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Review of The Meg (Harry Gregson-Williams)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you approach this marginally entertaining score with lowered expectations, Harry Gregson-Williams supplying some surprisingly engaging ethnicity and tonality to this otherwise formula equation.

Avoid it... if you demand a monster or superhero-worthy power anthem to accompany the story's battle of oversized character egos, the themes of this score sufficient and at times impressive but not leaving a lasting impact.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

The Meg: (Harry Gregson-Williams) There's only so much a movie can accomplish with a shark as its villain (until the day sharks can fly!), and many of the alternatives already spoken for on the big screen, 2018's The Meg, the highly sought adaptation of the studio-bait novel, decided to make the beast really, really big. With a bit of prehistoric mythos owing to Japanese monster films, the topic postulates that accidental human activity deep in the Western Pacific Ocean (in this case, the attempted rescue of a floundering submarine) releases the largest shark ever suspected of existing into the open waters. Naturally, it battles the pesky human researchers it encounters and eventually makes its way to a beach where vacationing civilians await their sorry fate. Ball-busting action star Jason Statham applies his fists symbolically to the monster, of course, allowing for solid box office performance. The problem with The Meg, however, is that it's not scary or gory enough to satisfy adults and too frightening for children, so it's ultimately not particularly satisfying or memorable for anyone. Any shark-related film in which too many minor characters survive is destined for disappointment, and a monster of Megalodon size needs to consume more amusing targets than shown. Director Jon Turteltaub was realistic about one aspect of his production, though, and that was the original score. Having collaborated with Hans Zimmer and associates throughout his career, he turned to early Zimmer enterprises graduate Harry Gregson-Williams for The Meg, and he made it clear to the composer that no emulation of John Williams' famous Jaws music was to be attempted. This is, after all, more of a monster action flick than a straight horror one, and Gregson-Williams approached it as such. While the orchestral and synthetic blend that the veteran uses for this occasion is pretty much rendered as expected, he does incorporate more than a small touch of Chinese sensibility into his equation. This ethnic influence provides most of the score's attractive moments and owes to the film's location (a Chinese resort is the location of the attack late in the film) and its Chinese production backers. The composer's merging of Eastern woodwinds and percussion with bass-heavy orchestra and electronics serves well enough; the resulting action blend resorts to typical, thrashing action of a synthetic tilt in some passages but manages to infuse enough character into the subject to keep the score more interesting than Gregson-Williams' concurrent and rather pointless The Equalizer 2.

There is rarely a moment in The Meg during which Gregson-Williams doesn't employ some kind of droning synthetic element on key. Such is the nature of the universe during this era of music. But he adds a variety of interesting sonic coloration above those standard tones to retain interest, starting the orchestral players but really shining with the ethnic Chinese percussion he imported for the recording. A choral layer is applied sparingly but often supplies the fantasy angle. Unfortunately, listeners expecting to hear a reprise of the power anthem wonderment from Trevor Rabin's Deep Blue Sea will be disappointed by Gregson-Williams' less obvious approach to this assignment. The major fantasy statements of the score's most accessible main theme, as at 0:44 into "Prehistoric Species," are more restrained in their glory. The composer assigns an interesting dichotomy to the two main thematic representations, utilizing similar structures for the shark and human themes but reversing their intervals. The identity for the humans is a bit wishy-washy, developing out of the pleasantry of "Mana One" and "A New World" before taking a militaristic stance early in "Even the Score" and bubbling along in "You Saved Me," "Dr. Zhang," and "We Have a Plan." This often lovely material culminates in the opening of "To Our Friends\ with the choir and magnificent brass interlude in tow. These soft and surprisingly engaging passages could be combined into a ten-minute suite of top Gregson-Williams sentimentality, and their Chinese influences stirred the imaginations of listeners hyped about the composer's assignment to the later live-action adaption of Disney's Mulan. The theme for the shark in The Meg, however, is more relevant to the score, and you hear its menacing presence almost immediately on bass strings in "Sub Disaster" and in fragmented forms throughout the score. Its moment of climax arguably emerges at 1:39 into "Beach Attack," when the audience receives its payoff in the form of a near Godzilla-like brass pronouncement of the idea. Gregson-Williams obliges listeners with this theme, even if just a three-note portion featuring its memorable descending interval, during countless appearances of the beast, and he is sure to include it in the suite-like "To Our Friends" at the end. In sum, The Meg strikes you as a score that is far more entertaining than it needed to be, though it won't last very long in memory anyway. The digital-only release includes no high-resolution download option, a sorry shame given the recording's dynamic specialty instruments. Still, if you can forgive the anonymous action and underplayed theme for the humans, there's a decent amount of material to appreciate in this competent work.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 51:04

• 1. Sub Disaster (4:16) • 2. Mana One (1:32) • 3. A New World (4:57) • 4. Jonas Descends (3:12) • 5. Prehistoric Species (2:41) • 6. Toshi's Sacrifice (2:33) • 7. Non-Extinct (1:46) • 8. Meiying Explores (2:24) • 9. Even the Score (2:10)

• 10. Tracker (2:42) • 11. Shark Cage (3:52) • 12. You Saved Me (0:56) • 13. Dr. Zhang (2:35) • 14. We Have a Plan (1:20) • 15. Pippin (0:43) • 16. Beach Attack (2:48) • 17. Jonas vs Meg (5:56) • 18. To Our Friends (4:41)

NOTES & QUOTES:

No packaging exists from the label for this album.

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