John Scalzi - Sound + Vision: Scores That Make Their Science Fiction Films
Last Friday I happened to be in New York City and with some friends went to a screening of the 1927 Fritz Lang science fiction classic, Metropolis. The showing was accompanied by the Manhattan Sinfonietta performing a new score by Argentine composer Martin Matalon. I say the word "new" advisedly, since it was was composed in 1993; however this presentation was the U.S. premiere of the score, so it was certainly new enough to me.
Although a silent film, Metropolis has not been without music before, mind you; a complete musical score was written for it by German film composer Gottfried Huppertz when it was released. The score became essential for later film historians: Metropolis has been so chopped over its history that one of the only ways we know what's missing is to look at the score and see where the holes are (some of the final missing bits of the movie were only recently found in Argentina). Since the 1980s, composing or arranging music for Metropolis seems to be a growth industry -- it's been done five times by folks other than Huppertz or Matalon.
Going back to the Matalon score, I thought it was interesting if ultimately not especially successful; the instrumentation of the Sinfonietta was appropriate, with a mish-mash of electronic and acoustic instruments, and for a fair part of the time, the score matched what was going on up on the screen, particularly the effectively cacophonous opening, in which the visuals of a futuristically industrial city were accompanied by the slamming beats of drummers. But the rest of the time, the music went blandly electronic, which to my mind was no good. Matalon's score was ambitious and interesting, but ultimately it's not right for the movie.
Why It Matters
And yes, of course, as with any movie -- it matters. Science fiction
like any genre gets a kick from the music filmmakers graft onto it,
because it can act to heighten the emotional impact of what you're
watching on screen. To register the difference for yourself, I suggest
the following exercise: Go rent (or buy, I'm not picky) the 1931
Universal Pictures version of Frankenstein and the 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein.
The 1931 edition barely has music in it (the compser, Bernhard Kaun,
went uncredited), and for that reason -- among a number of others --
the movie seems flat to modern viewers. By 1935, however, Hollywood had
figured out the whole "film score" thing, and as a result -- again,
among many other things -- Bride of Frankenstein is a richer,
fuller and better audience experience than its prequel (and indeed, is
overall a far better film, but that's a subject for another column
entirely). For modern moviewatchers, it really is a night and day
experience.
Listening to Matalon's ambitious, but flawed, score got me thinking of the science fiction film scores that really make a difference for their movies. The most obvious one, of course, is Star Wars, whose themes by John Williams are so monumentally and monolithically successful that at this point you couldn't get away from them if you tried. But I present that one example to get it out of the way; there are other and in some ways better examples as well. Let me offer you a few:
Planet of the Apes (1968)
This
percussive and discordant score by Jerry Goldsmith is one of the true
classics, not only of science fiction, but of film scoring in general,
and landed Goldsmith an Oscar nomination. Watch the movie again and
note how the music hits all the right notes, especially during the run
through the fields. Then watch the 2001 version and note how Danny Elfman's score, while competent, is nowhere nearly as effective, or affecting (and I say that as a huge Danny Elfman fan).
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Bernard
Herrmann (who for film and music buffs needs no introduction) used not
one but two theremins in this score, giving science fiction its
signature sound, as it were, and also in the process creating one of
Hollywood's first nearly fully electronic scores. I feel very sorry for
Tyler Bates, who is scoring the upcoming 2008 remake; there's almost
nothing he can do to make a score as memorable or influential as
Herrmann's, and I wonder if he's even going to try.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Not every perfect science fiction score is written for the film -- in 2001,
director Stanley Kubrick famously and creatively married existing
composed works with his images and did such a spectacular job of it
that from now until the end of time Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach
Zarathustra" will be forever associated with the film. Ironically, the
film did have a complete score written for it, by composer Alex North,
who had scored Kubrick's film Spartacus;
the music in the film was originally placeholder music. But then
Kubrick decided he liked the placeholder music more than North's score,
and kept it -- and then forgot to tell North, who learned about it when
he actually saw the film. Which was a pretty cold way to treat the (at
that time) five-time Oscar-nominated composer. That score was finally
released on CD just before North's death in 1991. Having listened to
North's score, I can say it's very good... but Kubrick was right to go
with the music he did.
A question for you: What science fiction film scores are memorable for you, either positively or negatively? Tell me what sounds work -- or don't -- for your science fiction visions.
Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies as well as the novels Old Man's War and Zoe's Tale, which was released this week. His column appears every Thursday
Forbidden Planet! Such a successful science-fiction score, even Saturn is copying it now.
The greatest for me is Vangelis' extraordinary score for Blade Runner. It's almost a crime that the Final Cut DVD box didn't have an isolated score track.
(stretching a point)
BOC's Veteran of the Psychic Wars, voila: flashback to Heavy Metal. Works for me.
Oh, and five freakin' tones in the Pythagorean (un-tempered) scale 9:10:8:4:6 ? Look around, wonder "where's the mother ship" from CE3K. Curse you John Williams, curse you forever!
One of the greatest scores for me, even if (or because, I´m not entirely shure^^) it is more rhythm than melody is the one from Terminator.
One of the worst ones is the fugly pop sound of "Ladyhawke" (ok it´s Fantasy, but it instantly came to mind and I had to get it out of my system)
Plus side:
*Aliens
*new Battlestar Galactica
*Excalibur
*A Clockwork Orange
Hard to think of SF movie music I "hated". If I didn't like the movie, I wasn't paying attention to the music anyway. If I did like it, then bad music didn't take me out of it enough to matter.
While John Williams' original Star Wars soundtrack was fine, his style (or presence) has narrowed the field ever since. I looked through all my soundtrack music and found very few additional SFnal subjects:
* Donny Darko
* Dune (Toto/Eno - some excellent stuff here)
* Ghost in the Shell
* Solaris (Artemiev, but it's the Bach everyone remembers)
* Solaris (Cliff Martinez)
I would not remember music that didn't work for me - and that would include bad scores and themes.
The most memorable & influential for me:
#1: 2001: A Space Odyssey.
#2: the title theme from Terminator. Once I hear that music, I'm compelled to watch at least Terminator 1 and Terminator 2 again.
#3: the original Star Wars sound track, which evokes all those scenes I so loved the first dozen times I saw it.
Dear Tripod,
One SF soundtrack I think is highly overlooked is Cliff Martinez' "Solaris" soundtrack. Amazing use of gamelan and orchestral pieces add vivid atmospherics to a very underappreciated movie.
Gataca's soundtrack is pretty dang good, too.
Now best soundtrack ever? Stewart Copeland's for "Rumblefish."
I completely agree about the importance of music in SF films (I almost sent this in as a suggested topic!).
Danny Elfman might not have been able to save the Planet of the Apes remake, but his Batman score and other work more than makes up for it.
I also think that Williams score for Star Wars is a great case in point. The score for the first film was a phenomena. Can anyone even hear the 20th Century Fox fanfare without expecting Star Wars to start? I'm always disappointed when a different movie comes on.
But that's not the case for Phantom Menace. They tried to create the same type of phenomena around the Darth Maul fight scene music, but it didn't have the same impact as the original themes. The music couldn't have saved the movie, but I always wonder if part of the hatred for the film is a subliminal dislike of the music. It was for me.
For me, Mr. Scalzi mentions three of the the four kings of the SF film score race, Huppertz' s score for METROPOLIS, Goldsmith's PLANET OF THE APES, and Herrmann's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.
But Leonard Rosenman's score for FANTASTIC VOYAGE is utterly, absolutely...well, fantastic. I've always liked how he saves the music until the miniturized people actually enter the body. Modernistic and atonal, with nary an electronic instrument in it. This is the future, done old school style.
Rosenman was a genius. Every bit the equal of Williams, Goldsmith and Herrmann.
Several good examples so far, but I should also point out that Star Trek films have had an effective series of scores - interwoven, of course, with several TV series.
The film that comes most to mind is "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn". This movie almost didn't get made after the near-disappointing, mostly-cerebral first film. Star Trek II was fashioned as more of a space battle - with a nod to the nautical traditions from which spacefaring is supposedly drawn and many,many references to Moby Dick. The score reflects the film very well, and serves to add tension and drama to the battle scenes. I think some parts of the score found their way into later film and TV scores as well. I think you could say that the score had a real effect on keeping that particular franchise going.
Significance to later trailer-cutting endeavors... Aliens
NWRTYRSP
I'm surprised that Tron hasn't made the SciFi favorites list for anybody yet. It certainly produced the perfect tone for the film, but also very prominently featured electronic composition which, in many ways, jives with the genre as a whole.
airanw:
Good call on Tron. I think that movie is subject to a SF fan global collective agreement to treat it as though it didn't happen, but I'm not sure why.
As long as I'm posting again, I'll call attention to another obvious choice, 1979's Flash Gordon.
I particularly like the score for Cowboy Bebop
Among my favorites is Akira's soundtrack, and the Klingon theme from the first Star Trek movie.
The end theme from "The Golden Compass" was so bad as to be MST3K worthy in my opinion. It was so bad we were laughing about.
There's a lot of great music in the Godzilla movies, Akira Ifukube was a great composer, and many of the themes from the Godzilla movies are instantly recognizable, particularly the "Godzilla" theme and the "Japanese Self-Defense Force" theme.
Oh I second Flash Gordon! Queen's soundtrack for Highlander was also very good (though you can't quite call it Sci-fi).
When I saw the subject of this post, I immediately thought of Fifth Element -- which totally redefined the term Space Opera for me -- but which also had an audio design that perfectly complemented the eclectic visual design of the movie.
OMG, Star Wars for sure... the opening scene where the Star Destroyer is blasting away at Leia's Corellian Corvette.. the Imperial March when we see Vader... the triumph at the awards ceremony following the destruction of the Death Star... try those without John Williams!
Come to think of it... more John Williams... Superman!
Hmm... on a totally different note (haha) how about the Night Breed soundtrack... Danny Elfman. Loved it.
I was going to mention Close Encounters and Highlander, but others beat me to it. As for Danny Elfman, I can't think of him without hearing the music from Beetlejuice in my head (not really SF, but since he was mentioned...).
Another thumbs up for Vangelis work on Blade Runner. But my favorite of all time are the soundtracks that Howard Shore did for LOTR.
I'm glad someone brought of "The Fifth Element" which was a great soundtrack. I listen to it often. It's a little disappointing that one of the more interesting songs in the movie didn't make the soundtrack (the Spanish music when running/hiding from the cops).
Does Pi count in this genre? Clint Mansell did some excellent work on that and it included some great 3rd party works.
The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions had some great soundtrack compositions by Don Davis.
Can a video game soundtrack fit into this discussion? Halo 1 has a really good soundtrack. If it's comes to your area you should check out the Video Games Live! concert series. Some great stuff to be found there.
If A Beautiful Mind can be counted as a science fiction film (given that it has both science and fiction), I would say James Horner's opening title theme is one of the greats. Same for Cliff Eidelman's opening title music in Star Trek VI, although I also like Horner's Wrath of Khan score (I'm of two minds about Goldsmith's The Motion Picture score, which sometimes seems to me like so much excess meringue).
Exceptional original SF movie score of recent years: Giacchino's for The Incredibles.
Does a SF game count? I have all three Halo soundtracks CDs that I listen to in my car almost on a daily basis, and I have to say they are absolutely amazing. Composers Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori did an awesome job with the musicality for the game and translating it to a very successful soundtrack.
If it doesn't count, then I'll throw in my vote for Star Wars, and pretty much anything and everything Hans Zimmer.
John, that's quite a coincidence -- I'm on a panel at the Context SF convention this weekend regarding music in science fiction.
Among the choices I dubbed onto a CD (remember those?) to play for everyone are the Gayane Ballet Suite (2001 again), "The Drones Attack" by Jerry Goldsmith from the STAR TREK: INSURRECTION soundtrack (a marvelous example of a score better than the movie) and "Going for a Ride" by David Newman from the SERENITY soundtrack.
I agree that music can make all the difference in a great many SF films, especially in evoking the grandeur of space and other sensawonder stuff.
John Williams is definitely at the top of my "scifi/fantasy" composer list. And I firmly believe he has aliens helping him, because no mere human could write such moving music!!!
Also up there: Joel Goldsmith's work on the Stargate movies... not theater movies, but sci-fi movies nonetheless, with pretty awesome scores to boot!!!
Gattaca. I own just a handful of film scores/soundtracks on CD, and Gattaca is one of them. The music is powerful, capturing the mood of the film perfectly.
Re FORBIDDEN PLANET, Mark Leeper has said:
Special mention should be made of the electronic music by Louis and Beebe Barron. It was the first totally electronic score in a feature film and the MGM music department would not even allow it to be called a score. They were somewhat disappointed that there was not more interest in their new musical form. In 1976 Louis Barron decided that there might be a market for the soundtrack on record. He still had tapes so had some cases made up at his own expense. He had not much luck finding a market and he brought a case to MidAmericon, the World Science Fiction Convention. He hoped that there might be some interest in the record. He told himself that science fiction fans might still be interested in the score after twenty-one years.
As he told me at the convention, after selling in the huckster room for an hour he put in an emergency call home to his wife Beebe saying he had run out and asking her to ship him the all rest of the cases as quickly as possible. He had no idea the degree of demand that there would be either for the record or for himself. He found himself to be a celebrity and the record suddenly found a large market. For years after that I remember seeing copies of the record for sale. I believe it is even on CD. I hope the latter-day popularity of the score helped the Barrons in their later years.
[Posted by permission]
Re FORBIDDEN PLANET, Mark Leeper has said:
Special mention should be made of the electronic music by Louis and Beebe Barron. It was the first totally electronic score in a feature film and the MGM music department would not even allow it to be called a score. They were somewhat disappointed that there was not more interest in their new musical form. In 1976 Louis Barron decided that there might be a market for the soundtrack on record. He still had tapes so had some cases made up at his own expense. He had not much luck finding a market and he brought a case to MidAmericon, the World Science Fiction Convention. He hoped that there might be some interest in the record. He told himself that science fiction fans might still be interested in the score after twenty-one years.
As he told me at the convention, after selling in the huckster room for an hour he put in an emergency call home to his wife Beebe saying he had run out and asking her to ship him the all rest of the cases as quickly as possible. He had no idea the degree of demand that there would be either for the record or for himself. He found himself to be a celebrity and the record suddenly found a large market. For years after that I remember seeing copies of the record for sale. I believe it is even on CD. I hope the latter-day popularity of the score helped the Barrons in their later years.
[Posted by permission]
I'm very fond of Alan Silvestri's score for Back to the Future. In fact, I have a piece of it stuck in my head now. Thanks for that! Interestingly, the other Silvestri scores I've heard (aside from BTTF 2 and 3) are very different in style, and none of them pack the same emotional wallop for me.
What? No Rocky Horror Picture Show?
As a nod to my misspent youth I'm going to have to nominate both the score and soundtrack of Repo Man. The soundtrack is justly (in)famous as an easy to procure introduction to LA punk but its score by Tito Larriva and the Plugz is integral to the feel of the film as well. The bit of score included on the soundtrack - Reel Ten by The Plugz - is one of the few pieces of pure score music that are consistently on my playlist.
Others that are always on my playlist from science fiction(ish) films are Williams' Imperial March, a few pieces by Yoko Kanno from Cowboy Bebop and Ghost In The Shell, Gerald Fried's "horns of Kirk" fight music from ST:TOS and the entirety of Basil Poledouris's epic score of Conan the Barbarian.
It's a little disappointing that one of the more interesting songs in the movie didn't make the soundtrack (the Spanish music when running/hiding from the cops).
It's actually not in Spanish; It is from a genre called Raï that is sung in Arabic but is heavily influenced by Spanish (and French and Sub-Saharan) music. The song is called Alech Taadi and is performed by Algerian musician Cheb Khaled. A real shame it is not on the soundtrack because it is an excellent song.
Dang I forgot Rocky Horror, and thus also Little Shop of Horrors (which does have a SFnal premise). I also neglected James Horner's "Brainstorm", "Krull" and hesitantly, his Schumann-plagiarised "Willow".
If one is going to veer into fantasy (as so many other posters have done) then you immediately accumulate a lot of rather memorable Disney scores, and material from Brigadoon to Xanadu and beyond.
For sheer silliness, back in the SF world we should also mention Weird Science, Electric Dreams, and the nostalgia-trip of Elkman's theme for Mars Attacks!
How about "Benson, Arizona" from Darkstar? Best C&W song about the effects of near light speed travel on a love affair ever written.
Since nobody else has mentioned it, I have to give a shout-out to E.T.'s music. The story is pretty simple, but the music is what made us care about it.
How about Amin Bhatia's The Interstellar Suite?
Sure, it's not a soundtrack to any real movie but Bhatia imagined it as the score to a sci-fi film. It is a very engaging, beautiful piece of electronic music. You can read more about it at http://www.interstellarsuite.com/.