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Review of The Mummy (Brian Tyler)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you still long for the days of Brian Tyler's early
horror achievements, that sound resurrected and merged with broad
symphonic fantasy stokes among oppressive action and suspense.
Avoid it... if you demand these characters and locations be treated with appropriately dramatic romanticism or satisfying exoticism, the booming reliance on heavy weight in the orchestrations and mix damaging the score's dynamism.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Mummy: (Brian Tyler) Good, old-fashioned
monster movies are hard to screw up. Their stories usually aren't that
great, their scares are cheap, and they overflow with campy silliness.
But their charm rests in the suspense of all logic for the thrill of
monstrous fantasy. No matter how hard audiences tried to forgive the
fallacies of 2017's reboot of the "Mummy" concept on the big screen,
they apparently could not overcome the total incoherence of its plot.
The Alex Kurtzman film, The Mummy, barely scratched back its
costs in earnings, scorned severely by critics and jeopardizing
Universal's "Dark Universe" series of movies meant to resurrect the
nastiest, most famous monsters of yesteryear for renewed profit-taking.
Perhaps some of the blame for the frightfully poor storyline of The
Mummy rests on the shoulders of star Tom Cruise, who apparently
wielded an inordinate amount of influence on the post-production of the
movie. A significant step behind everything from the 1932 to 1999
versions of roughly the same tale, the 2017 retelling ties plotlines
together that involve ancient Egypt, the knights of old England, and
modern-day Iraq and London, the titular character seeking revenge upon
the contemporary world for her incarceration 2,000 years earlier. While
the evil Egyptian bitch may be the glitzy showcase of The Mummy,
the movie's actual purpose is to establish the now 55-year-old Cruise as
an undead franchise action star, ready and willing to join with hunters
of the paranormal to thwart the monsters inevitably unleashed upon the
land by the studio. Film score collectors have held a soft spot for the
music from the prior mummy-related movies, the more recent entries by
Jerry Goldsmith and Alan Silvestri remaining fan favorites for decades.
Some measure of relief was expressed when Brian Tyler was hired to
handle the score for The Mummy, as he leads the younger
generation of composers in championing a traditional orchestral approach
(sometimes blended with electronic accompaniment) akin to Goldsmith's
later style of writing. As a topic best addressed musically by a
swashbuckling flavor of old-school orchestral pomp, The Mummy was
treated appropriately by Tyler, who prides himself as being both
cognizant and respectful of film score legends. His affinity for
Goldsmith is particularly notable, though the subtle references in
instrumentation and style in his music here intentionally emulate many
generations of the concept's music.
Aside from a few seeming embellishments of the synthetic sort at times, The Mummy is a purely orchestral romp, though Tyler has succumb to the self-preserving notion of enhancing the bass region of his action scores to test your subwoofers as needed in the Hans Zimmer era. At times, as late in "Harem," the thumping of those deep base tones nearly overwhelms the remaining elements in the music. A wide array of worldly specialty instruments is employed as per usual by Tyler (he has a tendency to infuse Middle-Eastern tones into scores unnecessarily at times, though it certainly makes sense here), but contributors like a ney flute can get lost in the testosterone-defined, beefy environment sustained in a streamlined idea like "The Call of the Ancients," in which Tyler references churning lower string rhythms and deep brass assistance in much the same way that John Ottman handled the story of the giants in Jack the Giant Slayer. The handling of the orchestra is still quite impressive in The Mummy, a large team of orchestrators plastering layers of complexity pleasing to more intellectually inclined listeners. The influence of veteran Elliot Goldenthal orchestrator Robert Elhai is especially redemptive, and, together with Dana Niu, it's not surprising to hear shades of Tyler's vintage horror work, particularly Darkness Falls, in full force again. Full-throated discord like this has been absent from Tyler's recent career, the last equivalent score of such menacing force and extreme length being 2005's Constantine. While such scores have a niche following, more casual listeners continue to listen for exotic action music closer to the epic romanticism of Tyler's pinnacle, Children of Dune. Interestingly, that romantic element is not a major player in The Mummy, even the stereotypical female vocal mixed only marginally into a few places into this work. With the exotic contributors also marginalized in the mix, you receive a rather standard, albeit impressively intelligent, action-horror score. Tyler has a tendency to write music that hits all the right notes with all the right instruments, but the sum remains lacking of a soul. There are enough brazenly bombastic highlights of The Mummy, including some John Williams nods in "Liberators of Precious Antiquities," to pardon this tendency of the composer in this instance, but some listeners will continue to feel that nagging sense that this music is extremely proficient but aimlessly disconnected from the listener's gut. The narrative of Tyler's music for The Mummy must be praised despite the damage done to it by the composer's insistence upon badly rearranging his presentations on album, a persistently obnoxious habit that plagues this score more so than most of his. The composer provides three major themes in the score and allows the two primary identities ample development solo and in deconstructed forms against each other. A series of suites consolidates the main ideas into easily identifiable form, and it's no coincidence that Tyler included a significant arrangement of the main theme from The Mummy in a concert he conducted right at the time of the film's debut. The assembly of all the major themes and underscore highlights into a ten-minute suite for the end credits is quite remarkable, and Tyler opens and closes the film with cues that nicely bookend the two primary themes. Leading the charge is a progression of five notes that churns in ways that Goldsmith might have done with the picture, vaguely reminiscent of Poltergeist if not for its rather blatant resemblance to David Arnold's instrumental adaptations of the prime Tomorrow Never Dies theme. This Tyler idea attempts to match the pomp of a classic Arnold fantasy affair and features all the instrumental and choral ingredients to make that happen, but there is a touch of arresting, stomping style missing. Maybe it's the campy personality that's somehow gotten lost. Still, the main theme is an enjoyable diversion, expressed in full in "The Mummy" before Tyler adapts it better into the Egyptian chord progression stereotypes of "The Secret of the Mummy." The presentations of the idea as one of lost elegance, as heard in "Egypt's Next Great Queen," or eerie seduction, as in "Power and Temptation," are very commendable. In the former, the tragic, contemplative nature of the latter half of the cue is perhaps slightly underplayed in its attractiveness, however. If ever there was a place for a duduk or oud in duet with mournful female voice (think Children of Dune again), this would have been it. The theme does receive some mid-stream expressions of grandeur worth exploring, the chime-aided pronouncement late in "She is Risen" straying towards the over-the-top Christopher Young style that may have better suited this movie. The villain's use of sand as a weapon allows her theme to exist above pounding percussive and choral rhythms in "Sandstorm" and "The Sand of Wrath," though don't expect to hear the idea layered clearly in the purely atmospheric horror cues. The other main theme in The Mummy exists for Cruise's hero, Nick Morton. Not surprisingly the subject of the suite called "Nick's Theme," this idea resides a bit closer to the higher nobility end of the spectrum, but it addresses the heroics of the character with the same gravity and bass-happy presence with which Tyler entered the Goldsmith Rambo franchise. The theme's rendering in the suite has more in common with the chugging brass and snare combination that opens Zimmer's The Rock than anything you'd expect from Silvestri for an action hero. A secondary suite for the theme is offered up in "A Sense of Adventure," where Tyler opens the rhythm of the idea a bit, allowing the theme to flow far better in spirit. After a few coolly distant cameos, as in the last moments of "Haram," Tyler returns to the idea more vitally in "Between Life and Death," when the character's theme valiantly sends the film off into its possible sequel-dwelling future. The final theme of The Mummy is secondary and represents the institution of supernatural hunters led by Russell Crowe, and it's in "Prodigium" that a touch of Danny Elfman enters the equation. The quirky movements of the theme's major performances are a bit demeaning to the organization, perhaps, but the underlying rhythmic drive and bass progressions return importantly in "World of Monsters." The aforementioned suite for "The Call of the Ancients" could be considered another theme, but don't expect it to inform the score much beyond its confines. When not melodic, The Mummy is at its weakest, Tyler's suspense music functional but not engaging, his stock action material equally functional but once again easy to forget. Highlights outside of the suites definitely exist, but they have difficulty sustaining, especially in the second half of the score. Where is the pizzazz? The campiness? The zeal? This issue is compounded by an outrageously long album presentation of 124 minutes, lengthier than the film itself. This download-only product was released before a shorter CD offering that does indeed feature all the best highlights outside of the neat assembly of "The Mummy End Title Suite." On one hand, it's fabulous to have essentially the entire score, including alternate cues, up front for fans to enjoy. On the other hand, Tyler continues to drive some fans nuts with his album arrangements. Two hours of music from The Mummy is simply unsustainable, exposing too many of the score's weaker filler cues, but the CD, which you will want for the sound quality anyway, is highly recommended. This score isn't Tyler's best, but it resides in that higher echelon for him, and the suites at the very least make for some of the most entertaining fantasy music to come from the composer in years. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Regular Edition:
Total Time: 74:27
Deluxe Edition: Total Time: 124:26
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from The Mummy are Copyright © 2017, Back Lot Music (Deluxe), Back Lot Music (Regular) and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/29/17 (and not updated significantly since). |
