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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Super 8 (Michael Giacchino)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you love highly melodic scores that convey an
outstanding narrative flow on their own, Michael Giacchino succeeding
well in developing and mingling his four attractive themes throughout
the length of Super 8.
Avoid it... if you're driven nuts by any score that features a less frequently stated secondary theme that is clearly far superior to the primary identity, or if you expect the highlights of this score to survive the several dull sections of a laboriously long album presentation.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Super 8: (Michael Giacchino) Back in the 1980's,
director Steven Spielberg was considered a master of storytelling
involving the family dynamic, finding ways to capture a child's
perspective with fantastic and sometimes terrifying success. There is no
doubt that J. J. Abrams attempted to emulate this classic technique in
his direction of 2011's Super 8, though some of the movie's
similarities to the Spielberg mould likely owes to the latter's
involvement as a producer. Children in tough circumstances are the heart
of the tale once again, their efforts in 1979 small town America to make
a super 8 monster movie tempered by strained relationships caused by
conflicts between their parents. When a military train derails near
their town, it unleashes a monstrous force that causes the community to
come under attack from both a mysterious creature and the military that
is attempting to corral it. Seemingly supernatural elements cause
strange happenings to occur along the way, and the children and their
parents have to reconcile to save themselves, the town, and, ultimately,
the antagonist. The Abrams-written script and shooting style for
Super 8 is so inherently saturated with the Spielberg touch that
it both succeeds and suffers because of those connections. The
production received significant critical praise, the only truly negative
comments related to its derivative nature, and it eventually more than
tripled its budget in gross revenue. Many of the same observations about
the movie can be made about Giacchino's score for it, Abrams applauding
his regular collaborator for composing music that speaks to their
similar childhoods (and confessing to becoming weepy during the
recording sessions because of it). It should come as no surprise to any
film music collector that the Abrams' imitation of Spielberg indirectly
causes Giacchino to channel John Williams' classic fantasy scores from
Close Encounters of the Third Kind to E.T. The
Extra-Terrestrial and even Jurassic Park. Giacchino burst
into the limelight in the scoring world with his robust music for the
"Medal of Honor" video games, the initial entry in that series
absolutely dominated by Williams' orchestral mannerisms. After being
labeled "the next John Williams" at the time, he branched out into a
television and film scoring career that largely abandoned that
connection, though his output remained strong.
Marking a return to Giacchino's admiration of Williams is the soundtrack for Super 8, a competent and sometimes very compelling orchestral work that is clearly rooted in the styles of yesteryear but also exposing its own inspiration in a few too many cues for a film score collector to be completely comfortable with it. The throwback aspect of the score exists in its strictly orchestral constructs and extremely melodic consistency. Giacchino formulates four distinct themes and remains very faithful to their development throughout the score. Each one develops in its instrumental domain and they begin to mingle, change shape, and overlap as the story's characters become increasingly intertwined. The composer does an expert job at choosing his placement for the themes, creating an outstanding sense of foreboding and resolution in appropriate narrative places. So often composers these days fail to shape their identities in an intelligent narrative that Super 8 is uniquely refreshing in this regard. For casual listeners, the culmination of these themes in the latter half of the score will be exhilarating and heartbreaking. For those with sizable soundtrack collections, however, Super 8 could potentially be an irritant in its reliance on not only Williams' prior works, but other sources as well. Additionally, the two primary character themes suffer from the rare but awkward phenomenon that results when the secondary idea is clearly superior to the primary one. Leading the score is the theme for the main boy character's family, its opening four-note phrases redemptive but a bit reminiscent of Giacchino's sentimental material for the "Lost" television series. This idea occupies the bulk of the main titles, accompanies some of the boy's discussions about his dead mother, and flourishes in the pivotal "Letting Go" departure scene at the end. Some listeners will find the main theme to be too sappy in its full ensemble performances, though its effectiveness can't be substantially questioned. Unfortunately, this theme is overshadowed by the far more lovely and memorable identity for Alice (or the children in sum). Introduced in "Acting Chops" but rollicking in "We'll Fix It in Post-Haste," this theme was used to promote the film and was initially mistaken by some to be the primary identity. The idea extends to the unused cue "Mom's Necklace" and a tense reference in the middle of "Neighborhood Watch - Fail" before becoming something of an interlude to the main theme in "Letting Go" and "Super 8 Suite." Whereas the main melody of Super 8 is a bit generic, the Alice theme is a clear winner, a switch from the Williams mould to the sensibility of James Horner's romanticism circa the early 1990's. A touch of the love theme from The Rocketeer joins several other standard Horner shifts and instrumental techniques for this stunning but underutilized theme. The exuberance of the brightly major-key idea in "We'll Fix It in Post-Haste" and its stunning depth at about 2:40 into "Letting Go" (along with the similarly massive performance in the last ninety seconds of "Super 8 Suite") are among the best material ever written by Giacchino. How this theme didn't evolve into representing the entire film is curious, for it's so clearly superior. The other two themes in Super 8 are very satisfying in their applications but not spectacular in and of themselves. The monster's theme is used frequently to establish a suspenseful atmosphere even in places where it is not present, including the opening bars of the main titles and suite. The rising three notes and falling fourth note of this theme run counter to the four notes of the main family theme and can easily be utilized by Giacchino as a counterpoint device in the base. The growling low brass performances of this idea, beginning in earnest in "Aftermath Class," are rather static throughout the score but necessarily one dimensional. The creature is sometimes afforded a whining violin note that lowers its pitch in that "sinking feeling" kind of way. When performed by low woodwinds, the theme will trigger your memory of the suspense material in Jurassic Park. The final theme in Super 8 is often in smart battle with the monster's identity, and it represents the true villains of the story (as anyone could predict), the American military. Immediately during "Aftermath Class," Giacchino pits the military and monster themes in successive battles, often switching between them in short order. The muscular idea for the military opens with five fanfare-like, typically brass-exclaimed notes before twisting itself into a complete theme that will remind collectors of the composer's 2003 score for the game "Secret Weapons Over Normandy." In its repeated opening phrase, however, it owes Williams for his villain idea from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. The most vibrant and lengthy performances of this theme can be heard in the tragic, snare-tapped "The Evacuation of Lillian." Together, the melodies of Super 8 are well-handled despite the strange dominance of the one for Alice. The filler material in Super 8 is where many more connections to Williams' most famous scores can be heard, with several techniques pointing not only to Jurassic Park but, not surprisingly, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Giacchino doesn't quite provide the same masterful complexity as the maestro, however, which might leave some listeners disappointed. Some of the suspense music is also detached and mundane compared to the score's highlights, the ten-minute cue "Creature Comforts" bringing the album presentation of Super 8 to a slow, sleep-inducing stop. Giacchino isn't afraid to use silence as a method of stirring trepidation, either, but this means that subtle references to the themes (and especially the one for the monster) can be extremely lightly drawn out for extended periods of time. The album, therefore, will test your patience at a total length of 78 minutes, though it does include the source-like "The Case" (cute synthesizer effects to emulate a theremin for the comedic, low budget zombie environment, but it's no competition for Ed Wood in terms of pizzazz) that is heard over the "movie within a movie" at the end of Super 8. A significant number of the cues from Giacchino's score could have been combined and shaved down to their highlights to create an outstanding 45 minute presentation. As it stands, none of the songs heard in the film is included and the score drags badly at several points. The product was delayed on CD until after audiences lost interest in the film at the theatres as well, leaving something of a sour note over the entire affair. Sound quality remains an issue with Giacchino's feature film scores, an incredibly flat and dull ambience making the music sound two rooms away and restraining the moments that should soar with vibrant energy. This issue is particularly pronounced in Super 8, with some of the fullest sequences perhaps unintentionally matching the archival sound of early 1980's scores. If Giacchino ever wants to actually match the engrossing tone of Williams' classics, perhaps he and his crew should shift the time they spend on conjuring cute, ridiculous cue titles to instead reworking the recording and mixing of these muted and very dry scores. Still, there are great moments on this album and it will make for a thorough souvenir for fans of the film, but like any score that features a secondary theme far more impressive than its primary one, you can't help but walk away from Super 8 strangely disappointed.
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 77:43
* not contained in the film
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert contains a list of performers and a long note from the director
about Giacchino and the score.
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