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PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Chappie (Hans Zimmer/Various)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you're game for a Hans Zimmer resurrection of vintage
Vangelis synthetics en route to a highly discordant representation of
humanity's future.
Avoid it... if you expect Zimmer to follow the logical method of playing opposite to audience expectations, his choice not to address the titular robot with clearly organic elements a blatant opportunity missed.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Chappie: (Hans Zimmer/Various) If anyone doubts
writer and director Neill Blomkamp's obsession with the topics of
artificial intelligence and societal unrest in Johannesburg, South
Africa, then you'll be convinced otherwise by 2015's Chappie, a
science-fiction venture meant to once again challenge the definition of
humanity. The special effects master-turned-director once again attempts
to address concepts basically touched upon in District 9 and
other prior works, with only marginal success. The narratives of his
films suffer against the concentration on visual elements; in the case
of Chappie, the near future sees robots replace the police force
in crime-ridden Johannesburg. As this is happening, their designer
creates one variant that can feel emotions and form opinions, and this
one robot, the titular "Chappie," is the focus of the film as it
imprints upon a human mother, experiences fear and pain and loss, and
eventually (and predictably) becomes the most human character in the
movie. While members of the South African hip-hop group Die Antwoord
play major roles in the film, Blomkamp also brings in veterans Sigourney
Weaver and Hugh Jackman as antagonists to cement the establishment as
evil. In many ways, the film is a juxtaposition of Blade Runner
and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, striving for the bleak dystopia
of the former while embracing the more familial heartstrings of the
latter. That comparison becomes important when analyzing the music for
Chappie, written not by one of Hans Zimmer's plethora of younger
clones but instead by the popular composer himself (with the aid of
Steve Mazzaro and Andrew Kawczynski, not to mention the usual crew of
less official contributors). Calling his gang of artists "The Chappie
Elektrik Synthphonia" this time, Zimmer commented that Blomkamp was "a
director who encourages us mad boffins to drag out forty-year old
analogue synthesizers and lets us spend days fiddling in lab-coats with
patch-cables, blowing up valves and transistors." He took the
opportunity to write his first entirely synthetic score in decades,
clearly embracing the Vangelis Blade Runner method of addressing
futuristic robot/human law enforcement relations with electronic
discord. The result is not surprising, and, more than in some of the
composer's other works, you can hear Zimmer's own musical voice
reflected in the softer sequences while the action portions devolve into
a mess of electronic dance deconstruction possibly guided by his
contributors.
As already mentioned, the ensemble for Chappie is entirely electronic, and some film music listeners may equate this score in Zimmer's career to Heartbeeps in John Williams' or Runaway in Jerry Goldsmith's. For some people, the often harsh tones of the synthetics will sound not significantly different from Zimmer's usual bass-heavy treatment of blockbusters of the era, but his collectors will notice that the composer doesn't even employ samples of orchestral elements. Instead, the reliance upon aged synthetic tones is pronounced, aided at times by sounds dating back to Zimmer's own early 1990's electronic tendencies (especially as heard late in "Never Break a Promise"). You occasionally hear a sampled chorus or electric guitar employed as a singular accent ("Rudest Bad Boy in JoBurg"), but it is interesting how faithful Zimmer is at times to the vintage Vangelis realm of sounds. Some of the more refined keyboarded tones are employed in lighter moments, and percussion representation is surprisingly absent during long sequences. In the latter half of the score ("You Lied to Me"), you begin to get more manipulation of layers in the mix, most notably disturbed, distorted vocal effects. The general personality of the score is driven by Zimmer's typical propensity to pound his chords in action sequences, and listeners shouldn't expect much elegance in these portions ("Mayhem Downtown" is actually somewhat laughable). Pairs of these blasted chords are most common, emulating bad heavy metal music as it thrashes to mesh this sound with Zimmer's neo-classical inclinations. To counter these hideously abrasive representations of the human society in Chappie, Zimmer assigns a theme to the main character and runs through the full spectrum of emotional distress. For the lighter moments of tender intent, this theme (once again simplistic in its five-note progression and rooted right around key so that all he has to do is shift the underlying chord while keeping the actual progression the same until he gets to the secondary phrase) is presented in a music box effect, barely audible in "A Machine That Thinks and Feels," "Firmware Update," and "The Black Sheep" compared to the action material. The idea is harshly interpreted in "Use Your Mind," "Breaking the Code," "Mayhem Downtown" and "Never Break a Promise" before experiencing a melodramatic crescendo in "The Outside is Temporary." There are occasional self-contained themes that struggle to emerge, as in the oddly song-like "We Own This Sky" that doesn't seem to fit quite right with the rest of the score, especially with its whistling application, despite running with an ascending idea presented just before in "Never Break a Promise." For Zimmer collectors, Chappie will present a vibrantly synthetic soundscape of extremely oppressive, retro origin. There are legitimate questions about the efficacy of the composer's choices in this score, however. Aside from the fact that cues such as "The Only Way Out of This," "Mayhem Downtown," and the arcade tribute in "Illest Gangsta on the Block," among others that occasionally borrow too much inspiration from the Vangelis of old days, are totally unlistenable on album, you also have questions about how Zimmer handled the sensitive half of the score. His choice of applying simple theme in a child-like music box tone for the robot is a bit obvious, and it's not actually that intellectually smart. He makes a big deal out of this score being entirely synthetic, but that misses the point. More poignant would have been an entirely synthetic score for the human world and one strikingly organic instrumental tone for the titular robot. For Blomkamp's District 9, Clinton Shorter offered a Zimmer knock-off sound but with the important addition of a lone ethnic voice. Some kind of equivalent human representation for the lead robot in this score was desperately needed. A crisp piano, perhaps, or even the composer's vintage woodwinds. Nobody will argue that this film needs the kind of overwhelming operatic beauty that Williams offered at the end of A.I., but something closer to that appeal would have been infinitely more effective for the purpose of mother/robot relations clearly exploited by Chappie. This was a tremendous lost opportunity for the disparity in the film to be gloriously illuminated by the music. Along those same lines, with the exception of the last half of "The Outside is Temporary," you don't have a true sense of narrative development in the pivotal theme. Part of these issues of flow in Chappie relate to yet another poor presentation of a Zimmer score on album. This time, it stems from lack of gain equalization from track to track. The action cues will pound away at you at extremely high volume and the softer surrounding material is not elevated in volume to compensate. Thus, the album alternates between extremely loud and soft tracks, requiring constant manual adjustment. Also no stranger to a Zimmer album situation is Mr. Annoying Release, and here it is due to a contractual agreement between the label (Varèse Sarabande, intriguingly) and one outside vendor website to supply all the digital and CD copies of the product (the latter at $18). Don't bother trying to find this release at Amazon or the label's own website at the time of its debut. Overall, Zimmer and his crew's approach to Chappie is basically functional but contains several truly unlistenable action sequences and sadly misses a great chance to represent a humanity's last best hope, a robot, with organic elements against the alternative. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 63:06
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes extensive photography but no extra information about the score or film.
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