In Defense of JAMES HORNER... (1 Viewer)

[Steve Christou]

Another Horner fave.

 

[Kevin M]

For what it's worth I happen to like Horner's Battle Beyond the Stars score as derivative as it is...and as repeated as it was in his early career.


However one of my personal favorites was his score for 48:hrs, his use of the...was it a Clarinet, a Straight Soprano Sax?...in the score was a great hook. That score set the action score standard for years after IMO. Apparently it was never given an official album release here in the US.

 

[Steve Christou]

48hrs, good score Kevin, refreshingly different from the usual action scores at that time, but Horner still couldn't resist rehashing that score for Red Heat though. I've got the album.



Game over man... game over!

 

[Dave Gorman]

I've often wondered why, when most of his music is as awful as it is, he is called upon so frequently to score so many movies. I guess it's like Burger King -- they don't sell anything that is even remotely worth eating, but billions of people eat there anyway.

Braveheart could probably be a movie I could rewatch several times, but it was all I could do to sit through Horner's score one time. And Troy was far from a masterpiece as a movie, but it could have at least been fun if the score hadn't been so annoying. Every time that female "singer" started squealing, I just about had to leave the house. (I do hope this "wailing wench" trend is over soon...)

 

[Mark Hawley]

Aliens is probably the biggest culprit as it borrows far too liberally from Horner's Star Trek II score, even though it probably has the best action cue ever (the one that's used in so many trailers).

Even when I saw Aliens in the theater when I was eleven, I was well aware that much of it sounded just like Star Trek II.

 

[Kevin Grey]

IIRC, Horner had very, very little time to score Aliens in which is supposedly one of the reasons for the heavy music reuse. I'm also pretty sure that Cameron wasn't very satisified with Horner's work which is why it took until Titanic for them to team up again.

 

[Steve Christou]

Is it possibly because... the people who make the movies... don't think his music is as awful as you apparently think it is? hmmmm



And yet another favorite James Horner score...

 

[Dave Gorman]

I suppose that would make sense given that so many people who make the movies love to churn out mediocrity. If one is going to make a mediocre movie, why not have a mediocre score to go along with it?

 

[Nick Martin]

Way to threadcrap, Dave.

I could say the same thing about Williams- when it comes to not liking his music, but I'm fairly quiet about not liking things.

Keep'em coming, Steve !

 

[Nick Martin]

As for ALIENS, he ended up with about a week and a half to write the score- while the film was still being re-edited. He mentions this and why he and Jim Cameron parted ways for many years on the 2 Disc
ALIENS DVD.

 

[Steve Christou]

And Horner still managed to get an Oscar nomination for his Aliens score.

The next time he worked with Cameron he won Best Score.

 

[Chris:P]

That was the score that really made me sit up and notice Horner's work, and it's still one of my favorites. That's one of the few times I've headed to a record store right after seeing a movie to get a copy of the soundtrack.

 

[Nick Martin]

Damn right.

You know, this thread is finally becoming a bit enjoyable.

 

[Kevin M]

I actually didn't like his score for Something Wicked, it seemed lackluster and uninspired.....or was it the film that had that quality and the score suffered for it?

.....um, Nicholas, so basically you really did only want a "let's praise Horner" thread despite the thread title & topic? Why didn't you just start a thread under that topic then?

 

[Nick Martin]

I'm talking about how it's changing a bit, instead of the same old 'I think he reuses his music but I'm going to say that as though it is some big revelation even though I've read it a hundered times before' conversation, it's a little more fun, with you wondering about what instrument was used for the 48HRs score, to Dave and Steve's banter back and forth.

By the way, I forgot about this thread long ago, and it was created because at that time, I read post after post of so much hate, and was intrigued by a similar thread called "In Defense Of TITANIC". People are going to praise him or damn him, and no one can change that, but I fought to move past the reuse issue because there has to be more to Horner's music than just complaining about what melody he used in an earlier score. Anything else. If people like Dave talked more about why they don't like his music beyond the reuse issue (too over the top, too noisy, too anything) that is far more interesting than repeating that old issue.

Also, I was looking at this from an almost exclusively 'on album only' point of view, while it took a while for me to realize the majority of complaints were most likely coming from an 'as heard in the film' point of view. I listen to film music the same way someone would listen to any rock/ pop/ hip hop artist/band.
Listening to a film score on CD, at least for me, is quite different than just hearing it in the film. No one here really mentioned if that reuse issue bothered them in that case, which I assume is due to people simply not having or listening to the CDs.

Curious, Horner's latest score is for a film called "The Chumscrubber". Anyone here have dirty thoughts about that title?
It seems to be common...I often read things like 'just remove the "h"....:b

 

[Kevin M]

That's cool......hey, let's not forget Captain EO!

 

[Nick Martin]

AHHH! I knew there was a reason I never saw that movie/short/whatever that was...What is that thing on his shoulder, Bubbles? Nevermind. I don't want to know.


Little known fact: Horner wrote the music for one of the THX trailers, called "Cimarron"(1988) - it's the one that begins with the sound of an orchestra tuning their instruments, before a conductor's baton is raised. Apparently this trailer made its debut with "Willow".

Another, but more well known, is the 75th Anniversary music tag for Universal Pictures, which was used from 1990 to 1997, replaced by the current one by Jerry Goldsmith.

I was surprised to learn (thanks to the commentary mentioning Horner by name) that his version made its debut with "Back To The Future Part III".

It's kind of funny, the obscure themes big name composers come up with, like John Williams' NBC news theme.

 

[Dave Gorman]

The purpose of a film score is to enhance the movie, to supplement the emotional content of a movie. At its best, the score should complement the movie so well that it doesn't even stand out on its own, it *is* part of the movie. At its worst, the score sticks out like a sore thumb because it complements the movie so poorly it can't help but be noticed.

For me Horner's "music" generally falls into the latter category -- it usually detracts from the movie for me because it doesn't fit in with the movie, or worse yet, in the examples of Braveheart and Troy that I pointed out specifically, the music is so unbearable to listen to that it actually prevents me from enjoying a movie that otherwise could have been fun to watch! (Of course, Titanic's score was quite annoying as well, but the movie as a whole was nearly unwatchable, a good score would have been wasted effort anyway )

As for the time factor -- not being given enough time to compose a decent score -- it seems to me to speak poorly of someone's pride in their own work when they take a job knowing that they don't have sufficient time to do decent work. It almost seems to me like desperation, that he's so desperate for a paycheck that he'll take any job he can get. He gets enough work anyway that he shouldn't be taking jobs out of desperation. I don't know... maybe he thinks he's doing a good thing by getting the director out of a jam?

 

[Nick Martin]

Wow...replace Horner's name with John Williams, you've got my take on his music almost perfectly!

Thank you, though...at least you don't have any issues with the whole reusing.

 

[Steve Christou]

You did already and it's getting tedious, time you moved on, find another topic to trash. I know how Nicholas feels now, when you start a thread I'll be sure to pop in regularly and post negative crap until you're chomping on your keyboard.