through the years, and unfortunately most of them
have proven to be hopelessly lame. Production on the Chinese-American
hybrid flick
essentially told the same story in 1994, and it somehow
defied poor critical and public response on the way to a 2002 sequel. In
the plot, a boy who is a social outcast is guided by nature and a wise
man with a book into a fantasy world where the boy must help save the
day in a timeless, distant land. With
, Hong
Kong director Ronnie Yu forces upon the audience the same presentation
of good versus evil that requires fine execution to be successful when
compared to its peers. Shoddy effects, obvious overacting, and
characters (and worlds) that nobody really cares about all plagued
, but one of its redeeming factors was a
large-scale orchestral score by composer and orchestrator Don Davis.
Best known for his orchestration work for James Horner, Davis was
branching out into his own composing career in the mid-1990's, and his
involvement with the production of
began
early. Introduced by the filmmakers to the concepts in 1994, Davis wrote
a concert piece inspired by the film for the Breckenridge Music Festival
in 1995. His continued involvement during pre-production and photography
allowed him to become very familiar with the characters and concepts of
the fantasy world in the story, and it also allowed him to write his
material at a leisurely pace. A 1996 album release of the score by the
budding specialty label Prometheus (with Davis' usual creative track
titles) preceded the wide 1997 opening of the film. Despite the movie's
problems in theatres, the album remained popular, however, because it
was among the first releases of Davis' compositional work, and with his
career launched soon after by the franchise of
The diversity of Davis' early career spanned a wide
variety of different scoring styles. In the mid-1990's, many listeners
were only familiar with Davis' music of an electronic nature, and even
when
The Matrix rolled along at the end of the decade, few knew
that Davis had a lushly romantic and harmonically heroic side. In the
case of
Warriors of Virtue, there is much pomp to be impressed
by, with several rousing orchestral and choral themes. Many of the noble
action sequences, though lacking the creative refinement of his later
works, are extremely satisfying. The problem with this score, if you
could even term it as such, is that Davis' work as one of Horner's
orchestrators betrays him throughout the work. This score easily belongs
to the same family of Horner's fantasy/adventure music as
The
Pagemaster,
The Rocketeer, and
Krull. Because of these
extremely close stylistic ties to Horner's trademarks, it was difficult
at its release to exactly pinpoint Davis' own personal compositional
style. At the same time, however, you can't point a finger at any
particular overarching aspect of
Warriors of Virtue and declare
that it takes too much from any one other particular score. Its
personality is derived from the purely ambiguous and adventurous fun
that often accompanies Horner's music for the children's fantasy genre.
Little snippets of counterpoint here and there are clearly references to
Horner's usual habits, and these moments of replication most often
recall
The Rocketeer. The balance between sweeping adventure
themes, romantic interludes, and prancing kiddie rhythms for lighter
moments of character interaction adheres closely to the Horner formula
in a general sense. One place where Davis does deviate, however, is in
the strict coherence of his thematic development. There are several
major ideas (among minor, recurring motifs) that grace
Warriors of
Virtue, but they aren't as neatly wrapped as those in the Horner
equivalents. The score's early offerings are, unfortunately, its
weakest; it takes a long time for
Warriors of Virtue to get
rolling on album though the generous length of the product forgives the
slow start with engaging material that begins in "The Vortex and the
Dare" and continues thereafter.
The score's themes are only provided in fragmented
hints in the first seven cues, with introduction cues that seem
surprisingly understated. But with "The Lifespring Rhapsody" and "Forces
of Nature," Davis unleashes his themes as the opening volley of nearly
an hour of symphonic and choral harmony. The title theme for
Warriors
of Virtue represents the fantasy world, and it receives full
treatments at 1:40 into "The Lifespring Rhapsody" and, of course, at the
outset of "Theme of Tao." Secondary themes are difficult to definitively
pin to individual characters, though the score has a heroic theme often
accompanied by choir that announces itself with elegance at the end of
"Encounter of the Roo Kind" (and no, the theme doesn't seem to represent
the Roo Warriors in any of their other cues). The princess Elysia and
the evil Komodo both appear in cues that are surprisingly weak on volume
and development. An action motif introduced in "Forces of Nature" is
grand compensation, though, with some swashbuckling spirit raising
memories of
The Pagemaster. During the score's most robust and
harmonic material, concentrated in six cues between "The Lifestring
Rhapsody" and "Encounter of the Roo Kind," Davis draws the best
performances he can out of the generally underwhelming Denver Symphony
Orchestra and its chorus. The score loses cohesion thereafter, though
early portions of "Planet of the Roo-Warriors" feature some of the
dynamic dissonance that fans of
The Matrix will appreciate. On
the whole, Davis' music here is indeed derivative of James Horner's
works for the same genre, but
Warriors of Virtue is entertaining
nevertheless. The tragedy-stricken sequel film a few years later did not
even employ a composer, with music tracked in as needed. The commercial
song album for the film only included four tracks of Davis' material, so
score fans should only seek one of the two specialty score-only albums
available. The initial Prometheus release of 1996 is long gone, but
Buysoundtrax (the more recent offshoot the same label) quietly re-issued
the same contents on a very limited, 1,000-copy product in 2014 with a
mastering of the score's mix that incorporates improved technologies.
The score is an entertaining diversion that remains one of Davis' less
appreciated achievements.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Don Davis reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.2
(in 10 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.06
(in 44,938 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
