Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,821
Written 6/30/17
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Buy it... if you've somehow managed to appreciate the mechanically
functional but anonymous quality that Brian Tyler consistently brings to
his music for the franchise, this entry a predictable extension of the
same sound.
Avoid it... if this music does nothing more than induce shrugs of
indifference for you, the main theme not utilized frequently enough, new
themes mediocre at best, and the action material pounding away on an
overly lengthy album presentation.
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| Tyler |
The Fate of the Furious: (Brian Tyler) Perpetuating
the stunning success of the adventurous street car racing franchise,
2017's The Fate of the Furious defied mediocre critical response
to break box office records and ensure the production of another two
sequels. Having retired the characters directly related to deceased
actor Paul Walker prior to this eighth series entry, the plotline fills
in backstory of Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto character, revealing a
family he didn't know he had and using them as incentive to betray his
prior colleagues. The villain of the franchise has become Charlize
Theron's cyber-terrorist, Cipher, and the team of government agents and
racing enthusiasts is sent on a wild, worldwide chase to stop her
takeover of a Russian submarine with which she can cause a senseless
nuclear holocaust. (Before American president Donald J. Trump can beat
her to it in real life, that is.) Despite the best efforts of the
returning ensemble of shady characters, now including a variety of
former antagonists working together and supplemented by the likes of
both Kurt Russell and Helen Mirren, the fate of Cipher remains
unresolved in The Fate of the Furious, paving the way for another
few billion dollars of revenue to emerge from the wallets of the simple
masses for the next entries. Certainly, these films continue to dwell in
a fair amount of stupidity, the fallacies of logic not deterring any of
the filmmakers from their predictable trajectory, and composer Brian
Tyler fits squarely into that scheme. Marking the fifth film in the
franchise for Tyler (unless you consider Fast & Furious 6, which
had the composer's music tracked heavily into the picture when he could
not score it due to scheduling conflicts), The Fate of the
Furious continues to build upon the musical foundation the composer
established in Fast Five. An avid auto-racing enthusiast, Tyler
remains perhaps the best suited composer (literally speaking, too) for
this franchise, and his orchestral/synthetic blend, heavy on percussive
rhythms, has become the accepted musical identity of the concept despite
the usual influx of song placements. In fact, for subsequent films in
the series, an editor could easily utilize the Tyler music for the
existing entries without needing much new material, if any. The
shrug-inducing music has a mechanically functional but anonymous quality
that lends itself well to the rather formulaic topic, but don't expect
it to win any awards in the process.
The tendency towards workmanlike attitude in Tyler's
music for these films yields a score for
The Fate of the Furious
that does little to distinguish any narrative evolution. The balance
between electronic layering and the 77-member orchestra is a bit more
favorable towards the organic tones, it seems, with few truly obnoxious,
grating moments. Listeners continue to await the day when Tyler
fine-tunes his affinity for the late Jerry Goldsmith in the form of
sustained, rhythmic action of superior quality. And yet, with
The
Fate of the Furious they receive another merely average expression
of testosterone-laden pounding that remains largely harmonious but fails
to extend any clear melodic purpose. The
Fast Five theme that has
become the main franchise identity makes its descending, staccato blasts
heard in "The Fate of the Furious," "The Toy Shop," and "The Return,"
and it's truly a shame that it is so infrequently applied. As a theme,
it may be simplistic drivel, but it's the best we have here, so why not
let it flourish like Tyler does in concert arrangements of the idea?
Other existing themes return, too, including notably the insular Deckard
Shaw idea (best summarized in "Cargo Breach") and the Latin-flavored Dom
and Letty love theme on guitar in "Reunited." That romantic side is
complicated by the addition of another Dom-related love interest, and
Tyler takes a rather muted journey through that somber identity earlier
in "Reunited" and later in related forms in "Incentive," "Asking the
Question," and, tragically, "Consequences." One gets the impression that
if Tyler were to score softcore pornography, this kind of nebulously
pleasant but inconsequential music would result. A few other nuggets are
thrown into the equation include the hip Roman Pearce motif in "Roman,"
a touch of
Now You See Me jazz in "Nobody's Intel," and some
badly underdeveloped ideas for Cipher, led by an understated
introduction to her in "Cipher" and extending to "Simple Solutions" and
others. The only point of potential creativity comes in the Cipher theme
using three-note fragments and descending background lines to musically
suggest that her character has been relevant to the group of
protagonists for longer than we previously knew. Unfortunately, all of
these ideas are muddled by the nearly constant, mundane, drum-slapping
action sequences. Thus far, all of the Tyler scores in this franchise
have received three-star ratings, and while
The Fate of the
Furious fails to muster some of the emotional gravitas of
Furious
7, this one holds a steady course overall. Exceedingly long album
presentations continue to test your patience for this otherwise decently
functional music.
*** @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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