: (Hans Zimmer/Lisa Gerrard/Klaus Badelt)
Ridley Scott has often been credited with reviving the genre of
historical epic films with his 2000 smash hit
, a film
based very loosely on the Roman emperor Commodus, the deranged son of
Marcus Aurelius. His sister, Lucilla, who likely suffered the same
incestuous relationship that Commodus inflicted upon his other sisters,
was indeed implicated in a senate-led assassination plot against her
brother, after which Commodus exiled and eventually executed her.
Commodus was also the one Roman emperor to actually enter the arena and
fight as a gladiator, though his death came at the hands of a wrestler
and not in the famed Flavian Amphitheatre at the heart of Rome. In
, a handful of screenwriters rewrote history and each
other, with even actor Russell Crowe reportedly storming off the set
when his script suggestions were not granted. In any case, Crowe's
character of Maximus Decimus Meridius was a fictional combination of
Spartacus, Cincinnatus, and the actual killer of Commodus, Narcissus.
For the purpose of a plot centering on vengeance and redemption, the
former great general Maximus of the Roman army escapes his own execution
and avenges that of his family by working his way up through the ranks
of enslaved gladiators, eventually returning to Rome to play an integral
role in Commodus' demise. One of the Scott film's unique qualities, and
one that places it, strangely enough, with the classic
, is
the theme of resurrection and the afterlife that was added to the third
generation of the film's script. While noted for its brutal battle
scenes and glorious CGI renderings (not only adding 35,000 extras to the
scenes in the Colosseum, but also bringing actor Oliver Reed back to
life to finish a handful of his scenes after he suffered a heart attack
and died during filming),
Despite some scathing criticism from some leading critics
who mostly found the film's characters to be flat,
earned more than it cost to produce in just two weeks, eventually
earning nearly half a billion dollars in international revenue. It won
five Academy Awards out of its twelve nominations, and was nominated for
119 awards between the Oscars, BAFTA's, Golden Globes, and other groups.
Among the more controversial nominations was the Academy's "Best
Original Music Score" nomination for composer Hans Zimmer's music for
. Despite sharing considerable credit with Lisa Gerrard
and Klaus Badelt for the writing of the popular score, only Zimmer was
nominated for the Oscar. After Zimmer and Gerrard had shared the win for
the Golden Globe that year, Zimmer not only lost the Oscar to Tan Dun
for
, but the situation contributed
to the Academy's decision to restrict the nomination of scores by
multiple composers for several years. The original soundtrack album was
a massive success for Universal and Decca, going platinum in sales and
prompting multiple subsequent album releases in the future. The score
would continue to generate publicity for Zimmer through the years,
especially in regards to a 2006 lawsuit alleging copyright infringement
in Zimmer's "inspirations" behind the more robust portions of the work.
Nevertheless, the
as one of the most
important in the modern age of soundtracks, bringing recognition to the
genre of music from the masses. Within the community of devoted film
score collectors,
has always played a polarizing role,
inevitably dividing listeners along familiar lines of perennial Zimmer
supporters and those who believe that his works are underachieving,
messy in attribution, and derivative. The score's tendency to
concentrate its highlights in a few flashy cues contributes to this
division.
In the weeks before the film became a massive success,
most professional film score reviewers rated Zimmer's
music between average and good, with few offering the highest praises to
the work. The overwhelming success of the score within the film for most
viewers, however, is what gave true life to the music, and
has since become recognized as being, at the very
least, in tune with Ridley Scott's vision of the film. Additionally, a
fair number of fans have adopted
would accomplish three years later. (Zimmer was
contractually forced to remain uncredited for his involvement in the
composition of that score.) On the whole,
remains as
fascinating as ever to study in retrospect, partially because of the
score's clear definition of Zimmer's stylistic maturation and partially
because of the lawsuit that erupted because of Zimmer's process of
gaining inspiration. The original 2000 album of
provided all the score's major cues on a one-hour product and mostly in
their film order. The 2001 "More Music From" companion album, also from
Decca and Universal, threw in a variety of outtakes and cues in lesser
demand. The same label would eventually sell both together on a 2005
"Special Anniversary Edition" in Europe only with no new content and
later re-issue that product. For the purpose of this review at
Filmtracks, the first album's cues will be used to analyze the score
itself since all of the major motifs by all the composers are
represented on that product's music. While compositional credit is
spread around between the several composers, Zimmer takes credit for
most of them. Of the major themes and motifs in
, only
Lisa Gerrard's "Elysium" theme marks a significant thematic contribution
to the two major and several minor themes employed by Zimmer throughout
the score, with many of Gerrard's passages shared in credit with Klaus
Badelt as well, brought on board later in the project to assist her in
adapting what Zimmer deemed the female influence on the tone.
is clearly divided between
the world of Rome and that of the afterlife, and the film opens and
closes with the spirit of the latter. (The character-centric portions
seem to gravitate between these opposite Zimmer and Gerrard approaches,
most of the suspense of the score's latter half pushing back towards the
Zimmer side since he wrote most of that material.) Zimmer's opening cue
introduces the ambience of the era with a nebulous motif often referred
to as a "calling of the wild" theme that would appear as a bridge
between the score's two primary identities. In "Progeny," the composer
splits the performances between three of his noted soloists: Djivan
Gasparyan on duduk, Jeff Rona on flute, and Tony Pleeth on cello. Lisa
Gerrard's "Elysium" theme, later to be combined with Zimmer's own
"Earth" theme to form the famous "Now We Are Free" ascension cue, is
heard during Ridley Scott's shots of wheat blowing in the wind and thus
is provided in a short cue on its own. This cue is mixed directly into
the start of "The Battle," one of the score's surprisingly few action
pieces. Zimmer has claimed that this piece, along with its subsequent
variant for the gladiator battles in Rome, is based heavily on a
classical Viennese waltz and was the first part of the score written.
The opening thirty seconds of "The Battle" offers what would have seemed
to be the primary theme of both Maximus' life and the film if not for
the sorrows that would befall the character. The film's original
presentation elongates this material. The rousing French horn theme is
standard in structure for Zimmer's career, its rising structures over
propulsive electronic percussion serving the role of "hero's anthem" as
well as any he has written before or after. The instrumentation in this
theme mirrors
, even down to the trumpet solos over
the top of the theme near the end of the first statement. From there,
"The Battle" becomes understandably muddied. A fluttering of Heitor
Pereira's guitar work foreshadows the Spanish influence to come later in
the score, though its usage seems misplaced here. Deep male choir is
mixed under echoing synthetic pounding effects once again from
The guitar returns in "The Battle" to open the 3/4 waltz
rhythm that later dominates the cue, eventually led by wildly demanding
staccato blasts from strings and brass. Shades of Gustav Holst become
evident in several passages within this cue, masked only by Zimmer's
attempt to heighten the battle's frantic pitch through dissonant,
electronically manipulated brass accents atop the churning movements.
The cue can be broken into several related pieces, one of which
providing significant inspiration to Zimmer and Badelt for
Pirates of
the Caribbean. At 5:52 into the cue, Zimmer's faux-swashbuckling
style seems distinctly out of place in
Gladiator, and this small
segment returns twice in full later in the score. Previous segments in
the cue return for short restatements, including the Wagnerian
movements, until Gerrard's voice provides the first fragments of
Zimmer's gorgeous "Earth" theme in the final moments of the cue. Zimmer
obviously viewed this theme as being representative of death, and its
use at the end of this atrociously bloody sequence is outstanding. The
theme receives further attention, not surprisingly, in the following
"Earth" cue. After providing an additional "mourning" motif to represent
the loneliness of the scene with elegant trumpet, Zimmer yields his
first full statement of the "Earth" theme on cello and flute. For
"Sorrow," Gerrard's "Elysium" theme is expanded upon by Badelt for a
powerful vocal performance by Gerrard that serves among the highlights
of the score. Zimmer's desire to work with famed duduk performer Djivan
Gasparyan led to a handful of cues in
Gladiator, none more moving
than "To Zucchabar." As the film's location heads south, Zimmer uses the
duduk to merge fragments of the "Earth" theme and two of the previous
smaller motifs into an exotic new theme owing some, surely, to
Gasparyan's own improvisations. For "Patricide," Zimmer moves away from
the synthesizers and electronic manipulation of orchestral elements for
a dramatic string piece based on parts of the "calling" theme, though it
is disguised by significant dissonance. While this cue offers some of
Zimmer's most intelligently layered melodrama in
Gladiator, it
fails to really engage.
The reintroduction of the Commodus theme marks the latter
half of "Patricide" with choppy, over-demanding string statements. In
the subsequent "The Emperor is Dead," Gerrard and Badelt employ an
instrument called the Yan Ching that Zimmer discovered and offered to
Gerrard for her portions. It sounds like a zither, and in this cue it
performs her "Elysium" theme with class. Arguably the centerpiece of the
score follows, with "The Might of Rome" proving to be the most memorable
cue from the entire work. Two minutes of a slow percussive crescendo
lead to an exotic beat and choral chant aided by Gerrard until the
three-minute mark, which is when Zimmer causes a significant amount of
head scratching. The composer has stated that he had the music of
Richard Wagner (and, more specifically, the Ring portions relating to
"Siegfried's Journey to the Rhine" and "Siegfried's Funeral March" from
"Gotterdamerung") so clearly in mind when he wrote the latter half of
this cue that the music took only an hour to write. While the beauty of
the cue in the film, with the special effects by The Mill gloriously
bringing the ancient city back to life, is not questioned, the blatant
use of Wagner can't be easily overlooked. So awkward is the
incorporation of "Siegfried's Funeral March" alone that not even the
remarkable choral outburst near the end of the cue (which, ironically,
when combined with Zimmer's synthetics in the cue, sounds surprisingly
similar to what Vangelis would provide in the same overwrought but
engaging tones for
Alexander several years later) can help match
what you hear in these two minutes with the rest of the score. If the
usage had not stood out so blatantly, especially with its total
domination of the film's mix in the scene, perhaps the cue's momentous
impact would not have been tarnished. For "Strength and Honor," Zimmer
uses bass region elements to explore a minor key variant on his Commodus
ideas in "Patricide;" the cue is similar in mix and style to
The Thin
Red Line. As the cue segues into "Reunion," Zimmer handles the
sorrowful circumstances of love that can never be realized in the story
by allowing Gerrard and Badelt to provide a simple vocal rendition of
Gerrard's "Elysium" theme, as pretty in its Eastern flavor as
always.
The rhythm and heightened vocals at the end of this
"Reunion" lead to the momentous "Slaves to Rome" cue, a piece that once
again treats the spectacular visuals of Rome but without the obvious
influences of before. Without that touch of Wagner, though, the cue
fails to muster the same level of dramatic anticipation. As the climax
of the film draws near, Zimmer once again skirts with plagiarism
problems in the lengthy "Barbarian Horde," the second of the two major
battle pieces in
Gladiator. He opens with a restatement of the
"calling" theme from "Progeny" on flute, which seems to be Zimmer's
choice of motif for impending death (or another representation for
Commodus' influence, perhaps). Over the course of several minutes,
Zimmer proceeds to resurrect Holst once again, leaving no doubt of his
affinity for "Mars, the Bringer of War" from "The Planets." The usage
becomes so obnoxious in this cue that it is difficult to understand how
Zimmer can claim that his use of Holst, while he recognizes the
inspiration now, was largely "an accident." (In his words, he claims
that he "was more conscious of striving after Stravinsky's sort of
brutality.") After the lengthy repetition of Holsts' distinctive
structures, Zimmer returns to the several different sections of "The
Battle" for restatement. The awkward shift to the faux-swashbuckling
music foreshadowing
Pirates of the Caribbean returns at about
5:30 in "Barbarian Horde," followed immediately once again by the same
somewhat irritating low range chord shifts with blasting electronic
pulses over the top, a contributor also from "The Battle." At 6:35 into
"Barbarian Horde," however, Zimmer allows a short guilty pleasure; he
hands the "Earth" theme over to the full ensemble for one brief
performance that would prove to be the only large, orchestral
presentation for the theme in the score. While it sounds great, its
placement here really doesn't make sense given that the muscle at that
moment runs counter to the identity's purpose. Following, however, is a
delightful highlight of the score; menacing bass string meanderings for
Commodus' motif lead to a fully symphonic and choral performance of the
Maximus theme heard before only at the outset of "The Battle" and
briefly in the Moroccan fights.
The concluding minutes of "Barbarian Horde" are the moment
of grand revelation in the plot of
Gladiator, and the return of
General Maximus is handled with all the pomp that Zimmer can provide the
theme. While this idea does not return again in full-ensemble form, its
handling is extremely satisfying at this moment. Zimmer has stated that
"Am I Not Merciful?" is his favorite cue from
Gladiator because
of the emotional impact involved with the betrayal of Commodus by his
sister, Lucilla. Pieces of the "calling" theme and the calculation of
Commodus' twisted theme from "Patricide" accompany his devastation, led
by Jeff Rona's flute. Zimmer once again bursts into Wagner territory
with an obvious reference to "Siegfried's Funeral March," with deeper,
more resonate tones and chime banging that may make one wonder just how
much of
Crimson Tide and
The Peacemaker owe to Wagner as
well. The final three cues on the original album are obviously the
popular highlight of the score both in and apart from the film. In
"Elysium," Gerrard lends her vocals to the first full combination of her
so titled theme and Zimmer's "Earth" theme, a process that reportedly
took quite a while to exact. The pleasant, streaming representation of
death and the afterlife in these moments lends a very new age effect to
the
Gladiator, and, in conjunction with the following cues, made
the album the bestseller it was. In "Honor Him," a choral and light
orchestral presence is added to Zimmer's "Earth" theme before moving
directly into the famed ascension cue, "Now We Are Free," that closes
the film. The electronically and percussion-aided cue of inspirational
propulsion features well-layered Gerrard vocals, utilizing the best
aspects of her voice in a performance of lyrics that are, despite fans'
hopes otherwise, meaningless. One of the greatest misconceptions about
"Now We Are Free" is that the lyrics are formed from Hebrew or Latin or
some other ancient language when, in fact, they are simply fictional
words. It's gibberish, so just enjoy the music and don't go looking for
sensical lyrics. The "Elysium" and "Earth" themes are joined quite
deceptively by major key variants on the motifs from "Patricide" in "Now
We Are Free," a cue which credits all three major composers on the
project.
The "Now We Are Free" cue went on to propel the album to
its platinum status and lead to techno and dance-beat variants that
would climb the charts in European countries over the following year,
eventually punctuating Harry Gregson-Williams' score for the 2024 sequel
as a necessary reference. The original
Gladiator album is, as
usual for a Zimmer product, mixed so that several of the major cues run
together, regardless of whether they do so in the film. In fact, the
final thirty minutes of the first album are a continuous presentation.
This choice is largely successful and was sometimes executed to mask
poorer-quality portions at the outset of a cue. The second album,
released a year later by Decca and Universal, adds dialogue from the
film into the mix, and despite worries by film score fans that this
intrusion would ruin the album, it sold quite well on its merits. On
"More Music from Gladiator," many of the notable cues missing from the
first album are provided to listeners, as well as outtakes and
"sketchbook" experimentations that never truly informed the final cut.
At the outset of the album, Djivan Gasparyan's duduk performances offer
some of Zimmer's earlier compositions for
Gladiator, echoing some
of the "calling" theme but giving the idea far more life than the film
and first album would have indicated. The cue ends with a full blown
"Spanish" theme that was eventually dropped from the film; minus
Pereira's guitar, the theme foreshadows the Kraken theme from the second
Pirates of the Caribbean score. The "Now We Are Free" version
that appears on the second track on this album was among the many
attempts by Badelt to merge Gerrard's "Elysium" and Zimmer's "Earth"
theme into the famous new age piece. (Given that Badelt did so much work
on this highlight track, among others, it's surprising that he didn't
receive more screen credit for the sum of his effort on
Gladiator).
This "Juba's Mix" would prove to be too upbeat for the film, and
features a heavier African influence in background vocals that
eventually dominate the track. The cue "The Protector of Rome" actually
features an alternative take on a conversation between Maximus and Juba
about family, though the album overwrites dialogue between Russell Crowe
and Richard Harris for listenability.
The "Homecoming" score cue, which did appear in the film,
was a very last-minute composition by Zimmer and even the composer would
admit that its aimless urgency doesn't particularly relate to any other
part of the score. It is, really, a throw-away track with the exception
of the dialogue on the second album that occupies the cue's latter half.
An alternate desert journey track is provided for "The General Who
Became a Slave," with similarities in tone to "Strength and Honor" on
the first product until segueing into a more recognizable variant of "To
Zucchabar" without the enhanced role for the duduk. In "The Slave Who
Became a Gladiator," Zimmer's early training and fighting music in the
desert is synched with a Crowe and Oliver Reed conversation from a bit
later in the story. The cue ends with pieces of "The Might of Rome" from
the first album due to the correct sequencing of music in the film. In
his comments about "Secrets," Zimmer reveals that his "calling" theme
here is indeed a representation of Commodus, which is acceptable to a
degree but doesn't explain some of its usage earlier in the film. A
highlight of the second album is "Rome is the Light," an improvisation
that Gerrard and Zimmer used as a template for the combination of their
"Now We Are Free" efforts and for which Badelt pumped in some
percussion. The standalone theme presented in this cue is not only one
of the more compelling compositions for the film, but also one of the
composers' more satisfyingly original ideas. Gerrard's vocals are
exquisite in this cue, and it's a shame that parts of this material
weren't used in lieu of some of the Wagner inspirations for the
CGI-laden scenes. The following two tracks are disappointingly mundane.
After some minimal duduk experimentations with Gasparyan in "All That
Remains," a slight performance of the "Earth" theme on guitar by Pereira
barely stirs any interest. Source music featuring Rona's flute over
percussion in "Marrakesh Marketplace" represents the North African
scenery and is an unnecessary inclusion. In "The Gladiator Waltz," we
hear the totally synthetic demo version of "The Battle" that Zimmer and
Scott used to set the tempo of the pivotal early scene. Once again,
shades of Holst overshadow the waltz structures, as well as the sequence
of fragmented ideas that together as a suite form the battle
music.
Hearing the early battle music in synthetic demo form in
"The Gladiator Waltz" is interesting in that the recording doesn't sound
too much different from the final orchestral and synthetic rendering
together, a disturbing revelation that begs for comments that will come
later in this review. Maximus' dialogue at the outset of this cue is its
highlight; to hear the plagiarism in this cue with only Zimmer's synths
as substance is nearly unbearable, though. Gerrard's solo performance of
the "Earth" theme on the zither-like Yan Ching instrument in "Figurines"
is another throw-away track. A Morocco fight sequence cue that made the
film is "The Mob," and while early chanting portions are little more
than an annoyance, a brief statement of the infrequently used Maximus
theme in the low regions (with Yan Ching for accent) is of interest near
the end. The cue "Busy Little Bee" was written by Gerrard and Badelt in
secrecy and was used in the film for the creepy conversational scene for
Emperor and his sister. It's a largely non-descript string cue with only
faintly mixed Gerrard vocals of fragments of the "Earth" theme. In
"Death Smiles at Us All," the last major conversational piece of the
film receives striking treatment by Badelt; taking ideas from
"Patricide" and adapting Commodus' theme by Zimmer's direction, Badelt's
cue uses its percussion and bass strings with a masterfully suspenseful
result, and the track would have been great to enjoy without the (albeit
appropriate) Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix dialogue. Badelt ran with
Zimmer's prior percussive clicking effects to solid ends in this cue,
and it helps keep the pace moving. The "Not Yet" cue was one of the many
recorded attempts by Gerrard to grasp Zimmer's "Earth" theme for the
final cue. This particular performance was "magical" enough, as Zimmer
says, to have harmonious layers added to it later and press it to the
second album. The dialogue by Djimon Hounsou is as appropriate as the
implication in the cue title applies to Gerrard's attempt, though the
cue once again would be good to hear without that dialogue. The last
track on the second album is a "Maximus Mix" of "Now We Are Free" that
worked towards the disco fame of the song; Zimmer apparently had nothing
to do with this remix, thank goodness. There is no less an irritating
way the album could be concluded.
These two early commercial albums for
Gladiator
did contain nearly all of the pertinent music actually heard in the
film, though they did not feature anywhere near all the material
recorded for the project, including some of Zimmer's early sketchbook
ideas. Common sense, of course, told collectors that Zimmer's endless
number of alternate takes, along with unused material by Gerrard and
Badelt, meant that there was more music available to hardcore bootleg
collectors. Indeed, within five to six years after these albums'
release, 3-CD bootlegs of a more complete nature surfaced on the
secondary market due to the Zimmer production house's tendency to see
such things leaked prolifically to the fans one way or another. In 2025,
though, La-La Land Records released a 25th anniversary 3-CD set that
combines everything heard on the first two commercial albums (minus
"Maximus Mix," thankfully) into a fuller primary presentation aided by
41 minutes of sketchbook demo material and 37 minutes of alternate takes
or edits that were made for the initial albums. The film presentation of
the score on the first two CDs is largely complete despite the little
edits made here and there, along with the continuation of the
cross-fading of adjoining cues. Finally, no dialogue inhibits any of
these cues. For tracks that indicate themselves as a "film version,"
these options are not actually alternate takes from the music already
released; rather, they are simply just a different edit from the prior
album versions. The exception to this circumstance is the opening
"Opening - Fields" cue that was a last-minute concoction to address
Scott's late film editing of the opening credits. Some of the tracks
previously combined were separated on the 2025 album due to legal
licensing reasons. Generally, this presentation is absolutely fantastic,
a long-awaited, comprehensive combination of the first two albums with
no dialogue and provided in chronological order with satisfyingly
tasteful cross fades. This faithful recreation of the film's music on
the first two CDs is outstanding regardless of the various issues one
might have with the music, and attributions are extremely clear. Aside
from bits and pieces of filler and the "More Music From" cues heard here
for the first time without dialogue, the newly revealed material of the
most interest exists on the third CD in the set.
On that third CD of the 2025 set for
Gladiator,
the initial three sketchbook demo tracks had been previously released,
and the additional 24 minutes provided here are sometimes really good.
Highlighting the group is "Opening Soldiers," which wraps Zimmer's more
dramatic tones for the concept into a remarkable piece of lament for
choir and Lisbeth Scott's voice on top, as Gerrard hadn't been involved
yet at the time. Had Zimmer found a way to incorporate this material
instead of the classical inspirations that eventually found their way
into the work, the overall product would have been more contemplative,
less abrasive, and consistent with what eventually became Gerrard's
portion. For some listeners, the lengthy "Opening Soldiers," with its
duduk portion appended at the end, will be the single most impressive
highlight of the set. Setting the stage for the eventual "The Kiss" is
Zimmer's longer demo of "Sister Theme," which previews Lucilla's theme
as eventually worked into several conversational cues involving her and
Maximus. (The inclusion of the "Earth" theme in this demo confirms
Zimmer's strategic intent at this moment from the start.) Deeply
brooding drama typical to Zimmer in "After the War" was given more
Spanish flavor with guitar and duduk in "After the War (Guitar
Variation)." The same dichotomy is explored tentatively in the very
understated "Roman & Spanish" that toys around the edges with the
Maximus theme. The alternate material follows with the original album
version of the duo of "The Wheat" and "The Battle," and most intriguing
in this section are the two alternates for "To Marrakesh" (otherwise
known as "To Zucchabar"), showcasing explorations of the cue with and
without Gasparyan's duduk. The "Elysium" theme from Gerrard is provided
a lovely rendition in the alternate "The Bodies," and she lends her
voice poignantly to the differing take on "Busy Bee" as well. Some of
the alternates aren't all that interesting, "Win the Crowd," "Afraid of
Dark," and "Figurines" merely simmering. The two alternate versions of
"Now We Are Free" showcase vastly different ideas about where that cue
could go, the first with a heavy African vocal influence against more
contemporary pop loops and the latter built almost entirely around
Gerrard's descending choral interlude sequence for the final
performance. Neither can compete with the final recording.
Although the 2025 set is a fantastic treatment of the
score for
Gladiator, casual listeners will still be best served
by the mass of most important material included on the first commercial
album, which is readily available at rock-bottom prices. Debate will
continue about the merits of the score, though. Zimmer's career and
sales numbers have proven through the years that his most popular scores
aren't necessarily his best, and
Gladiator is no exception. There
really exist four sides to the
Gladiator score: the ethereal
atmospherics, the battle waltzes, the suspenseful conversational cues,
and the Moroccan (and other ethnic) textures. The last two are adequate,
merely average in Zimmer's career, with "To Zucchabar" offering some
decent usage of the duduk and "Patricide" elevating the drama.
Ultimately, though, these cues are significantly overshadowed by the
other two sides to the score. There is no doubt that Zimmer and his
team's greatest success with
Gladiator comes with the individual
statements and eventual merging of the "Elysium" and "Earth" themes. His
employment of Gerrard's voice to represent the afterlife is nothing less
than perfect, pouring a depth of soul into the film that Scott's
original vision didn't contain. From the mournful "Sorrow" to the
beautifully redemptive "Elysium" and "Honor Him," these thematic
explorations make
Gladiator a worthy score by themselves. The
final eight minutes of the work, encompassing a cue in "Now We Are Free"
that successfully balances the gravity of the event with the spirit of
heaven, is among the best ever to come from Zimmer's career. When you
take all of these Gerrard performances and merge them with the unused
"Rome is the Light" and "Opening Soldiers" tracks from subsequent
albums, you have about twenty minutes of must-have music. Unfortunately,
Gladiator's final side is so obnoxious that it washes out the
ethereal elements in the overall memorability and functionality of the
score. Zimmer's waltz structures and blatant plagiarism in the battle
sequences and "The Might of Rome" are extremely dissatisfying. Their use
in the film is marginal at best, distracting from scenes that could have
very well benefited from more thoughtful music for the concept and its
location. Zimmer was never destined to write epic music in the style of
Miklós Rózsa, but his limitations did inhibit these
scenes.
And thus, the conversation about Zimmer once again turns
to his work ethics and general methodology of emphasizing production of
music over cohesive compositional strategy. Why exactly were the
large-scale cues in
Gladiator so irritating? You'll get several
different answers, including a few that will simply state that Zimmer
really didn't do anything wrong. The apologists for the composer (and
Zimmer certainly suffers from one of the most ardent groups of what film
music collectors identify as "fanboys") need to recognize that the
composer brings most criticism along the following lines upon himself
due to his insistence upon forcing a film to adapt to his sensibilities
rather than adapt himself to reach greater heights. The pomposity of his
interviews, which negate notions that he is personally a humble man,
don't help, either. This argument has been raised many times more
recently than
Gladiator, but several circumstances point to this
score as a good starting point to discuss these issues. The first reason
the major action pieces in
Gladiator don't really function like
they should is because of Zimmer's style of electronic manipulation. The
great irony in many of Zimmer's works is that his orchestral material
sounds frighteningly similar to his synthetic counterparts, and the
reason for this is because when Zimmer does indeed go to London and
record with a decent ensemble (as was the case with
Gladiator,
which had a huge brass section), he then usually takes that recording
and merges it with his synthetics or, even worse, manipulates the
orchestra's sound to give it the more masculine edge that his
synthesizers produce by default. You reach a certain point when you
can't tell if a burst from the French horns is actually being rendered
by the horns or by the samples meant to imitate them, and such is the
pitfall of Zimmer's persistent acoustic mangling of the orchestra in the
post-production of many of his scores. In efforts like
Crimson
Tide and
The Peacemaker, the resulting brazen sound, sharp
around all the edges, suits the contemporary matter well. But in
Gladiator, as well as in the
Pirates of the Caribbean
scores, the audacious, jabbing style lacks the elegance to smoothly
convey the era. Even in the structures of the "Earth" theme, there are
unnecessary similarities to Zimmer's early score for
Backdraft.
In this case, Zimmer argues, of course, that nobody
really knows what Roman music sounds like, and he is correct. But he
uses that argument as an excuse for his lack of effort in scholarly
research, and this is the second failing of
Gladiator's action
pieces. Several times in his career, Zimmer has decided not to examine
previous film composers' works to evaluate how and why they worked so
well in a given context. As he said in a Dreamworks interview from 2000,
"I did not want to compete with other great composers. Plus, I am a big
procrastinator and never do my research." Whether it's Danny Elfman's
brilliant identity for
Batman, the classic Erich Wolfgang
Korngold flair for the swashbuckling precursors to
Pirates of the
Caribbean, or the massive Golden Age works of Miklós
Rózsa or Alex North for Roman epics, Zimmer insists on trying to
re-invent the wheel within his own artistic and production parameters.
There's nothing wrong with trying to re-inventing the wheel... unless,
of course, you can't do it. Or do it well enough, as is the case with
Gladiator. Zimmer's Viennese waltz for the battle sequences, in
conjunction with his awkward instrumental masculinity in the synthetic
realm, simply does not function to any degree in
Gladiator the
way Rózsa's music did in
Quo Vadis,
Ben-Hur, or
El Cid. He, along with Bernard Herrmann, would probably be
horrified by both the quality and popularity of Zimmer's music for Rome.
Rózsa did extensive research for those scores, and that's the
reason he is commonly considered the best of the Golden Age composers.
Zimmer instead will often write based on what his gut tells him is
right, and unfortunately his gut doesn't always make the right choice.
You can't definitively say that a Rózsa score would have
functioned as a good temp track in
Gladiator. It likely would not
have worked at all with Scott's modern style of direction. But there
must exist a happy medium position between the success of the past and
contemporary expectations in which a classic score can reside. Zimmer
had a chance to do that with
Gladiator, and on the ethereal
aspects, he flourished. The battle sequences, however, especially with
his four or five motifs successively pounding without any much thought
for refinement, are extremely untempered.
And then there's the third and most disturbing reason for
the failure of Zimmer's large-scale cues in
Gladiator:
plagiarism. At the time of its release, educated crossover collectors of
soundtracks and classical music easily identified several sources of
"inspiration" for Zimmer in these cues. Zimmer has admitted that the
adaptation of Wagner's music (and specifically "Siegfried's Funeral
March") played an integral role in a few places, though he initially
claimed that his use of Holst's "Mars" in the battle scenes was
accidental. Either way, the music speaks for itself, and Zimmer would
eventually admit in interviews and notation that these influences are,
among others, all present. In a May, 2000 interview with Ian Lace of
Film Music on the Web, Zimmer referred to "The Might of Rome" by
stating, "Yes, the Wagner was a very conscious choice. I managed to
assume the style of Wagner so easily that I was able to write that piece
in an hour." Half a year later, Zimmer acknowledged the influence of
Holst in his own liner notes for the second
Gladiator album. He
writes that he used "the same language, the same vocabulary, if not the
same syntax" as Holst. He has made similar statements in other
interviews as well, likely due to his pride in knowledge of classical
music while never himself being classically trained. From his point of
view, there probably is no harm in admitting such inspirations. After
all, John Williams employed pieces of ideas from Wagner, Holst and
Stravinsky in his first
Star Wars score, and few people blinked.
Another argument could extend from here, involving the merits of
Williams' ability to adapt classical pieces with skill far exceeding
that of Zimmer (and you could certainly throw James Horner into the
discussion as well), but there are very few knowledgeable film score
fans who will claim Zimmer's talents superior to Williams' at any time
during the overlapping decades of their careers. Part of Zimmer's
problem stems from his inability to adapt these pieces intelligently, as
opposed to leaning too heavily on their actual, more obvious constructs.
In fairness, the portions of
Gladiator that struggle with these
inspirations are relatively brief compared to the entirety of the work,
especially with Gerrard and Badelt never going that direction
whatsoever, but the affected cues are overly obvious in their prominent
placement during "spectacle" battle and scenery scenes in the
film.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Zimmer seemingly forgot, in
the process of rambling off his inspirations, that the London-based
Gustav Holst Foundation still owned the copyrights to the 1915 Holst
work in question here. With many classical works, copyright infringement
is absent because the music now falls in the realm of the public domain.
But in April of 2006, Zimmer was personally sued by G&I Holst Ltd. and
music publishers J. Curwen & Sons and G. Schirmer Ltd. in a complaint
regarding infringement of the opening to "Mars" in
Gladiator.
Also sued were the various Universal entities that either own the music
or are involved in its distribution on album. A spokesperson for the
publishers indicated that they attempted to resolve the issue directly
and privately, possibly explaining the reason for the six-year delay in
the filing of the suit. In their statement from June of 2006, they
claim, "After a considerable period of discussion between the two
parties it has become necessary to ask for the assistance of the
courts." A defense lawyer for Zimmer responded by asserting that "Mr.
Zimmer's work on
Gladiator is world-renowned and is not in any
sense a copy of 'Mars.' Just listening to the two works is enough to
tell any listener this claim has no merit." Supporters of Zimmer have
also claimed that one of the few reasons the suit was filed so long
after the score's release is due to the album's platinum status. Because
sales of
Gladiator remained strong so many years after its
initial offering, the Holst Foundation stood to make millions of dollars
off the legal claim. The situation was always destined for a quiet
resolution outside of the courts, however, as is typically the case with
such cases. But it was always difficult to see how Zimmer could be
considered favored in the battle given especially his own words about
the topic. (There was quite a bit irony in that Zimmer's own flapping
mouth could be his demise, as his interviews about how he crafts his
music have become something of an annoying parody of self-absorbed
artists in the decades since.) Most importantly, despite what his
attorney stated, there are distinct similarities to Holst's "Mars," and
those similarities come at the pivotal moments in the film. By the time
the 2025 album debuted with a fresh interview with Zimmer that addressed
the controversy, he was comfortable providing a reasoned response, so
the whole situation is now water under the proverbial bridge.
Still, the discussion continues.
Gladiator is
one of the most important scores of the 2000's, if only because it
exposed the relatively small world of film music once again, like
Titanic before it, to the masses. The score has solidly remained
the most popular in the traffic ranks at Filmtracks, and by a wide
margin. Zimmer long felt robbed by his Academy Award loss to Tan Dun
that year, and another interesting side note to
Gladiator is the
fact that Zimmer, after receiving his Oscar win for
The Lion King
and several nominations throughout the late 1990's, was not nominated
for another Oscar throughout most of the rest of the decade while John
Williams, for comparison sake, continued earning them at nearly every
opportunity. Not only was the 2006 suit by Holst Foundation a
troublesome factor for Zimmer's lightning rod status in the industry,
but a messy legal battle over the profits of his Media Ventures
enterprise had been in progress as well, leading him to spin it off
under the Remote Control name, and those issues also dragged on in the
years following
Gladiator. The quality of his scores was not
immediately diminished, with the years of 2003 and 2004 offering several
high-quality entries both within and above the classification of "guilty
pleasure." But outside of a questionably reasonable score for
The Da
Vinci Code in 2006, Zimmer's output later in the decade following
Gladiator was both weak in assignments and weak in production,
including his uninspired results for the lower quality
Pirates of the
Caribbean sequels. Whether you consider yourself a fan of Zimmer's
work or not, his career since
Gladiator struggled to maintain the
level of promise and respect that any soundtrack enthusiast would have
hoped for, unless you consider foghorn blasts to qualify as
revolutionary music. As for the
Gladiator score itself, your
enjoyment of its contents will depend on whether or not you can forgive
Zimmer's plagiarism and tired, rehashed electronic manipulation and
enjoy the softer, ethereal portions of the score. Gerrard's voice is the
easy selling point, as it would once again be in a brief contribution to
Zimmer's
Mission: Impossible 2 later in the same summer. All of
this said, though, there are twenty minutes of
Gladiator music
that are not to be missed by any film score collector and contained on
the superior 2025 expanded set, regardless of Zimmer's controversial
tendencies.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on the 2000-2005 Albums: ***
- Music as Heard on the 2025 Album: ****
- Overall: ***
| Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84
(in 129 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.95
(in 299,902 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
For Klaus Badelt reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3
(in 11 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.11
(in 104,703 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
