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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Serenity (David Newman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you are an enthusiast of either this film or the
television series that preceded it, because the score's experimental
tones are uniquely individual and defy most genre conventions.
Avoid it... even if you seek David Newman music that strays from his considerable talents in writing for ridiculous comedies, because Serenity is a challenging and inaccessible exploration of dissonant exoticism.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Serenity: (David Newman) When at first you don't
succeed, try, try again, and hopefully the big screen will afford you
the success that witless television studio executives failed to allow
you in their own venue. Such is the story with writer and director Joss
Whedon, who was buoyed by his ironically opposite success of "Buffy, the
Vampire Slayer" on television after it was thrashed in its initial big
screen debut. This time, the equation is thrown the other way around,
with Whedon having created the 2002 science fiction action series
"Firefly" for television only to see it cancelled before the end of its
first season. (To make matters even worse, several of the finished
episodes were shown out of sequence by the network). Luckily for Whedon,
his success on "Buffy" and the subsequent "Angel" gave him the
opportunity for Universal Studios to finance a big-screen film based on
"Firefly," albeit on a tight budget. Renaming the property
Serenity but retaining most of the cast and concepts from the
television show, Whedon delves further in the mind-reading, space battle
prone universe half a millennium into the future in which
government-citizen relations are strained much in the same way Orwell
might have imagined. Its Western-inspired tendencies convey the crew of
the main transport spaceship as outlaws battling their own inner demons
as much as they elude oppressive forces. The film may not have made
total sense for viewers who hadn't followed the series on television and
thus failed in generating enough interest to extend the concept beyond
this one entry, but its eye candy made it a serviceable project.
Composer David Newman came onto the project by the suggestion of
Universal music executives because of Whedon's request for an affordable
composer who could write to several different eras and genres. This
after the "Firefly" composer, Greg Edmonson, was abandoned and the first
assigned composer for the movie, Carter Burwell, struggled so
significantly with the project that he was fired not long before
recording sessions were scheduled to take place. Part of the issue in
finding the right composer for Serenity was Whedon's unusual
sensibility for what he wanted to hear in the movie. His approach to the
music was challenging and dark, and although Burwell would have seemed
like an excellent match for the director, Whedon later failed to get
through to Newman at first as well. Newman was worried that his firing
was next.
The highly capable composer had written music for nearly every type of film imaginable by this point in his career, including the Galaxy Quest parody of Star Trek and other projects that gained cult followings much like that of "Firefly." But serious and experimental sci-fi is an area in which Newman didn't have extensive credits, with most of his work seemingly revolving around completely pointless comedies an occasional venture into lighter action. Given that he had been stuck in a dumb comedy rut for so long, a project like Serenity was exactly what many of his thin following had hoped for over the previous ten years. The result of his efforts, however, has long frustrated film music collectors even if it inevitably enthralled concept die-hards not bothered by his decision to completely ignore the music of Edmonson. One of the boggling aspects about Serenity is determining whether its failure as a score is due to Newman's own inability to capitalize on the opportunity or Whedon's insistence upon an utterly bizarre, disjointed, and frequently dissonant soundscape for the film. The director encouraged Newman to be as varied and unusual as he could, avoiding the typical space opera sound or any other genre of music, and Newman responded in kind. Unfortunately, the score is a jumbled mess of otherwise fine ideas that are never executed with any kind of sincere development towards narrative or stylistic satisfaction. It's an orchestral score overall, but it's laced with a myriad of specialty performers and custom percussive recordings, with a fair amount of synthetic experimentation involved. The dry mix's volume varies wildly but is more inclined to resort to understatement. From an erhu to an electric guitar, Newman touches every culture with instrumental manipulation, concentrating often on nontraditional use of lower string tones. With a decent ensemble of strings, brass, percussion, and soloists (the director made a point about the lack of woodwinds, for some reason), blasts of rhythmic excitement are often completely chaotic in structure; in "Space Battle" in particular, Newman makes the cue so dense with conflicting sounds that this technique becomes distractingly cacophonous. Many of the other action cues, including the duo of "Mal & OP Fight" and "Simon Shot/River Runs," suffer from the same highly abrasive edge without the kind of tonalities or rhythmic flow to create more than confused anxiety. A fine opening snare rhythm in "Jayne & Zoe" is prematurely cut short, though the subsequent "Final Battle" finally reveals some hint of heroics on brass. A number of cues in Serenity suffer from Newman's choice to electronically alter the instruments after the recording, such as the unnatural reverb added to the strings in "Crash Landing." Backwards edits, distorted slashing guitars, and sudden orchestral hits with a metallic edge are mixed in between promising orchestral ideas that never take flight. Only in the final, fleeting set of cues does Newman save Serenity from total despair; from "Funeral/Rebuilding Serenity" to "Love/Serenity" he offers acoustic guitar and string solos that are increasingly melodic and supply a small dose of payoff for the grueling experience prior. It's hard to say exactly what Newman could have done to pull Serenity together as a more cohesive score given the intentional harshness with which most of it was conceived; perhaps a female voice out of his fine The Affair of the Necklace score would have provided the River character's theme with an identity better than the piano that eventually evolves to cohesion in "Truth/Mal's Speech." Better placement of the decent but sometimes awkward main theme may have helped as well. This idea representing Mal and the vessel is a very understated cello concept that seems completely at odds with the rest of the score despite Whedon's enthusiasm for it, and it is adapted into a lively folk-like identity at the outset of the film and occupies the end credits in multiple guises. While it's nice to hear this melody subtly merge finally with the River theme in the final cues, the enunciation of these ideas isn't clear enough earlier in the score to suffice for the narrative. Secondary themes, such as the obtuse character theme in "The Operative" and "Death of Mathias," are even less impactful. Without more obvious placement and emphasis on Newman's viable but stifled set of themes, Serenity relies upon its counterculture style of exoticism to float its personality until the marginally redeeming cues of resolution at the end. These closing moments likely will not be redeeming on behalf of the rest of this score, and as frustrating as it is to say it, Serenity is to David Newman what Earthsea was to Jeff Rona half a year earlier: an enormously wasted opportunity. Both of those scores were released at the time by Varèse Sarabande, but Serenity was expanded onto a 2-CD set by the same label in 2023. Though admirable in its chronological presentation and increased attention to the first half of the score, the much longer set only exacerbates the flaws of the score by emphasizing lesser material content to stew in the oddity of Newman's ambient personality for the concept. It's okay to strive to be different, but this score takes that ambition to ineffective ends. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
2005 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 49:53
2023 Varèse/2024 Back Lot Album: Total Time: 89:21
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 2005 album includes a list of performers and a
note from the director about the score and film. The 2023 album features
notes about both the score and film, including a list of performers. The
latter album uses no photography or logo from the film itself.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Serenity are Copyright © 2005, 2023, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande, Back Lot Music and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 11/12/05 and last updated 1/31/24. |
