Fantastic Four - Marco Beltrami & PHilip Glass |
8/7/15 |
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What You Will Hear: Brooding low strings and brass, chaotic action, and a spattering of uplifting heroic scoring. The brass writing is sometimes clean and bright, and other times crass and stabbing. Everything is just a little off-kilter from your standard hero or adventure score.
Standout Tracks: Fantastic Four Prelude, Baxter, Building The Future, Neil Armstrong, Footprints, ‘Run’, Strength In Numbers, End Titles Will You Be Humming Along? There is a nice little 8-note motif that’ll stick with you. It is used well in a variety of ways throughout the score. The score this makes me want to dust off: Captain America: The Winter Soldier – Henry Jackman Will I come back to it? I was so conflicted by this one. After the first track, I originally tweeted: I was in love with the celeste (or is it bells?) and classic Glass woodwinds. Then, the rest of the album went in a more generic direction, and it took me over a week to get through every track. I would hit repeat on a few of the standout tracks, but I just never found myself excited to finish the listening experience. I finally sat down to write this and was intent upon giving Fantastic Four a big thumbs down. But, I made the happy mistake of re-listening to it as I started to write… and immediately began to second-guess myself. It dawned on me: we have a tale of two film scores. It sounds as though the composers (and film makers) set out to make a different type of super hero experience. But, the film (apparently) falls flat on its face, and the score cannot fully escape the source material. It starts out as an interesting experiment, but is quickly shackled by the poorly made movie. But, you should still stick around for the effort from Beltrami and Glass. I wish they had stayed with the quality of the opening track and given us something truly unique. But the final product is still something different. There are no huge “good guy” moments, no insanely dark tragedies, and hardly any humor. Do not expect the Avengers, X-Men, or DC experience. Fantastic Four offers some great moments, but the full experience is only for those interested in a super hero score that (oddly) sounds generic but also doesn't conform to the (increasingly tired) norm.
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