The score and its commercial album both begin with
arguably their weaker halves, with the obligatory song followed on the
album by somewhat discouraging selections that skirt the impressive
material heard in spurts throughout this portion of the film. The music
for these sequences, as audiences are introduced to the zany crew of the
expedition, hails back to the style of Alan Menken's silly comedy
material. Only upon the entrance of the submarine does Howard fully
state his marginally swashbuckling title theme on brass, and only once
the journey reaches Atlantis itself does the score begin to sweep the
listener into the action with diverse material of sustaining interest.
Howard's majestic theme for the lost civilization is a slowly rising
idea that often reaches a choral crescendo in the fashion of Alan
Silvestri's
The Abyss. The primary brass theme of enthusiastic
action is not as pronounced or mature as the one that sparked so much
controversy in
Dinosaur (and more specifically, the cue "The Egg
Travels"), but at the same time, there is no plagiarism issue with the
more generic ideas for
Atlantis. In fact, the pedestrian nature
of Howard's main theme for this score means that the performances of
that idea are not the highlight of the work. More appealing is the
vibrant majesty that Howard reserves for the various scenes of
wonderment in the latter half of the film. The collection of cues
following the discovery of Atlantis and accompanying its fantastic
scenery are a sibling of the exotic underwater music that Howard wrote
for
Waterworld. Howard's knack for writing simple, harmonious
chord progressions, always substantiated by a strong bass of strings and
brass, is flavored with an array of solo vocalists. Female soprano
voices are well employed on their own and supported by chorus to
represent the majesty of the seas, and the fuller adult chorus alone
reflects the ghosts of the empire's citizens with haunting beauty. The
mix of the score, while somewhat flat and leaning too heavily on the dry
side of the equation, improves when the chorus, orchestra, and
synthetics are merged late in the score.
Howard's electronic accents never overwhelm the
orchestral ensemble in
Atlantis, and his exotic touch of
percussion throughout the second half of the score includes chimes,
bells, and synthesized metallic elements not much different from those
heard in
Waterworld. When combined with the orchestra and chorus,
these tones are nothing short of magnificent. Howard also captures the
adventurous, chasing spirit of the journey's resolution with ambitious
snare rhythms heard in the trio of cues spanning "Going After Rourke"
and "Just Do It" (though the lengthy "Dogfight" in the middle is missing
from the commercial album). There is a certain amount of overblown
fantasy in the score that may cause it to sound too childish and heroic
for listeners expecting a plethora of subtleties, but given the genre of
the film, it would be difficult to find music more appropriate for
Atlantis. It was easy to see why Disney switched to Howard over
Menken for these films, all of which required an enormous scope of epic
proportions that Menken was never as accomplished in producing. The
commercial album for
Atlantis offers exactly 50 minutes of
Howard's score, which was generous considering Disney's past disregard
for the presentation of orchestral music off the screen. Ironically, the
album was released on the same day as the one for
Pearl Harbor,
and the Zimmer score stole almost all the spotlight away from
Atlantis. The song for the Disney film, performed by Mya, is far
less engaging than the Faith Hill song that Diane Warren also wrote for
the end credits of
Pearl Harbor. There is no doubt that the score
for
Atlantis is a more inconsistent listening experience on album
than
Pearl Harbor, but the latter score doesn't have half of the
amount of appropriate energy that Howard provided for
Atlantis. A
numbered limited edition album from Disney, with a special 3-D insert,
contained the same contents. Fans were treated to a 73-minute
promotional album from Disney almost immediately, pushing unsuccessfully
for an Oscar nomination but inevitably resulting in countless identical
bootlegs. Outside of about five minutes of superior additional material
(including the massive opening, "Atlantis Destroyed"), the complete
presentation is mostly redundant. Still,
Atlantis is an
accomplished work for its genre.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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