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Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl


Pieter Boelen

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Klaus Badelt)  

68 members have voted

  1. 1. How do you rate this score?

    • 5 stars
      4
    • 4,5 stars
      1
    • 4 stars
      8
    • 3,5 stars
      8
    • 3 stars
      8
    • 2,5 stars
      8
    • 2 stars
      8
    • 1,5 stars
      3
    • 1 stars
      20
    • I'm not familiar with this score
      1


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Every few days I will post a thread on a random score from my collection that we can discuss and rate. I made a playlist on my computer with one track of each score I've got, so by using the random play option, I'll be able to post a truly random score each time. Hopefully this will allow us to discuss some scores that would otherwise never be discussed. Also we can record the rating so that we can create a full list of the ratings given to scores by JWFan.com.

Considering the amount of discussion related to this score in the Revenge of the Sith tread, I figured we might as well go ahead and rate it as well. :)

Today's score is Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl by Klaus Badelt. Are you familiar with it? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? How do do you think it works in the film? What are your favourite tracks?

pirates.jpg

So far JWFan has rated:

See Soundtrack Ratings by JWFan.com.

This web page contains the ratings from all my previous polls as well as those of Blumenkohl's.

Final ratings are converted to a 1-10 rating for both rating systems so that they can be compared.

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I'm feeling generous, 4 stars. Its biggest weakness are the synths, it really takes away from the listening experience. However, I'm a big fan of all the music.

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I give it a 3,5. There was a time when I was truly impressed by it, but that time is long gone. Thank you, John Debney! :D

It's still good fun and does work in the film, but is also wholly inappropriate for the genre.

But when Jack Sparrow sails into the movie on his leaking li'l dinghy with that over-the-topic heroic music going with it, I can't help but smile.

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This is gonna be an interesting thread, and as such, I'll try to stay away from it. But I will unabashedly give it 4 stars, simply because I really enjoy listening to it and playing my own piano arrangements of it. That's not to say it took the same level of compositional skill as most other scores I'd give 4 stars, or that it's original, or that I approve of the over-use of synths. But I LIKE this score. I really do. Especially because when I saw that awesome film for the first time, I had never heard a Media Ventures score before, so it sounded very fresh to me. No amount of rational thought will change my enjoyment of the score, for which I'm glad. Isn't it preferable to enjoy music that you "shouldn't" (if you can) than dismiss it purely on principle?

I will go further against the grain and say that DMC and AWE are much worse in my book. They're just as guilty of self-plagiarism, but they manage to annoy me a lot more in the process. The adaptations of the original material are usually quite poor, and the presence of the guitar really kills it. Some of the new thematic material is nice, and I appreciate the increased use of real orchestral elements in AWE. But I enjoy TCOTBP a hundred times more, and contrary to popular belief, that is not indicative of brain damage, lower standards, or reduced intelligence.

Flame away.

EDIT: And to add further insult to injury...while I appreciate the orchestral integrity, unbridled enthusiasm, and traditional appropriateness of Cutthroat Island...I much prefer TCOTBP. :D

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Oh Pieter, you did not just go there....where's the frisbee option.

The score is somewhat like having a blind man hammering an ice pick into your brain, missing and whacking you in the head with the hammer half the time. Painful and annoying.

But I do love the movie.

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EDIT: And to add further insult to injury...while I appreciate the orchestral integrity, unbridled enthusiasm, and traditional appropriateness of Cutthroat Island...I much prefer TCOTBP. :dance:
I do agree with pretty much everything you said, but this is going a bit too far for me.

I like CotBP, but Cutthroat Island just might be my favourite score of all. :lol:

Oh Pieter, you did not just go there....where's the frisbee option.
That's what the "1 star" option is for. :D;)
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Regurgitation of all that is loathsome and turgid in Hans Zimmer and his clone factory. Add a dose of piraty violin shanty and hey presto! You have POTC.

So yes 1 star.

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Add a dose of piraty violin shanty and hey presto!

Technically, it's solo electric cello doubled quietly by an acoustic cello section.

:D And just when I thought that music could not get more phoney. I mean Zimmer and Co. make the normal orchestra sound like synths but apparently normal cello was just not good enough for them or they could not make it sound electric enough.

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The score is somewhat like having a blind man hammering an ice pick into your brain, missing and whacking you in the head with the hammer half the time. Painful and annoying.

:D

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2 stars, I like the main theme(Jacks' theme). I know the score is crap, but I like it. Its my guilty pleasure, its like listening to Chubuwumba, you know its crap, but its still infectious.

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Im not sure which is the one I like then, course its been ages since I've watched the films, and I would never pay money for it.

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Oh...I'm being generous today. 3 stars. I like a lot of the music itself, the themes and melodies, but I really wish they had done this without all the synths and with it solidly orchestrated. Just doing that much would've made the music much more appropriate for the film. I still wish they'd kept Silvestri, but I do enjoy parts of this.

-Ben, who just listened to "Watch the World Burn" and wishes the rest of TDK and BB had been scored with even that level of craftsmanship.

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EDIT: And to add further insult to injury...while I appreciate the orchestral integrity, unbridled enthusiasm, and traditional appropriateness of Cutthroat Island...I much prefer TCOTBP. :)
I do agree with pretty much everything you said, but this is going a bit too far for me.

I like CotBP, but Cutthroat Island just might be my favourite score of all. :lol:

Then I take it you disagree with Doug Adams?

John Debney's
Cutthroat Island
has so much music in the film that it only serves to reinforce the fact that it's not terribly well composed. Everything is written to be essentially linear and melodic, leaving textures pretty much ignored. Yet, even the melodies aren't particularly outstanding. They usually stay within one general key area for the chase section until they go to the Important Chords (usually all major or all minor chords separated by a minor third, a minor sixth, or a tritone, musicians) whenever the zenith of the action is upon us. Of course, every chase has the same zenith in the same place. ... Orchestrations are from the tired "brass means toughness, strings and woodwinds mean tenderness, and percussion means savagery" lineage.

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3 stars. It's OK, but the heavy sintethizers make it painful to listen. If it would have been 100% orchestra (or at least, 10% :) ), it would have been far better. But... Zimmer clones just keep using synths as much as they can.

And I guess we will never know what Badelt composed for the score. We know what Zimmer did, for "Pirates, Day One" in the Soundtracks Collection, but... Badelt?

By the way, have you noticed that the love theme from this movie starts and sounds exactly like Shrek's love theme? Which isn't that suprsising, considering two of his "students" did the score.

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Also unsurprising, Michael, because there are only so many sets of three notes with which one can start a melody. ;)

I do want to point out that there's a hefty contribution to the score by a real orchestra and choir. (Several, actually. :lol:) The good old Zimmer recording techniques do make them sound regrettably more electronic, and there's certainly a heavy layer of synthesized orchestra and percussion in much of the louder material, but the foundation of what you hear is very much acoustic. I'd invite y'all to take a listen to the DVD rear channels, but I wouldn't want to be responsible for such horrible pain... :)

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I have a feeling most people don't know anything about how Zimmer and RCP compose music. It's not like they're pressing keys on a computer and the result is a note coming through the speakers. The scores are written for orchestras, not synths. Synths are added in later. The first Pirates score has a lot of synths, the score was written in 2 weeks. Considering the time frame, it's pretty damn good.

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Considering what other film composers have come up with for orchestra in 2 weeks...not so much.

And if they are writing the scores for orchestra, with synths being more-or-less an afterthought...well, the orchestrations are...lacking, to be polite.

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I like it. Its my guilty pleasure....I would never pay money for it.

:)

why do you roll your eyes, just because its a guilty pleasure doesn't mean Im going to spend bucks on it.

I can listen to it other ways for free.

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why do you roll your eyes, just because its a guilty pleasure doesn't mean Im going to spend bucks on it. I can listen to it other ways for free.

Regardless of any understandably low artistic respect you may have for the score, if it's worth it for you to listen to it, it's worth paying for. You may disagree with Zimmer and company's approach - again, understandable - but it still took time, effort, and money to make it a reality, and it's a creative product that they have not decided to give out for free. That's why I rolled my eyes.

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don't be an idiot and think that free means theft. I was given a copy as a Christmas gift, and I didn't ask for it either. It was paid for, just not by me. However if I want to listen I can go to you tube. Its faster and I don't have to go find the disc.

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don't be an idiot and think that free means theft. I was given a copy as a Christmas gift, and I didn't ask for it either. It was paid for, just not by me. However if I want to listen I can go to you tube. Its faster and I don't have to go find the disc.

Fair enough.

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Can't say I'm familiar with this score but I remember thinking when I watched the movie that the music sounded like something you would hear at the beginning of the news or some financial program.

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^ Not if you give it to the general public. They tend to have as hard a time understanding the score's flaws as many of you do understanding how it can be a fun listen. Makes it a little frustrating for those of us who are lucky enough to be able to see the different shades of very green grass on both sides of the fence we're sitting on, if you will.

Wait, what?

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^ Not if you give it to the general public. They tend to have as hard a time understanding the score's flaws as many of you do understanding how it can be a fun listen. Makes it a little frustrating for those of us who are lucky enough to be able to see the different shades of very green grass on both sides of the fence we're sitting on, if you will.

Wait, what?

Yes, you are right there, but I meant it's a loser on this MB... :angry:

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Well it was somewhat predictable how this poll would turn out on this MB. Not that I feel bottomless ire towards Zimmer&Co.myself but POTC is something that I just had a bad gut reaction to from the start. Hasn't got anything to do with having narrow musical tastes.

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It's clear (and not surprising) that the majority of the people here don't much care for this score (or hate it altogether), but still there's a fair amount of people who do seem to be able to appreciate it. Babel was a lot more universally hated on this forum. :angry:

Then I take it you disagree with Doug Adams?
Uhm; no, not really. I've been trying to get my greedy li'l hands on any piratey/seafaring scores that I could find and Cutthroat Island is simply the best. It might not be entirely original, but it can certainly stand on it's own two feet rather than being a copy-paste job from some other score. There aren't that many themes, but they're pretty good. And I love how each track offers something new. And the sound and orchestration is great, as is the enthusiasm and the fun. It's just plain great stuff and that's all I can make of it. :(
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Compared to action scoring this score, Kraken is a masterpiece track. I can't stand even five minutes of Curse. But i don't have to. A few cues from the second one and a large chunks of the third have everything I need to hear from this series (guilty pleasures?).

1 star.

Karol

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