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The Lone Ranger
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Composed and Produced by:
Additional Music and Arrangements by:
Geoff Zanelli Rupert Gregson-Williams Steve Mazzaro Andrew Kawczynski Jasha Klebe Lorne Balfe Jack White
Conducted by:
Nick Glennie-Smith
Orchestrated by:
Bruce Fowler Walter Fowler Kevin Kaska Suzette Moriarty Carl Rydlund
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LABEL & RELEASE DATE
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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The download (Disney) and CD (Disney/Intrada Records) contents are
identical, the latter initially selling for $20. The download option was available
three weeks prior to the CD.
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AWARDS
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None.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... for Geoff Zanelli's long, intellectually superb
adaptation of the "William Tell Overture" alone, one of the most
spirited and interesting pieces of film music in years.
Avoid it... if you expect Hans Zimmer and his other ghostwriters to
supply any satisfyingly new ideas or provide more than a senseless,
ethnically insulting misstep for Tonto and the Comanche in the story.
BUY IT
 | Zimmer |
The Lone Ranger: (Hans Zimmer/Geoff
Zanelli/Various) Is the Western action genre truly dead? The disastrous
2013 resurrection of The Lone Ranger sits alongside Wild Wild
West and Cowboys & Aliens atop the list of spectacular fiscal
mishaps in the genre, The Hollywood Reporter projecting that Walt
Disney Studios was looking at a forecasted loss of $150 million on
The Lone Ranger alone. Long before critics pounded the film and a
frighteningly high proportion of the moviegoers attending it in theatres
were old enough to remember the concept's heyday on the small screen,
the production suffered from a series of setbacks that forced all the
principal crew and executives involved to take a 20% pay cut just to
keep The Lone Ranger from being cancelled. It's difficult to say
exactly where the movie went wrong, though the casting and costuming of
Johnny Depp as Tonto was disturbing enough to have possibly sunk the
film in the early marketing phase. That, and the fact that young people
simply don't care about the Lone Ranger and Tonto anymore; these are
concepts effectively tied to a grandpa's generation. In Disney's
flailing attempts to revise the characters, however, they brought in
much of the team that translated Pirates of the Caribbean to the
big screen, retelling a creation story about how attorney John Reid
becomes the titular character in 1869 and battles outlaws in Texas in
official and masked form with the help of his horse, Silver, and
Comanche Native American Tonto. A somewhat sterile story (though with
some cutting out and eating of a hero's heart) was partly the downfall
of the production, but along with Depp came a few other oddities that
did not function quite as well as they could have. One of the issues
Disney faced during the making of The Lone Ranger was a problem
with the identity of its soundtrack. For whatever reason, rock guitarist
Jack White was originally hired to compose the score for the film, but
after writing several songs, three of which credited for use within the
film but only one appearing on the album releases, White reportedly
stepped aside, citing conflicts of schedule. With Jerry Bruckheimer and
Gore Verbinski at the helm, it's no surprise that Hans Zimmer and his
army of Remote Control minions was brought in to save the day. Zimmer
and his cohorts were extremely busy in 2013, and it should come as no
surprise that the duties on The Lone Ranger were spread between
Zimmer and six of his ghostwriting clan.
The same questions about authenticity that plague the
film abound when considering the score, which is a highly unoriginal
piecing together of various existing sources with doses of prior Zimmer
mannerisms slathered on the parts not explicitly emulating the
composer's own personal hero, Ennio Morricone, as well as Elmer
Bernstein, Jerome Moross, and others. It's truly challenging to find
originality in Zimmer's approach to the production of this score, and
one has to wonder if time constraints played a role in this haphazard
collection of ideas. By no means is The Lone Ranger the absolute
stylistic mess that was Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger
Tides, though you still get the sense here that there are too many
cooks in the kitchen. The ensemble is better rounded in its
representation of the recording mix, though Zimmer's taste for deep bass
does continue to weight heavily on much of the work despite better
enunciation of treble elements. Electronics are held to an outward
minimum aside from the accentuation of the bass realm that Zimmer
insists upon. Some honky tonk piano, guitar, and fiddle work is
expected, as is the composer's predictable referencing of spaghetti
Western techniques with a modern flair, akin to Marco Beltrami's 3:10
to Yuma. While Zimmer claims to have always wanted to write a
Western action score, however, it's surprising to hear so few truly
modernized genre mannerisms in a cool and affable package in The Lone
Ranger, the cue "Ride" the only real exposition of such tribute-like
genre music. Rather than taking this score down the purely Western
route, the composer has clearly armed his ghostwriters with concepts
that are mired in his own past, and some of the re-applications of this
material are nonsensical. The heroic and action sensibilities are
informed by the Pirates of the Caribbean scores and, oddly
enough, Angels & Demons. The identity for Tonto is a totally
bizarre mixture of Rango and Sherlock Holmes, with an
unexplained infusion of Irish spirit as well. The traditional Irish folk
song "After the Battle of Aughrim," arranged by Zimmer and performer Ann
Marie Calhoun, is heard for the character in the deceptively named cue
"Silver." Somewhere in between the realm of Zimmer power anthems and his
underdeveloped sense of Americana exists the theme for John Reid, heard
in pleasantly extended though somewhat anonymous form in "Home." He
cannot escape his penchant for neoclassical progressions even here,
several cues in the score emulating his prior use of them almost
verbatim.
The stomping action material in The Lone Ranger
is highlighted by "The Railroad Waits for No One," an entertaining
though simplistic regurgitation. The suspense music in "You've Looked
Better" and "You're Just a Man in a Mask" relies upon dissonant textures
and fails to engage. The most inexplicable moment in the score is "For
God and for Country," an important cue that completely dismisses the
Native American element with a single cry before launching into chanting
choral attack music more suitable for a modern setting. What was Zimmer
and his crew thinking here? Would it have been too difficult to adapt
Tonto's style into some form of a Comanche war theme? That cue, while
enjoyable in parts outside of the picture, is a monumentally wasted
opportunity. All of these moments in the score are completely
overshadowed by the outside insertions, including the Irish folk tune.
Along with it are compositions by Brian Satterwhite, the three songs by
White, and a slew of other licensed usages. And then there's the
extensive work by Geoff Zanelli, a veteran Zimmer ghostwriter
responsible in this case for adapting "Battle Hymn of the Republic,"
"Stars and Stripes Forever," "The Star Spangled Banner," "Marse Henry
March," and Gioachino Rossini's "William Tell Overture" into the film.
What Zanelli managed to accomplish with the "William Tell Overture" in
"Finale" is truly remarkable and very easily the highlight of the score.
Whereas the rest of the score alternates between tired recapitulations
of Zimmer's past and senseless ethnic attributions, Zanelli adapts the
"Overture," which was the theme song for the famed television show, into
an incredible action piece complete with highly intelligent
manipulations of Zimmer's themes into its formations. The passages from
about 4:40 to 5:10 and 6:55 to 8:20, along with snippets in between, are
nothing less than brilliant, and thankfully the recording is mixed
without such a heavy-handed bass. This work is so damn pleasing in an
intellectual way that it really does make the rest of the score seem
like simple rehash, and one could easily wish that Zanelli had been
allowed to write the entire score. While thematic integration throughout
The Lone Ranger is decent, you still get a score of disparate
pieces in the end, one with no narrative due to the composer's
methodology. The absolutely botched ethnic side of the work, from the
Tonto identity to the Comanche raid on the train, is so insultingly
off-base that it's hard to appreciate even apart from the film. If not
for Zanelli's "Finale," this is a two-star score that could function as
a three-star listening experience on album for the easy flows of "Ride"
and "Home." But Zanelli saves the day with his arrangements,
supplementing the other ghostwriters' toil with enough smarts to save
the whole.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84
(in 124 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.95
(in 298,631 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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the Finale Expand >> whez08 - July 27, 2013, at 10:52 p.m. |
8 comments (5022 views) Newest: October 9, 2013, at 11:50 a.m. by Victor L. |
Finally  John Cunha - July 27, 2013, at 4:44 p.m. |
1 comment (1345 views) |
Total Time: 49:35
1. Never Take Off the Mask (1:08)
2. Absurdity (4:58)
3. Silver (4:01)
4. Ride (4:18)
5. You've Looked Better (3:10)
6. Red's Theater of the Absurd* (3:03)
7. The Railroad Waits For No One (3:09)
8. You're Just a Man in a Mask (4:14)
9. For God and Country (4:54)
10. Finale** (9:52)
11. Home (6:55)
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* composed by Jack White, performed by Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three
** "William Tell Overture" composed by Gioachino Rossini, arranged by Geoff Zanelli
The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about
the score or film.
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