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Atlantis: The Lost Empire: (James Newton Howard)
Back for their third venture with Walt Disney Pictures, directors Gary
Trousdale and Kirk Wise turn away from the musical format that was
dominant in the animated film genre when they made
Beauty and the
Beast and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame and instead follow a
trend set by
Dinosaur that established the genre as capable of
supporting a more traditional adventure format. With no character songs
and far more explosive action than seen before in a Disney film,
Atlantis: The Lost Empire explores the idea of an early 20th
Century expedition to find the sunken city in a fashion that merges
plotline concepts from
Indiana Jones and
20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea. Instead of turning to their previous collaborator,
mega-Oscar winner Alan Menken, for the music for
Atlantis,
Trousdale and Wise were handed composer James Newton Howard, who was in
the middle of a multi-picture scoring deal for the studio's animated
features at the time (extending to the following year's
Treasure
Planet).
Atlantis joined the ranks of not only Disney's
Dinosaur, but competition from Pixar and Dreamworks (including
Chicken Run and
Shrek) that was also employing mainstream
Hollywood composers to write non-musical orchestral material for the
genre. The Hans Zimmer hoard of Media Ventures ghostwriters had become
attached to many of these films, though Howard, who only maintained a
peripheral relationship with Zimmer's organization, was arguably
producing the most appealing music for animated films during this era.
Fans were not only dazzled by the sharp animation of the previous year's
Dinosaur, but also by the score, which many believed to be among
the year's five best. From a standpoint of construct and
instrumentation, not much is different between that project and
Atlantis, but the latter entry allowed Howard to reincorporate
some of the eclectic instrumentation that was heard more frequently in
his earlier projects. In scope, the performances for
Atlantis are
rendered similarly to those for
Dinosaur, though Howard raises
the bar in terms of the amount of choral and percussive creativity for
the latter film.
The score and its commercial album both begin with
arguably their weaker halves, with the obligatory song followed on the
album by somewhat discouraging selections that skirt the impressive
material heard in spurts throughout this portion of the film. The music
for these sequences, as audiences are introduced to the zany crew of the
expedition, hails back to the style of Alan Menken's silly comedy
material. Only upon the entrance of the submarine does Howard fully
state his marginally swashbuckling title theme on brass, and only once
the journey reaches Atlantis itself does the score begin to sweep the
listener into the action with diverse material of sustaining interest.
Howard's majestic theme for the lost civilization is a slowly rising
idea that often reaches a choral crescendo in the fashion of Alan
Silvestri's
The Abyss. The primary brass theme of enthusiastic
action is not as pronounced or mature as the one that sparked so much
controversy in
Dinosaur (and more specifically, the cue "The Egg
Travels"), but at the same time, there is no plagiarism issue with the
more generic ideas for
Atlantis. In fact, the pedestrian nature
of Howard's main theme for this score means that the performances of
that idea are not the highlight of the work. More appealing is the
vibrant majesty that Howard reserves for the various scenes of
wonderment in the latter half of the film. The collection of cues
following the discovery of Atlantis and accompanying its fantastic
scenery are a sibling of the exotic underwater music that Howard wrote
for
Waterworld. Howard's knack for writing simple, harmonious
chord progressions, always substantiated by a strong bass of strings and
brass, is flavored with an array of solo vocalists. Female soprano
voices are well employed on their own and supported by chorus to
represent the majesty of the seas, and the fuller adult chorus alone
reflects the ghosts of the empire's citizens with haunting beauty. The
mix of the score, while somewhat flat and leaning too heavily on the dry
side of the equation, improves when the chorus, orchestra, and
synthetics are merged late in the score.
Howard's electronic accents never overwhelm the
orchestral ensemble in
Atlantis, and his exotic touch of
percussion throughout the second half of the score includes chimes,
bells, and synthesized metallic elements not much different from those
heard in
Waterworld. When combined with the orchestra and chorus,
these tones are nothing short of magnificent. Howard also captures the
adventurous, chasing spirit of the journey's resolution with ambitious
snare rhythms heard in the trio of cues spanning "Going After Rourke"
and "Just Do It" (though the lengthy "Dogfight" in the middle is missing
from the commercial album). There is a certain amount of overblown
fantasy in the score that may cause it to sound too childish and heroic
for listeners expecting a plethora of subtleties, but given the genre of
the film, it would be difficult to find music more appropriate for
Atlantis. It was easy to see why Disney switched to Howard over
Menken for these films, all of which required an enormous scope of epic
proportions that Menken was never as accomplished in producing. The
commercial album for
Atlantis offers exactly 50 minutes of
Howard's score, which was generous considering Disney's past disregard
for the presentation of orchestral music off the screen. Ironically, the
album was released on the same day as the one for
Pearl Harbor,
and the Zimmer score stole almost all the spotlight away from
Atlantis. The song for the Disney film, performed by Mya, is far
less engaging than the Faith Hill song that Diane Warren also wrote for
the end credits of
Pearl Harbor. There is no doubt that the score
for
Atlantis is a more inconsistent listening experience on album
than
Pearl Harbor, but the latter score doesn't have half of the
amount of appropriate energy that Howard provided for
Atlantis. A
numbered limited edition album from Disney, with a special 3-D insert,
contained the same contents. Fans were treated to a 73-minute
promotional album from Disney almost immediately, pushing unsuccessfully
for an Oscar nomination but inevitably resulting in countless identical
bootlegs. Outside of about five minutes of superior additional material
(including the massive opening, "Atlantis Destroyed"), the complete
presentation is mostly redundant. Still,
Atlantis is an
accomplished work for its genre.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.4
(in 62 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.35
(in 74,674 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The commercial album inserts contain extensive credits and an advertisement
poster for other products related to the film, but no information about the score
or film. The promotional album's packaging is sparse.
