Filmtracks: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Hans Zimmer/Various)

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Written 5/17/11

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Buy it... if you yearn to continue punishing yourself with lazy and uninspired Hans Zimmer pirate music that is inexplicably translated into the realm of cheap trance as per the composer's own wishes for your listening enjoyment.

Avoid it... on an inexcusable album presentation that is not only worse than Rango, but makes it nearly impossible to appreciate what few, fleeting moments of interest the composer and his army generated before sleepwalking through the haphazard assembly of this score's many boring components.

Zimmer

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: (Hans Zimmer/Various) Never trust any studio executive or producer who declares that the doors on a successful franchise have officially closed. The initial Pirates of the Caribbean adaptation of the famous Disney theme park ride was originally conceived to be a standalone film. Then, two sequels were planned for release in short succession and at the debut of the third entry, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End in 2007, the concept was put to rest. The allure of $1.8 billion in net profits for Disney after that trilogy, however, proved too seductive, and despite some publicized spats between studio executives, the fourth film in the franchise was produced based upon Tim Powers' novel "On Stranger Tides" for a summer 2011 release. Everything about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides has seemed tarnished by a lack of uniform enthusiasm from both Disney and the crew. The budget for the movie was slimmed down considerably, many famous characters are gone, new ones based upon real-life inspiration take the overarching story in a new direction, a PG-13 rating for sensuality is a Disney first, and more than one crew member, including lead actor Johnny Depp (despite earning $55 million for reprising his role), have expressed that the experience has been less than ideal. The story reunites Depp and Geoffrey Rush's character and pits them with and against Penelope Cruz as an old flame on a hunt for the fountain of youth. In their way is Blackbeard, mermaids, and the usual assortment of nasty undead pirates. Early critical response was not particularly favorable to Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and reactions to its soundtrack have been even more vicious than those for the original, disastrous entry. Composer Hans Zimmer wrote the bulk of the material for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl but couldn't take credit for it due to contractual obligations for The Last Samurai. It was a hectic and rushed, last-minute job to replace Alan Silvestri that was largely hacked out on synthesizers for the final recording. Remarkably, the score enjoyed the same success as the film and has become a mainstream favorite regardless of its countless shortfalls of intellect. Zimmer took greater responsibility for the two sequels that followed, eventually replacing the synthetic elements with a mostly orchestral score for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End that is considered by almost all film music collectors to be the most superior of the franchise to date.

In the years after At World's End, Zimmer claimed that he was done with the franchise, and even at the time of scoring On Stranger Tides, he affirmed that it has made him "seasick." Nevertheless, the composer is a champion of the collaborative process in music composition and recording, and if nothing else, these Pirates of the Caribbean scores allow him a significant amount of latitude in terms of teaming up with other artists who interest him. In the case of On Stranger Tides, that meant employing the usual army of Remote Control assistants, including additional music and arrangements from Matthew Margeson, Geoff Zanelli, Guillame Roussel, Tom Gire, John Sponsler, Jacob Shea, Nick Phoenix, and Thomas Bergersen. But also on the menu are contributions from a variety of external sources, too, including a tango from Eduardo Cruz, Penelope's younger brother, choral arrangements from Eric Whitacre (Zimmer needed his assistance to gauge the performance capabilities of the singers), and a variety of Latin influences from Mexican/Irish rock acoustic guitar duo Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero ("Rodrigo y Gabriela"). For the standalone release, Zimmer joined with respected album producer Peter Asher to coordinate a slew of remixes based upon those original collaborative results. More than anything, Zimmer enjoys seeking contributions from other musicians and spreads the credit amicably, and it is this continued career path explored by the composer that absolutely sinks the music for On Stranger Tides. For years, there has been a growing discontentment within Zimmer's most ardent fanbase in regards to his diminished role as a solo composer and concentration on "overproducing" the scores he is asked to write. While his preferred process still appeals to a large segment of his listeners, On Stranger Tides may represent a turning point in that support. To say that the initial commercial album containing this score is an uncoordinated, unfocused mess pointed at people who own just a couple of soundtracks is an understatement, and be aware that the review to follow is based upon that product alone. Zimmer fans claimed to have extensive recording sessions leaked already on the web at the time of the official album's release, but that material (chopped into an insane number of short cues) will perhaps be the topic of future analysis. Until then, the album that Zimmer himself produced is the target of choice ridicule, for the music presented in its contents won't really satisfy anyone in the film score spectrum, whether you apologize for Zimmer's coordination techniques or otherwise.

More discussion about the ills of the album situation will be covered at the end of this review, and what follows is, once again, based solely upon the snippets of score (amounting to less than half an hour) that Zimmer chose for inclusion on the product. As for the score itself, Zimmer handled On Stranger Tides, as always, with his collaborators often in the room with him while he toyed with ideas on keyboards. This includes Rodrigo y Gabriela; the three wrote their sequences together in close confines. With the exception of the love theme and some minor motifs, Zimmer handled the new major themes himself, writing the score's ideas for the mermaids and Blackbeard. Interestingly, Zimmer sought to make On Stranger Tides a nearly completely organic score, shedding the synthesizers in favor of acoustic performances. This posed a problem because he confessed that it was challenging for the orchestral players to produce the "tough, rugged bass" that he desires. The trademark emphasis on lower registers is indeed prevalent in the score, and some minor kudos have to be extended to Zimmer for attempting to leave the electronic enhancements behind. But when the orchestra (and especially the brass) is forced into such unnatural performance exaggerations, you end up hearing a result that is so similar to the synthetic sampling and manipulation of those players that the effort seems moot. Zimmer has for a long time used post-processing to construe the live recordings into the beefy, muscular tone of their electronic representations, and the outcome here is really no different. There is no doubt that a fair number of listeners will erroneously believe that On Stranger Tides is at least partially synthetic. It's hard to blame them, especially given the franchise's roots. Why Zimmer thinks this sound is befitting a swashbuckling concept is still an issue, but that debate has been beaten to death in the reviews for the previous scores in this series. All of the same arguments are valid here, but reprising them is somewhat pointless. It suffices to conclude that anyone looking for intelligence in the totally non-dynamic sound of the Pirates of the Caribbean scores is not very well educated about the history of film music. It's also safe to say that if you're still genuinely wishing you could hear what Silvestri would have produced for the first film before being canned, then the equation with On Stranger Tides will not change your opinion in regards to Zimmer's style. What's truly disappointing about this score is what a letdown it is compared to the promise shown in At World's End. There's practically nothing clever about the narrative development in this music, and that's the telltale sign of a composer bored with the topic and handling the assignment because he is obligated to do it, not because he's passionate about it.

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Because there is so little original score on Disney's official album for On Stranger Tides, a track-by-track analysis is to follow and provide details on compositional attribution and thematic usage. Aside from the seven remixes that destroy the second half of the album, there are three nearly solo Rodrigo y Gabriela performances mixed in with the score that reduce Zimmer and his Remote Control crew's portion to under half an hour. For casual enthusiasts of the franchise, though, nearly every moment of On Stranger Tides features some kind of backwards reference to the previous three scores, usually in blatant reminders. A shortened, reworked version of Jack Sparrow's theme for Martin Tillman's usual cello occupies the short "Guilty of Being Innocent of Being Jack Sparrow" in ways that will make some Edward Shearmur fans cringe. The tango written by Eduardo Cruz is the basis of "Angelica," the de facto love theme of the film that features Rodrigo y Gabriela supported by deep string backing in the rhythms to basically connect it to the rest of the score. It's a very basic tango, really, aside from some occasional flourishes in the guitar performances. The version here is the complete one, meant to accompany a longer scene that was chopped down in length on screen. The first forty seconds of "Mutiny" touch upon three major thematic elements in short succession, hinting at the dual-chord progressions of Angelica's theme on brass before staccato pounding of the franchise theme ("He's a Pirate") in the familiar routine and transitioning to Blackbeard's theme on strings. The action motif for undead pirates and the franchise theme from the first score return later with choral chanting as well. The first nearly solo Rodrigo y Gabriela cue is "The Pirate That Should Not Be," a self-contained remix-like track with only slight connections to Zimmer's themes. The highlight of the original material arrives with what Zimmer claims is the primary new theme for On Stranger Tides, in "Mermaids." It's really the only idea in the score with some intellectual merit (though it oddly doubles for the fountain of youth), smartly balancing the intoxicating allure of the mermaids with the ominous threat of their otherwise fierce nature. With the help of Eric Whitacre's choral arrangements (emphasizing female singers, of course), "Mermaids" is a truly engaging cue, its beautiful melody and softer performance aspects countered by a turbulent undercurrent of troubled background lines. After several minutes, the cue adds frightful brass and rumbling bass to increase the volume, string ostinatos creeping in and vocals turning to angry whispering and then chanting. Just as this cue engrosses you, however, Zimmer chooses to backtrack and awkwardly insert a statement of Cutler Beckett's death-related material from "I Don't Think Now is the Best Time" in At World's End. A final, forceful snippet of the Blackbeard theme then closes out long cue.

The second Rodrigo y Gabriela remix cue of sorts is "South of Heaven's Chanting Mermaids," this time based upon Zimmer's mermaids theme. It's a very long and dull performance, the guitars performing solo until some basic accompaniment late takes the tone dark like its inspiration. Fans of the Dead Man's Chest score will find merit in "Palm Tree Escape," a cue primarily consisting of elements pulled from the 2006 score. Most of these concentrate on various guises of Jack Sparrow's material, though this time featuring Rodrigo y Gabriela as percussion-like devices to set a unique rhythm. Their guitars infuse an extra dose of attitude for the full ensemble franchise theme statement late in the cue. The instrumentation is also a bit more varied in "Blackbeard," opening with creepy chimes and deep string effects to emulate synthesized dread. Hints of an electric guitar (almost like a live ensemble contributor) eventually yield to extremely heavy, Inception-style brass in unison and choral chanting that is more aggressive than the norm for Zimmer. The actual theme contains a meandering introduction before pounded on-key chords in descending lines that are eerily similar to the progressions of Victor Heredia's "Todavia Cantamos" as adapted into Shaun Davey's underrated 2001 score for The Tailor of Panama. Even if you can tolerate this similarity, you might succumb to Zimmer's preferred technique of pounding you into submission by repeating his super-awesome notes within the melody (or doing so on key underneath to achieve the same effect). More intriguing is this theme's interlude for cello and choir at about 2:20 into the track. The third Rodrigo y Gabriela solo cue is clearly the worst of the lot, extending for five minutes of meaningless light performances that are finally joined by electric elements at the end to liven it up with references to the franchise theme. How this music is meant to interest album buyers more than additional orchestral score recordings is a mystery. The mermaid theme is conveyed on melodramatic, ominous strings in "On Stranger Tides," segueing into a combined performance with the franchise theme (and a new one for the Spanish) for an abrasive chanted sequence. Closing out the score portion of the album is the "End Credits" rendition of "He's a Pirate" with a few changes to the orchestration (brass and timpani at the very start are a noted change) that make the theme sound synthetic even though it isn't. The middle sequence in this suite returns to the Jack Sparrow action motif from Dead Man's Chest as heard in "Palm Tree Escape" before leaving us with "He's a Pirate" one last time. As for the seven remixes that follow on the product, it's painful to hear Zimmer's material translated into the trance realm. Wretched, in fact. The only slightly listenable one is "Palm Tree Escape," and even that is difficult to endure for its entire duration.

So what happened here? By all accounts, On Stranger Tides is a monumental screw-up of Zimmer's own making. As nice as it is to see the man act in such a humble manner, his tendency to delegate authority has ruined what little progress he made in the music of this franchise with At World's End. It may not be as offensive intellectually as Curse of the Black Pearl, because the mermaids' theme does indeed have the kind of individual merit completely lacking in the 2003 score, but this is a case in which the album presentation is so heinously awful (yes, even worse than Rango) that it's impossible to really know how On Stranger Tides rates, for instance, alongside Dead Man's Chest. Make no mistake about it: Zimmer is alone to blame for the terrible album. He has confessed many things about the album's constitution, even admitting that Disney would have pressed an album with much more original score if he had personally insisted. But after blaming the musicians union's fees involved with Los Angeles recordings for limiting most score releases to 30 minutes (someone needs to get this man to consult with Brian Tyler about that), a largely irrelevant poke at the players he claims to support given his wealth and appeal, Zimmer actually claimed artistic merit for his album choices (along with Peter Asher's input). He wanted to show off more artists' talents, seeking spirited remixes that more closely followed his original material (sorry, didn't work!), and specifically left off more of the orchestral action sequences because he thought that they would make the CD less listenable to the purchasing audience. This coming from a man who thought that The Social Network had a tremendously positive impact on film music and cannot speak any more highly of Trent Reznor's compositional prowess. If anybody doubts that Zimmer lives within the mentality of his Remote Control bubble, then On Stranger Tides is proof that he is indeed, intentionally or unintentionally, altering the course of film music creation and soundtrack album production for the worse. Even if you consider the score portions of this effort alone, you have underachieving music that has been cobbled together to form cues in ways that betray the edits of the separate, shorter recordings. The style still doesn't befit the swashbuckling genre and whatever momentum that was gained in the previous franchise score is lost. There will be debate about whether On Stranger Tides is evidence of a lazy composer or simply a misguided composer. Whereas the previous scores failed for some listeners because of their obnoxious tone, this one fails for a far worse reason: it's boring. Ultimately, Zimmer can humbly proclaim his love for assembling talent in the collaborative process, but if those efforts yield a stinky turd that potentially alienates even his own fanbase, then the only person to blame is himself. @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Music as Written for the Film: *
Music as Heard on Album: FRISBEE
Overall: *

Bias Check:

For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.85 (in 128 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.96 (in 299,193 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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