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ScoreKeeper Talks About Michael Giacchino's STAR TREK Score...
Greetings! ScoreKeeper here still seizing from the spectacle of science-fiction experienced yesternight at the Alamo Drafthouse in beautiful Austin, Texas. In case you haven’t heard, there was a bait-and-switch screening of J.J. Abrams’ STAR TREK (2009) with Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy, mind-melding our collective glee into an electrified euphoria the likes of which could not be immediately comprehended.
Reviews, bloggings, tweets, and reports about the new film are proliferating the net like Tribbles so I deemed it logical to weigh in on what has long been regarded as the backbone of the STAR TREK franchise…its music.
It must be painfully unnerving to tackle scoring duties on a new STAR TREK property. Following in the musical footsteps of such legends as Alexander Courage, Jerry Goldsmith, Leonard Rosenman, Fred Steiner, Gerald Fried, and many others, is a task much like piloting a starship through a debris-strewn mine field; one misstep results in total destruction while success is simply measured by getting out alive on the other side.
Upon hearing Michael Giacchino’s score for J.J. Abram’s STAR TREK last night I’m starting to reconsider that evaluation. Perhaps success could actually be measured by more.
It’s no secret I’m an ardent admirer of Michael Giacchino’s music. His scores for THE INCREDIBLES (2004), RATATOUILLE (2007), and SPEED RACER (2008) all cracked the top three on my Top Ten Best Scores lists for their respective years. He is a rare artist whose acrobatic compositional abilities are matched only by his proclivity for effective storytelling. While I hold his work in high esteem, I’m still dubious of each new upcoming score he’s slated to produce. I’m waiting – expecting even – for something mediocre to come from him. It’s going to happen. It’s bound to happen.
…maybe so. But not yet.
Michael Giacchino’s score for J.J. Abram’s STAR TREK is a real ear-opening, boldly-going, riveting trichotomy of quality composed music earning it’s placement among the ranks of the upper echelon of STAR TREK scores. I think a lot of people will be asking “Is it as good as Jerry Goldsmith’s music?” That may be a bit unfair just as it would be unfair to compare the new film itself to either the original series or any of its subsequent cinematic spawns. This is indeed something quite new, a fresh reboot with enormous potential for growth. Although rampant with a brand of compositional development Giacchino is well known for, I felt the score, as a whole, was largely expositional much like the arch of the film itself. The foundation has been set. Let the future begin!
There were three major components to the score that struck my ear upon my initial viewing of the film. The first is the deep underlying emotion running hilt to tip throughout the entire musical presence of the film. Even the bombastic action sequences were emotionally charged. A mere ten minutes into the film, I was reduced to tears and had only the music to blame.
Secondly, Giacchino’s primary TREK theme is cut from the same swath as other well-crafted themes heard throughout the history franchise yet remains remarkably original. It’s a theme for this STAR TREK yet it nestles comfortably among its popular brethren. I found myself humming it all day today remembering its key entrances in the film (there were many, and they are glorious).
Finally, the Romulan music was effectually primitive in design yet powerfully bombastic in its execution. It gave Nero a one-track-mind mentality rooted in a classic eye-for-an-eye revenge scenario. Always the connoisseur for percussion, Giacchino lathers thick layers of it during these raucous moments.
As much score as I soaked up, I have to admit the majority of the time I was succumb to the inexplicable elixir of the story, characters, and stunning visual effects. Like everyone else in the audience, my initial reaction was simply that. I am very much looking forward to getting the soundtrack, breaking it down, listening to individual pieces repeatedly, and ultimately viewing the film in its entirety once again. This will be a score worth revisiting and more importantly, worth building subsequent sequels upon.
If you’ve read the other reviews on this site from Harry, Quint, and Massawyrm, I ditto pretty much everything they’ve already said about the movie. Everybody in that theater had a memorable night and it wasn’t because who showed up, or the free popcorn and soda, or the free STAR TREK one-sheets signed by Leonard Nimoy…it was because we saw an amazingly worthwhile film sporting quality writing, acting, lighting, effects, and yes….scoring!
ScoreKeeper!!!
ScoreKeeper!!!
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what the fuck Scorekeeper..get some taste...he aint even a player compared to the likes of Thomas Newman
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stop wetting yourselves and speak intelligently about your experiences..bunch of fucking little girls breaking into tears..what is this a fucking Miley Cyrus concert?
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was very solid for season 1, but got a bit repetitive after that.
And yes, it's a TV show, but if you look at Mark Snow's work on The X-Files, I think it's safe to say that the guy treated almost every episode like a separate feature film, giving many eps their own distinct tune with key scores being replayed and worked upon throughout the series.
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she's cry tears though slitty eyes.
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Never heard him score anything which was that memorable and amazed how some people rate him so highly. I guess they have nowhere else to go on Trek as Goldsmith is sadly gone & Horner would be too expensive & uninterested anyway.
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Sol Kaplan & Gerard Fried » Tracks
The Ritual / Ancient Battle / 2nd Kroykah (6:09)
i also force my cousins aged 3 and 5 to fight to the death whilst listening to this -
That intro is damn fine scoring.
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That is all.
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smack bitch
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And that's saying a lot.
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Fringe probably has my favorite opening music over any show I've ever seen. It gives me chills every time. It's so well timed, and mysterious and fun, I love listening to it. JJ said it popped into his head, in its entirety, one night as he was getting into bed. Good call on that one.
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I was getting worried about the people who said that the score was not anything too memorable. I have a feeling they were just too caught up in the film to notice. Looking forward to May 8th!!!!
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Only if you've never heard it.
I'm just amazed that Giacchino has had time to sleep in the last few months, much less score STAR TREK, UP and LAND OF THE LOST *and* conduct at the Oscars. Good report, SK. -
I'm sure the movie is fine but good god it has provoked every single reviewer on this site to drop their professional facade and write like a 5 year old. Thanks for nothing Scorekeeper- I now know zip from your analysis of the score so much as you were having a total geekasm to actually do your job. Focus people...
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Did we forget the centerpiece of the whole Star Trek franchise with II and III?
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The only REAL saving grace for that movie
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Did it make an appearance as promised? Was it glorious? Comparable to his usage of the original Speed Racer theme? Any other themes from the show pop up?
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I was getting a bit worried as well that the music would pale in comparison to the other aspects of the film. Good to hear that the score holds up on its own.
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I have been underwhelmed by most scores in recent years. Some key sections in Batman Begins are great. LOTR was outstanding. I'm sure I'm overlooking something.
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And I'm telling you to go get the score to 'The Machinist' by Roque Banos. It's fucking incredible.
I mean it. Go get it. Right now. Amazon.com. GO. -
Remember - it doesn't have to be orchestral to be good, and if it doesn't have to be electronic it probably shouldn't be.
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STAR TREK 2 by James Horner. I still feel emotionally attached to that score.
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It was forgettable.
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How can you leave out James Horner on your list? His work on II was amazing
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the strange TOS music. Those high chorus-y voices whenever superior brainiac aliens showed up. Just awesome mood setting music
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That Amy Chasing character makes a good point. I like Giacchino's work. Look forward to hearing his new stuff for Star Trek.
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Better than Star Wars, Indy, Close Encounters, LOTRs, Best of all time bitches
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... it was so understated (not so bombastic as TMP score) and had the most beautiful main theme of any of the Star Trek movies.I have high hopes for this score, as I too am totally in love with his work on The Incredibles and Ratatoille.The biggest problems with the "new" summer tentpole films (particularly the superhero movies) is that none of the scores have matched up to Superman, or Danny Elfman's Batman, or Indiana Jones, etc, etc.What do I mean by that? Well, go and try to hum the a piece of the score to Iron Man or for the Spiderman flicks.People want to shit on Hans Zimmer and his various proteges, like Steve Jablonsky, but those guys give us scores with great themes.Think Gladiator or Pirates of the Caribbean, or any of the Bayhem flicks. Actually, Jablonsky gave us two great scores in The Island and Transformers, two scores that always find a place on my iPod.So the question is, ScoreKeeper, is this score rememberable, or hummable? Is it it Pirates or Transformers, or is it X-Men, Iron Man, or Spiderman?
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The Speed Racer score is incredible. Step past your initial bias.
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Yes, his work on the Wrath of Khan score is memorable. I'll give him that. And only that. The majority of his other work is a Frankenstein of thievery and recycling of past work, most of which is not his own.
If all artists are thieves, James Horner is the Clown Prince of Artistic Crime. -
It great idea to keep long dead franchise on life support by re-casting parts originally inhabited by good actors! It not like most of charm in original show came from the people playing the roles! DeForest Kelley? William Shatner? Who am they?! Me great idea am to remake "To Kill A Mockingbird" with Xac Efron as Atticus Finch! Martin Lawrence, him star as Tom Robinson! WASSUP?!
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Apr 08, 2009 1:51:01 PM CDT
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His work on Trek II is worthy of a mention no doubt, but if scorekeeper snubbed him because he noticed how he steals and recycles shamelessly like no other composer I can think of, I could not put up an argument.
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"gettin from there to here" Man, I hate to say it being into obscure German Industrial bands, but that song always gets me misty.
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wtf is up with these ads?!?
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It doesn't seem like these articles should be able to survive in the same environment as most of the stuff on here... I'm so glad they've found a way to coexist. This sounds like excellent news for Star Trek.
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1. The Motion Picture
2. The Wrath of Khan
3. The Undiscovered Country
Special mention for First Contact. -
And I dare you to say otherwise. Sure some themes are repeated, and any of the 'chase' music usually sounds pretty much the same, but he has consistently come up with great new themes for each season. I never thought I'd purchase the score to a TV show, but sure enough, I've got all three seasons and eagerly anticipate the 4th in May. Giacchino is clearly an amalgam of a few composers (John Williams and Bernard Hermann primarily), but it's nice that there's a composer out there making exciting and memorable film music in these modern times.
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Really? You're gonna give Leonard Rosenmann a free pass after he basically just rehashed his crappy LORD OF THE RINGS score for STAR TREK IV, then rehashed that rehash for ROBOCOP 2 (both times, I just expected dancing hobbits to pop out and dance with badly-rotoscoped Roman soldiers painted up to resemble "orcs"), but you'll completely neglect Horner's incredible WRATH OF KHAN score?
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and forget Horner and his plagarizing self, where was Cliff Eidelman on that list
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Apr 08, 2009 3:02:20 PM CDT
This review reads like damage control for a score no one can rem
by darthpigman
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I miss big themes in scores... we don't get too much of that anymore. The Pirates scores were amazing though, I love the way they evolved and introduced new themes throughout each movie.
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Yes.. Horner repeats himself.. BUT if you judge him just on Wrath of Khan only, he is genius. I love the contrast between the soft Enterprise scenes and the fast beat khan scenes- as they go back and forth and create tension. Is it getting hot in here?
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Yeah, his TWOK score is pretty good, as is Aliens, and Willow, but every score he's written in the past twenty years has been a rehash of those scores. Scorekeeper, if you don't keep up with Bear McCreary's blog, he made a post recently detailing his score plans for the rest of this year. There is some great news regarding the remaining BSG score albums. The fourth season release is going to be a two disc set where the first disc covers everything from "He That Believeth In Me" (4x01, or 4x03 if you count Razor as 4x01 and 4x02) to "Islanded in a Stream of Stars" (4x18). The second disc will be basically the entire score from Daybreak Parts 1 and 2. That sounds fucking awesome. Additionally, there will be a further album with the scores from Razor and The Plan. Finally, there will also be an album released with the score from the Caprica miniseries. He is also considering releasing further albums with previously unreleased tracks from BSG. IMNSHO, screw Giacchino, Bear McCreary is already a better composer.
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Apr 08, 2009 5:44:18 PM CDT
The word "hack" is abused... but Horner actually is one
by mattmanreturns
His Willow and Rocketeer scores were great, but from the early nineties on, he had nothing new to offer.
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You know you can appreciate more than one composer, right? Freakin talk back chimps always think it's necessary to dis something else to praise something. You're right on about McCreary incidentally, only he doesn't need to be the only great televsion composer out there. Giacchino does great work. The two don't need to be compared or thrown into some kind of adolescent fan boy metaphorical cage match together.
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thanks i heard it...you have me confused with someone who doesnt actually know what they're talking about..
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Completely agreed. The two can co-exist in peace and harmony.
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But yeah, he hasn't done a truly great score since Braveheart back in '95.
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You called a very well received score "dog shit" and offered no reasoning for your statement. Troll?
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Count me among the fans of Roque Banos' score to The Machinist. It's literally like a lost Bernard Herrmann score to the original Twilight Zone. When I first heard it, and heard the quavering Theremin, I practically fell over. Incredibly creepy, atmospheric music of a kind you just don't hear much anymore.
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But does every reviewer on AICN have to be a splooger too?
Not directing this just at Scorekeeper (who's review is well done) but at the general lack of pit-bull nastiness at this site.
Come on. Gulp some Hatorade. -
Ah, you know what you can do.
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Apr 08, 2009 9:43:17 PM CDT
Horner's Rocketeer Score is an AWFUL LOT like his TWoK score...
by dderidex
Seriously, if you listen to them back and back, you can identify a LOT of queues re-used quite clearly. And the overall style is completely unmistakable.
I'm going to have to go with the popular opinion - Horner IS a hack. A very good one, actually, and has produced some incredible work...but he's a hack, no doubt. Takes a few good ideas, steals a lot of other good ideas, and keeps re-using what "works".
That's fine and all, and in a series may actually make good sense. And, heck, he does certainly come up with some 'hummable tunes' (at least two pieces each in 'Rocketeer' and 'TWoK' are immediately recognizable and easy to humm).
While I definitely liked the 'First Contact' intro (Goldsmith) and the 'Undiscovered Country' soundtrack - it's all pretty good (Eidelman), you have to admit, better composers they may be, but they aren't making "hummable tunes". Is that important? I dunno - maybe. -
I havn't seen any star trek movies so i made a point of starting from the start a few months ago. When I got to the second one I though HEY! That's The Score to Krull! I love that score! and I do love that score, but they do contain the exact same cues...
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Caution to everyone else .. the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin Texas was the ONLY theater found in the greater Austin area that used sufficient projector lighting in a newspaper sponsored consumer check a few years back. Their sound system is equally well-calibrated (theaters boast of expensive sound systems, but then don't bother to keep them calibrated and tuned). By the way, one rough way to tell if your local movie-house, like most, are cheating by using lower wattage projector bulbs - look at white objects on the screen. White should be brilliantly pure white - not a hint of yellow.
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expert_40, I too have warmed to Zimmer over the past few years. His score for Kung Fu Panda, with John Powell, was my favourite of last year.
Lost's themes do repeat, but they're meant to. The whole show is about echoes and callbacks and temporal loops, so the music has to reflect that. Whenever they do they're usually subtly changed so he's not just dropping old stuff in, but it's meant to be a series of repeated motifs. It perfectly fits the structure of the show. Yet another reason why it's the best thing on TV, and he's the most consistently interesting composer in the business. -
I thought it was bland, and it sounded small too. Jay Chattaway was a better composer for the TV shows than McCarthy. GENERATIONS sounded like a tv episode.
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That score sustained the movie in so many places. And it was innovative too. And I do love Goldsmith's VOYAGER theme too, as an aside.
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I've gotten into this argument before. I did like Giacchino's score to the first season of Lost, but somewhere in the second season I found that his scoring started to strike me as more farcical than dramatic (much like the writing on the series, I've made my disappointment with the series known previously). McCreary, on the other hand, consistently turns out brilliant work that continually grows and challenges not only his own abilities as a composer, but the audiences' ears too. McCreary's score for the BSG finale, Daybreak, was more complex than not just everything else on TV, including anything Giacchino has done, but probably 99% of films too. Going back a few episodes to "Someone to Watch Over Me" gives you an example of diegetic music in TV that is so tightly wound with the narrative that it is nearly unprecedented outside of film. To me, the gap between McCreary and Giacchino is like the gap between Bach and Telemann. Once you have one, why would you even want to bother with the other?
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LAND O' THE LOST. With LOL, I'm a little afraid it'll be like the SPEED RACER score, which I wasn't crazy about. For me, the quality of a score is measured in how it enhances the film and how it tells the film's story on its' own. That's why THE INCREDIBLES is one of my all time favorite scores and certainly my favorite Giacchino work, which is saying a lot because I've dug all his stuff except for SPEED RACER. And he works perfectly with Abrams. ALIAS, LOST, MI III (score far superior to the film), the CLOVERFIELD roar (again, far superior to the film). Gotta hear FRINGE.
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STII still gives me chills. Plus Titanic and Krull are normally on my playlist somewhere.
I think Goldsmiths theme got a bit overplayed towards the end. -
I've always liked the music on Fringe and hoped the score of ST would be as good. For me outside of Courage, Goldsmith, and Horner I've always thought ST music as not so good. Especially in the TV shows after TNG. I thought the music sing song like with no real melody and actually slowing the action on the screen down. Uninspired is the word I'd use. This may be because I read once that Rick Berman didn't like score music and thought it intrusive. Well it showed. So I hope this stuff gets your blood pumping as much as the 3rd trailer's music ( not from the film as I understand which is too bad because I really liked it ).
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TNG music as better than late TNG music. Probably Berman's influence showing. If you like that show go back and listen to the early episodes. A much better reflection of what's going on with the screen.
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Yeah, Horner steals from a lot of sources, but I was shocked at how close The Rocketeer theme was to Bill Conti's "The Right Stuff" theme - almost note for note in parts.
Oh, and John Williams borrows heavily from Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughn Williams. -
When I teach my film intro classes, I always make a stop for Elmer Bernstein and compare him with Goldsmith and Williams as well as Eric Korngold (1938 Robin Hood). Bernstein's music in To Kill A Mockingbird is sublime. While almost every composer mentioned on this board has a musical score which can be played extracinematically, it MUST also succeed in moving the movie along in some way or another.
A good example of great music - poor theatre music, is Alex North, whose CLEOPATRA was beautiful in orchestration, but brought the action to a halt several times during the movie.
Also, thematic invariance can account for some of Horner's more familiar stuff, but he writes a tune you cannot miss, and that works against him - Bicentennial Man, Mrs. Doubtfire, STII&III all have pieces of each other. But Williams does the same thing in Close Encounters, ET, Superman, and the NBC News Theme.
Goldsmith, to my ear, is the only one who fabricates, with few exceptions, new cloth each time. His Klingon Theme, for example is noticeably different, from movie to movie, with increasing elaboration, until we get to STVI when it becomes interwoven with Kirk's theme at the end. And how amazingly different is ST from Patton, or Logan's Run! Yes, he borrows, but so did Gounod - and from the best. His voyager is a paean to Wagner's Tannhauser. The image is the memory.
No, none of these composers are bad. Many are great. But Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein, to me, are the best of the 20th Century. So, notwithstanding the fine feelings Horner's work evokes, it's Goldsmith who is the most consistently original, elastic, and motivating (to use some film terms) for the film experience of Star Trek.
That said, I enjoyed the hell out of the new ST movie - score and all! -
How this assclown gets so much accolades is beyond reason. Worst score i have had the displeasure to endure for quite a while.
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Giving Orcus a visit in the underworld?
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