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| Zimmer |
The Ring/
The Ring Two: (Hans Zimmer/Various)
The hysteria revolving around the mid-2000's franchise of
The
Ring all began with Koji Suzuki's popular novel in Japan, featuring
a metaphorical horror story that warns of a cursed video tape that, upon
being viewed, begins a seven-day countdown to that viewer's death. It's
one of those classic, ridiculous urban legend concepts that has
cinematic legs, and one that builds upon a foundation of supernatural
menace rather than the usual slasher-related horror tales. In Japan, the
story was translated to the big screen in the 1998 hit film
Ringu, and its popularity led to a subsequent series of novels,
three subsequent movies, and a TV series. An interpretation of the
legend in American cinema was inevitable, and
Fear Dot Com
somewhat borrowed from the same concept while
The Ring finally
adapted the original idea in 2002. Followers of the Japanese originals
criticized director Gore Verbinski's American version immediately,
stating that its plot had been made incoherent because of the
filmmakers' attempts to condense the best ideas from the growing legend
into one film. For susceptible American viewers, however, the fresh
urban legend and a well-performed and executed product launched it to
box office success. Three years later, and with a new director at the
helm, the inevitable sequel moves the surviving primary characters from
the original setting of Seattle to Astoria, Oregon, where a fresh new
curse predictably begins another round of killings all over again in
The Ring Two. With his career never establishing the horror genre
to any great extent during its earlier years, composer Hans Zimmer, who
was an affordable option for this movie given his position within
DreamWorks, saw
The Ring as an opportunity to branch out into the
realm of musical horror master Christopher Young. It was a project that
would share a basic genre with
Hannibal, for which Zimmer
co-wrote a very popular, classically-inclined score, but these two genre
entries for the composer could not be further from each other in style.
Whereas
Hannibal is a horror score based on beauty, intelligence,
and elegance,
The Ring clearly required nothing so dynamically
thoughtful.
Both
The Ring and
The Ring Two prey upon
primordial emotions, like any good urban legend flick, and thus the
scores required a very simple, atmospheric approach in their tone and
structures. With additional material written by Jim Dooley, Henning
Lohner, and Martin Tillman, a small orchestral ensemble and a few
soloists comprise the performers in both works. The bulk of music in
The Ring is constructed from a base ensemble of a piano, a
violin, and two cellos. The piano and violin offer the plain, purposely
underdeveloped sensibilities of the story's primary character, her care
for her family, and her investigative instincts. There are significant
cues, including the lengthy "Floating Minds," consisting of
contemplative underscore that yields merely troubled dissonance, with
the two highlighted instruments performing subtle, meandering motifs
alongside a harp and celeste. Zimmer very slowly introduces and develops
his thematic material in
The Ring, and between elusive statements
on mainly the piano and violin, it takes nearly the entire length of the
score to realize where that rather unceremonious, descending lullaby for
the main character is leading. Most obvious when on piano, the lullaby
has potential in its slight waltz sensibilities but never really defines
the score. A small, accompanying ensemble of strings, synthetic accents,
and various percussion present an adequately tense, though occasionally
uninteresting base environment via skittish pairs of descending notes.
The synthesizers employ a fair amount of unsettling distortion in their
contribution, and Zimmer cannot refrain from sudden drop-offs and
manipulation techniques as a cheap scare tactic. The string section
often reacts much the same way, raising tension by simply using
themselves as one combined sound effect whether by screeching, whining,
or striking. Most listeners will recognize the two cellos, performed by
Martin Tillmann and Anthony Pleeth, to be the heart and soul of the
score, their typically disjointed performances representing the true
horror element in
The Ring. Almost never stating the same motif
or theme in unison, the two cellos play well off of each other in order
to create a unique method of confusing and frightening the audience.
Consider it a twisted form of instrumental taunting with subtle jabs at
the listener that never coalesce into a full expression of dread, guilt,
or outright fright in the ways you'd expect for an entry in this
genre.
By its end, the score for
The Ring doesn't really
sustain its appeal very well outside of the context of the film,
providing some intriguing ideas for enthusiasts of Zimmer and his crew
to consider but not expressing its ideas in such a form as to define
itself as a solid listening experience, as many Christopher Young horror
scores do. The end credits do finally condense all of the best lyrical
structures from the score, highlighted by the lullaby and related,
descending motifs of dread, into one surprisingly engaging and
impressive suite, and the long-awaited development of these ideas in
that eight-minute track saves the score from total mediocrity. Zimmer
even throws a dying, young girl's vocal at the end of a fuller,
alternate suite arrangement, playing to the expected psyche of the cult.
Had this more painful and mysterious lyrical element been applied with
obvious care in the score, its ethos would have been far more effective.
For the purposes of
The Ring Two, Lohner and Tillman primarily
tackled the sequel using Zimmer material in two strikingly different and
arguably very ineffective ways. The first idea in the score seems to
involve a simple expansion of the sound in the previous entry. With a
fuller breadth to the string orchestra (the sense of heightened violence
of their performances is easier to appreciate in this recording), the
reprised appearances of themes from the first film have more beef in
instrumental substance, although the rather stale structures will be
highly familiar and perhaps disappointing to fans of the original score.
If you heard nothing distinctly original or compelling in
The
Ring, then the rehash of ideas in the derivative half of
The Ring
Two will likely not interest you, either. The other, more curious
part of
The Ring Two is the mass-electrification of four cues for
the film. Sharing little in continuity with the other music existing
between the two pictures, the electric guitar, percussion, and other
basic pop band elements cheapen the score by turning it into a
rock-laced attempt at coolness in an otherwise atmospheric domain. With
compositional credit pointing to Tillman, the two final cues from
The
Ring Two, as well as the two remixes that appear at the end of the
commercial compilation album containing both scores, are extreme
disappointments. In some cases, they take the orchestral performances
heard elsewhere in the films and overlay blasting guitars and modern
percussive rhythms that all but ruin the listening experience
established by the previous material.
Despite the success of the film, as well as the
marketability of Zimmer's name in the years just after
Gladiator,
no record label picked up the rights to
The Ring and pressed an
album release up front. A variety of wild reasons for this circumstance
flew about over subsequent years, including an unconfirmed report that
Zimmer himself was unhappy with the outcome of the project and blocked a
possible album. As expected, the lack of availability for
The
Ring created an uproar with Zimmer and associated Media
Ventures/Remote Control collectors who had become accustomed to hearing
all of his scores on album. Desperate fans, however, were treated to a
"promotional" release of
The Ring not long after the film's debut
that included about 25 minutes of the score. The only reason this "TIL
Music Group" album even has the term "promotional" associated with it is
because much of the music in its contents was voluntarily streamed on
the website of one of the associated composers (Dooley), thus blurring
the lines in whether the intent of the music leak was for promotional
purposes, or, in the worst of cases, out of spite for the fact that no
commercial album existed. At any rate, this music was quickly taken off
the website by fans and pressed onto the original "promotional bootleg."
It was then filtered out by others almost immediately after the
realization that no commercial album would exist for the score, and, as
to be expected, a few bootlegged versions were created for those who
wanted to scrounge around and add even more music from the film. Music
produced by Zimmer and his production house often had a way of finding
itself leaked onto the secondary market at the time, with the group
perhaps existing as the most easily bootlegged ensemble of artists in
the contemporary film music industry, so the fact that several different
versions of bootlegs based on
The Ring were wandering about the
secondary market quite quickly (and eventually including the complete
sessions) should come as no surprise to Zimmer, his army of assistants,
the studio, or anyone else. So often are digital versions of their
recording sessions leaving the front doors of their studios that you
have to wonder if such mass bootlegging of their music concerns them to
any extent at all. For
The Ring, the original "TIL Music Group"
album had eight cues based on the first leak of the music, and before
too long, a fan-created suite had been added to the end (essentially
just an edit of the ideas heard in the original end credits, without the
girl's vocals) and, with new artwork, the common nine-track, 33-minute
bootleg was born.
Still, more material from the film was missing from the
initial rounds of bootlegs for
The Ring, and a ten-track,
38-minute alternative then appeared in late 2003. This second bootleg
maintained similar packaging but included several short cues from the
film's DVD edited rather poorly into a five-minute suite. For nearly all
collectors, the original eight-track "promo" of
The Ring would
have sufficed, because the end credits on all the bootlegs was the only
required highlight. When
The Ring Two entered the scene in 2005,
Universal decided to finally release both the original and sequel scores
together on one CD, which made clear sense given the material shared
between the two scores. The 2005 Decca album was the first commercial
release of music from either film, and for those seeking the first
score, this commercial product features a strong arrangement of music in
significantly clearer sound. In fact, the improved sound quality alone
was worth the purchase price for most listeners. The problem with the
2005 album, however, has always been that it does not differentiate
between music dedicated to
The Ring and original performances for
The Ring Two, leading you to believe that there may have been a
significant "cut and paste" operation in progress when the score for the
sequel was being prepared. Regardless of the tracking of existing music
into
The Ring Two, the final four highly synthetic and
pop-culture remix cues on this album are definitely new, and, as
discussed above, they all but ruin the listening experience. Enthusiasts
of the concept were treated to a significant expansion of
The
Ring in 2022, with 56 minutes of the full score presentation
supplemented by 41 minutes of alternate and unused cues. The arrangement
of this 2CD set from La-La Land Records is a bit odd, however, the first
CD containing what appears to be Zimmer's preferred album experience,
relegating actual film versions of several cues to the second CD. It's
one of the rare circumstances in which the second CD of bonus material
is actually more attractive than the primary film presentation, the
first three alternate tracks offering the best 14 minutes of essential
listening from the work. Even with this improved 2022 presentation, the
mass hysteria over this music still doesn't make much sense, because
The Ring, as functional and occasionally interesting as it may
be, offers not much more than very typical ambient suspense. If you can
forget for a moment that
The Ring is a Zimmer work and realize
that the film's cult status has instead caused all the interest, then
you may discover that the score is average at best and unsettling at its
worst, while
The Ring Two is a combination of rehash and remix
that further muddies the waters.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written for Both Films: **
- Music as Heard on the 2002-2005 Albums: **
- Music as Heard on the 2022 La-La Land Album: ***
- Overall: **
| Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84
(in 121 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.96
(in 298,134 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
None of the 2002-2005 albums (promotional, bootleg, or commercial) includes
any extra information about the score or film. That of the 2022 La-La Land set contains
extensive notation about both.
