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| Arnold |
Tomorrow Never Dies: (David Arnold) If one thing is
certain about Pierce Brosnan's tenure as British agent James Bond, it's
the superiority of
Tomorrow Never Dies. Everything clicked in
this, the second of his films as 007. His performance reached back to
the confidence of Sean Connery, the love interest came packaged as
Michelle Yeoh (who is more Bond's equal than just another conquest), a
previous flame's death provokes a malice in Bond loyal to the books'
original intent, the villain is charmingly enthusiastic and has a cool
new stealth weapon as a toy, and David Arnold's score combined the best
of the John Barry years with the younger composer's techno-saavy
sensibilities. While
Goldeneye had revived the series by becoming
the first $100 million grossing Bond film,
Tomorrow Never Dies
was far better packaged and drew greater interest from hardcore fans of
the franchise's classics. With John Barry now out of the picture
(despite his seeming renewed interest in scoring another Bond film
during the Brosnan years), Arnold was a perfect successor. His love of
the franchise and knack for imitating the expansive style of Barry in
his early scores, not to mention his British heritage, made him the
logical choice. And fans weren't disappointed. The score than Arnold
assembled for
Tomorrow Never Dies is a sophisticated and
intelligent tribute to the classic Barry scores while pushing the
envelope with synthetic rhythms and drum pads to aide the traditional
orchestra in joining Bond in a rapidly evolving technological age. The
trademark action style that Arnold established in
Stargate and
Independence Day is combined with a distinct return to the
flamboyant style of the jazzy Bond scores of the 1960's, and with the
presence of the synthetic elements native to Arnold's roots in the rock
genre, every variety of Arnold fan had something to look forward. Arnold
would become the franchise's regular voice, allowing the subsequent
films to really define his career (with very few notable scores for
non-Bond films mixed in between). He would continue pushing the
synthetic side of his music for the franchise until a somewhat
dissatisfying score for
Die Another Day would pull Arnold back to
the combo style of
Tomorrow Never Dies in the outstanding
Casino Royale.
Arnold was obviously keenly aware that the Bond frachise's
scores had their own unique formula while Barry was in charge, and that
formula would continue here. The franchise theme by Monty Norman is
quoted liberally in
Tomorrow Never Dies, with its incorporation
ranging from full-blown three-minute tributes to clever counterpoint
against the new themes for the film. Arnold's full expressions of the
Norman theme are extremely astute in an instrumental sense. Even the
opening fifteen seconds of the score offers brass and cymbal accents
true to Barry's introductions. The muted trumpets, solo flute, and
electric guitar performances in "Company Car" provide the most true and
entertaining modern performance of the Norman concept available. This
three-minute cue establishes a standard by which fans and students of
the franchise can worship and study. Acoustically, the recording is
flawless. Aside from the statements of Norman's theme throughout the
score, Arnold wrote one of the franchise's best title songs and
integrated its theme extremely well throughout the entire score. With
all the wailing brass flair of
Goldfinger, his title theme is
both seductively alluring and strikingly defiant, an easily memorable
aspect of the film. In the opening action sequence before the credits
("White Knight"), Arnold introduces the theme with nobility at the 7:10
mark (in between ample development of Norman's theme). This theme
punctuates many of the action sequences and is given an Eastern
personality in "Kowloon Bay" before a last monumental statement for
strings and bold brass counterpoint at the resolution of the film. A
theme for Teri Hatcher's role as the villain's wife and former Bond
lover is provided twice in
Tomorrow Never Dies. As they reunite,
Arnold allows the Barry-like idea to flourish with the full ensemble
(once again in layered strings under brass counterpoint) before a solo
woodwind echos accompany her demise. A deliberate, pounding motif for
the villain Elliot Carver and his stealth ship is sparsely utilized
throughout the score (its fullest appearance is at 3:55 into "The
Sinking of the Devonshire"), though it receives some intriguing, less
obvious exploration in "Underwater Discovery." If the score for
Tomorrow Never Dies has a weakness, it's in the largely
understated musical representation for Carver, as well as other "badguy"
elements such as in "Doctor Kaufman."
To counter the theme for Carver's wife earlier in the
film, Arnold writes a theme for Michelle Yeoh's agent and the Eastern
locations of the story. It's only receives brief treatment, but it is
quite gorgeous on solo guitar and piano in the early portions of "Bike
Shop Fight" and "Kowloon Bay." A full rendition in the latter cue,
merging with the title theme, is a highlight of the score. Faint hints
of this theme come through in the very last minute of the score, though
this progression seems to be a nod to Barry's
You Only Live
Twice. And that brings up another important point about
Tomorrow
Never Dies: the many references to previous scores in the franchise.
In the opening battle, Arnold states a fragment of
From Russia With
Love. The following cue offers brass wails identical to later action
sequences in
Goldfinger. In both "White Knight" and more
obviously at 0:45 into "Hamburg Break In," Arnold quotes the five-note
bass sequence that preceded Tina Turner's song for
Goldeneye,
arguably the most memorable element from the soundtrack of that film. He
would not make the same number of references in his scores for the
subsequent Brosnan/Bond films, though he does make a clever reference to
the title theme for
Tomorrow Never Dies during a conversational
cue after Bond's early rescue in
Die Another Day. In retrospect,
Tomorrow Never Dies is a much better score than many gave it
credit for being at the time. Some listeners were turned off by the
extensive synthetic percussion used in "Back Seat Driver" and "Hamburg
Break Out," among a few others, and these cues are indeed less effective
outside the context of the film (where they come in conflict with the
better balance of the surrounding material). But the varied, slapping
percussion of "Bike Chase" is a perfect combination of both worlds, and
its highly effective sound would set the stage for cues like the one for
the opening chase sequence in
Casino Royale. For the most part,
the balance in mixing in
Tomorrow Never Dies is outstanding, and
the gorgeous piano solos in several cues are testimony to this clarity.
Subsequent Arnold scores tended to get muddy in their rowdy action cues,
especially in
Die Another Day, though a total lack of theme in
that later score is the greater problem.
As anyone can expect, not everything with
Tomorrow
Never Dies went well. First and foremost, the song situation would
be very dissatisfying for both Arnold and Bond fans alike. While the
recording of the title song by k.d. lang would match the style and theme
of Arnold's score with incredible cohesion and effectiveness, the
producers of the film saw fit to hire a bigger name to provide a
replacement song for the traditional opening credits sequence. This move
was unfortunate not only because of Arnold's song was superior and in
spirit of the franchise, but also because of lang's sulty voice and
spirited performance. The replacement song is performed by Sheryl Crow,
whose popularity at the time was seen as an asset, but whose beach-bum
voice and lazy performance was a disgrace to the film. The video game
score for
Tomorrow Never Dies would heavily favor the use of
Arnold's song theme, retitled "Surrender," over the presence of Crow's
song. With critics, fans, and producers all easily recognizing the
superiority of the lang song, Arnold was rewarded with the opportunity
to write his own song for
The World is Not Enough two years later
(before suffering from extraordinary frustration trying to adapt
Madonna's non-thematic song into the score for
Die Another Day).
A more minor criticism of
Tomorrow Never Dies responds to the
fact that Arnold only used his trademark, beautiful choir for a short
snippet of "The Sinking of the Devonshire," though given that this cue
sounds awkward in its sudden shift to
Stargate during the
slow-motion sinking and death sequence, that's not necessarily a
negative. A truly major problem with
Tomorrow Never Dies,
however, was its album release. Much to the angst of Arnold, a hectic
and disorganized post-production schedule for the film caused the music
to be recorded chronologically in small portions over a matter of many
months. As a result, the original 1997 album release by A&M Records
could only feature the score material that had been mixed and mastered
from the first half of the film. The entire last third of the score was
missing from this product, including all of the Eastern-flavored cues
and the pivotal "Bike Chase" and "All in a Day's Work" music of over ten
minutes. This omission, which didn't make sense to consumers at the
time, combined with the replacement of lang's song from the title
credits, caused Bond fans to go stir crazy immediately.
After much fuss and delay, controversy and discussion,
most of the remaining music from the film was finally made available on
a commercial release from Chapter III Records in 2000 (along with a
concurrent release of Tommy Tallarico's score for the
Tomorrow Never
Dies video game). At the time,
The World is Not Enough was
failing to muster the same approval as its predecessor, and the latter
film's release date forced Chapter III to hold back the expanded version
of
Tomorrow Never Dies by several weeks. Despite providing 26
minutes of score not available on the previous album, the Chapter III
product does have its share of flaws. Although the packaging and press
information advertised it as being "complete," it's actually missing
several important pieces of music from the film. One major omission is
the track "Station Break," the four-minute cue that plays as Bond takes
Elliot Carver off the air and Arnold provides a darkly dramatic
performance of the love theme that foreshadows an uncertain future for
the Paris character. Ironically, this cue appeared in full on the 1997
album. Additionally, several very short snippets of music remain missing
on album, including the film's ending to "White Knight." The second
major drawback to the expanded album is the lack of the k.d. lang song.
None of the songs on the original album appears on the expanded volume,
likely due to financial reasons. The eleven-minute interview with Arnold
at the end of the 2000 album is interesting; the questions are
intelligent and the interview is mixed nicely with some of Arnold's
cues. But it's not something you'll find yourself listening to a second
time. A perfect album could have resulted if the interview were dumped
in favor of "Station Break" and "Surrender," but failing that, fans of
the film and franchise are forced to own both products. The sound
quality on both albums is equally vibrant. For the most hardcore of
fans, there do exist 2-CD bootlegs that are indeed complete, featuring
the isolated DVD score, the two songs, and bonus material totalling over
140 minutes in length. Overall,
Tomorrow Never Dies remains ahead
of
Casino Royale as the definitive David Arnold entry in the
James Bond franchise. Perhaps it is no coicidence that the best film of
the Brosnan era featured the best score during that period.
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- Music as Written for Film: *****
- Music as Heard on 1997 Album: ***
- Music as Heard on 2000 Album: ****
- Overall: ****
| Bias Check: |
For David Arnold reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.47
(in 15 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.28
(in 43,413 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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