Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #710
Written 7/9/03, Revised 4/25/11
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Buy it... if the maturity of Michael Giacchino's own distinct style
is what you had considered lacking in the previous "Medal of Honor"
scores.
Avoid it... if you really have no confidence in the quality of any
score for a video game, because by this entry in the series, Giacchino's
"Medal of Honor" music could compete favorably with any major film
score.
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| Giacchino |
Medal of Honor: Frontline: (Michael Giacchino) By
the time "Medal of Honor: Frontline" hit the gaming market in 2002, the
"Medal of Honor" concept had strongly established itself as a premiere
war game in the industry over the previous three years. With its origins
resting with Dreamworks and Steven Spielberg, the series of games firmly
extended the expectation that large orchestral music was not only a
normal feature of these historical war games, but also expanding into a
variety of other genres as well. After being recognized and awarded for
his work on "Medal of Honor: Underground" the previous year, composer
Michael Giacchino was also becoming an established force in the music
industry, with offers beginning to come in for a wider variety of
scoring projects (though mostly in television). Commissioned to write
music for both "Medal of Honor: Frontline" and "Medal of Honor: Allied
Assault," the latter only requiring five new cues of material (and thus
received no major album release on its own), Giacchino was on the verge
of partially leaving this era of his career behind, moving on to the
show "Alias" and, within a few years, feature film scores that would
yield an Academy Award nomination and a win. "Medal of Honor:
Frontline," in the meantime, thrust the Allies back into the series of
games with the daring, if not disastrous Operation Market Garden, during
which the Allies air-dropped troops along the German "West Wall" to
capture a handful of strategic bridges on the Rhine River. For the
return of the Allies from the first game, Giacchino was originally asked
to contribute roughly an hour of music for this third installment. By
the end of the successful scoring and recording endeavor, however, the
composer had written and recorded nearly 75 minutes of material.
Giacchino decided not to significantly alter the foundation of the
"Medal of Honor" thematic equation to any great extent, choosing the
revisit several of the key themes from the first game (many of which
were absent from the second game due to its different set of characters
and more intimate storyline). Interestingly, the thematic material for
the primary American character (Lt. Patterson) would be restructured in
an effort, as Giacchino would call it, to represent how the character
had matured in the time that had passed since the battles and adventures
of the first game. Not surprisingly, this growth of that character's
theme mirrors the maturation of Giacchino's own work for the entire
series, too. Enthusiasts of the video game series recognized, as did the
film music fans who had already embraced his work, that "Medal of Honor:
Frontline" is the most well developed, mature score that Giacchino had
provided to the series at the time.
Gone in "Medal of Honor: Frontline" is the optimistic
bombast that accompanied the gung-ho spirit of the first "Medal of
Honor" score. Some listeners who enjoyed Giacchino's obvious stylistic
similarities to John Williams' music of the 1980's were disappointed by
this fact, but the transformation which had taken Giacchino's style
further from that enthusiastic start also led him down the necessary
path to creating his own style. Indeed, the title theme for the Allies
is back, as is the Nazi theme and an adaptation of the major character
theme, but they are not presented with the same heroic vigor during most
of "Medal of Honor: Frontline." Only in the final mission on the album,
"The Horton's Nest," does a hint of that ballsy American patriotism
begin to shine once again. On the other hand, "Medal of Honor:
Frontline" isn't as subtle and understated as much of "Medal of Honor:
Underground" was, and when Giacchino does provide moments of suspense in
this score, he raises the bar by utilizing a varied chorus to accentuate
the horrors of the situation. The voices also work to brighten the
beauties of location (especially in a solo boy's tone), with cues such
as "After the Drop" and "Arnhem" offering harmonious, though bittersweet
passages that exceed the quality of Giacchino's other music for the
series. This score has a more powerful effect on the listener, and yet,
even in its magnificent consistency, it lacks the ambitious grip that
made the first "Medal of Honor" score so enticing on album. Thus,
despite being a superior composition and recording, "Medal of Honor:
Frontline" is about equal to the original in terms of album enjoyment,
and slightly better than the previous entry. Recorded in a Seattle
cathedral, the score enjoys a more acoustically dynamic sound, a
180-degree difference from the composer's later, extremely dry
processing. Part of this impression is likely due to the location,
though Giacchino's use of the chorus, chimes, bells, and anvil also add
welcomed depth. The initial CD album was not available through the same
limited online venues as the previous two; it was only to be purchased
through EA Games' online gaming store for an inexpensive $10. It went
out of print and escalated to three times that value by 2011, when La-La
Land Records assembled all of the existing "Medal of Honor" game
soundtracks by all of its three composers at the time and released them
in one massive, 8-CD set. That impressive collection, aside from
remastering the sound and making all of the scores available again as
part of a 2,000-copy pressing for $60, presents additional material from
the later entries. The contents for "Medal of Honor: Frontline" on the
set's third CD are identical to those of the original product. Beware of
a hideous, drink-induced, hidden source track at the end of both
presentations. Overall, "Medal of Honor: Frontline" confirmed what many
had suspected since 1999: Giacchino was ready for the major motion
picture scoring assignments soon to come.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Michael Giacchino reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.46
(in 43 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.21
(in 23,476 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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