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| Beltrami |
World War Z: (Marco Beltrami/Various) Despite
re-writes to the film's latter half that delayed its release
significantly, critical and popular response to
World War Z has
been surprisingly positive. A Brad Pitt produced vehicle in which Pitt
is shown saving the planet from a zombie apocalypse,
World War Z
is actually an attempt to make a serious movie out of the zombie genre.
Conveying the global realities of what would happen if a pandemic did
somehow turn people into zombies upon being bitten by one, the story
postulates about governmental and civilian responses to such an
outbreak. Pitt is a former United Nations employee taking the lead on
discovering where the problem originated, traveling the world on that
mission and staying just one step ahead of those seeking to take a bite
out his glorious ass. Never mind the logical fallacies and other
inconceivable coincidences that occur in the story. After all, it is a
zombie movie at its core, so it doesn't hurt to turn off the brain. The
quick popularity of the adaptation of Max Brooks' concept led Paramount
to almost immediately announce plans for two sequels, a possibility left
conveniently open by the conclusion of
World War Z's plot. Drawn
into the fray is horror-master Marco Beltrami, the composer whose career
in the genre has been prolific despite lacking individual masterpieces
in that lot. His comfortable blend of orchestral and electronic elements
is an easy match for this type of film, the organics of the symphony
overwhelmed by synthetic tones to match the impending doom of society at
the hands and teeth of the zombies. One could go back to Beltrami's work
in the early 2000's for movies such as
I, Robot and
Terminator
3: Rise of the Machines to get a sense of how he would continue to
adapt his horror moulds into the large-scale battles between humanity
and the instruments of its destruction. In the case of
World War
Z, he enlisted the help of several assistants (led by Buck Sanders,
as always) to largely continue developing sounds familiar to his career
and those of others who have been leading the way in perpetuating
decidedly "dark" film music trends. Listeners will hear an interesting
combination of three musical forces at war in this score: Beltrami's own
harshly rendered rhythmic tones, Hans Zimmer's broadly executed,
bass-dwelling exhibits of force, and Paul Haslinger's typical,
industrial metal ambience of brutality. In fact, don't be surprised if
you are reminded of Zimmer's
Inception and Haslinger's
Underworld several times during
World War Z.
One has to wonder if Beltrami and his crew would have
been better served by straying closer to the industrial influences of
the latter for the context of such a uniform apocalypse. The organic
portion of the mix for
World War Z is never convincingly played,
the orchestra often present but not the defining characteristic of the
music outside of its ability to create rough rhythms and an ambient
dissonance that might have been better achieved with strictly electronic
elements. The presence of an electric guitar as a discomforting
background performer in even the score's most palatable symphonic
portions is easily evident. The sound design of
World War Z is
really what drives this score, the thumping electronics and meandering
haze of discontent tuned to whatever rhythm Beltrami is hashing through
with the orchestra. There are ostinatos of John Powell origin to be
heard here, of course, but despite some critical references to
connections between the Jason Bourne and
World War Z chase
mechanisms, Beltrami seems far happier thrashing through standard horror
techniques than using contemporary chase rhythms. To that point, you'll
hear everything from stereotypical stingers ("Hand Off") to the
heartbeat-like thumps of Ennio Morricone's
The Thing ("Like a
River Around a Rock," not surprising given Beltrami's work on the
remake). A tremendous amount of unpleasantness with Christopher Young
precision marks the heightened suspense moments, though outright action
does seem to degenerate into basic pounding at times. Thematically,
Beltrami is not negligent of the compelling side of the storyline. He
applies two themes to
World War Z, one for the individual warmth
of humanity and the other for the larger plight for survival. The former
uses the deep piano thuds and a similar progression to the theme at the
end of Haslinger's
Underworld and is featured in "The Lane
Family" and "Wales." The latter is built around a rising three-note
structure of hope that bursts out of the darkness in the middle of "The
Salvation Gates" and closes out the score in "Like a River Around a
Rock" (after mingling with the other theme near the very end). The
conclusions to the final two album tracks offer an almost awkward amount
of relief, reflecting the sudden shift in tone at the end of Beltrami's
Scream 3, the "Wales" cue in particular presenting a brief
snippet of harmonious choral beauty. Regardless of this respite,
however,
World War Z is a frightfully generic tackling of the
concept, even considering Beltrami's intelligent orchestral
applications. There is very little narrative development in the work,
and its textures and ambience seem recycled more often than not. As
such, you get a work that bores you far more than it should, a
disappointment in any "end of the world" context.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.75
(in 28 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.8
(in 19,012 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the
score or film. It also makes the point of stating that Warner Brothers Records
takes recycling seriously. A smaller insert card contained within the packaging
advertises a download option for material written by "Muse" for the film (not
contained on the score-only album), as well as remixes of score cues.
