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| Goldsmith |
Star Trek: Nemesis: (Jerry Goldsmith) This tenth
installment of the famed
Star Trek film franchise was met with
all the grand anticipation of a finale feature, advertising a tagline
that suggested that this movie would depict the final voyage of the
starship Enterprise with an established crew that fans knew and loved.
Those fans had to endure an abnormally long wait for this film, with a
Star Trek record four years in between motion pictures, raising
hopes and expectations beyond franchise norms. Producers for the film
promised the pinnacle of quality for several elements of the plot,
including a fantastic villain and superior battle sequence, for
Star
Trek: Nemesis. Talent from outside the franchise's typical crew
infused the series with edgier subject matter, including a notably
grittier sexual component. The reintroduction of the Romulans to the
equation allowed for superior starship designs and an extended series of
impressive combat shots represented a significant improvement over the
lackluster equivalents in
Star Trek: Insurrection. The early
promises of greatness also came from those involved with the production
of the music for this tenth film. Hailed in post-production as one of
composer Jerry Goldsmith's most memorable achievements in the latter
stages of his career, the score was said to have inspired a
Rudy-like standing ovation from the studio orchestra players when
recording was complete. Little could anyone have known that
Star
Trek: Nemesis was not only a send-off for the "Next Generation"
crew, but also for Goldsmith, who would not enjoy an accepted, solo
effort for the big screen in the remaining two years of his life.
Musically speaking, Goldsmith had defined the "Next Generation" films
with the same popularity that James Horner utilized to define the height
of the original crew's journeys in the early to mid-1980's. This being
his fifth
Star Trek feature, Goldsmith had solidified his grip on
the "Next Generation" sound, acting as almost the most expected piece of
the franchise's production team of that time. His previous score for the
series,
Star Trek: Insurrection, had been commonly considered by
film music critics to be the strongest Goldsmith "Trek" score since his
original, Oscar-nominated entry in 1979, sending collectors on a mad
scramble for lengthier bootleg albums of that music.
With
Star Trek: Nemesis, however, the situation
became a cloudier mystery. The dark and more complicated nature of this
final Goldsmith venture opened new doors to the composer. This time
around, he'd have the ability to score a larger epic that depicts the
struggles of the Remus slaves against their Romulan cousins. He would
also be able to dig deeper into the well of musical emotions, offering a
psychological twist to a series of otherwise straight forward "Trek"
films in the recent past. The introduction of a super villain, Shinzon
(a younger, evil mirror of Captain Picard), his massive warbird, the
Scimitar, as well as the unveiling of a beautiful new Romulan warbird
design all led to opportunities for Goldsmith to whip up a frenzy of
creativity and theme. Likewise, the promotion at last of Commander Riker
to his own ship, his long awaited wedding, the loss of a friend, and
fate of the Enterprise called, to an extent, for Goldsmith to compose
both a triumphant and bittersweet farewell to the beloved crew with a
culmination of harmonic force consistent with what Cliff Eidelman had
done with
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It was
Goldsmith's chance to neatly wrap up the music of the ten films by
revisiting many of his favorite motifs of times past. Everything
pointing to this project indicated it as a winning proposition for
Goldsmith. But the end result of his efforts, unfortunately, sadly
missed many of these opportunities. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly
why the music for
Nemesis underachieves so thoroughly; it is
loud, suspenseful, pounding, and electronically diverse, but it is also,
ultimately, tired and unoriginal. Given the amount of stimulating action
music presented (as promised) in this effort, the reason for some
people's major disappointment with it needs to be delicately considered
and analyzed from a neutral standpoint. There is an intangible sense of
enthusiasm and adventure that always balanced the gravity of drama in
Goldsmith's (and Horner's) music for this franchise. In
Nemesis,
you hear the gravity in weighty doses, but the sense of adventure has
been compromised. The spirit of the final frontier is muted as the
composer recognizes the bittersweet nature of this conclusive chapter,
forcing most of the components in the score to express themselves with
resignation. It is a score that could be described as being among the
awkward few that offer all substance and no style.
Silly comedies often flourish with scores that have all
style and no substance (like
The 'Burbs) and straight action
films often flourish with scores that feature all substance and no style
(like the
Rambo works). But the
Star Trek films are a
different breed. They have required both style and substance ever since
Goldsmith introduced the elegant themes of the first film alongside the
substantively creative blaster beam effects and the memorable fanfare.
For
Nemesis, Goldsmith created an abundance of substance: hard,
relentless, driving action cues that will knock around the walls a few
times. The amount of pounding timpani alone in this score is
overwhelming. But Goldsmith's keen sense of style is minimal, if
non-existent, and most of it is tied to electronic effects that had
matured enough by this point to keep them particularly interesting. The
first half of the score is built around the zipping, panging, and
swooshing electronics in an effort to address the suspense of an
approaching adversary of great horror and power. This meandering
underscore is largely uninteresting in its lack of base, lack of strong
theme, and lack of creative instrumentation. The latter half of the
score is led by the kind of stale, non-engaging action material heard in
films like
U.S. Marshals and
The Last Castle, not the
rousing partnership of rhythm and theme that fans heard in
The 13th
Warrior and even, to a lesser extent, in
Star Trek:
Insurrection. The thematic development for Shinzon, his warbird, and
the greater Romulan Empire is restrained to a basic, cascading five-note
theme that occasionally develops into a 10-note extension of
surprisingly dull simplicity. As opposed to the uniquely devised and
performed four-note Borg theme in
Star Trek: First Contact, this
Shinzon theme doesn't have the same gripping power or fear-instilling
quality. At least the composer does attempt to manipulate the theme
greatly throughout the score to mirror the villain's appeal, often
transferring the idea to solo woodwinds for early conversational scenes.
To his credit, Goldsmith does express the idea with increasing anger as
the work progresses, a cue like "Odds and Ends" traversing most of this
spectrum within four minutes, taking the idea from soothing string
shades to trademark Goldsmith action rhythms of almost a heroic
personality. Perhaps more creative would have been a Picard-oriented
sense of pensive elegance and allure with the idea, a thought only
touched upon in the end credits suite.
One of the moderate successes of
Star Trek:
Nemesis, to a limited extent, is Goldsmith's attention to the
established Trek themes of the past. The title theme for the series
(which he created in 1979) is sparsely used, with two fleeting
performances with a hint of that original film's elegance accompanying
the opening and closing shots of the Enterprise. Otherwise, despite the
eruption of the theme late in "The Scorpion," it doesn't receive the
many subtle variations that the score could have used with great
effectiveness. Reportedly, this decision to mute the theme was
intentional, Goldsmith's recognition of sadness in this final film. Here
or elsewhere, there is no thematic tribute to the Romulan race or even
to the composer's favorite old Klingon theme, which isn't even applied
to Worf in this picture. Goldsmith does resurrect the four-note theme
representing both adversity and friendship that was the centerpiece of
his work for
The Final Frontier. Heard extensively in
First
Contact and only once poignantly in
Insurrection, this
optimistic idea is used for various friendship-related purposes,
including Riker's wedding to Troi and Picard's friendship with Data in
Nemesis at the start and end of the film, though these passages
are usually restrained to soft woodwind performances. More intriguing is
the return to the original Starfleet motif from
The Motion
Picture in "Argo" and "Course Plotted," the former a literal restart
of that rhythmic effect that is extremely welcomed in this context. The
end credit sequence is an odd case of conflicting attributes. In some
ways, it is poorly conceived and performed, with a strikingly
melodramatic and lush variation on the Shinzon theme that doesn't fit
with any of the material heard prior (hardly an appropriate farewell to
these characters). It's a beautiful comment on what could have been for
Shinzon, but it's simply out of place. Goldsmith had been using the same
end credit suite format since
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,
and while some superb sound quality for its performances in the previous
two films revived its appeal, the same equation sounds stale, forced,
and awkward in
Nemesis. Granted, the three final Goldsmith
scores' credits suites had an awkward and sudden drop-off from the
fanfare to the secondary theme, but none is so bizarre as the shorter
version of this one. The fuller version of the cue (with over two
minutes of full Shinzon battle material added) alleviates this problem
to an extent, but there still exists an odd disconnect at that
juncture.
The unfortunate failure of the
Star Trek:
Nemesis end titles suite, titled "A New Ending," may also be due to
the fact that its performance of the main theme is uninspired and
distinctly too slow in tempo, nearly crawling compared to the previous
few films. It is also overshadowed by the incorporation of the popular
1929 song "Blue Skies" to commemorate an emotional turn at the end of
the film, in addition to the seemingly out of place performance of
beauty for the Shinzon theme. Several smaller motifs and recognizable
singular structures from
The Final Frontier and
First
Contact exist in the late battle sequences of
Nemesis, and
the combination of timpani, pulsating basses, and noble brass will be
friendly tones to the ears. It becomes evident rather quickly that
Goldsmith decided to take no chances with this project. Other than his
attempt to underline the dramatic weight of the story, he injected no
new life into the series and ended up with a functionally suspenseful
and action-packed but stylistically void result. The frustrating aspect
of
Nemesis is, of course, that it was a perfect opportunity for
Goldsmith to take a chance. Imagine the power that he could have
harnessed had the money been budgeted to use a full chorus for the
score, or even a single operatic male voice for the Shinzon character
(we all know that Picard appreciated his musicals and operas). Perhaps a
seductive element of lyricism, or even the introduction of something
different from the same old zipping electronics, could have played
better to the emotions in this installment. It is also possible that
producer Rick Berman, who had been known to prefer understated and
conservative scores for the series (hence, the involvement of Dennis
McCarthy in so much of the "Trek" franchise), refused to allow for more
creative liberties to be taken with this score. It's difficult not to
get the impression, however, that Goldsmith was simply going through the
motions in
Nemesis. The synthetic effects are alone good proof of
this theory; the electronic sounds normally applied to the franchise are
accentuated with a prominent role in this score that they cannot
adequately fill because the composer did not develop them into any
memorable new form. What happened to the creativity of the Blaster Beam?
When these generic effects were a rhythmic accompaniment, as they were
in
Insurrection, they functioned well. Here, they collapse when
put under pressure, offering nothing more than the notion that the
villains in this particular film have more technological savvy than the
heroes. These sounds, like the other elements in the score, are sadly
two-dimensional.
Compounding the problem with
Nemesis is its
considerably dampened sound quality. For a performing group of over 80
members, the score doesn't resonate with the same life as the previous
two scores in the franchise. The sound quality on the final track in
particular is considerably muted. The dynamic mix and extra
reverberation in
Insurrection is especially missed, though this
sense of vivaciousness alone would not have saved this score on album.
As had been the case with
Insurrection, however, a substantial
portion of the music that provided a more rounded experience in the film
was simply left off of the original commercial product by Goldsmith's
choice. That Varèse Sarabande album release is not as attractive
as the previous entries by GNP Crescendo, which had gone defunct by
2002. No extra artwork, enhanced features, third-party essays, or
production photos for this album were offered, and producer Robert
Townson's overblown claims of this score's greatness in the liner notes
are very dubious in opinion and offer little of interest about the
creation process of the score. Not surprisingly, almost immediate
bootlegs of Goldsmith's score squeezed in at about 80 minutes of
material, featuring identical sound quality. The bootlegs did have some
attractions that Goldsmith chose not to include on the 48-minute retail
product, including the gentle and elegant performances of the title
theme for the ship. Most curious is the fact that the very strong tandem
of "Preparing for Battle" (or "Battle Stations") and "Team Work" (or
"Let's Go to Work") weren't chosen for Varèse's album, because
the prior establishes an attractive singular theme of determination that
was memorable in the film; it was this major omission from the album
that caused so much initial interest in the bootlegs. In 2013,
Varèse finally rectified the problem by pressing a 2-CD set for
the score that included all pertinent recordings. Most interesting for
fans of the score will be the Starfleet motif cues and the alternate mix
of the whole score for the film that is featured on the expanded,
limited product. For casual listeners, the difference in between the two
mixes (in mainly percussion and synthetics) won't be significant. On the
whole, however, the longer albums mostly expose redundant material that
suffers from the same problems as the rest of the score. It's easy to be
sentimental about
Star Trek: Nemesis because it largely marks the
end of Goldsmith's career, but that can't excuse the score's many
faults. A tired, procedural attitude gives the work a mechanical
personality that stifles its minimal attempts at creativity in tone.
This music boldly goes nowhere, and it remains a major disappointment.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written for the Film: **
- Music as Heard on the 2002 Album: **
- Music as Heard on the 2003 Bootlegs and 2013 Set: ***
- Overall: **
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 125 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 153,510 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The 2002 Varèse product's insert includes a short note by album
executive producer Robert Townson and a list of performers in the Hollywood Studio
Orchestra. No extra information about the film or production of the score is
provided. The bootlegs feature a wide range of fan-created art. The insert of the
2013 expanded set includes detailed notes about the film and score.
