: (Trevor Rabin) When DreamWorks
and J.J. Abrams engaged in a bidding war over the cinematic rights to
Jobie Hughes and James Frey's teen fantasy book of the same name,
demographic. Instead of vampires and
werewolves in battle at a parochial high school, however,
uses alien youths with super powers (and generic ones at that;
why can't these writers come up with superpowers significantly different
from what we saw as far back as Terence Stamp's ever-lovable General
Zod?). Nine such alien boys and girls are sent from the planet Lorien to
hide on Earth and evade the destroyers of that world, though the evil
Mogadorians discover their whereabouts and start assassinating these
teenagers on Earth. After the first three are dispatched, the fourth
becomes the next target, and he and the sixth, a kick-ass young woman,
unite to fight and ultimately eliminate the band of assassins sent to
find them. Alone, that storyline is fine enough, but in the mandatory
style of any novel aimed at teenagers these days, there has to be a
pretty Earthling love interest and her athletic boyfriend complicating
matters. Thus,
alternates between silly action
sequences exhibiting the aliens' amusing powers and sappy love triangle
nonsense the serves no purpose but to appeal to the female half of the
under 18 crowd. Despite involvement from the intriguing pairing of
Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay, the finished product from D. J. Caruso
was disastrously met by critics, most of whom repeatedly pummeled the
concept for its stupidity. That didn't stop audiences from sucking it in
during the slow early months of 2011, eventually turning a $50 million
budget into over $140 million in grosses, perhaps not enough to launch
the desired franchise but far from a failure either.
Since
I Am Number Four fell into the realm of
Disney distributed fantasy movies for youths, it's no surprise that
former Yes rocker Trevor Rabin wrote its score. The composer's career
has been dominated by such topics from Disney and its affiliates over
the previous few years, highlighted by
Race to Witch Mountain,
G-Force,
The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and perhaps the best
recognized of the lot, the
National Treasure movies. The one
thing that absolutely anybody can say about Rabin's methodology for
these films is that it's consistent, a very reliable throwback to 1990's
Media Ventures mannerisms and Rabin's own stagnant style that
undoubtedly continues to appeal to filmmakers like Jerry Bruckheimer and
Michael Bay. For film score collectors, hearing these Rabin adventure
scores of the late 2000's is akin to an eerie throwback to the 1990's.
Whereas the style of Hans Zimmer's other Media Ventures/Remote Control
associates has evolved through the years, Rabin continues to unashamedly
write in that same original mould. In fact, it almost seems as though
he's decided not to follow the stand procedure of purchasing updated
samples for his programming uses in the last ten years, because some of
the exact same ones continue to persist. In many ways, for a listener
nostalgic for film music of the 1990's, there's something refreshing
about Rabin's refusal to change his basic foundations even fifteen years
after that sound debuted.
Race to Witch Mountain in particular
was a score that paraded the best of Rabin's tried and tested formula in
2009, and while
I Am Number Four dutifully takes the same musical
route, the 2011 score is less cohesively developed. There are constants
that are indeed maintained in
I Am Number Four, starting with
Rabin's usual blend of a well-balanced orchestra and his various
electronic arrays. Choral effects range from generic background
synthetics to light majesty in the foreground that is most likely
sampled as well but at least resurrects the appeal of
Deep Blue
Sea.
A combination of light keyboarding and electric guitar,
sometimes with the help of a mid-range woodwind solo, sooths with the
usual theme of character development (introduced in "Who We Are"). A
bolder power anthem-like identity for the butt-whooping action is less
pronounced in
I Am Number Four but does exist relatively hidden
within both "Hit Me With Your Lumen" and "Commander Mog Explodes."
Standard Rabin chord progressions of extremely easy and rather
simplistic orchestrations are also familiar players. Slapped percussive
rhythms with wailing guitar, static full ensemble thematic flair, and
generic tonal grandeur make themselves heard in the final third. Rabin
does try to infuse some John Powell-style of rampant string movement for
action sequences, most notably in "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Forest
Fight." A little Mark Mancina comes into play during the heavily looped
sequences with pitch-defying sound effects. Most of these techniques
come together in "VI to the Rescue," something of a summary cue of
1990's blockbuster music. Aside from the fact that nothing in the score
for
I Am Number Four really attempts to stretch into new
territory, there is also some lingering dissatisfaction with the
handling of the themes. As mentioned before, Rabin's main anthem for the
heroic element only reveals itself in a small handful of performances
late in the score, with no interesting foreshadowing. Also, his idea for
the main character and his love interest is pretty (especially in
"Getting to Know Sarah," a definite easy listening highlight of the
score) but not very intelligent. It is based upon a series of five-note
phrases that betrays the possibility of writing a theme of four notes
for the lead character and one of six for his alien counterpart. Perhaps
such detail is too much to ask from a Rabin score, for despite the
inherent simplicity and familiarity in everything you encounter in
I
Am Number Four, the music surprisingly continues to function just as
adequately as it did more than a decade prior. Don't expect anything on
the relatively well presented 44-minute album to add substance to an
existing Rabin collaboration, but predictability sometimes does have
virtues of comfort, and here those benefits barely scratch out a third
star for the score's rating.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Trevor Rabin reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.5
(in 12 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.63
(in 12,994 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
