: (Steve
Jablonsky) Fact: our population is hopelessly stupid. Fact: our
population is satisfied by mediocrity. Fact: our population takes too
long to learn from previous mistakes. Fact: our population has
expendable cash to waste no matter how daunting our economic woes. Fact: our
population rewards senseless movies more than intelligent ones. Fact:
composers spawned from the Media Ventures/Remote Control studio of
streamlined film music exist solely because of all the previous facts.
There have been many opportunities through the late 1990's and 2000's to
beat a dead horse in the process of flaming movie industry powerhouses
like Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay for their adherence to the unspoken
laws of stupidity. But the fact remains that films like 2007's
are cash cows, preying upon the limited intellects
of worldwide populations (and especially Americans) to reap hundreds of
millions of dollars in profit for their studios. It took less than three
weeks for a 2009 sequel,
, to
reach the $300 million mark, despite scathing reviews from nearly every
respected movie critic and audiences who tolerated its exaggerated
length while themselves giving it low marks. The storyline of the film
is irrelevant; it exists only to show robots fighting robots, with human
collateral as a sideshow. It's bad enough that there is no true depth to
the plots of these films, for the original cartoon actually had some
intriguing political messages, but the really poor, over-complicated
design of the robots makes it impossible to quickly identify them during
action sequences. Sometimes, it takes Peter Cullen's distinctive voice
to come from a heap of metal to realize that Optimus Prime is actually
on screen. There's something appropriate about the demise of General
Motors at the precise time that their vehicles are contractually bound
to these transforming robots; some of the characters in the franchise no
longer represent vehicles that exist under GM's ownership since its
bankruptcy, presenting one of the only interesting product placement
dilemmas to ever exist in a franchise. Roger Ebert, who took time to
write that people who applaud
actually espouse "wrong" opinions, summed up his review of the picture
with a statement that simultaneously criticized the film's music. He
said, "If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the
kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to
start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your
imagination."
Despite reports that Hans Zimmer contributed music to or
produced this score, the commercial album release indicates no such
involvement. Returning once again to pull elements out of the Remote
Control library of generic muck and rearrange them for the franchise is
Steve Jablonsky, a man who very well could be as mechanized in his
approach to this franchise as the robots on screen. In fact, a computer
could very well have scored
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen;
like the film, perhaps skipping the humans completely is a plus. For the
first film, Jablonsky betrayed any of the quality that he had flashed in
his score for
Steamboy and instead tread closer to stock Hans
Zimmer imitation material that had also inspired his lazy work for
The Island. His staccato ostinato for the Decepticons and heroic,
masculine anthem for the Autobots were both highly derivative of
Zimmer's style, albeit different eras respectively (the application of
ostinatos is a relatively recent obsession with these people), and both
were crowd pleasers. Even Warner Brothers was caught off guard by the
demand for dumb, streamlined film music of this variety, losing sales
because they didn't get a score-only album coordinated until the DVD
release of the picture. The follow-up score is equally successful in its
initial weeks on store shelves (outperforming the song album at
Amazon.com after a few weeks), again proving all of the facts stated at
the start of this review. Interestingly, film music collectors have
reacted harshly to the music for
Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen, almost always placing it behind the original film's score in
terms of its memorable thematic content. Indeed, the Decepticon theme is
buried in the environment of
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,
barely making a dent in "Heed Our Warning." The Autobot theme is more
prevalent, but not in the extended crescendos of power that exist in the
previous score. It's joined here by equally simplistic harmonics
representing the ancient device that the robots are fighting over in the
narrative. Jablonsky doesn't develop the Autobot theme into any
significantly different variations when he does outright state the idea.
It doesn't even grow a slightly bigger pair of balls. Nor does the
action material here, which amounts to a waste of time given its
completely non-descript slapping of the soundscape with tired constructs
and library sounds, accomplish anything new. The sizable orchestral
ensemble is enhanced as usual in the bass region, and the choir performs
its standard "oooh's" and "aaah's." Electronic accents include the usual
thumping electric bass for additional power. It's all familiar,
including the addition of Lisbeth Scott's mournful and lovely voice as a
dominant aspect of this score; her tone seems to have been anointed as
the official soul of "the Remote Control sound."
The majority of those reading this far into this review
will agree (or at least concede the possibility) that Jablonsky's music
for
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is brainless. Stupid.
Imbecilic. Juvenile. This doesn't just apply to the ridiculously mundane
chord progress that pleasantly flow through each cue, but also in the
lack of creativity in instrumentation (duduk excepted) and, more
importantly, a lack of intelligent design in its approach. It is the
antithesis to a score like Jerry Goldsmith's
The Boys from
Brazil, which is a challenging but extremely smart shunning of
stylistic norms that defied all expectations (then again, Michael Bay is
no Frank Schaffner, so solely comparing Jablonsky to Goldsmith is
perhaps slightly unfair). Would Jablonsky know the difference between a
Viennese waltz and a German waltz if he had Johann Strauss slapping him
on one side of the face and Richard Wagner on the other? Maybe, but
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen doesn't indicate that kind of
depth in talent. So to get back to the point: this score is brainless.
Stupid. Imbecilic. Juvenile. The next question is this: does it matter?
Why should Jablonsky delicately change meters and instrumentation to
accent a slight change in ambience on screen when you're never going to
hear the majority of it over the sound effects anyway? Not to mention
the fact that an intelligent score for a
Transformers flick could
very well get a guy fired! If you accept the fact that scores like this
exist for a reason, and therefore approach them with extremely low
expectations, how bad can they be? Certainly, idiotic film music with
mainstream appeal has always irritated true collectors of the art;
anybody old enough to remember the music of Herbie Hancock, Giorgio
Moroder, and Michael Gore and the Oscars they won over truly classic,
timeless scores can testify to that. Jablonsky and similar clones are
simply the current incarnation of such pop culture favorites, tied in
this case to the action blockbusters that have risen from the birth of
CGI capabilities. So if films like
Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen are commonly accepted as stupid, and the accompanying music
is commonly accepted as equally stupid, then can you really give the
score a low rating simply because it's stupid? Moreover, there is the
issue of the listening experience on album. Since Jablonsky doesn't make
much attempt to hit specific synchronization points and construct other
basic aspects that typically define film music, then why not forget the
fact that this score exists for a film at all and rate it as a new age
compilation album? In lieu of simply ranting about the poor merits of
the score, perhaps looking at it as a new age product is better for the
blood pressure.
Think back to the early 1990's for a moment. The new
age genre was flourishing, highlighted by Enya's soothing tones, and
some of material coming from other artists was bordering on the realm of
what film music collectors were comfortable hearing. The group Enigma
comes to mind; their initial pair of highly successful albums of that
period offered material equivalent in the 1990's to what Jablonsky is
writing here to throngs of buyers in the 2000's. The varied choral
aspect of the current Remote Control sound is simply an offshoot of
Zimmer's music for Ron Howard's adaptations of Dan Brown books. The
basic harmonies and pleasant rhythmic flows are new age staples. You
can't of course, draw a total parallel between the two because
Jablonsky's action material is still held over from Zimmer's own 90's
style. This action music in
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
is actually better than expected in that it isn't totally obnoxious. In
fact, it's a bit dull, which is a plus in this case. And you have to
throw out the really awful Linkin Park contribution in "Nest," an
irritatingly trashy heavy rock piece that has nothing in relation to the
rest of the score and only serves as a marketing ploy. But then you have
the remainder of Jablonsky's material, addressing the larger than life,
historical aspect of this film. If you take parts of the cues "Prime,"
"Einstein's Wrong," "Infinite White," "Heed Our Warning" (arguably),
"Tomb of the Primes," "Precious Cargo" (arguably), "The Matrix of
Leadership," and "I Rise, You Fall" (and you reduce the bass and gain
levels considerably), you end up with upwards of twenty minutes of what
could easily be considered a very decent new age album. It's mindless
music, but that's the entire point of wishy-washy new age ambience. Some
of the parts with choir even remind of the Enigma days of new age's
1990's peak. Lisbeth Scott's voice is the clinching element in this
classification, gracing three of those cues with a distinctly religious
tone. Within the simplistic realm of Remote Control music, "Infinite
White" is as gorgeous as it gets, surpassing the equally dumb but
satisfying closing cue from
The Island on the guilty pleasure
meter for Jablonsky. Does this excuse the stupidity of the music in
context? No. Entire films as dumb as
Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen shouldn't exist, though, and like some of the pop culture,
musical-inspired flicks of the late 70's and early 80's, this is another
place and time in which the music has to be separated from the
soundtrack genre and reclassified. As a film score, Jablonsky's work is
trash. Appropriate, but still trash. As a new age album with twenty
minutes of satisfyingly simple atmosphere, it actually serves a purpose.
Approach it as such and you'll be rewarded with more than just a jewel
case for your expenditure.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check: |
For Steve Jablonsky reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 1.82
(in 11 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.4
(in 9,755 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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