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Fantastic Four
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Co-Composed and Produced by:
Co-Composed by:
Philip Glass
Co-Orchestrated and Co-Conducted by:
Pete Anthony
Co-Orchestrated by:
Andrew Kinney Jon Kull Mark Graham Rossano Galante Dana Niu Richard Bronskill
Additional Music by:
Miles Hankins Brandon Roberts Marcus Trumpp Buck Sanders
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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 have an undying urge to hear Marco Beltrami adapt
the mannerisms of Philip Glass in a context that the latter's music was
probably too ill-suited to function within because of its quirky,
cerebral nature.
Avoid it... if you expect Beltrami to crank out anything more than
basic workmanlike muck for this disastrous picture, leaving only the
faint echoes of Glass' earlier involvement to retain your interest.
BUY IT
 | Beltrami |
 | Glass |
Fantastic Four: (Marco Beltrami/Philip Glass) One
must despise contractual conundrums that arise when a studio is forced
to produce a motion picture simply for the reason of avoiding the loss
of its rights to a concept. That's the situation faced by 20th Century
Fox, which has to crank out a certain number of films in the
Fantastic Four franchise or the rights to that series will revert
to Marvel Studios. From the looks of the 2015 reboot of the cinematic
Fantastic Four adaptation, Fox might have been attempting to
create an intentionally hideous film, and it's something of a miracle
that the end result managed to scrape together enough earnings to make a
sequel to itself initially deemed viable. Fox allowed relative newcomer
Josh Trank to take the helm of the concept, and his vision of the world
for the Storm family and their associates was decidedly grim, perhaps
not a surprise given the director's obsession with the darkly
philosophical side of David Cronenberg. The humorless, rather depressing
script was blasted by critics and audiences alike, and this despite
frantic efforts by the studio, after five years of development on the
project, to salvage it with extensive reshoots early in 2015. The actual
plot doesn't really matter by this point in the franchise, though there
is obligatory character reintroductions, a colleague-turned-enemy, and a
convenient alternate universe in which that villain can thrive and be
thrust back into at the end. The lack of any real star power is also an
oddity, even after the studio attempted to haul in some decent
supporting players in the beginning. A cameo by Donald Trump might have
been advisable. Not surprisingly, Trank managed to muddy the picture
with his desire for a more thought-provoking score than the usual
Hollywood blockbuster fare. Having little experience with film scoring,
he had the intriguing notion of hiring a 77-year-old Philip Glass to
bust the balls of audience members with cerebral music. It was a potent
idea intellectually, and the studio agreed to the experiment, but only
to an extent. Glass, while classified as a minimalist in many
generalizations about his career, is better defined as a master of
repetitive musical structures, and his knack for undulating, churning
rhythmic figures would seem on the surface to be a natural match for
this era's obsession with ostinato movement in superhero contexts. Along
the route to realizing Trank's vision, however, Glass was ultimately
relegated to simply providing the main thematic identities and a few of
his trademark rhythmic flourishes to a score that was ultimately thrown
together in more conventional ways by veteran Hollywood fixer Marco
Beltrami.
Because Glass was touring at the time of the reshoots
and recording sessions, the final score for Fantastic Four is
largely a Beltrami product, thus his primary placement in the credits
for the work. The score's bulk is orchestral, though a few electronic
textures and choral accents become more prevalent as the music
progresses. The orchestrations are sadly conventional (the electronic
tones emulate the Spider-Man franchise, for some reason) outside
of a few influences that Beltrami seems to have retained from Glass,
including a satisfying presence of low woodwinds at the outset of the
score. Listeners approaching Fantastic Four with hopes of
appreciating a fresh Glass work will hear most such material highlighted
in "Fantastic Four Prelude," Glass' rhythmic figures, main theme, and
orchestrations best illuminated there. It's worth mentioning that the
various themes in the score are all appropriately constructed out of
series of four notes, these phrases defining the primary theme in the
aforementioned prelude, in full bravado form in "Baxter," and throughout
the score's action sequences. Secondary themes born from the same
four-note constrictions are a Jerry Goldsmith-like action variation
(likely a Beltrami direction, as heard gloriously in "Ben's Drop") and
the villain's downward manipulation of the heroes' theme
(understandably), as heard prominently in "He's Awake." The themes are
engaging enough to function even though they're not spectacular enough
to compensate for a plethora of mundane background character and
thriller bulk in the middle. Some of the action music is awful,
especially by the time Beltrami's trademark synthetics lay ruin to some
of the later cues. (Blame could rest on his associate "additional
composers," the obligatory scapegoats). The opening prelude, "Baxter,"
and "End Titles" offer upwards of fifteen minutes of entertaining music
due to the residual Glass influences, however. Glass enthusiasts will
not find much to be proud of in this score, its workmanlike load
formatted in such a way as to facilitate the numerous rearrangements of
the film later in production. Even in "Fantastic Four Prelude," some of
Glass' rhythmic formations are a tad awkward, especially in the bass
drum-aided sections. That cue may actually prove more interesting to
Danny Elfman enthusiasts with its music box and bassoon passages. The
entirety of the score is interesting in parts but extremely
underachieving given its original potential. It goes without saying that
nothing from John Ottman's prior music for the franchise survives here,
except for the concept's inability to escape from rather mediocre filler
music outside of its blatant thematic expressions. It's an adequate but
disengaged endeavor. *** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check: |
For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.73
(in 26 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.79
(in 17,241 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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Total Time: 66:20
1. Fantastic Four Prelude (5:16)
2. The Garage (2:26)
3. The Unveiling (1:03)
4. Baxter (2:45)
5. "All My Faith" (0:45)
6. The Lab (0:53)
7. Meeting of the Minds (0:53)
8. It Begins (0:34)
9. Building the Future (2:49)
10. Launch One (3:11)
11. Neil Armstrong (2:57)
12. Maiden Voyage (1:56)
13. Footprints (4:00)
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14. "Run" (2:38)
15. Ben's Drop (2:27)
16. Real World Applications (1:39)
17. Under Pressure (1:01)
18. The Search (1:58)
19. "You're Going to Like This One" (1:10)
20. Father and Son (1:49)
21. Return (2:42)
22. He's Awake (6:55)
23. Pursuit (3:01)
24. Strength in Numbers (5:17)
25. End Titles (6:15)
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The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.
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