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| Goldsmith |
Deep Rising: (Jerry Goldsmith) Somewhere in the
process of making
Deep Rising, director Stephen Sommers and his
crew must have realized that the film was well on its way to failure on
a historical level, and that something unique would have to be done to
make the whole thing memorable. Apparently, that's where the relentless
gore came into the equation, for it's hard to recall any film that shows
more grotesque body mutilation than
Deep Rising (and that survey
includes the likes of
Starship Troopers). The setting for this
ultimate display of fake blood spraying is the luxury liner Argonautica,
the target of a mercenary group who plans to raid its safes and scuttle
it as part of a deal to secure an insurance payout. Unfortunately, some
octopus-like monster of poor CGI rendering had already boarded the ship
first, killed most of its inhabitants and eagerly awaiting the fresh
blood of B-movie actors for whom their automatic weapons offer little
more than a tickle. The bad acting and poor plot were only made worse by
the really unconvincing presentation of the monster. That, and what's
the point of casting Famke Janssen in a wet T-shirt role if she's going
to wear a bra? The early 1998 horror flick vanished as quickly as it had
become a blip on the radar, receiving far less press than the real-life
food poisoning outbreaks on cruise ships that seem far more popular of
an event. The laughable qualities of
Deep Rising also had a
lasting impression on composer Jerry Goldsmith, who decided after his
collaboration with Sommers on this and
The Mummy the next year
that he was tired of earning his money on the backs of such trash.
Unfortunately, he would continue scoring trash like
Hollow Man
over the course of his final dozen or so scores before his death, making
his fans wish he had come to this conclusion a little earlier. Goldsmith
did, however, have the capability of cranking out some fine (or at least
interesting) music for these terrible horror and suspense films at times
in the late 1990's.
Deep Rising, sadly, is not one of those
entries. You occasionally hear composers stuck in autopilot mode when
they're going through their motions, earning that paycheck, and
obviously putting a minimal amount of thought into a score. Don't let
the producers of the 2014 album convince you that there is transcending
intelligence in this project, for this basic procedural methodology is
exactly what Goldsmith aspired to in
Deep Rising, a score with
very few, if any, ideas that the composer's fans haven't heard several
times before, and for far better films.
A score like
Deep Rising is really hard to
assign a rating to, because it actually has some very well developed
ideas and listenable passages. But while there are three or four easily
digestible and somewhat enjoyable major cues in the score, the rest of
it is as bland and predictable as anyone could have expected. The
memorable cues all involve the three themes that Goldsmith employs in
Deep Rising. The first we hear is a throwback brass descent for
the monster itself, a two note slur for tubas and other low-register
instruments very menacingly presented at the outset of "Underwater
Grave" under some unnerving string dissonance. The film's unused title
theme then erupts with rather heroic brass over a bed of both drum pads
and authentic timpani, as well as a heightened mixing of Goldsmith's
ever-tingling treble-range electronic rhythm samples. There's a faint
sense of the great heroes themes of times past in Goldsmith's career,
especially from the 1970's and early 80's, but without the genuine power
to back it up with muscle. The monster's theme foreshadows the surprise
for the mercenaries at the start of "Boarding," a cue that leads to a
solemn snare-backed brass theme for their raiding party. With its
surprisingly lyrical construct and tropical percussion at times, this
theme is the highlight of the score. A frantic variation of the theme
explodes at the opening of "Hang On," during which Goldsmith later uses
soft alternations of woodwinds similar to the mesmerizing performances
in
Star Trek: Insurrection. That final cue then launches into a
reprise of the title theme, this time with the timpani mixed a little
more to the forefront, and rides it to the conclusion. The main theme
became orphaned in the end credits due to its replacement at the start
by the raiding party's theme. The nearly nonstop action music in the
rest of
Deep Rising is truly Goldsmith on autopilot, with few
moments of memorable rhythms to which to return. The synthetic effects
heard prominently throughout them are very similar to those you'd hear
in his final two
Star Trek scores, with passages easily
interchangeable. A sensitive interlude for solo oboe in "Leila's Gone"
is interrupted by drum pads too quickly to satisfyingly change the mood
of the overall product. The original 32-minute album of 1998 was too
long a listening experience, so imagine how tedious the score becomes on
the 67-minute expanded product of 2014 from Intrada. Outside of two or
three minutes of interesting additions, it's an arduous slog. The
overarching creativity usually present in Goldsmith's music is absent
from
Deep Rising, leaving the score as a two-dimensional shadow
of scores like the related
Leviathan, which more effectively
convinces you of its evil heart.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 128 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.28
(in 153,786 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert of the 1998 album includes no extra information about the score or film. That of
the 2014 Intrada album contains extensive notation about both.
