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| Tyler |
The Expendables 3: (Brian Tyler) Sometimes the
drama of making a movie is more fun than the movie itself, and that
proved to be the case with Sylvester Stallone's third entry in the
guilty pleasure concept of
The Expendables. The franchise decided
that the time was right to start phasing out the old action heroes of
yesteryear and welcome aboard a new, younger team of "Expendables." The
plot actually dwells on the drama of that transition, to the detriment
of the action on screen. Let's face it: people want to see the
battle-scarred veterans battle one another in ridiculous spy game and
fighting methods not befitting their ages. That's the fun of the films.
By depriving fans of the 80's and 90's such a chance, there is less of a
purpose to the films and they lose their unique attraction. Critics and
audiences alike weren't thrilled by Stallone's guidance towards a
younger generation of stars (and a PG-13 rating, no less!) for
The
Expendables 3, leaving the best drama of this entry being the actor
negotiations and other extenuating issues in pre-production as the top
highlight. Which actor will want too much money? Which one refuses to
travel? When will one of them get out jail so shooting can start? The
franchise has always suffered bizarre press, usually involving lawsuits
at some point or another, and that part of the equation remains. In the
plot this time around, Mel Gibson's mega-villain and former "Expendables"
co-founder forces a slew of the old men on a mission to find and destroy
him. A simple story, witty lines, plenty of explosions, and ballsy music
are dependable parts of
The Expendables, and Stallone's
collaboration with composer Brian Tyler remains another source of
consistency. Tyler handled this assignment at roughly the same time as
he did the 2014 remake of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it's
not too far of a stretch to say that more of the cohesive energy that
you often hear in Tyler scores went into the flick about the turtles.
Conversely,
The Expendables 3 represents the composer on the most
basic auto-pilot mode. Tyler testifies that his relationship with
Stallone is so good that these assignments are relatively problem-free,
and that comfort factor perhaps has something to do with the declining
awesomeness of the music as each film in this franchise debuts. The
composer has a difficult time balancing loyalty to the concept's origins
and the sense of forward progress that comes with so many
damn-intriguing characters that keep wafting through these movies.
What's a guy to do?
The music for
The Expendables in 2010 was not
high art, but it was over-the-top bravado with choral glory that played
to the parody aspect of the franchise very well. Thrown in for good
measure was a vintage Jerry Goldsmith-like theme that served as a
perfect fanfare for these aging action stars. By
The Expendables
3, the grandiose element of bravado is completely gone (in all
honesty, it was mostly lost in the previous entry) and the statements of
the theme have been whittled down to mostly burpings of the main
four-note phrase of the identity. Instead, what you have now is
completely generic Tyler music of orchestral and synthetic origins,
stumbling along with almost no larger narrative cohesiveness. He seems
to have gotten caught up in the idea of treating individual new
characters, losing sight of the concept as a whole. Those deviations
into character themes vary from cute to intriguing, but they cannot
sustain the score. The two most memorable are the piano solo for
Gibson's villain ("The Art of War") and the Zorro-like Latin personality
for Antonio Banderas ("Galgo's Grand Entrance"), both of which short and
sadly not integrated with clarity into the remainder of the score.
Gibson's theme begs for further development, especially in how his piano
combines with the rest of the ensemble, but it never happens. The mass
of Tyler's
The Expendables 3 consists of tired loops for
synthetics and strings combining with broad brass statements to form
very derivative sequences. Local flavor is provided throughout the
score, but even here Tyler underwhelms. Listeners have heard him do
jungle rhythms with faint wails of ethnic flutes enough times to ignore
them. Even the rocking opening of "The Drop" doesn't have the
sophistication of his prior incarnations of the same material. Long
portions of "Package Secured," "We Were Brothers," and "The Last Window"
fail to develop the character material and instead stew with sound
design and low brass brooding that accomplishes nothing more than basic
atmosphere. Most of this music is so bland that it doesn't remind you of
anything distinctively, though the middle portion of "Infiltrating the
Block" has some John Powell chasing to it. The hour-long album
presentation of
The Expendables 3 concludes with a long but still
rather generic action cue that dissolves into electronic grinding and
percussive pounding in its midsection. Overall, this score is as much a
disappointment as the film, lacking all vestiges of the personality of
the original. This Filmtracks review represents the 25th analysis of a
Tyler work, most of them his efforts for widely distributed films, and
this is the first time the reliable composer receives less than three
stars. Seek instead the better-coordinated power anthem and choral
grandeur for those pesky ninja turtles.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Brian Tyler reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.2
(in 41 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.13
(in 19,742 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film. It does not even include a
standard listing of the score's crew.
