: (John Debney) Inspired by the
legendary Egyptian warrior teased successfully in
and his 16th
Century battle against an evil visionary and ruler of the famed city of
Gomorrah. The film was not much more than an excuse for a regurgitation
of the sets, costumes, and visual effects templates seen in the previous
film. Upon the unexpected level of success of the original 1999 entry,
Universal gave the green light to two sequels that were intended to be
released in snapshot succession, and by the release of
in 2002, the concept was stretching for marketability. Not
experiencing the same staleness factor at the time was wrestling star
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, starring as the Scorpion King and bulging
with 21st Century nutritional supplements but nevertheless battling
ancient, evil henchmen with such appeal that his blockbuster acting
career was officially born. In this case, he thrashes ancient Earth to
the sounds of John Debney's action-packed score, one of the composer's
rare ventures into wild fantasy for massive ensembles. Debney, whose
action music often needed no supplement, followed Jerry Goldsmith and
Alan Silvestri as the composers of the films in the series, the former
refusing to join the carryover crew for the sequel because of his
decision that
was mere trash. His music eclectic in
style and his career spanning nearly every possible genre, Debney had
been a master at both orchestral themes and synthetic rhythms throughout
the late 1990's and 2000's. Of all the composers producing large
orchestral works in Hollywood during this time, Debney was also among
the most talented at the creation of satisfying rock and roll infusions
as well. These talents have always landed him some less than desirable
scoring assignments (
is a prime example) and for
a long time, his mastery of both the orchestral and synthetic realms had
not yet merged on a grand scale.
Finally,
The Scorpion King changed all of that,
throwing the two stylistic sides of Debney's talents into one
surprisingly cohesive, kick-ass piece of music. It is no surprise that
when Universal beat a dead horse by resurrecting the concept again in
2008 with
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the man called
in to supplement Randy Edelman's underachieving music with a
continuation of his orchestral ass-kicking was none other than Debney.
Imagine the scope of Basil Poledouris'
Conan the Barbarian
accompanied by a handful of ancient instruments primed and ready for
The Passion of the Christ and an assortment rip-snorting electric
guitars (some performed by Debney himself; the studio loved that angle),
electric bass, synthetic percussion, and drum kits, resulting in a score
that combines the contemporary metallic enthusiasm of the actor in the
title role with the orchestral and choral magnificence of Debney's own
classic score for the not-so-classic
Cutthroat Island. The music
for
The Scorpion King will either blow you away or, at the very
least, leave you staggering from a wild orchestral experience that often
teases the heavy metal genre along its journey. Many listeners had been
skeptically curious as to how the melding of Debney's two worlds would
sound, though ultimately most of the composer's collectors considered it
either an enormous success or, at the very least, a substantial guilty
pleasure. Indeed, even if you can't readily enjoy the work apart from
the film,
The Scorpion King is a fascinatingly original score. It
plays to the stereotypes of Egyptian chord progressions, explodes into
its electric guitars whenever The Rock flexes a pectoral muscle, and
releases incredible amounts of straight forward choral and 80-piece
orchestral majesty for the film's grand vistas. Specialty instruments on
the ethnic side include ney, duduk, ram's horn, taiko drums, and
Japanese bamboo flutes, joining mandatory wailing female voices. The
score also lovingly borrows a few clear ideas from other popular film
scores, including the repeated ensemble striking of the same note from
Bernard Herrmann's
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and the wavering
fluctuations of octave-separated trumpets and horns from Don Davis'
The Matrix.
More importantly, Debney was aware of the history of
the franchise, and he emulates the style of Goldsmith liberally
throughout, especially in his main theme. Some of the more unashamedly
bombastic portions will remind of Goldsmith's
The 13th Warrior in
particular. A little Silvestri influence comes across as well, though
some of these passages owe more to David Arnold's
Stargate.
Still, though, Debney's work is creative enough from the opening bar to
compensate for any intentional or unintentional lifting. Don't let the
"Boo!" track at the start of the album discourage you from the rest of
it; if you've never heard a heavy metal cue accompanied by full
orchestra and chorus, it might catch you off guard. Obviously, the
studio and director were content to immediately distinguish this entry
from Silvestri's purely
Cutthroat Island style of swash and
buckle for the previous film. The greatest reason for the success of
Debney's score is the fact that he incorporates the electronics, many of
them arranged himself along with the guitar performances, with an
orchestra highlighted by two harps and a few ethnically appropriate
accents without allowing the accents to ever detract from the main group
of players.
The Scorpion King is, at heart, a fully orchestral
and choral score that is best known for its occasional, awesome
accompaniment of attitude, spirit, and power from The Rock's electronic
persona. Debney's thematic constructs for
The Scorpion King once
again take the franchise in a new direction, understandably jettisoning
all of Silvestri's ideas for mostly unrelated characters. These themes
don't reach out and grab you like Silvestri's did, which might
disappoint some listeners. The main identity of Goldsmith influence is
heard immediately at the climax of "Never an Akkadian" and is developed
fairly well throughout the score, including the nice ethnic moments in
"Camels are Smarter" and "Balthazar's Camp," eventually punctuating the
glory of the conclusions of "Die Well, Assassin" and "The Scorpion
King." A love theme for Mathayus and Cassandra dominates the middle of
the latter cue starting with a lovely vocalized rendition, and it had
been teased earlier in "Cassandra Leaves Camp" and "Cassandra Returns."
That character also receives a "sorceress" theme of sorts in "Night
Attack," "Cassandra's Vision," and "Cassandra's Bath" that can be more
challenging in the vocalizations to represent the erotic allure and
potential evil of the character along with the setting.
The majority of action pieces in
The Scorpion
King generally avoid grand capitulations of the themes, but they
still display a remarkable respect for engaging tonality and rhythms. By
"Mathyus Arrises," Debney employs the guitar as an ultra-cool bass
region transitional element, extending that use of the instrument into a
two-bar phrase in "Die Well Assassin" that is otherwise already
momentous with its percussion clanging and choral chanting. More ethnic
vocals during the slower passages would have been welcomed, as they are
a highlight when present. The narrative of the work is really strong,
the almost
Stargate-like majesty at the conclusion highly
satisfying. Although attractive in its competent summary of highlights,
the original 34-minute score album presentation from Varèse
Sarabande in 2002 (not to be confused with the popular song-oriented
soundtrack) has always been too short for many film score collectors. On
that product, the majority of the serious heavy metal ripping is
concentrated near the start. The label expanded the presentation to 77
minutes in 2025, adding another half hour of Debney's rougher, arguably
unnecessary demo recordings to span two CDs. The longer product greatly
enhances the narrative, though, including several important orchestral
additions to the first half of the story, until the pace slows down in
the final third before the climactic confrontation cues, all of which
were included on the shorter album and still remind of Silvestri bravado
from their choir and percussion decades later. The "Deluxe Edition," has
issues that will annoy hardcore collectors, however, including
distracting mono sound from the orchestra in "Message to Memnon" and
second half of "Healing." Awkwardly, part of "Veiled Threat" is repeated
underneath the start of "A Small Demonstration." A variety of
discernable microedits can be heard in "Enemy at the Gate," "Balthazar's
Camp," "Party's Over," some of these emulating the film's cut of the
music, but the film version of the ending of "The Scorpion King" remains
missing. Fans made the label aware of the mixing issues but no solution
was forthcoming. Overall, for Debney,
The Scorpion King was his
flashiest work in a while, merging the orchestral and electronic halves
of his career with impressive results. The themes aren't as obvious as
they perhaps needed to be, holding this score back from a higher rating.
The work is nevertheless the most unpredictable and snazzy score of the
franchise, though many orchestral purists who can't get past the initial
shock of the score's guitar outbursts will gravitate towards the
previous entries.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For John Debney reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.33
(in 56 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.1
(in 50,056 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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