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The Zimmer minion of choice for The Legend of Tarzan? Rupert Gregson-Williams, a veteran of the Media Ventures days still struggling to shake those Zimmer ghostwriter origins. In all seriousness, Rupert Gregson-Williams, bother of the much better established Harry Gregson-Williams, is among the more talented of the army of Zimmer clones to rise through the Media Ventures/Remote Control ranks. Despite enjoying solo projects of note for more than a decade by the time of The Legend of Tarzan, however, most of Gregson-Williams's recognition has come from the genre of utterly stupid comedies. Perhaps the greatest disappointment regarding this 2016 project has been the massively wasted opportunity to showcase not only a Grigorov endeavor, but really any intelligent score at all, because Gregson-Williams and his own ghostwriters, perhaps due to time constraints, produced a minimally effective, devastatingly derivative Zimmer-clone score for The Legend of Tarzan, one with no originality whatsoever. Zimmer reportedly had nothing to do with the music's composition, but somebody may as well have copied and pasted pieces of his scores from the mid-1990's to mid-2000's indiscriminately and achieved the same end. A veteran Zimmer collector will either accept this mass regurgitation at face value and enjoy its melodic passages or will approach it as infantile amusement as he literally guesses each upcoming chord progression with ease. It's almost as though Gregson-Williams tried to address the region with a combination of Beyond Rangoon and Tears of the Sun, the melodrama of the characters with The House of the Spirits and Pearl Harbor, and the action with The Dark Knight and Man of Steel. And that's just in the tone of the orchestrations and mix. When you throw in the themes, you receive the only marginally redeeming aspect of the score, ironically aping other Zimmer ghostwriters' imitations of 1990's Zimmer power anthems. It almost sounds as though these interchangeable, incestuous, muscular themes are no longer imitations of the original Zimmer inspiration but rather an extension of those imitations that have come before. So when you listen to The Legend of Tarzan, you're less inclined to be reminded of a Zimmer "classic" than you are the Jablonsky, Glennie-Smith, and Rabin emulations, among many others, of that sound.

For most of its length, The Legend of Tarzan truly sounds like a Jablonsky score ready-made for the Transformers franchise. Expect no significant narrative development for characters or location. There's no meaningful difference in the tone of the music for the scenes in England and those in the Congo. The latter is simply treated to some ethnic woodwinds and the mindless percussive pounding and electronic effects suitable for the Batmobile. Churning strings and moody brass are familiar players, light choir offering the fantasy appeal in several places. Zimmer collaborator Lebo M composed vocal lines for the opening cue, though the somber performances by Zoe Mthiyane have little impact on score as a whole. Both the suspense and baseline action cues in The Legend of Tarzan could often be classified as stock Remote Control filler, achieving nothing other than grinding or thumping ambience. Where Gregson-Williams excels to some degree is in the rendering of his melodies. More specifically, his use of counterpoint in the score is quite adept, so much so that he muddies his themes by allowing the counterpoint lines to exist by themselves at times. Good luck trying to definitively separate out each idea, because they blend together in progression quickly. The highlight is the main theme, heard at 1:23 into "Catching the Train," 0:29 into "Jungle Shooting," 2:16 into "On the Boat," and with gusto at the end of "The Legend of Tarzan," the last of which the brainless, easy-listening highlight of the score. Meanwhile, a heroic alternative theme is teased at the end of "Diamonds" before enunciating itself fully at 0:53 into "Where Was Your Honor?" and 2:25 into "Stampede," the latter the score's most ambitious action cue. There's a location theme of sorts at 0:50 into "Returning Home" and 1:39 and 3:05 into "Stampede," and a variant of this idea seems to exist at 1:28 into "Boma Port." All of these thematic mutations share minor-third progressions. The muted love theme, however, is the score's greatest weakness, developed in "Togetherness" but devolving into understated mush in "Tarzan and Jane" and "Campfire." Those who admire Zimmer clone scores will find solid enjoyment in the last four or five tracks on the arduous album release, which ends with an unrelated but surprisingly non-offensive rock song. The vocal, percussive and woodwind accents are sometimes buried in the mix, leaving the basic string and brass passages of power anthem origins as the only aspect of the work worth recommending. The Zimmer machine cranks out another one.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Total Time: 71:19