Power Anthems: Part 3

A brief prefatory note: I've noticed that some of these have become mini-reviews. So don't be surprised if some of the material is included in the full reviews (assuming I actually write any, since so far, Wallace and Gromit is the only one).

Batman Begins/The Dark Knight-Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard
I'm not the biggest fan of these scores--as far as music for The World's Greatest Detective goes, I prefer Elfman, Walker, and Goldenthal. For me, the most enjoyable part of these scores include the quieter, more emotional material and Harvey Dent's theme. The music for the Joker is effective, if not as revolutionary as some think. But the first film does feature a power anthem heard in the track "Molossus" and plays in the film when Bruce Wayne is escaping from the League of Shadows fortress and again at the film's climax. Puzzlingly, this theme is not heard in The Dark Knight in full, though the underlying chords are heard in the track "Like a Dog Chasing Cars." Because, as we all know, Batman doesn't need a theme! Simplistic droning and endlessly repeating minor thirds perfectly express the complexity of Batman's character, especially since it sounds so much like the music of every Jerry Bruckheimer action film ever made.

Pearl Harbor-Hans Zimmer
For this film, which drew raves for Ben Affleck's subtle, nuanced, and powerful Brando-esque performance, Zimmer wrote a slight love theme and lots of other unsubstantial material. The CD contained almost no action material, except for the track "War," which is an admittedly rousing piece with some particularly fine string churning about two-thirds of the way through. But the true power anthem in this score is in the unreleased cue following the attack when Affleck and Hartnett go all macho and dogfight with the Japanese planes. The theme here is more than a little similar to one in Gladiator (see below) and, thus, the "He's a Pirate." You can listen to it on Youtube here, though there are unfortunately machine gun and plane sound effects.

Gladiator-Hans Zimmer, Lisa Gerrard, Klaus Badelt
About halfway into the "Battle" cue (underscoring the opening skirmish), we hear a figure that seems to have directly influenced the "He's a Pirate" theme. I tried typing several statements comparing the two that didn't sound like I was typing out of my ass (which I am), but since I have no formal musical training, I gave up. Sorry. Suffice to say, the two are very structurally and melodically similar. The track also opens up with a simpler yet still muscular theme for Maximus.

Pirates of the Caribbean-Hans Zimmer, Klaus Badelt, Henry Jackman, about a dozen more
Wonder why the Pirates of the Caribbean films have so many themes? One of the reasons is probably because so many composers worked on it. Besides the "He's a Pirate" theme, there's a quirky string dance, a grander theme for Jack's entrance, a Black Pearl motif, a "rocking" theme for the undead pirates ("rocking" in more ways than one--it's very similar to the theme for Hummel in The Rock), and several action themes (one of them based on a theme from Drop Zone). And that's just the first film--the next two films offer a ridiculous (yet fun) theme for the Kraken, an expansion on the string dance that is transformed into Jack Sparrow's theme, Davy Jones's music box/organ theme, a tune for Tia Dalma, a sweeping three-part love theme for Will and Elizabeth, themes for Sao Feng and Beckett, and the "Hoist the Colours" chant. There are themes for Blackbeard, mermaids, and the Fountain  of Youth in the fourth movie, but I honestly can't recall them. The problem is that the themes in the first film sound similar and tend to run together, and the second film doesn't use its themes enough. Yet the third film, along with Last Samurai, has one of the best scores Zimmer has done since 1998.

Drop Zone-Hans Zimmer and Nick Glennie-Smith
This score is completely synthesized and performed by Zimmer and Glennie-Smith. It attempts to emulate the sound of an orchestra, which makes it sound a little dated. But the cleverly titled "Too Many Notes, Not Enough Rests" contains a theme that would find its way into Pirates of the Caribbean. It features prominently in the suite "Pirates, Day One 4:56 AM" that Zimmer composed before handing scoring duties to Klaus Badelt and others.

Broken Arrow-Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams
John Travolta hams it up as a villain in this John Woo film, and Zimmer and Gregson-Williams provide swaggering accompaniment. One tension-building theme is adapted from (and credited to) Randy Edelman, but original themes include a rising theme for the hero, a cool guitar lick that turns into a massive anthem for Travolta's character, and an exciting action anthem that again sounds like it could be an inspiration for the "He's a Pirate" theme. The music for the final battle of the film ("Hammerhead" on La-La-Land Records' expanded CD) is a nonstop adrenaline blast.

Backdraft-Hans Zimmer
This score was written in the ancient days of 1991, but it is still arguably one of Zimmer's most effective, benefiting from the talents of orchestrator and conductor Shirley Walker. Some of its music was famously used in the TV show Iron Chef, setting the precedent for scoring cooking competitions and reality shows with ridiculous, laughably over-the-top dramatic music. The score features an anticipatory ostinato that would influence many other MV/RC scores, and the triumphant "Show Me Your Firetruck" cue that is either one of the most inspiring or most hokey tunes you will ever hear. I imagine this is the sort of music that would pump athletes up before a big game (or a little one, as the case may be.)

Crimson Tide-Hans Zimmer
This score for Tony Scott's entertaining thriller features the ultimate power anthem in the cue "Roll Tide." A solo trumpet leads into the anthem played softly on real and synthesized brass and strings. It repeats and gets louder and louder, and just when it seems like it has reached its peak, three massive percussion hits precede a gargantuan statement of the theme This leads into a blood-pumping ten-note ostinato on low strings and then a brassy bridge before simmering down. And would you believe that the scene in question (the ending of the film; the aforementioned three percussion hits mark the final cut to black and the text epilogue) is not a macho march or slow-motion action scene, but merely Denzel Washington watching Gene Hackman walking away with his dog? Nonetheless, this is probably the definitive example of this type of music.

The Peacemaker-Hans Zimmer
This ballsy action score is like Crimson Tide on steroids (apart from the main anthem, most of the score to Crimson Tide is relatively low-key.) Although it contains a neat theme for Sarajevo and various other thematic material, most of the action material can be summed up in the 17-minute cue "The Chase," one of the most exhilarating pieces of music Zimmer has ever written (even though consists of a few cues edited together). The main theme appears in full in the last two minutes of the cue, and is actually the end credits. It resembles the theme from Crimson Tide more than a little, especially with the low string ostinato, which here rises steadily instead of going up and down. It ends with a march-like horn tune that builds before rhythmic strings fade out. Again, the combination of orchestra and synth is remarkably potent, and this 1997 score would be Zimmer's last effective use of this style of scoring.

The Rock-Nick Glennie-Smith, Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams
Zimmer wrote the title theme for Michael Bay's best film (unless Armageddon and The Island, which I haven't seen, are better), a slow, melancholy march that plays much the same way in the scene where (MILD SPOILER ALERT) Michael Biehn dies yet again, along with his crew (END OF SPOILER). The theme can also conveys a more adventurous tone when played faster (Sherlock observed perceptively). Glennie-Smith and Gregson-Williams provide a plethora of additional themes. Besides a guitar-based love theme and a flute theme for Sean Connery (reprised in power anthem mode in "Mason's Walk") there is a swashbuckling theme for Nicolas Cage's exploits that opens the end credits (similar to, yes, "He's a Pirate") and an angular theme for Ed Harris (Hummel) and his troops (part of which is similar to another Pirates of the Caribbean theme played when Elizabeth first encounters the pirates in their undead form). Gregson-Williams also provides some themes in the San Francisco car chase that appear again in the final fight scenes, one that uses more repeated notes and one that is slightly more lyrical. Like the film itself, the score is not terribly original (though certainly more original than certain score that would follow), but it's one of the most entertaining scores of its kind.

Power Anthems: Part 2

X-Men: First Class-Henry Jackman
For the most part, Henry Jackman's scores (like John Powell's) have been more complex and orchestrally adventurous than those from his fellow MV/RC graduates. But for Matthew Vaughn's impressive follow-up to Kick-Ass, Jackman composed a simple, robust anthem for Xavier's mutants and their emerging heroism. While best heard in its full form in the track "First Class," (actually the last part of the end credits) Jackman also incorporates more adventurous, higher-tempo variations in the cues for the lengthy final battle. The ten-note melody is interesting in that it sounds like it's going to resolve in note eight, but instead rises up for the conclusive descending figure.

Speed/Speed 2: Cruise Control-Mark Mancina
The noble, surprisingly evocative main theme for Speed is a catchy tune that is played with more of an orchestral sound than the typical power anthem, and even gets a tender piano and string rendition in the end credits of the first film. There is also more standard, minor-mode anthem that often follows the main theme as well as a staccato six-note action motif. The score for the second film introduces even more themes. In addition to the Caribbean-style love theme and chromatic villain theme, there are no less than three distinct anthems. Having not seen the film, I have no idea what each relates to, but one is a faster-paced one introduced in the opening "Motorcycle Chase", one is a more triumphant fanfare heard in "Last Lifeboat," and the last is the most power anthem-y of them, heard in "Final Chase" and the commercially-unreleased cue "Tuneman." Mancina's score for Speed would have a large influence on the action music of the rising Media Ventures "club."

Twister-Mark Mancina
Although Twister contains a lively Copland-esque theme (introduced in "Wheatfield") and a wondrous theme representing the awesome power of tornadoes (best heard in "God's Finger"), it also contains one of my personal favorite power anthems. The climatic cue "Mobile Home" includes a pounding ostinato that leads into the impressive anthem, which is modulated upward for its second statement before returning to the ostinato and climaxing with a dramatic rendition of the Copland-esque theme. This cue segues right into the splendor of "God's Finger," and they are a pair of cues that I play often.

BLOOD+-Mark Mancina
For this ambitious anime series, Mancina composed several themes, two of them fitting in the "power anthem" category.  "Saya's Victory" introduces a triumphant theme that reminds me a little of his superb work on Tarzan, while "BLOOD+ Grand Theme" is a dramatic march (with the inevitable Mars/Holst-inspired section.) The whole score is full of riches, from tender passages and raging action to a fantastic aria.

Antz-Harry Gregson-Willams and John Powell
This isn't the first score to spring to mind when one thinks "power anthem," and indeed, this gem of a score is in a category of its own. But the theme for General Mandible does fit into this category. While it is introduced on exotic instruments, male choir soon enters and exposes the theme for what it really is. A high-energy variation of the theme is played during the termite battle. The fact that this is actually one of the more minor themes in this theme-heavy score illustrates the strength of the composition as a whole.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty/Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater/Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots-Harry Gregson-Williams
For the second installment of this complex video game series, Gregson-Willams "power anthem-ized" the theme from the first game composed by TAPPY. For the third game, HGW introduced his own epic theme to accompany the original theme. A plagiarism suit involving TAPPY's theme kept it from being included in the fourth game, but HGW was able to update his own theme, giving it a faster pace and a part of it beautifully performed by solo trumpet in the cue "Metal Gear Saga." Oddly enough, HGW does not use his theme much in the actual underscore to the games (at least not in the cues he composed), which is a shame because it's a rousing theme.

Team America:World Police-Harry Gregson-Williams
This just might be the best power anthem score there is, maybe because it's parodying the style and HGW thus does not need to restrain himself in any way. The "Team America March" opens with an ultra-macho theme complete with male choir accompaniment, and then moves on to the most used theme of the score, a triumphant melody more reminiscent of the composer's work with John Powell on Chicken Run than any power anthem. The track closes with a true power anthem that starts quietly before blossoming into full chorus, orchestra, and synth-orchestra. "F.A.G." contains a brief rocking anthem while "Putting a Jihad on You" contains a classic, four-chord masculine melody that brings to mind a Michael Bay film with a line of macho US Military soldiers walking toward the screen in slow motion. Truly an enjoyable score.

Next: The conclusion with Hans Zimmer.

Power Anthems: Part 1

I've stated before my somewhat lukewarm feelings about Hans Zimmer in the wonderful post/essay with his name emblazoned on top. While he is not among my favorite composers, there is no denying that, especially in his earlier works, he has written some crowd-pleasing tunes. Although Zimmer has written his share of tender scores, he is most known for his action scores, combining synthesizer, brass, and low strings to create muscular blasts of music. He popularized the use of what has come to be known in film music circles as the "power anthem," a loud, melodic tune based on very simple chords that makes you want to go out and kick some derriere (or roll your eyes, depending on your level of exposure to these tunes that have admittedly become a bit overused). Power anthems have a lot in common musically with progressive rock, which, combined with the typical earth-shattering volume and emphasized bass, perhaps accounts for their popularity. Soon, Zimmer's acolytes also began writing these anthems, and the big studios' fondness for this style of writing has led to composers such as Patrick Doyle, Javier Naverrete, and Brian Tyler, not from Zimmer's Media Ventures/Remote Control studio, being asked to create this kind of music. Of course, there is no shortage of MV/RC graduates like Mark Mancina, Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, Henry Jackman, Steve Jablonsky, and Klaus Badelt currently writing such tunes.

Of course, it is difficult (for me at least) to explain the properties of music without getting flowery, so let's use the most popular example of a power anthem: the "He's a Pirate" tune from the Pirates of the Caribbean films. As soon as the credits rolled for the first Pirates film, I was undoubtedly impressed at the macho, energetic sound. As with many in my generation and after, it was the first full-blooded power anthem I'd heard, but it would be far from the last. As I became more familiar with Hans Zimmer's catalog (especially Crimson Tide, The Peacemaker, Broken Arrow, and Drop Zone), the more I realized how derivative the theme was. Not that it isn't enjoyable, but it's not the unique, revolutionary, untouchable melody that some seem to think it is.

So... if "He's a Pirate" stirs your blood, here is a selection of power anthems that you should become intimately familiar with. Part 1 will include composers Steve Jablonsky and Brian Tyler.

Transformers-Steve Jablonsky
OK, it's not a great score, but the scores for the Michael Bay action-fest films are literally a string of power anthems strung together (with the exception of a blatant Thomas Newman rip-off theme for Sam Witwicky's more whimsical scenes). There are actually quite a lot of themes, but unfortunately, most of them sound the same. There is a reflective theme composed of two four-note phrases (heard in "Optimus Prime"), a churning, ostinato-based motif with male chorus for the Decepticons, an anthem for the military forces (heard in "Scorponok"), an action theme associated with Bumblebee and the other Autobots (heard in "Allspark" and "Bumblebee"), and the popular "Arrival to Earth" theme associated with Optimus Prime. Perhaps the most engaging theme is the one introduced at the beginning of the film and entitled "Autobots" on the soundtrack. This is the theme that gets stuck in my head the most often.

Transformers: Prime-Brian Tyler
This may not be a popular opinion, but I find Brian Tyler's score for this animated Transformers series to be superior to Jablonsky's efforts for the feature films. The main theme is a muscular, steadily rising march that combines the sound of MV/RC scores with Tyler's own melodic sensibilities.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3-Brian Tyler
For this installment of the blockbuster video game franchise, Tyler adapted the Zimmer sound to powerful effect. The main theme is not as memorable as the one for Transformers: Prime, but it still harkens back to the days when Zimmer and his apprentices actually composed themes like these instead of sonic wallpaper.

Battle: Los Angeles-Brian Tyler
MV/RC composers have always found a place for electric guitars, but Tyler uses them more for color and texture instead of playing rock riffs that have become somewhat cliche in film scoring. The track "Battle: Los Angeles-Main Title" (actually a suite of material from other parts of the score) contains most of the primary thematic material. The main theme is a simple but fairly long melody that starts out descending before slowly reaching upward, creating a mood of muted hope.

It should be noted that many of Brain Tyler's action scores are wonderfully powerful and owe a little to MV/RC influence, but not as much as the three mentioned above. Scores like Eagle Eye and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem are exciting, but they feature rapid, busy orchestral action as opposed to the simpler, slower chordal movement of power anthems.

Part 2 will feature the four best composers to emerge from MV/RC: Henry Jackman, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, and Mark Mancina. Part 3 will be devoted to the progenitor of all this madness, the Big Z himself. That means at least two more posts before I have to start thinking about writing actual reviews.

Wallace and Gromit

Stop-motion maven Nick Park touched a worldwide chord with his enormously successful shorts about a somewhat absent-minded amateur inventor and his intelligent (and very expressive) dog. Despite the quintessentially British nature of the characters, their setting, and their various exploits, they are popular with worldwide audiences. It was thus somewhat of a surprise that their feature (Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit) did not do spectacularly well in the United States. In fact, with the exception of Chicken Run, the features of Aardman Animation have not lit the US box office on fire (other titles include Flushed Away, Arthur Christmas, and Pirates: Band of Misfits). At any rate, the intrepid duo has benefited from the expressive music of Julian Nott (although the feature, being a DreamWorks Animation release, had additional music by Zimmer acolytes Lorne Balfe, Jim Dooley, Alastair King, Rupert Gregson-Williams, and Halli Cauthery).

This will focus on the scores for the three shorts made before the feature: A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave. (Unfortunately, none of this music has been released on CD, although there is a rare promo.) Nott's bouncy main theme perfectly encapsulates the whimsy of the two characters, its opening three descending notes building a foundation for the rest of the tune, most often played by brass with full orchestra accompaniment. It plays at the closing titles of the shorts, and briefly at the openings for A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers.

A Grand Day Out has the most sparse scoring. There is some low-key music as Wallace and Gromit explore the moon and snippets of the main theme as the Cooker (as the machine they encounter is known) imagines skiing on Earth. The two most prominent uses of music are during the rocket building montage and the scene where Wallace and Gromit are hurrying to leave the moon. The former sequence features a brass-led melody while the latter has a more dramatic bent, and wouldn't feel out of place in a serious adventure film.

The next two shorts would showcase more music of this ilk. The Wrong Trousers opens with the main theme segueing into an old-fashioned horror movie stinger as the shadow of the Techno-Trousers is revealed. The villainous Feathers McGraw plays source music on his radio, but there is one simple musical gesture that Nott makes regarding the character that I have found effective since I first saw this short as youngling: McGraw observes Gromit using the trousers to paint the ceiling, and there is an ominous timpani stroke as the camera zooms is on the penguin's expressionless, blinking visage. There is also music during the exhilarating model train chase that recalls the style of music used during A Grand Day Out's rocket building montage.

But it is in A Close Shave where Nott gets to write the most prominent music. A favorite sequence is a parody of Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds, where Wallace slides down chutes in preparation for his window-cleaning mission. (Gromit more practically decides just to use a door, and there is a nice, subtle bit of animation as he looks up prior to getting in the motorcycle's sidecar. Is he rolling his eyes? Looking to see that Wallace didn't mess anything up on his journey over?) Fittingly, Nott scores the scene with noble, militaristic brass theme that starts out with a nifty opening percussion cadence. A lighter theme on strings emerges as Gromit gets in, before the noble theme repeats again. Wallace's endearing encounters with Wendolene ("Wallace with a wig on," as Park explains) feature tender string scoring, and there is an especially poignant passage underscoring the scene where the two grasp each other's hands as a flock of sheep carries Wallace away.

When Shaun the sheep accidentally gets sucked into Wallace's Knit-O-Matic, Nott uses ominous music, with an especially dramatic passage for strings. The climax of the film has the most energetic music, starting with the truck/motorcycle/plane chase. This thrilling sequence is scored with an almost out-of-control dance-like theme, while Gromit's aerial exploits earn a separate, soaring theme. Heavier music plays as Preston the dog's true nature is revealed ("Mal-what?") and a final frenzy of music plays as our heroes run to avoid being turned into dog meat.

Wallace and Gromit's theme has deservedly earned classic status, but the rest of Nott's music is adventurous, fun, thrilling, and highly effective. Hopefully, some specialty label will release a compilation of at least some of this fine music (though rights issues might tangle things up). But for now, one has to watch the films in order to hear the music, and that's not too hard to ask. Is it?

Some Composer Quotes

I know I haven't posted in a month, and I've been procrastinating on finishing a massive review. So as filler, I will lazily post a collection of composer quotes that I've already gathered and posted elsewhere.

"This sh*t is so unpredictable. But that's good." -James Newton Howard

"I won't tell you again. I'm not Mick Jagger, you blithering idiot" -Danny Elfman

"You don't have to be a total freak to enjoy a Goldenthal score this time!" -Elliot Goldenthal, on Frida

"This is going to sound like sour grapes, not that I care" -Jerry Goldsmith

"If I want to sit here and eat plaster or whatever, it's my prerogative!" -Basil Poledouris

"I live in an area in LA that I grew up in, and have a real association with the mud and the weeds."-Thomas Newman

"It's crazy time"-Michael Giacchino

"I remember thinking on Armageddon, I was working on this bloody cue I was doing with Bruce Willis, with a tear in his eye standing on some f*cking meteorite and he was saving the world. I thought, this is more than just Hollywood - this is ludicrous! I could underpin this with very emotional music... ah.. sorry Jerry [Bruckheimer]!" -Harry Gregson Williams

"'Kick-What'? That sounds rather rude."-Henry Jackman, quoting his mother's reaction to the news that he was working on Kick-Ass. 

John Williams tends to be more serious in interviews. But if you watch the behind-the-scenes stuff for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you'll find that he has thinly-veiled attraction to Cate Blanchett.

"Film idea : a can ofbaked beans gets sold at a supermarket but the customer hasn't got enough money so they put it back and get embarrassed."-David Arnold, from his Twitter (davidgarnold). By the way, David Arnold's Twitter is flat out crazy. Following is just the beginning series of tweets he made recently:

"Insect incest"
"Outsect outcest"
"Shake it all about"
"If anyone wonders what exactly 'it' is all about...apparently its the okey cokey ..which you have to do."
"The okey cosy is an elaborate form of commentated kicking"
"For people with Parkinson's"

For the thrilling conclusion to Arnold's magnum opus (it makes his score to Independence Day sound like The Social Network) go to his Twitter and see the entries for February 19th (2012).

John Williams

What can be said about John Williams that hasn't already been said? Williams is not only the best-known film composer, but his skill and mastery at his craft are matched only by long-gone masters such as Bernard Herrmann, Erich Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Jerry Goldsmith, and the like. Williams is a musical titan, and even if he hadn't written any concert works, he would still be considered a great composer. He may have written some of the best known and catchy themes of all time, but a closer listen to any of his scores will reveal compositional depth and clever musical ideas that bolster his surprisingly complex melodies.

Williams was born in New York and studied composition at UCLA and Juilliard after which he became a jazz and film score pianist for great composers like Henry Mancini and Jerry Goldsmith. Williams's first full score was in 1958 for a film called Daddy-O. Throughout the '60s, he scored many light, romantic comedies of this type, using the casual, jazzy style he had employed as a pianist. He got to branch out with films like None But the Brave and The Reivers, but his foray into blockbuster fare came with his relationship with Irwin Allen. Williams scored the themes and several episodes of Allen's TV shows The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, and Lost in Space before Allen hired him for the feature The Poseidon Adventure. A year before, Williams had won an Oscar for adapting the score for Fiddler on the Roof, but soon his own music would become recognized by the public and the critical establishment. After scoring two more disaster films (Allen's The Towering Inferno and Earthquake), Williams formed a seminal relationship with Steven Spielberg by scoring The Sugarland Express. Their next film, Jaws, became a sensation with its famous, menacing two-note theme. Even more impressive, the score contained inventive orchestrations and additional themes to underscore the danger and adventure of the film. Williams would score all of Spielberg's feature films as director except for The Color Purple (scored by Quincy Jones) and Bridge of Spies (scored by Thomas Newman). Their collaborations would include Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, the Indiana Jones films, ET, Empire of the Sun, Always, Hook, the first two Jurassic Park films, Schindler's List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, AI, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, War of the Worlds, Munich, Adventures of Tintin, War Horse, Lincoln, and The BFG. After scoring Alfred Hitchcock's final film in 1976 (Family Plot), Williams created an even bigger splash with his score to Star Wars. Throughout the series' six films, Williams provided immortal themes filled with excitement, beauty, tenderness, melancholy, and terror. The same year as the first Star Wars film, Williams created another musical touchstone with his experimental, dissonant music for Close Encounters of the Third Kind as well as a famous five-note theme. Superman was another smash, with Williams providing not only the title march, but a soaring love theme, heroic action music, tender strains for Smallville, a comic march for the villains, and more modern music for Krypton. Raiders of the Lost Ark and ET were next up on Williams's non-stop hit parade, the former one of the most exciting action scores ever, and the latter featuring exultant and emotional music for the bond between boy and alien. In the '90s, Williams wrote surprisingly touching music for two Home Alone films, swashbuckling adventure music for Hook, melodies of wonder and terror for Jurassic Park, and reached heights of poignancy with Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. As the new millennium rolled around, Williams scored the first three films of the incredibly popular Harry Potter franchise, providing the boy wizard (or his pet owl, at least) with an enduring, magical theme. The end of 2011 signaled the end of a three-year Williams drought with two superb scores for War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin.

Although Williams is best known for the themes for his blockbusters, his filmography contains hordes of lesser known but still awesome scores, from the wildly unconventional Images and the pastoral The River to the triumphant SpaceCamp and the beautiful, thrilling Far and Away. He also composed the NBC News "Mission" theme, the theme for DreamWorks SKG, and four Olympic fanfares alongside numerous concerti and other concert pieces. With the exceptions of Memoirs of a Geisha and The Book Thief, Williams has only written film scores for Spielberg, Star Wars, and Harry Potter since 2000's The Patriot, but his music remains as exciting and inventive as ever. He deserves all the recognition and praise that he gets. Unfortunately, with the advent of sound-design drone scores, his work has become under-appreciated by certain film critics, mainly of the younger generation. Regardless of their opinions, Williams's music is among the most superb written for film.

AI*
The Accidental Tourist
Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn*
Always

Amistad
Angela's Ashes
The BFG

Black Sunday
The Book Thief

Born on the Fourth of July

Catch Me If You Can

Close Encounters of the Third Kind*

ET**

Empire of the Sun*

Family Plot

Far and Away**
The Fury*

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone*

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban*
Heartbeeps
Heidi

Home Alone**

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York*

Hook**

Raiders of the Lost Ark**

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom**

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade**

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Jane Eyre*

Jaws*

Jaws 2*

JFK

Jurassic Park**

Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World
Lincoln

Lost in Space (TV Series)

Memoirs of a Geisha*
Midway

Minority Report*

Munich

Nixon

The Patriot
Pete 'n' Tillie

The Poseidon Adventure
The Post
Presumed Innocent
The Reivers

The River

Rosewood
Sabrina

Saving Private Ryan

Schindler’s List**

Seven Years in Tibet
Sleepers

SpaceCamp
The Spielberg/Williams Collaboration (3 Volume Compilation)
Stanley & Iris

Star Wars**

Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back**

Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi**

Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace*

Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith*
Star Wars: The Force Awakens*
Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Stepmom

Superman: The Movie**

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace* (with Alexander Courage)

The Terminal*
Tom Sawyer (with Richard and Robert Sherman)

The Towering Inferno
War Horse**

War of the Worlds
The Witches of Eastwick
1941

Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer, the "big Z" of film music, has had perhaps the largest influence on film scoring methods in the modern age. Whether this is a positive influence or not is debatable. Zimmer was born in Germany and quickly developed an interest for synthesizers and electronic music, working with groups like The Buggles and The Damned. He became a protege of renowned film composer Stanley Meyers and the two started developing the signature synth-orchestra sound that would come to dominate big-budget Hollywood action pictures. His score for A World Apart got the attention of Barry Levinson, who offered the composer his first big hit: Rain Man. Today, Zimmer is best known for his popular scores to films in the 2000s like Sherlock Holmes, Christopher Nolan's Batman films, Inception, Interstellar, Man of Steel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the Pirates of the Caribbean films, The Ring, Gladiator, King Arthur, The Da Vinci Code, and Pearl Harbor. All employ Zimmer's "wall of sound" effect, combining orchestra and electronics into massive blasts of audio in simplistic chord sequences. But for me, his best work lies among the scores he did before 1999. Scores like Black Rain, Pacific Heights, Point of No Return, Backdraft, Drop Zone, Crimson Tide, Broken Arrow, and The Peacemaker contain the best examples of the "power anthems" that would make Zimmer famous, and indeed one unfamiliar with these scores will be surprised at how similar they sound to Pirates of the Caribbean. These earlier action scores all contain an energy and inventiveness that is hard to find in his modern day scores, with exceptions like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, The Last Samurai, Rush, and the brilliant "160 BPM" cue from Angels and Demons. Zimmer also excelled at lower-key scores in the '90s, with Green Card, A League of Their Own, The House of the Spirits, Beyond Rangoon, and The Thin Red Line all containing appealing music. Two of Zimmer's absolute best scores are for animated films: The Prince of Egypt and The Lion King. The former features a brilliant theme for God and more glorious music rare for Zimmer, and the latter has some of the most effective and emotional themes in modern films. Zimmer has also forged relationships with prominent directors, including Ridley Scott, Ron Howard, and Christopher Nolan, and he is head of music for DreamWorks Animation. His collaboration with Ridley Scott has been especially fruitful, with Black Rain, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, and Matchstick Men. He also composed Days of Thunder, True Romance, Crimson Tide, and The Fan for Ridley's brother Tony before Harry Gregson-Williams took over.

Speaking of Gregson-Williams, Zimmer also founded what was then Media Ventures and is now Remote Control Productions, taking in young composers and having them write additional music for him before sending them off on their own. The most talented alumni so far have been Gregson-Williams, John Powell, Mark Mancina, and Henry Jackman, and others have included Steve Jablonsky, Ramin Djawadi, Geoff Zanelli, Marc Streitenfeld, Lorne Balfe, James Dooley, Klaus Badelt, and Heitor Pereira. (Trevor Rabin was never formally part of MV/RC, despite his music sounding more like Zimmer's than that of many "true" MV/RC graduates). On one hand, it is extremely generous of Zimmer to offer these budding composers a chance to get a foothold into the film industry. On the other hand, many of these composers write (or are asked to write) music highly derivative of Zimmer's style. There are exceptions, like Gregson-Williams, Mancina, Powell, and Jackman, but they are few. In addition, Zimmer's own scores, especially from 2000 on, are co-written with a host of additional composers, which has noticeably diluted the big Z's own voice. He may be talented, but he is not Our Savior and the Lord God as many Youtube people claim. I may be quickly losing interest in the musical direction Zimmer is going in, with his increasingly simplistic and staid music, but his earlier works will always pack a punch. Zimmer has an undoubtedly sound dramatic instinct, and in many cases, he has followed it well.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Angels and Demons

Backdraft

Beyond Rangoon

Black Rain

Broken Arrow

Crimson Tide

The Da Vinci Code

The Dark Knight (with James Newton Howard)
Days of Thunder

Drop Zone

Gladiator (with Lisa Gerrard)

Green Card
Hans Zimmer Live in Prague (Concert)
Interstellar

King Arthur

Kung Fu Panda (with John Powell)

Kung Fu Panda 2 (with John Powell)

The Last Samurai

The Lion King**
Man of Steel
Pacific Heights

The Peacemaker

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (with a bunch of other people)

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End* (with a bunch of other people)
Point of No Return

The Prince of Egypt*

The Rock (with Nick Glennie-Smith and Harry Gregson-Williams)
Rush

Sherlock Holmes
White Fang

Christopher Young

Christopher Young hasn't quite made it into the ranks of the most well-known film composers, but his talent and body of work prove that he definitely deserves to be there. Young is mostly known for his horror work, where his complex orchestrations, haunting themes, and exotic harmonies combine to create chilling scores. An early assignment was Nightmare on Elm Street 2, and Young soon found himself scoring projects like The Fly 2, The Vagrant, The Dark Half, Species, The Grudge, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and The Uninvited. Two particular fan favorites are his enormous, epic scores to Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II. His score for Bless the Child combines signature dark chorus and various doom-related material with more tender, sublime material. Young's skill at composing action music is evident in his bombastic scores for Ghost Rider, The Core, and Priest. Young has also done a handful of films for Sam Raimi, scoring The Gift, two scenes from Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, and Drag Me to Hell. The majority of the films in Young's oeuvre may be unremarkable, but the scores for them are not.

Bless the Child*
The Core

Drag Me to Hell

Hellraiser

Hellraiser II: Hellbound

Jennifer 8
The Monkey King**
The Monkey King 2*

Priest

Spider-Man 3

Gabriel Yared

Gabriel Yared is a composer perhaps under-appreciated in his time, at least by the mainstream. He has had a few of his scores rejected, at least one of which is one of the most exciting and bold scores in decades. Yared was born in Lebanon and scored many French films before Hollywood noticed him. Among his early scores are Clean and Sober and Robert Altman's Beyond Therapy and Vincent & Theo. His score for director Anthony Minghella's The English Patient won him critical accolades and an Academy Award for Best Score. Yared would score Minghella's subsequent films, including The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain, Breaking and Entering, and the TV show The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Other films he has scored include City of Angels, Message in a Bottle, the remake of Shall We Dance, 1408, and Amelia. He had written music for the films The Tourist and Troy, but had them rejected. Troy in particular was an interesting case, as Yared had written an enormous score fit for an epic, only to have it cut after an audience test screening. James Horner quickly wrote an underwhelming replacement score, but the film couldn't be saved. Yared's rejected score stands as an amazing standalone piece regardless of whether or not it would have worked with the disastrous film. Yared's style of writing is perhaps out of date in an era where musically empty and unintelligent droning is favored, and that is indeed unfortunate.

Amelia

The English Patient

Troy (Rejected)**

Jack Wall

As far as video game composers go, Jack Wall is the cream of the crop. Although he studied civil engineering in college, Wall has proven to be a real talent at composing. His scores include Unreal II: The Awakening, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Mass Effect II. He is also the co-founder and conductor of the Video Games Live concert series, bringing attention to the wealth of quality music being composed for video games. Two of his best scores are for Myst III: Exile and Myst IV: Revelation. Wall brought movie-quality music to the venerated series of games, even incorporating some of Robyn Miller's themes in his score for the latter game. Both games combine the exotic instrumentation familiar to the Myst franchise with orchestral themes and furiously chanting choir. Wall delicately balances more atmospheric (yet still interesting) music for exploration with rich drama, tension, and tenderness for the cutscenes. 

From 2006 to 2012, Wall had only scored the two Mass Effect games and Army of Two, and sadly did not contribute any music to Mass Effect 3. However, in 2012 Wall made a big comeback with his score for the popular Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Trent Reznor wrote a slight main theme, but the exciting and surprisingly varied score (at least for a modern FPS) is really Wall's through and through. His score for Black Ops 3 was even better, mixing propulsive electronics, rousing orchestral anthems, and dramatic choral melodies. He also displayed his versatility by composing pastiche songs in a variety of styles, from swing and country to jazz and Calypso, for the game's zombie mode. I for one hope that this is only the start of a glorious return for this talented composer.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (theme by Trent Reznor)
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

Jade Empire

Myst III: Exile**

Myst IV: Revelation