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| Haslinger |
Underworld: Awakening: (Paul Haslinger) As long as
each of its successive, brainless entries keeps making money, why put a
merciful end to the
Underworld franchise? Surely there has to be
something more redeeming in this concept than simply seeing a hot
brunette in a black leather outfit kicking godless ass. Or is there?
That tool of hotness is once again Kate Beckinsale in the fourth movie
of this series,
Underworld: Awakening. She has evolved into a
hybrid vampire that is impervious to sunlight and telepathically
connected to her lover and daughter. In the twelve years during which
she was imprisoned in cryogenic suspension, humanity had decided that it
had endured enough of this vampire and lycan nonsense. When not
annihilating the "non-humans," men used a company called Antigen to work
on a cure for these groups of nasty community-wreckers. To the dismay of
the vampires, however, it turns out that this creepy company is actually
controlled by the lycans, who are using its research to make themselves
more physically powerful. The daughter of Beckinsale's character,
Selene, contains the genetic key to mastering all of these evolutionary
changes, and her mother has to rescue her, fight off a new troll-like
lycan, and conduct an ass-whooping of immense property destruction to
help free her lover and save her suffering people. Unlike the previous
Underworld movies, which contained at least a greater dose of
existential and interpersonal intrigue,
Underworld: Awakening is
a more conventional action flick. Its production style hasn't changed
significantly, blue hues still dominant and a nasty metallic edge to
much of its sound effects and music. Handling the first and third scores
in the franchise was industrial metal composer Paul Haslinger, and it's
refreshing to see the artist continue his affiliation with the franchise
for which he established the musical direction. His score for the
original entry was an extremely abrasive but appropriately pounding
balance of ball-busting rhythmic force and vaguely troubled tonal
resonance, including the franchise's one and only love theme of note.
After a decent diversion to Marco Beltrami for
Underworld
Evolution in 2006, Haslinger returned to provide more conventional,
streamlined music for
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans in 2009, and
that trend away from the composer's metal roots continues with the
increasingly orchestral stance of his music in
Underworld:
Awakening.
The basic foundation of Haslinger's music for the
original
Underworld endures in this fourth movie in the
franchise, but its trademark instrumentation is tempered by orchestral
techniques that reside far closer to current blockbuster convention.
Grating metallic effects, thrashing percussion, dominant bass tones, and
whining electric guitars are still active players in
Underworld:
Awakening, but their impact has been diminished by the greater role
of an orchestra and choir. With his approach to
The Three
Musketeers in 2011, Haslinger confirmed that he was, by choice or
necessity, steering his career towards the sound made famous by Hans
Zimmer and his Remote Control production house. Thus, you hear him
providing muscular string ostinatos for vampires and lycans while
exploring melodramatic tonality for the sensitive character scenes. His
execution of these techniques is rather simplistic, reflecting
The
Three Musketeers in its relative lack of sophistication and sounding
like a clone of Trevor Rabin (but without that composer's knack for
catchy themes). In an ambient sense, Haslinger earned his pay with
Underworld: Awakening, handling each facet of the score with
appropriately brutal or sad tones. The "Main Titles" and "Find Her and
Destroy Her" are typical RC marches of rhythmic bravado. The piano
loneliness of the prior scores' slower moments returns in "This is Not
One of Us" and "You Came Back," the latter a Mark Snow-like cue. The
best moments in the score, ironically, are those in which Haslinger
reprises the ugliest mayhem from the first score, the pair of "The
Uber-Lycan" and "A New Dawn" finally tapping that original, raw energy
of a mostly synthetic nature. But the problem that has plagued these
scores from the very start has been cohesion, and
Underworld:
Awakening once again meanders along without forming any kind of
narrative arc. There are no prominent themes once again, the popular use
of "Eternity and a Day" as the love theme in the first score only
suggested briefly in "The Melancholy of Resistance" (with subtle female
voice mixed periodically in the cue for single notes) and the primary
theme from
Underworld still largely absent from the sequels
despite the direct line of narrative in the stories. Like
Underworld:
Rise of the Lycans, Haslinger teases listeners with passages that
almost combine his uniquely electronic mannerisms with the RC sound in
an ultimate hybrid mixture (which would seem appropriate, given the plot
of these movies), but he never follows that path. A score-only album
with three compatible songs at the end may be a guilty pleasure for
some, but it doesn't advance the franchise's music in any coherent
direction.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
