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| Djawadi |
Pacific Rim: (Ramin Djawadi) Thanks mostly to the
imaginations of the Japanese, the "mecha" and "Kaiju" genres of films
have flourished since the 1950's, delighting audiences with depictions
of metropolitan destruction far more entertaining than the typical war
story. Rarely in the mainstream have you seen the giant monsters of the
Kaiju variety battling the massive human-driven robots of the "mecha"
world, however, and the 2013 American movie
Pacific Rim seeks to
bring those concepts together. It postulates that in the future,
alien-like monsters rise from the depths of the Pacific Ocean with the
intent to haunt the nightmares of insurance company executives. As
expected, they pillage, sack, and destroy with awesome visual
methodology. But those pesky humans dedicate all their resources to
creating big "mecha" robots that they climb into and utilize to wage war
against the nasties, setting up a wet dream of a conflict between
Godzilla and the Transformers, essentially. The story makes even
Independence Day seem intelligent, testing the limits of
juvenility and logic while appealing to the rampant testicular
hyperactivity of its target demographic. Such a movie, with the blessing
of modern rendering technologies, is perfect for a large-scale parody,
pitting robots and creatures with faces molded after Gene Wilder and
Kelsey Grammer against each other, both requiring anatomical correctness
that allows them to use their male appendages as additional weapons or
vulnerabilities. Now that would be worth watching. As for
Pacific
Rim, all hope rests upon director Guillermo del Toro to deliver more
than simple metallic eye candy. He wanted to honor the "mecha" and
"Kaiju" traditions without mocking them, and to that end he sought a
more balanced musical identity in the film than what you heard from
Steve Jablonsky for the
Transformers franchise. Impressed with
Ramin Djawadi's varied work for television and film (his music for the
series "Game of Thrones" has garnered significant positive attention),
del Toro hired the veteran of Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions
to provide a truly hybrid orchestral and electronic score. In these
circumstances, one would certainly have expected Djawadi to emulate the
Jablonsky mould or simply rehash his stale, ineffective tone from the
original
Iron Man. After all, does
Pacific Rim really
require or deserve any better? Interestingly, the composer decided to
step up his blobkbuster sound for the occasion, yielding a surprisingly
complex and engaging score that steps beyond the label of "guilty
pleasure" with which some will inevitably label it.
The ingredients that Djawadi calls upon for
Pacific
Rim are exactly as expected. An orchestra without a woodwind section
(aside from a flute soloist), electric guitars played by Tom Morello and
George Doerning, electronic sound design by a Remote Control veteran, a
deep male chorus, enhanced bass region brass emphasis, a female vocal
soloist for lamentation, an erhu soloist for an exotic touch, and many
of Zimmer's usual crew are present. From this list, you'd expect Djawadi
to lay waste to the soundscape with generic, occasionally insufferable
noise. But he doesn't, and what
Pacific Rim finally proves, along
with a few other distinctive scores, is that the stereotypical ensemble
collected for these occasions doesn't necessarily have to produce
stereotypically asinine results. Djawadi has managed to take these
elements and infuse them with a more expansive thematic tapestry,
complex musical techniques (including counterpoint and quick, rhythmic
variations, both shunned by Zimmer during this era), and, most
importantly, a sense of
style. This music is, quite frankly, what
one could imagine Brian Tyler executing rather than anyone associated
with Remote Control, and it's therefore a refreshing change of pace that
manages to stir the loins using ultra-masculine force without completely
sacrificing smart musical design. That said, is this composition
anywhere close to matching those of modern day maestros? Of course not.
But it achieves menace, awe, and coolness without bashing the listener
over the head, and that victory alone warrants significant praise for
Djawadi, as does the apparent fact that he didn't employ a dozen
ghostwriters from the production house to flesh out the score, either.
There may be criticism from some listeners regarding the somewhat retro
style that the composer decided to employ with his primary theme for
Pacific Rim. It has a distinctive 1960's television vibe going
for it, thanks to the movements of its melody, and it therefore has
hints of Lalo Schfrin in its demeanor. Why Djawadi decided upon this
route is uncertain, though it remains applicable because of the straight
forward rock aspects of the baseline and electric guitar performances
under the brassy melody. The opening guitar riff in "Pacific Rim,"
followed by the underlying, nicely staggered rhythms and the main melody
of that concert-like arrangement of the theme, will also recall portions
of famous rock songs, though not to the detriment of this score's
effectiveness. In some ways, the theme sounds like a harder offshoot of
Alan Silvestri's 2012 score for
The Avengers, and by association
it makes one wonder if this theme for
Pacific Rim wouldn't have
been a good fit for Djawadi's
Iron Man.
The main
Pacific Rim theme closes out with a small
dose of humor for
Inception fans, the concluding foghorn effect
more organic here and later punctuating the start of measures in rhythms
during several places in the score. Credit has to be given to Djawadi
for how well his main theme is manipulated throughout the work,
following the awesome coolness of the opening track on album with a wide
variety of renditions of the theme that begin with a restrained
statement at 1:36 into "Gypsy Danger" and continue onto soft electric
guitars early in "Canceling the Apocalypse." The components of the
opening performance are sometimes separated from the melody, the
underlying rhythmic line employed for character usage in "Call Me Newt"
and "Kaiju Groupie." At 1:27 into "Physical Compatibility," this rhythm
develops into the main theme on guitar, and the actual melody is
generally heard in the other references to the identity. These moments
include reprises of the opening arrangement (with all supporting parts,
including rocking guitars) in "Jaeger Tech," "Go Big or Go Extinct," and
"No Pulse." Less obvious statements include fragments of the theme mixed
into the action of "Category 5," melodramatic, elongated renditions in
the middle portions of "For My Family," a nice brass insertion of the
idea over a descending line in "Deep Beneath the Pacific," and a
noteworthy intersection with one of the stomping 4-note themes of
bravado in "The Breach." Djawadi doesn't stop there, however, and while
his secondary motifs may be sometimes difficult to attribute to
individual meanings, he does explore seven additional themes in multiple
places each, making the score one worthy of a closer examination.
Clearly related to the main theme is a hopeful offshoot that serves as
Pacific Rim's de facto anthem. Hinted on guitar at 0:44 into
"Canceling the Apocalypse," the theme builds to its full form at 1:04
into that cue. A subtle but stoic version mingles with hints of the main
theme at 1:20 into "To Fight Monsters, We Created Monsters" and a
militaristic variant in the form of a choral chant at 0:37 into "We Are
the Resistance" morphs into the main theme. More frequently referenced
is a series of cascading 4-note phrases heard late in the opening suite
(at 3:13) that represents both dread and heroism later in the work. It
exists in accelerating fashion at 0:46 and 2:20 into "Gypsy Danger,"
mixes seamlessly with the main theme at 1:34 into "Jaeger Tech,"
occupies a very pretty horn solo at the start of "Better Than New,"
offers hints of itself at 1:01 and 1:47 in "Category 5," supplies a deep
brass sense of anticipation at 1:18 into "Go Big or Go Extinct," and
concludes the album's presentation with an unresolved fragment at the
end of "We Need a New Weapon."
There exist two "stomping" motifs in
Pacific Rim
that seem to play off of each other and infuse the necessary grandiose
scale to the score. Neither is really sophisticated in any way, though
the second one does develop into what seems to be a more complex
identity for the elements of evil in the plot. The first of the two
4-note stomps is a generic, ball-busting motif heard at 1:12 and 2:13
into "Pacific Rim," more of a rolling rhythmic effect in that track.
Subsequent applications include a fluid statement at 0:23 into "To Fight
Monsters, We Created Monsters," a dramatic form at 0:54 into "Striker
Eureka," and a reminder at 0:31 into "Category 5." More interesting is
the seemingly villainous alternative to this motif, another stomping
identity that is sometimes elongated with repeated final notes.
Accompanying this brutal blurting is a melodramatic theme that only
graces the score a couple of times on album. Both parts of this identity
can be heard in "Just a Memory," the stomping at 0:47 yielding to the
introduction of the wrought-out minor-key progressions of the actual
theme. Only at 1:05 in "Deep Beneath the Pacific" do you receive a
similarly developed presentation of the melody again. Djawadi does,
however, remind you of the stomping portion of the identity throughout
the work, starting immediately in "2500 Tons of Awesome" and extending
deliberately at 0:19 into "Striker Eureka" and 0:40 into "Deep Beneath
the Pacific." Not surprisingly, the theme becomes immensely rendered
with choral muscle at the starts of "Category 5" and "For My Family"
(the former with timpani pounding and the latter with constant cymbals).
Less obvious is a creepy translation to erhu ambience at 0:43 in
"Hannibal Chau" and a choral hint at 1:43 into "The Breach." The other
themes of
Pacific Rim include the Russian-like ideas heard
initially in "The Shatterdome," first a very long anthemic idea at 0:17
and then a bull-blown Russian chant at 1:35 that grows out of the deep
male choir in the rest of the cue. The Russian chant returns at 1:20
into "Double Event" while the more elegant theme for strings and horns
is defiant and hopeful at 1:42 into "Pentecost." For the romantics in
the audience, the hidden treasure in
Pacific Rim is an elusively
elegant theme that shares progressions, strangely enough, with Jerry
Goldsmith's main idea from
The Ghost and the Darkness. This soft
theme builds out of a typical but still alluring solo female voice from
1:27 in "Mako" (repeatedly adding additional performers) and receives a
more major arrangement throughout "We Need a New Weapon" (with a big
crescendo at the end). In between is a performance at 0:50 in "To Fight
Monsters, We Created Monsters" during which the theme's underlying
progressions eventually nicely reveal the actual melody.
There are other fragments of themes in
Pacific
Rim that don't recur, most notably the Hannibal Chau theme over
rolling rhythmic suspense in the first half of the track of that name.
There is also a brief passage at 1:20 into "Striker Eureka" that
suspiciously borrows the theme from Mark Mancina's
Speed for a
moment. The extensive interaction between the main melody and its
related offshoots also muddy the thematic picture a bit, but Djawadi
ties them together with common rhythmic devices (often featuring trios
of repetition) that afford the score a strong sense of cohesiveness. You
don't expect to hear eight themes in a context such as this, and to
encounter so many instances of cohabitation of themes in the same cues
is refreshing enough to forgive some lack of delineation of identity.
Most casual enthusiasts of the score will be enamored by the opening
main theme arrangement and its three reprises later in the work. It
wouldn't be surprising if there are orchestral film score
traditionalists who summarily classify
Pacific Rim as yet another
entry in a lengthy series of brain-dead electric guitar-laden, generally
anthemic, and nuance-lacking scores from the influence of Zimmer's style
of the 1990's and 2000's. To force that label upon
Pacific Rim is
inaccurate, however, especially in terms of its unnecessary but welcomed
complexities. For those who cannot stand electric guitars in their
scores, stop and consider exactly what type of film they would be most
appropriate for.
Pacific Rim is certainly that film, and Djawadi
goes one step further by allowing the guitars enough free reign to be
cool without ever screeching or becoming obnoxious. Their performances
here are awesomely executed, even if they do steal a bar or two from
rock tradition. A distinct lack of generic stupidity here, in part
because of the influence of Schifrin style in the main theme, should
earn the composer praise from even staunch Zimmer/RC detractors. The mix
of this score contributes to the positive outcome; at a time when so
many similar works are absolutely drowned out by an overemphasis on the
base region,
Pacific Rim refuses to resort to droning ambience or
the kind of "enhancements" that Zimmer uses to squash the natural tone
of the horns, trombones, and tubas. Djawadi, on the other hand, simply
boosts the number of those performers, allowing their natural tones to
create foghorn effects of a much grittier, authentic sound. Overall,
Pacific Rim is for Djawadi what 2004's
Catwoman was for
Klaus Badelt, a score maligned because of its ingredients and Media
Ventures/Remote Control origins despite containing a remarkable amount
of thematic development and appropriate style for the subject matter.
Approach the music for
Pacific Rim with the same understanding of
its purpose and be rewarded by its unnecessary smarts.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information
about the score or film. As in many of Amazon.com's "CDr on demand" products,
the packaging smells incredibly foul when new.
