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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
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Composed, Co-Orchestrated, and Produced by:
Co-Orchestrated and Conducted by:
Tim Simonec
Co-Orchestrated by:
Andrea Datzman Marshall Bowen Jeff Kryka
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LABEL & RELEASE DATE
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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Regular U.S. release.
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AWARDS
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None.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... if you are a dedicated Michael Giacchino collector
enthused by the opportunity to hear him merge his music for "Lost,"
Super 8, and Land of the Lost into a conservatively
predictable formula for this franchise.
Avoid it... if you expect continuity with Patrick Doyle's superior,
preceding score or an engaging presence of suspense, this work's subtle
and sparse introspection making its solemn thematic highlights seem
better than they actually are.
BUY IT
 | Giacchino |
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: (Michael Giacchino)
After the dissatisfying disintegration of the quality of the franchise
that followed Planet of the Apes in the 1960's and mostly 1970's,
as well as Tim Burton's flawed 2001 re-envisioning, the success of the
concept's resurrection in the 2010's is highly redemptive. These
alternate takes on the events that happened long before the original,
classic Charlton Heston entry in the timeline are a treat to audiences
and have been appropriately assigned significant critical and box office
success, ensuring further sequels. The story of 2014's Dawn of the
Planet of the Apes picks up ten years after the conclusion of
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (wouldn't these titles have been
best reversed?) and depicts the struggles in the interactions not only
between surviving human populations after the plague released in the
prior film and the apes that gained intelligence because of it, but
within their own civilizations trying to coexist in the San Francisco
Bay Area. As is always best in this franchise, conflict within these
human and ape communities allows for the social commentary originally
intended in this concept to thrive, and the winner of Dawn of the
Planet of the Apes really is meant to be nobody. Even with audiences
knowing that outcome, the execution of suspense and battle is the film's
selling point, the concentration of the next new director to take the
franchise. When Matt Reeves took the helm of Dawn of the Planet of
the Apes, in with him came his preferred crew, yielding yet another
change in the composer for the series. With his J.J. Abrams connection
from the television realm came the logical collaboration with Michael
Giacchino, who provided music for his Cloverfield and Let Me
In projects. The franchise has evolved astonishingly from the highly
textural, minimally rendered style of Jerry Goldsmith, modern
counterparts in Danny Elfman, Patrick Doyle, and Giacchino all
struggling to balance that arguably now untenable sound with the musical
mannerisms expected by studios and audiences. One common thread running
through these scores is a reliance upon rhythmic, primordial-sounding
percussive elements, balanced by occasional glimpses of either
accessible fantasy awe or deeper hints of tonal, thematic
representations for character.
Giacchino follows this line of musical evolution
expectedly in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but with a distinct
emphasis on stark loneliness, a clear representation of a
post-apocalyptic wasteland environment and the despair it entails. It
has to be mentioned immediately that the composer made no evident,
impactful effort to coordinate the structures of this score with those
of his predecessor, Patrick Doyle, whose work for Rise of the Planet
of the Apes remains the pinnacle in the entire franchise. There are
common techniques of using rising chord progressions to denote the
ascendance of a civilization or concept, perhaps, especially at the
conclusions of the two scores, but listeners will struggle to find
meaningful connections in the bulk of the works. Giacchino maintains the
desire for creative orchestration and especially percussive handling,
but even here, the volume of this material growls more often than it
outright frightens or exhilarates. The thematic core of this work is
closely rooted to the composer's more understated melodic expressions of
the past, especially the solo piano portions of his popular music for
the television series "Lost." He employs a similarly-conceived idea for
the sense of goodness in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,
primarily for the relationship between the main ape family members, and
don't be surprised if these sequences pass you by without making an
impression in their barely audible portions, such as "Past Their
Primates." It does expand into a full-fledged variation in "The Great
Ape Processional" and "Primates For Life," aided by rhythmic and choral
effects that are clearly the highlight of this score. Listeners will
also notice connections between this softly tender, thoughtful idea and
similarly sparse melodic renderings in Super 8, and a few
progressions will even remind of the solemn Vulcan identity in the
composer's music for the "Star Trek" franchise. These passages are
limited in number, however, and Giacchino counters them with a couple of
action motifs that run through the score with a more standard
contemporary edge. Highlighted by performances late in "Close Encounters
of the Furred Kind" and "Planet of the End Credits," these ideas, which
burst suddenly from horrifying choral dissonance in the middle of "Look
Who's Stalking" as well, are a cyclical expression of primal force using
low strings to set the base rhythm while the other sections let rip with
various phrases over the top, flutes especially pronounced in their
duties atop the range.
The most obvious, harmonically accessible thematic
performances in the score come in the form of the "ascendance motif"
heard at the very end of the film itself ("Primates For Life") and the
end credits, assisted by choir and a pounding ending. These moments are
not really satisfying enough to compensate for the remainder of this
long and comparatively dull score. To this point in Giacchino's career,
perhaps his biggest disappointment was 2009's Land of the Lost,
and much of the mid-section of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,
even when audible in its atmospheric toiling, emulates the weaknesses of
that prior score. For some reason, Giacchino has difficulty making
highly textured music interesting enough to sustain your attention at
times, a problem with "Lost" at some points, too. The usually very
creative composer got stuck in an ambient rut in parts of this score,
and it causes the very long album arrangement to drag badly in its
midsection. Still, on the whole, the style of this score is very much in
the Giacchino mould, almost every moment connected in some way to his
previous works. The lack of continuity with Doyle's score is a major
detriment here, the two 2010's films' content and themes requiring
continued development across productions. Doyle's merging of percussion
and propulsion is superior in almost all places, his effort gaining far
more traction as a separate listening experience. While Giacchino
remains a huge enthusiast of the original Goldsmith score (and you can
tell that he tried to incorporate some textural tributes to the 1968
work at times), it was Doyle's music that was most relevant here, and
Giacchino seems to have completely forgotten this reality. No better an
opportunity to connect to the prior score existed than in the scene with
James Franco's cameo on a camcorder recording, an opportunity almost too
easy to miss. There are two other detriments to Giacchino's score on
album that are typical to the composer's career. First is his and his
crew's asinine insistence upon cute cue titles that do little to help
the listener identify where a cue is placed in the film (if, for
instance, you want to find the music for that camcorder scene anyway,
you're an ape out of luck). Far more important, however, is Giacchino's
preference for an awkwardly dry mix to his scores, a choice he seemingly
deviated from in John Carter but one that returns with a
vengeance here. This is a fantasy score, and the eerie atmosphere in its
suspenseful moments could have used reverb to achieve an outstanding
effect. Instead, the score sounds very flat, exacerbating its restrained
demeanor and really diminishing its potential impact. While functional
in its purpose, this score is a laborious listening experience on album,
a difficult one to ultimately recommend.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on Album: **
- Overall: ***
Bias Check: |
For Michael Giacchino reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.46
(in 43 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.21
(in 23,467 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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Total Time: 77:38
1. Level Plaguing Field (2:21)
2. Look Who's Stalking (2:35)
3. The Great Ape Processional (4:34)
4. Past Their Primates (1:57)
5. Close Encounters of the Furred Kind (4:38)
6. Monkey to the City (1:16)
7. The Lost City of Chimpanzee (3:46)
8. Along Simian Lines (5:04)
9. Caesar No Evil, Hear No Evil (2:27)
10. Monkey See, Monkey Coup (5:12)
11. Gorilla Warfare (7:37)
12. The Apes of Wrath (4:28)
13. Gibbon Take (2:55)
14. Aped Crusaders (3:26)
15. How Bonobo Can You Go (5:42)
16. Enough Monkeying Around (3:35)
17. Primates For Life (5:42)
18. Planet of the End Credits (8:56)
19. Ain't That a Stinger - composed by Griffith Giacchino (1:10)
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The insert includes a list of performers and notes from the composer and director,
the latter of more substance about the score.
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