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| Beltrami |
Logan: (Marco Beltrami/Various) Whether you believe
2017's
Logan, technically the tenth "X-Men" film entry, to be a
refreshing change to the franchise's normal operations or, conversely, a
grim bore of an alternative universe gone horribly wrong, you have to
admit that it's at least different. Director James Mangold returns to
helm his second movie dedicated to Marvel's Wolverine character, this
time taking inspiration from the "Old Man Logan" series of comics to
convey the later years of the character. Set in a dystopic future,
Logan exists as a futuristic spaghetti western with defeated
superheroes as the protagonists. It's one of those films that kills off
beloved characters under the pretense that the actors portraying them
over the past few decades are too old to continue in the roles and need
retired in some emotionally gripping manner. That premise works unless
the setting and deaths are tragically misplayed, and
Logan has
the potential to leave your average superhero enthusiast adrift. Critics
mostly loved the approach, however, hailing Mangold's violently
depressing vision of the Marvel Universe in comparisons to famous films
of adversity that have nothing in common with standard heroism. Given
that
Logan occupies an alternate universe, it should come as no
surprise that Mangold advised his recurring musical collaborator, Marco
Beltrmi, to largely ignore the genre and the franchise's past when
concocting a score for the film. This choice is shallow and stupid when
you think about it, because the true test of a competent alternate
universe adaptation is how prior associations with a character or
circumstance are twisted into new situations. You don't abandon
Wolverine's past; you force it to face new challenges. Of course,
Beltrami didn't pay much heed to Harry Gregson-Williams' music for
X-Men Origins: Wolverine when he scored 2013's
The
Wolverine, so perhaps expecting any semblance of continuity is
asking for too much. Beltrami and his usual crew, led by Buck Sanders,
approached
Logan with a totally clean slate, aside from
western-associated sources of inspiration from the director. It's no
surprise that Beltrami's
3:10 to Yuma, among the composer's
similar genre works, guide
Logan's experimental demeanor.
Unfortunately, in a rush to make the score "different," Beltrami and his
crew once again failed to grasp the emotional core of the story, leaving
the music badly limp and underdeveloped when it was needed the
most.
Brazen instrumental originality and a brutally harsh
tone are the main characteristics of the music for
Logan, a small
orchestral ensemble taking a back seat to guitar, piano, harmonica &
glass harmonica, drum kits, and the usual manipulation expected for any
film with roadside dystopia and perpetual death. The score's personality
is depressing and oppressive at every moment, even when involving the
young girl, a mutant clone of the titular character, who must be
shuttled to safety on the journey that occupies the whole story. It's
the end of the road for both Logan and Professor Charles Xavier, and
there's hope for a new generation of mutants in the final scenes. But
the score totally misses that point. So concerned with its growling
accompaniment of the travel and fight scenes, the music forgets the
lineage and survival connotations, Beltrami's motific devices
frustratingly slow, sparse, and lacking any spark of life. Important
death scenes are assigned meaningless noise as music, and the girl is
sent to her future with a slight Western-noir sense that makes little
sense. Beltrami emphasizes subtlety above all else, except when action
necessitates vague coolness or grinding dissonance. The final four
tracks on the soundtrack album release nicely summarize the motifs for
the girl, Logan's future despair, his physical problems, and the journey
in general. If you really stretch, you can imagine that some of the
two-note pairs that Beltrami assigns to Logan's traveling motif are
connected with his score for
The Wolverine, but the connection is
poor at best. You do have motifs of sorts for the villains, whether it's
powerful, electronically slurred base tones in "The Grim Reavers" or
total mechanical pounding for an evil clone in "X-24." The former is at
least tolerable and marginally frightening. The other motifs are either
obnoxious to the point of laughter or obtusely ineffectual due to pacing
and subversion. Exercising some of this nightmarish musical environment
is fine so long as it is used as counterpoint to the alternative, namely
Logan's past. Without that disparity in battle within this film, there
can be no proper emotional catharsis, and it makes for an extremely dull
and mind-numbing album that conveys no narrative for the otherwise
important closing chapter for two vital franchise characters. On the
other hand, as critics noted about the film in general, kudos need to be
supplied for taking a chance, and Beltrami responded to this unusual
demand as best as anyone could have. While this music is less cohesive
and tolerable than
The Wolverine, it's at least more technically
intelligent, and they thus receive the same rating. On album, though, be
prepared for adamantium poisoning of your ears.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.72
(in 25 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.79
(in 17,044 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers and lengthy notes from the director and composer about the
score and film.
