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| Horner |
The Amazing Spider-Man: (James Horner) What do you
do when one of your star movie franchises stalls because of creative
differences that leave its respected director and crew dissatisfied?
Reboot! Despite the success of Sam Raimi's trilogy of
Spider-Man
films that debuted from 2002 to 2007, disappointing scripts left the
production of
Spider-Man 4 in limbo, and when Raimi refused to
sacrifice the integrity of the concept by rushing the fourth film to
production by 2011, Sony Pictures pulled the plug and immediately
shifted its focus onto a hasty reimagining of the franchise. Many of the
ideas explored for
Spider-Man 4 (and the two additional Raimi
sequels planned after that) were transferred to 2012's
The Amazing
Spider-Man, including the use of the Lizard as the film's villain.
The origin story of Peter Parker is shifted to a period earlier in his
life and concentrates on the role of his parents in his destiny, though
there are numerous redundancies in the other plot points when comparing
the reboot to the original 2002 film in the franchise. While collective
groans initially greeted the news of production on
The Amazing
Spider-Man, the film was ultimately praised for its own strengths
and earned significant profits in line with the Raimi endeavors. Some
critics even placed the 2012 entry as superior to the heralded
Spider-Man 2 of 2004. Regardless of how redundant this reboot may
be (in its own universe and amongst the endless reboots of other
franchises), the project at least gave the
Spider-Man franchise
another opportunity to consolidate its musical identity. Danny Elfman
had conjured a very effective and entertaining score for the original
Spider-Man and his themes endured in the Raimi trilogy despite an
extremely messy composing situation that saw Christopher Young, John
Debney, and others contribute to the franchise. Young's involvement,
starting bizarrely with his reprise of
Hellraiser music in
Spider-Man 2, eventually solidified into a surprisingly good
score for
Spider-Man 3 that remains a fan-favorite long
unreleased on album. Still, Elfman's memorable title theme for the
titular character accurately expresses his high-flying capabilities in
its structures and instrumentation, and it's difficult to completely
jettison that identity for the reboot.
The very brief filmography of new director Marc Webb led
to much speculation about who would compose the music for
The Amazing
Spider-Man, some of which implicating Mychael Danna as an
interesting possibility for the assignment. When James Horner became
attached to the project, however, there was a range of responses from
head-scratching curiosity to a "too good to be true" sense of
excitement. The composer had not tackled the genre of comic book-related
heroism since
The Rocketeer in 1991 and had seemingly divested
himself from the blockbuster scene (aside from
Avatar) over the
course of the 2000's in an effort to seek more obscure assignments that
pique his artistic sensibilities. Although the spirit of his fabulous
scores in the franchise of
The Mask of Zorro are an exception,
you have rarely heard Horner explode with heroic superhero music of
enthusiastic and extroverted emotional expression since the days of
Willow and
The Rocketeer. Did he still have that side of
rambunctious fun in his repertoire? Futhermore, would that sound even be
acceptable to studio and test audience ears in an era of melodramatic
droning for troubled superheroes as defined by Hans Zimmer and his clone
production factory? How much would Horner have to adapt his
instrumentation and structures to even be relevant in this age of darker
superhero scores? Fortunately, he seems to have taken the same approach
to the evolving genre that Patrick Doyle chose for
Thor in 2011,
refusing to abandon his stylistic comfort zone but extending his
capabilities into a more modern instrumental environment. For better or
for worse, there are few moments in his score for
The Amazing
Spider-Man that do not remind of his established sound. You
encounter a significant dose of his 1990's mannerisms, in fact,
saturating his chord progressions, instrumental and vocal tones, and
singular techniques. Thankfully, his most tired and obnoxious
trademarks, including the venerable but ridiculed "four-note danger
motif," are absent, the composer tending toward reprising ideas from his
lesser known dramatic scores instead. Webb stated, "I wanted him to
create a score that felt massive and huge but also intimate and small,"
and the composer obliged with a work that is heroic when necessary but
unexpectedly dramatic in is character-centric passages.
Horner's approach to
The Amazing Spider-Man,
regardless of the tools he uses to accomplish his goals, is remarkably
intelligent. He applies a very wide range of those building blocks to
enhance a thematic narrative that is more complex than necessary for
this context. His major themes have intellectually appropriate
variations that transform into their own somewhat autonomous entities in
consistent fashion. The coloration of these ideas remains identifiable
throughout the score, foreshadowing and reminding of events where
applicable and supplementing the structures with individual usage of
voice or instrument that can alone suggest a connection without the need
of a larger motif. The base for this endeavor is similar to Elfman's,
featuring a full orchestra with choral and electronic accompaniment. The
piano is clearly the heart of the score, following Parker's
relationships in their tender and mysterious turns. For a film about a
family's cloudy but loving past, the instrument seems logical, though
Horner's tendency to prefer his own performances of the piano in a
leading role for such situations is awfully convenient as well. The most
interesting observation to make about this music is the de-emphasis of
the lower strings; the celli and basses do not chop in the ostinatos so
prevalent in this generation and are never even tasked with affording
the mix a heavy melodramatic presence. Rather, you hear Horner revisit
the playful tuba solos of his late 1980's and early 1990's scores in
several cues ("Playing Basketball" and "The Spider Room - Rumble in the
Subway") and light, tingling metallic percussion from
Avatar in
"Metamorphosis." The composer's usual rumbling chords of ensemble
broadness on measure to denote gravity are present but restrained. The
only nod to modern orchestral usage for blockbuster action that becomes
obvious in the work is the slapping percussion in "Saving New York,"
which emulates Doyle's
Thor in some ways. Uniquely notable
instrumental techniques in
The Amazing Spider-Man include
finger-snapping for comedic effect in "Playing Basketball," moderated
shakuhachi flute as a tool of quietly descending wails ("The Equation"
and "Peter's Suspicions") that avoid the puffing or shrieking of other
Horner scores, and atonal solo piano strikes in middle of "Saving New
York" that resurrect David Shire suspense of the 1970's. If you seek a
few minutes of prototypically pure Horner innocence from the era of
The Spitfire Grill, look no further than "The Ganali
Device."
The use of vocal talent in
The Amazing Spider-Man
ranges significantly in effectiveness. Rather than rely upon the dynamic
scope of a lively adult choir in the methodology of Elfman, Horner is
content to revisit his child-like and processed ensemble applications
most famously heard in
Titanic, even down to the same puffing
techniques in "Saving New York." This synthetic-sounding accompaniment
is the most grating aspect of Horner's stock usage here; the better
enunciated and more mature tone of the voices in
Willow would
have been better welcomed. Conversely, the composer's mix of solo voices
is much more entertaining musically even if they don't always make
sense. Horner reunites with Dhafer Youssef from
Black Gold for a
Middle-Eastern hint in the identity of the Lizard, a striking choice in
terms of foreign-sounding alienation but one that has nothing ethnically
related with the plot. More warranted is the use of English boy soprano
Luca Lupino-Franglen, plucked from a Christian chorister school to
convey an important connection between "Main Title - Young Peter" and
"Saving New York." Film score veteran Lisbeth Scott, with whom Horner
had collaborated for
Avatar, returns for a pretty, albeit
intentionally haunting cameo in the middle of "The Bridge." Equally
important to Horner's soundscape is his employment of electronics in
ways that suggest that these contributions are meant as the bulk of his
effort to bring his superhero style up to date. Ticking, pulsating
effects denote movement in "Becoming Spider-Man," at times switching off
with the piano in an equivalent duty. Quietly processed electronic
guitar also figures later in that cue and in "Lizard at School!" For
fight sequences late in "The Spider Room - Rumble in the Subway" and
"Ben's Death," Horner mixes in more pop-like, slapping percussion and
pulses akin to James Newton Howard's recent work. The most interesting
layering of electronics in the score comes in "Making a Silk Trap,"
which uses the foundation of organ and Blaster Beam-like sounds reprised
with choir directly from the "Winter/Battle" sequence in
The New
World (though pounding drum hits here do keep it fresh). This cue,
among others, proves that you can indeed rock the floor with resounding
bass while still using harp, violins, and choir to occupy the treble
with feelings of awe. Horner's mix of the electronic elements into the
major ensemble cues is tastefully handled in every case, especially in
the initial statement of the main theme in "Main Title - Young
Peter."
Thematically, Horner provides
The Amazing
Spider-Man with the necessary identities to hold the score together,
including some extremely impressive manipulations of his main themes for
multiple uses, though he also misses a few opportunities as well. It's
difficult to qualitatively compare the main theme by Horner to the
equivalent by Elfman; Horner's is more structurally straight-forward
that Elfman's, though neither is the kind of walloping identity that
reaches out and immediately grabs you. Elfman's theme was intentionally
elastic and thus somewhat elusive in the memory. Horner sticks with his
preference for quickly enunciated, four-note phrases in his themes, and
his heroic identity for Spider-Man here is at least a bit more
malleable. Its initial four-note phrase is repackaged in innumerous ways
in the score, sometimes truncated to three notes. It's an odd merging of
Jerry Goldsmith's "friendship" motif from
Star Trek V: The Final
Frontier and
Star Trek: First Contact with Carlo Siliotto's
main theme from
The Punisher. Its initial performance in "Main
Title - Young Peter" is a highlight of entire score, its trumpets over
electronics a dynamic range of tones. In "Becoming Spider-Man," the
theme receives somewhat playful treatment before a statement of string
and choral grandeur at 1:29. During "Playing Basketball," Horner
humorously transfers the theme to solo tuba in
The Land Before
Time mode. By "The Bridge" and "Lizard at School!," the idea matures
into its strong action variant, and "Saving New York," "Ocsorp Tower,"
and "Promises - Spider-Man End Credits" all feature rousing heroic
brass renditions that cement the theme's place in the franchise.
Countering this melody is Horner's answer for the intimate portions of
the story, his love theme. This pretty and unassuming piano identity
will remind you of several early 1990's small drama scores by Horner,
leading up to its fuller variants in
Deep Impact and others. This
quietly sensitive idea, performed often by Horner on piano without much
accompaniment, dominates two cues: "Rooftop Kiss" and "I Can't See You
Anymore." While the theme is technically introduced in the opening cue
and is heard in short snippets throughout the score, it doesn't really
congeal until "Rooftop Kiss," in which the piano is joined by solo oboe
with lovely, nostalgic results. Fuller string performances exist in the
lengthy "I Can't See You Anymore," bracketing gorgeous piano renditions
in its middle and latter half.
Outside of Horner's two main themes is where the score
becomes shrouded in mystery, because there's an extensive mix of
variations and singular motifs that aren't as well defined in terms of
their purpose. The Lizard's theme and its associated ethnicity is the
score's greatest disappointment. The actual melody consists of a
descending series of notes, often in groups of three and brutally
conveyed in the bass region. You can logically hear this identity in
"The Bridge," "Lizard at School!," and "Oscorp Tower," though usually as
quick interludes to surrounding action. Supplementing this theme is the
assignment of the Middle-Eastern vocals by Youssef to the Lizard, a
completely nonsensical application unless such tones are meant to simply
"sound foreign" and thus relay untrustworthiness. These vocals exist at
the start of the "Main Title" and are reprised in "Peter's Suspicions"
and "Making a Silk Trap," the latter a memorable electronic manipulation
of the voice to make it sound like a crying animal. Horner at least once
implicates the electric guitar as a possible calling card for the
character's evil side, especially in his contrast to the acoustic guitar
in "The Equation," but he neglects to flesh out this possible
connection. More integral to the remainder of the score is Horner's
seemingly intentional handling of his primary two themes to give them
alternate identities of their own. The love theme is twisted into what
could be called Horner's "Craig Armstrong tribute" several times during
suspenseful or mysterious moments. Although there are definite threads
of the love theme in this rising motif, the connections are not refined
or explicit. A very slight suggestion of this motif late in "The
Briefcase" is revealed as its own identity at 2:45 into "The Equation."
This crescendo format really emulates the popular Armstrong technique
(heard as recently as
In Time) near the end of "Peter's
Suspicions," even down to the combination of string melodrama, slapping
percussion, and electronics. One has to wonder if
Plunkett and
Macleane, a staple of trailers for decades, wasn't temp-tracked into
one or more of these sequences. Armstrong's languishing string
preference for statements of this motif exist at the conclusions of
"Saving New York" and "Promises - Spider-Man End Credits," a definite
precursor of plot elements to come (perhaps as a motif to represent
Parker's parents?). The use of fragments of the love theme in a few of
the performances of this motif represents another dimension of potential
turmoil for a character that still has plenty of discovery ahead of
him.
The final recurring motif in the score is a downsizing
of the main theme to most likely accompany Parker in his non-superhero
endeavors. It's anchored by the first four-note phrase of the primary
theme, repeated significantly as Horner shifts into his deliberately
plodding "progressive flow" mechanisms that have become his general
representation of "genius" going back to
Sneakers and most
famously earning recognition in
A Beautiful Mind. This definite
"Hornerism" is either a love it or hate it type of proposition, though
at the very least the mechanism allows the composer to once again shift
through satisfyingly pretty chord progressions and keys with fluidity on
piano. The boy soprano sequence in the middle of "Main Title - Young
Peter" offers a beautiful reintroduction to this usage, followed by an
accelerated version to open and close "Becoming Spider-Man" (where the
four-note rhythm really begins to take hold). Echoes of this motif
ramble through "The Briefcase" before merging with the suspense/mystery
alternative. Deep thumping and choir accompanies the motif for a minute
in "The Spider Room - Rumble in the Subway" (before the latter half of
the cue abruptly cuts it off). The motif is transferred to acoustic
guitar early in "The Equation" and, after hints in "Ben's Death,"
returns to the vocalizations of the initial cue in the middle of "The
Bridge." As Horner channels the aforementioned cue from
The New
World in the first half of "Making a Silk Trap," the motif turns
nasty in a cool sense through the use of pounding percussion and
synthesizers under choir. The boy soprano version of the idea is
reprised briefly in "Saving New York" and the motif is not heard from
again. Other motifs exist in
The Amazing Spider-Man, including
some outstanding individual ideas. An increasingly urgent searching
motif consists of ethereal ambience over quickly rising piano runs in
"Hunting for Information" and "Secrets." Out of the highlight in
"Secrets" builds a separate magical motif at the heart of
"Metamorphosis" as well. The most unique idea in the score is the
theme that occupies the entirety of "The Ganali Device," a moment of
unashamed Horner tradition that builds its structures around Charlotte
Church's counterpoint lines from
A Beautiful Mind before
launching into an exuberant variant of the brighter material from
Casper. This cue will be a singular delight for veteran Horner
enthusiasts and it's something a shame that its material doesn't extend
into the rest of the score.
Overall, there is much to praise about Horner's
handling of
The Amazing Spider-Man. Few superhero scores of the
2000's and 2010's are allowed to be so expressive and genuinely
heartfelt. Horner takes the cliches of the industry and the trademarks
of his own career and packages them into a refreshingly organic,
character-centered score that is cool and ballsy when necessary. He,
just as John Williams demonstrated in the prior year, has chosen not to
compromise his principles despite movement within the industry to treat
topics with more brawn than nuance. The result is a throwback sound for
The Amazing Spider-Man that proves its continued viability,
reminding listeners that the music produced by Horner and others in the
early 1990's can still function well twenty years later. The composer's
own piano performances, while not extraordinary, require some moderate
acclaim as well. Some of his fans will assign this score a rating at or
near their highest capability, though while the work certainly stands
above what passes for blockbuster superhero music at this time (one
listen to Hans Zimmer's
The Dark Knight Rises will confirm this
opinion for many veteran film score collectors), there are faults to
The Amazing Spider-Man that place it behind its peers in Horner's
own career. Regardless of the many merits of its parts, this score fails
to muster the intangible feeling of greatness that prevails in the more
crystal clear personalities of his prior triumphs. Detractors will
continue to be bothered by the composer's reliance upon familiar
phrases, most notably the two crescendos in "Becoming Spider-Man," the
latter of which hails all the way back to
Star Trek II: The Wrath of
Khan. The theme for the villain is poorly enunciated and makes
little sense. The singular motifs in between the major statements of
theme don't amount to a cohesive whole. The length and constancy of the
score has been criticized, and the 76-minute album will indeed tire your
senses. Finally, something has to be said for scores that use their love
themes as the explicit interlude sequence within a hero's theme, and
Horner missed that opportunity in his end titles arrangement. All of
that said, the composer deserves much admiration for this entertaining
and intelligent work. Although
The Amazing Spider-Man may not
achieve the highest rating at Filmtracks, it's about as strong a
four-star score as one can be, and nobody should be ostracized for
forgiving its relatively minor faults and awarding it the highest rating
possible.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 200,390 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
It contains no actual photography from the film, either.
