, but
rather, it pointed towards a disturbing direction of stylistic
repetition, especially in this particular genre of film. Perhaps most at
fault for Goldsmith's decline was his selection of productions for which
to write, and by sticking to his established collaborations more often
than not, he ultimately became attached to trashy pictures. Even the
composer himself lamented in his final years that he had become mired in
terrible assignments. Ultimately, if Goldsmith wanted to win another
Oscar, then writing derivative music for inevitable failures like
Along Came a Spider was never the way to do it. While there
remained a small audience for mundane Goldsmith works like
Hollow
Man and
Along Came a Spider, it had become increasingly clear
that the composer's days of even providing at least some minimally
satisfying thematic or rhythmic cohesion in this genre of music had
passed. What most collectors heard instead was a legendary composer on
autopilot. It came as no surprise, therefore, that there is very little
in
Along Came a Spider that the composer's fans had not heard
five or six times before in previous years. Of Goldsmith's minimalistic
suspense scores, in fact, this one may be the most boring. It served as
evidence that he wasn't even making a concerted effort in his 2000 and
2001 scores, including the subsequent
The Last Castle, to create
a new sound, a structural reinvention, or any fresh approach to his
balance between the synthetic and the orchestral. Even with Mark
McKenzie brought in to orchestrate
Along Came a Spider (replacing
Alexander Courage), listeners hear the same tired electronics and
orchestral elements in predictable applications. Goldsmith's music
spends a significant amount of its time establishing the setting and
atmosphere of the story, leading to lengthy sequences of single cello
plucks and other bumps and groans that require amplification just to
hear.
In "Night Talk," Goldsmith's trademark metallic
electronics drone away for three minutes, barely interrupted by
occasional dissonant sways of the strings. The electronic sound effect
of a vibrating metal wire heard in this cue is obviously meant to give
an aural representation of a spider web, but it is not pronounced enough
to be even remotely exciting. It recurs in "The Missing Picture" and
"The Photos," diminishing late in "Profiling" and intermittent in the
first half of "Not My Partner." As a conspiracy or thinking motif, the
idea could have achieved much better results if Goldsmith could have
harmonized it into a better structural base. The action sequences are
stereotypically handled with standard hits of the orchestra, usually
followed by the kind of drab brass figures that punctuate the later
Star Trek scores but owe the most to
U.S. Marshals. This
technique exists throughout "Testing," in which collectors hear a
mash-up of lesser material from the likes of
The Haunting,
Star Trek: Nemesis, and
U.S. Marshals, with the same mode
repeated in "Megan's Abduction" and taking a fuller rising and falling
form in "Megan Overboard." These chasing or searching scenes also offer
tiresome drum pad explosions from countless other Goldsmith scores. A
rambling low piano technique owing back to the staggered rhythms of
Capricorn One,
Contract on Cherry Street, and
First
Blood is provided for suspense in "Cyber Meeting," "No Guard," and
"Cop Killer." It becomes menacingly uncontrolled in "Missing Girl" and
"Hi Alex" but returns to sneaking form in "The Ransom Part 1." In the
two "The Ransom" cues (combined into one track on the initial album),
however, Goldsmith finally develops the percussion and brass into
extended figures that reveal the main theme for the score. It's a solid
Goldsmith identity for this period, the initial ascending three notes of
the theme highlighting another callback to the law enforcement realm in
U.S. Marshals. The idea debuts at 0:59 into "The Ransom Part 1"
on full brass before diminishing to trumpet at 2:32 and strings at 3:36.
Lighter woodwinds take the theme at 0:07 into "The Ransom Part 2" and
brass fragments toil with it at 1:35 and 2:01 into that cue. The theme
is deconstructed with turmoil at 0:50 into "Profiling," but that's the
extent of the melody in the whole score.
Even if the score for
Along Came a Spider
doesn't make prominent use of its main theme outside of this one scene,
the "The Ransom (End Credits)" track is an edited together suite of
highlights from the two "The Ransom" cues, so the film likely meant to
confirm this idea as its primary identity. Why Goldsmith chose not to
adapt the theme into any other part of his score is a mystery, for its
three-note opening had much potential for interpolation into a number of
emotional modes. There is another recurring theme in the score, one for
loneliness on solemn piano heard at the start of "Alone" and at 3:41
into "Not My Partner," the latter building to a redemptive string bridge
into the end credits. Outside of these points of marginal interest,
Goldsmith collectors may find some merit in the brass-slurring and
rhythmic suspense a la
The Shadow late in "A Closed Book" and
creepiness from
The Haunting in "Watching." Otherwise, there is
really nothing particularly interesting about the score for
Along
Came a Spider. The climax in "Not My Partner" doesn't resolve with
any emotional satisfaction, the narrative of the film nonexistent in the
music. The original 2001 Varèse Sarabande album left listeners
with only 35 minutes of bland and uninspiring underscore, albeit
including the two themes in all their performances. That was more than
enough. In 2021, though, Varèse returned to the score, expanding
the listening experience to over an hour padded at the end by the
reprise of portions of "The Ransom" edited together for the end credits
and a few minutes of various takes with incidental studio chatter tossed
in. The longer album offers little benefit over the 2001 product. To the
credit of his engineers, the mixing of Goldsmith's late scores remained
consistent to the dynamic, reverb-friendly mix his music had enjoyed
since 1998, leading to a phenomenal presence of the orchestra and crisp
resonance in each of its sections. That outstanding presence is
preserved on both albums. Better sound quality doesn't lead to
originality, though, and longtime Goldsmith collectors had every reason
to be quietly nervous at the time that the composer was losing his touch
in the precious few assignments he had remaining as he battled age and
illness before his death in 2004. Only the somewhat engaging pair of
"The Ransom" cues elevates this otherwise utterly boring score above the
lowest rating.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.23
(in 140 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.25
(in 154,807 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
