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The Rocketeer
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Composed, Conducted, and Produced by:
Orchestrated by:
John Neufeld Elliot Kaplan Conrad Pope Billy May
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LABELS & RELEASE DATES
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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The 1991 album is a regular U.S. release. Between 1993 and 1996, the
album was very difficult to obtain in America, but a reprinting by Hollywood Records
in March, 1996 made it widely available once again. The 2016 Intrada set is limited
to an unknown number of copies and retailed at soundtrack specialty outlets for an
initial price of $30.
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AWARDS
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None.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... if you grew tired of James Horner's later, more seriously
weighty dramatic scores and prefer the unrestrained enthusiasm of his
early adventure works, among which The Rocketeer is one of the
best.
Avoid it... if the overly-consistent innocence of Horner's soaring
themes only serves to remind you of a composer rolling shamelessly in a
bed of his own favorite musical constructs.
BUY IT
 | Horner |
The Rocketeer: (James Horner) There was hope in the
ranks of Walt Disney Pictures during the initial production phases of
The Rocketeer that a film franchise could be made out of the
beloved comic book hero. At a time when superhero films and their
franchises based mostly on DC Comics characters were being launched with
far darker sensibilities, The Rocketeer represented the innocent,
straight-forward days of American fantasy in the late 1930's and early
1940's. In the story, a test pilot is given the opportunity by an old
inventor to experiment with a rocket pack and, in the process of
astonishing audiences with the new device, becomes a target of Howard
Hughes, the Nazis (who want the technology for several reasons), and a
few shady mafia characters. Throw in a beautiful girl and table is set
for a typical Disney adventure. Unfortunately, the movie bombed, partly
because of the exact kind of innocence that the film was trying to
convey. The black and white distinctions in the film made it bland, and
not even a rousing score by the ever-increasingly popular James Horner
could salvage Disney's hopes. While the film slacked off at the box
office and has been forgotten, Horner's score continues to soar. The
composer commented at the time that despite his love of aviation, a
passion that would take his life at 61, he had missing every opportunity
to write music about flying, and this assignment thus became a labor of
love. One of the composer's truly remarkable efforts, The
Rocketeer is a stylistic bridge between his early, brass-heavy
fantasy scores and his later trend towards the favoring of broadly
melodic string romance and drama themes. It's too serious of a score to
be classified along with Horner's long list of great works for animated
features, but it also has an undeniable touch of magic that reminds us
of the light, comic book origins of the story. It is this light-hearted,
tingling feeling of magic which makes The Rocketeer a work that
has withstood the test of time. While originality was an issue for the
concurrently bright score for An American Tail: Fievel Goes West,
Horner only references his own standards for The Rocketeer,
occasionally taking stylistic inspiration from his previous scores. And
when he does, he often improves upon those sounds, adding to The
Rocketeer's appeal over time.
Two primary themes, an ascending four-note motif for
Timothy Dalton's villain, and a descending set of phrases akin to Alan
Silvestri's Back to the Future time travel motif are used almost
constantly in the work. The title theme embodies the magical elements of
the rocket and its aviator, serving as the basis for almost every action
cue. With concert arrangements of this theme bookending the score, its
consistent, extended statements do beg for some variation, and Horner
provides some changes in tempo in the score's two ambitious action
highlights. In "The Flying Circus" and "Jenny's Rescue" (alternately
named "South Seas Send Up"), Horner offers the kind of explosive
thematic expositions that made Willow so engaging. Here, he
augments the long, brassy performances of the theme with an active
percussion section, using cymbals, chimes, tambourines, triangles, and
other light metallic elements to highlight the positive spirit and
metallic technology of the story. In "The Flying Circus," the rhythmic
action motifs mirror Horner's early Star Trek and Aliens
writing, but he translates them into their most flighty forms. Late in
that cue, some hoedown attitude from Fievel Goes West appears in
the form of banjo, fiddle, and other instrumentation meant almost as a
parody of such sounds. For your money, however, "South Seas Send Up" is
easily the more enjoyable cue, partly because of the bass-staggered
counterpoint performance of the title theme two minutes in. The more
fluid performances of the identity in the opening and closing suites
feature more of the magical atmosphere, however. The tingling sensation
starts immediately, accompanying the film's opening takeoff sequence
with an elegant combination of light electronic tones (closer to Jerry
Goldsmith's style than Horner's) under a gorgeous solo piano
introduction of the theme. The storybook personality continues through
both suites and moments in between; Horner's theme is so fluid and
aerodynamic that it's built upon drawn-out peaks and valleys meant to
accentuate the thrill of flying. Detractors often attack the perpetual
use of this theme in the suites and beyond, though Horner does
adequately shift its performances between all four corners of the
orchestra, often with grand results. More troubling could be the
trademark Horner finale at the end of the film, a progression first
introduced with a bang at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of
Khan, although its performance concluding The Rocketeer is
among the better variants.
The love theme in The Rocketeer also soars with
innocence, and it easily eclipses the quality of many of the romantic
string themes that Horner would provide for films later in the decade.
Heard in the form of short interludes in the two suites and during the
action cues, this theme receives a lengthy performance in "Jenny" (aka
"Love Theme"). From the solo horn to the full string ensemble, this
theme moves as gracefully as any in Horner's career, and its strikingly
gorgeous layering amidst so much enthusiastic action material will
remind of the same role the love theme played in Horner's early score
for Krull. Its appeal in The Rocketeer is much the same,
serving also as a tie to the source music of the era that is performed
on screen by the love interest herself. The villain's theme (for Neville
Sinclair) is perhaps one of the weaker points of the score, never
developing with the kind convincing menace that you would hope from a
score that delineates good and evil to such extremes. The rising four
note motif is cartoonishly rendered at times and melds into the bland
underscore in several cues before finally making an impact in the latter
half of "Zeppelin," in which the theme's layering is reminiscent of the
Queen Bavmorda material from Willow's climax. Overall, critics
often lump The Rocketeer in with Willow and The Land
Before Time as simple, adventuresome children's music of significant
orchestral volume. But there is one major difference between The
Rocketeer and those other efforts. This movie's character is a
larger-than-life comic hero and therefore falls under a different
classification of fantasy. Horner appropriately bloats every element of
his score to create the needed level of bright fantasy; the major key is
brutalized, the brass play a little louder, the strings perform themes
at a slower tempo, and the percussion section is absolutely exhausted of
every metallic resource imaginable. Together, part of The
Rocketeer seems slightly exaggerated, and that is the key to its
success. The original, relatively short album with 50 minutes of score
and the two decent recordings of vintage jazz vocals ("Begin the
Beguine" is as fluffy as it gets) was a rarity in the early 1990's but
re-pressings made the score available once again in the middle of the
decade. A limited, 2016 2-CD set from Intrada Records added over twenty
minutes of largely incidental score, but the remastering and restoration
of the major action pieces to their original lengths makes the expanded
album an easy recommendation. On any album, only a flimsy villain's
theme and the inevitable lack of variation in tone keep The
Rocketeer one short burst of flame from the highest rating. **** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.16
(in 103 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.26
(in 193,546 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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1991 Hollywood Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 57:16 |
1. Main Title/Takeoff (4:30)
2. The Flying Circus (6:30)
3. Jenny (5:10)
4. Begin the Beguine - performed by Melora Hardin (3:36)
5. Neville Sinclair's House (7:20)
6. Jenny's Rescue (3:20)
7. Rendezvous at Griffith Park Observatory (8:10)
8. When Your Lover Has Gone - performed by Melora Hardin (3:25)
9. The Zeppelin (7:58)
10. Rocketeer to the Rescue/End Titles (6:30)
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2016 Intrada Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 138:59 |
CD1: (67:11)
1. Main Title (4:43)
2. The Gizmo (3:25)
3. Finding the Rocket (1:52)
4. Neville and Eddie (1:07)
5. Testing the Rocket (2:40)
6. Lothar Gets Wilmer (1:44)
7. The Helmet (0:45)
8. The Laughing Bandit (1:10)
9. Neville Eavesdrops (1:25)
10. The Flying Circus (6:35)
11. A Hero is Born/Bye Bye Bigelow (2:51)
12. Begin the Beguine** (3:44)
13. Jenny's Rescue (3:52)
14. Love Theme* (5:10)
15. Cliff to the Club (0:49)
16. Cliff the Waiter (0:32)
17. When Your Lover Has Gone** (3:28)
18. South Seas Send Up (3:43)
19. Neville Sinclair's House (7:19)
20. Cliff Caught (1:38)
21. Rendezvous at Observatory (8:10)
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CD2: (71:48)
1. The Zeppelin (7:56)
2. End Title/End Credits (6:30)
1991 Soundtrack Album: (57:11)
3. Main Title/Takeoff (4:43)
4. The Flying Circus (6:23)
5. Jenny* (5:10)
6. Begin the Beguine (3:44)
7. Neville Sinclair's House (7:20)
8. Jenny's Rescue (3:21)
9. Rendezvous at the Griffith Park Observatory (8:10)
10. When Your Lover Has Gone** (3:28)
11. The Zeppelin (7:56)
12. Rocketeer to the Rescue/End Title (6:30)
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* not featured in film
** performed by Melora Hardin |
The insert of the 1991 album contains no information about the score or film
and is a poster that is difficult to re-fold into its original form. That of the 2016
Intrada album includes extensive information about the score and film.
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