Expend4bles: (Guillaume Roussel) There wasn't much
high art in the franchise of
The Expendables to begin with, but
2023's belated fourth entry,
Expend4bles dispenses with whatever
appeal the concept once had. The 2014 predecessor,
The Expendables
3 had reduced its violence to achieve a PG-13 rating, which robbed
the production of the gloriously stupid death depictions that drove the
prior movies. Its stumble caused years of consternation over the fate of
The Expendables 4, lead actor Sylvester Stallone declining to
contribute to the story as he had before and many of the franchise's
prior big-name action stars of the 1980's and 1990's opting out. But
with Stallone returns Jason Statham, and their chasing and explosions
take them to the popular tourist destination of Libya to prevent a dude
with dark skin from stealing a nuclear weapon on behalf of a mysterious
warlord who, of course, turns out to be closer to home than anyone
originally suspects. Fake deaths, double-crossing, and escaping nuclear
blasts are part of the yawn-inducing story of the eventually renamed
Expend4bles, and nobody seemed to care upon the film's release.
Performing terribly at the box office, the franchise appears dead
despite the valiant return to "R" rating territory. Missing out on all
the fun of this failure is composer Brian Tyler, who was reportedly
asked to return for this movie after scoring the first three. His
commitment to
The Super Mario Bros. Movie and
Fast X did
not allow him a chance to continue his work here, and that ended up
being to the benefit of new director Scott Waugh's strategy. He hired
relatively obscure French composer Guillaume Roussel for
Expend4bles instead and instructed him to ditch Tyler's
established sound for the franchise. Roussel is one of many graduates of
Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions, having most notably
contributed to the absolutely wretched score for
Pirates of the
Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in 2011. Since branching off on his
own, Roussel found himself mired in the muck of lesser television
projects, though his big screen work in the action/thriller genre did
include 2014's
3 Days to Kill and 2022's
November. He has
admitted finding more comfort with lighter orchestral music like that he
wrote for Disney's 2020 version of
Black Beauty. For
Expend4bles, though, he is sunk by a director who asked for
comparatively dull rock and hip-hop material as the new focus of the
series.
Tyler's music in this franchise was meant to evoke
memories of 1980's orchestral action while lacing it with a newer,
percussively muscular resurgence of power. All of that tact is absent in
Expend4bles, and Roussel admits that he was initially
disappointed by that direction because of his affinity for what Tyler
had accomplished. Whatever last vestiges of Jerry Goldsmith that Tyler
had applied to Stallone and company, including a main theme highlighted
by something of a four-note anthem at the start, is abandoned. Now, the
1980's characters are afforded a hard rock style while the new additions
receive the hip-hop influence. It's a brash electric guitar and
synthesizer-led score, with an anonymous orchestral presence of strings
and brass relegated to secondary duties of action support and muted,
dramatic stewing in a few moments early and late. A lack of distinctive
role for brass is especially baffling; not even unison horns can provide
any balls to this work. That duty is for the electronic elements alone,
and expect to hear nothing new stylistically when compared to countless
equivalent scores on big and small screens. Roussel does provide two
fresh themes to
Expend4bles, but neither competes favorably with
the main Tyler identity. The new main theme is a repeating five-note
rhythmic formation heard immediately in "The New Squad" that figures in
a brief burst late in "Marsh Runs the Show" and meanders on electric
guitar behind the pounding of "Bike, Explosions and Death." The
performance of "The New Squad" is reprised in "Expend4bles Main Theme"
but with slightly more (but still inadequate) orchestral presence. A
secondary theme for the characters' story arc utilizes ascending
dramatic phrasing around two-note pairs, eventually shifting to
ascending trios. Barely reminiscent of Tyler's main four-note motif in
purpose and structure, this idea is heard at the outset of "A Horrible
Loss" on low strings and a vague, fake chorus. On the upside, it returns
appropriately to guide the action in the middle of "Redemption." These
placements cannot salvage the remainder of the totally anonymous
recording for
Expend4bles, every technique applied to this score
already saturating the industry and giving the listener no reason to
care. Wailing alarm-like noises are undeniably the worst of these
stereotypes, and that sound effect factors here. On album, the score
amounts to a paltry 26 minutes, which may be a blessing in disguise. In
the quest to create something different for this franchise, Roussel
provided what has become most predictable and inane. The situation must
have been frustrating for the composer, because the joy of earning this
mainstream assignment is countered by the knowledge that the production
forced him to record the worst music of the franchise.
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