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MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT (2018) - Film & Score


Damien F

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Assuming that the score sounds like the trailer music, I don't understand why McQuarrie didn't just hire trailer music composers. Balfe (like others from Remote Control) may not be as artistically qualified to be such high profile as he has risen to be (being friends with Hans does a lot), yet it sucks that he keeps being typecast into these generic action scores. I'm torn what to think of Balfe. On one hand, it's not his entire fault that he is always asked for this type of music. On the other hand, he always dodges all criticism by claiming that his music is never meant to exist outside the film, which is an alarming commentary on the future state of film music. He also seems to really not care too much about the composers getting replaced by him.

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1 hour ago, Drew said:

Assuming that the score sounds like the trailer music, I don't understand why McQuarrie didn't just hire trailer music composers. Balfe (like others from Remote Control) may not be as artistically qualified to be such high profile as he has risen to be (being friends with Hans does a lot), yet it sucks that he keeps being typecast into these generic action scores. I'm torn what to think of Balfe. On one hand, it's not his entire fault that he is always asked for this type of music. On the other hand, he always dodges all criticism by claiming that his music is never meant to exist outside the film, which is an alarming commentary on the future state of film music. He also seems to really not care too much about the composers getting replaced by him.

 

That last sentence is bizarrely presumptive.  Do you have some kind of weird personal beef or vendetta with Lorne?  Not the first time you've made it seem that way.  

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3 hours ago, TGP said:

 

That last sentence is bizarrely presumptive.

 

 

I guess a little. I think if other composers were in his position, they might be a little uncomfortable being a replacement after so many times in a row. 

 

3 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

Successful Composer Tip #1: Turn down immensely popular and successful franchise films offered to you if a composer was previously rejected...

 

This thread is going after Balfe because of his reputation as a replacement composer who is known to not care about being a replacement composer on replacement projects several times a year. The attitude would be different if the assignment went to a different composer who did not have a history of disrespecting the art (like when Balfe says that film music doesn't belong outside the film).

 

If I was a better-known composer and was offered to score Fallout, I would have declined. Not asking Kreamer to return is wrong, period.

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Doing what Tangerine Dream did when they were offered 'Legend'? I'm sorry pal, but on the list of unforgivable rejection sins, Kramer is pretty low on  the totem pole.

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Balfe was not a replacement composer on MI6... Kraemer was never hired. Balfe has been working on this score for months.

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2 hours ago, Drew said:

 

I guess a little. I think if other composers were in his position, they might be a little uncomfortable being a replacement after so many times in a row. 

 

 

This thread is going after Balfe because of his reputation as a replacement composer who is known to not care about being a replacement composer on replacement projects several times a year. The attitude would be different if the assignment went to a different composer who did not have a history of disrespecting the art (like when Balfe says that film music doesn't belong outside the film).

 

If I was a better-known composer and was offered to score Fallout, I would have declined. Not asking Kreamer to return is wrong, period.

Lol sure. 

 

Giacchino should have declined Star Wars too, right?

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If you get asked to score a movie, you do it, no matter who scored the last one. It’s like saying Kraemer shouldn’t have taken the job on MI5 because Ghost Protocol was a great giacchino score (which it was)...

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48 minutes ago, Koray Savas said:

Lol sure. 

 

Giacchino should have declined Star Wars too, right?

 

Desplat left because he decided to focus on Valerian instead of rewriting RO to fit the new edit. Different situation.

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2 minutes ago, Drew said:

 

Desplat left because he decided to focus on Valerian instead of rewriting RO to fit the new edit. Different situation.

That’s the official story. He might have been fired.

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Just now, Mr. Who said:

That’s the official story. He might have been fired.

 

It depends on how much involvement JW reportedly had as the music consultant... :P

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JW had nothing to do with that. There must have been a point were the relationship between him and Disney turned sour (after he worked for a year on the picture), if the reason were unrealistic expectations of after-the-fact work on the picture or dissatisfaction with what he had written for the Edwards cut is pure speculation. Given that Desplat is/was a Kennedy darling i think the decision was not made lightly.

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Rumor Control:  when Desplat was hired, Rogue One had not yet been filmed and it's tone was intended to be very dark and very serious.  After TFA's mega-success, Disney was taking no chances and wanted R1 to feel more like a traditional Star Wars movie, not less.  Key to this was doing a score in the vein of JW, something AD explicitly said he didn't want to do when he was hired.  Disney and Lucasfilm gave AD every chance to keep the job, but in the end, he just wasn't willing to write the music they wanted.  JW had nothing to do with the decision, he wasn't a "music consultant" on the film or anything like that.  In fact, JW was...perturbed, let's say, that he was never offered the movie, as he had come to regard Star Wars as his musical universe (ref the ruffled feathers over Shadows of the Empire).

 

During the recording of MG's score for the film, JW learned that there were major quotes of his themes in the score, and for reasons you can read in other threads on this board, those themes were removed and replaced at the last minute by original material by MG.  JW also had control over what films were done live to picture in NYC last fall, and what films were not.

 

However, AD did not spend a year working on the picture.  He spent a year *thinking* about working on the picture, but by his own admission, he does most of his writing in the last three weeks of the schedule (one example: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30413134).  Part of the reason he does this is that it leaves the directors less time to give him notes and meddle with his music, a choice I can definitely relate to.  He's learned how Hollywood works and knows if he gives them too much time to rethink things, directors create a lot of busy work for every one around them in stead of trusting the people they hire.

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5 minutes ago, elvisjones said:

Disney and Lucasfilm gave AD every chance to keep the job, but in the end, he just wasn't willing to write the music they wanted.  JW had nothing to do with the decision, he wasn't a "music consultant" on the film or anything like that.  In fact, JW was...perturbed, let's say, that he was never offered the movie, as he had come to regard Star Wars as his musical universe (ref the ruffled feathers over Shadows of the Empire).

 

Very interesting. Could you elaborate on JW being "perturbed"? Would he have time to score the film anyway?

 

I'm sure that if JW wasn't offered to score the film, he'd be fully capable of asking for the assignment if he really wanted to do it.

 

Could you also elaborate on the Shadows reference?

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58 minutes ago, elvisjones said:

In fact, JW was...perturbed, let's say, that he was never offered the movie, as he had come to regard Star Wars as his musical universe (ref the ruffled feathers over Shadows of the Empire).

I'd be curious to hear any details about that too.

 

59 minutes ago, elvisjones said:

During the recording of MG's score for the film, JW learned that there were major quotes of his themes in the score, and for reasons you can read in other threads on this board, those themes were removed and replaced at the last minute by original material by MG.

Where did that come from?

There were a whole bunch of JW thematic statements in RO anyway.

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1 hour ago, elvisjones said:

Key to this was doing a score in the vein of JW, something AD explicitly said he didn't want to do when he was hired.  Disney and Lucasfilm gave AD every chance to keep the job, but in the end, he just wasn't willing to write the music they wanted.

 

Please provide a source for this, as i do not remember Desplat saying anything of the sort (rather the usual PR fluff 'honored to follow in JW's footprints' etc.). Your whole thesis seems doubtful: would a guy as savvy in Hollywood politics be so naive to expect not having to reference Williams' style in Star Wars? And then leave because what, exactly? Disney asking him to shoehorn the Imperial March in?

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16 minutes ago, elvisjones said:

I explained all of this in a previous thread (the one about the remastered CDs, I think).

 

I can't provide a specific source as this is all stuff I know firsthand and it obviously wasn't printed in the Hollywood Reporter or Variety or an article on FSM.  

 

I have a good reputation on the board - I don't post often, but when I do, I post accurately.

 

My post is not a thesis, it's what happened.

 

Consider this - AD was offered and took the job because he had worked with Gareth Edwards on Godzilla.  Having already followed JW's footsteps with Harry Potter, he made it clear on this one he wanted to make his own contribution to the Star Wars universe of music, rather than just ape JW's style.  To that end, he insured with the filmmakers that he wasn't going to use JW's themes or style.  This is all fine with everyone involved at this point because the movie is SUPPOSED to feel different.  He doesn't want any SW music used in the temp scores, he wants to do his own thing.  Now, a year or so later, Disney has mandated that the film's tone needs to be completely rethought, including the music, which should feel like Star Wars.  They don't mean a quote of the Imperial March here or there, they mean a ground-up rethinking of the film's score to be comfortably in the Star Wars style, to do what AD considered to be "aping" JW's sound.  The entire temp was redone from scratch using over an hour of JW"s scores from the 70's.  The way Hollywood works, if AD says "no, I quit", he gives up the balance of pay due him.  If he refuses to quit and waits to get fired, the studio has to pay him the balance he's owed.  So, savvy businessman he is, AD understands he has no reason to give up on his ideals of not imitating JW - if he sticks to his guns, the studio will either back off and let him write what he wants, or fire him and he gets paid anyway.  Up to this point, the Oscar-winning AD had never been fired from a project, so he felt bulletproof.  On top of that, the longer Disney waits to replace him, the less time the replacement has to write a score, something which also works in AD's favor.  The filmmakers dragged their feet on this decision for over a month, from August to September of 2016.  Part of the reason was loyalty to AD, part of the reason was that R1 had already replaced so many key people on the film that they feared replacing another would doom the film's publicity.  In the end, no one wanted to insult anyone, no one wanted to hurt anyone else's careers, so they allowed the story to be that AD had to leave due to scheduling, which is all fair and good, and minimized the damage done to the publicity by making it AD quitting the movie rather then being fired.

 

Again, I can't prove this to you, so feel free to not believe it, but I promise you on my reputation here on the board, which is all I've got, that it's true.

 

Thanks!

 

I do wonder what a Star Wars score without any Star Wars themes would sound like.

And I also wonder how AD expected to get away with such a firm stance on that.

 

It always did strike me as odd that he only used minimal John Williams themes in his Harry Potter scores.

This does fit with that...

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I really would have liked a Desplat non star wars sounding score for Rogue One! Too bad we got Giacchino's poor attempt.

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PS - I apologize for dragging Star Wars into this thread.  Back to the subject at hand - as reported earlier, Joe Kraemer was not replaced by Balfe on MI6.  Joe Kraemer was never hired for MI6.  Apparently, McQuarrie stopped talking to him after MI5 came out, until he emailed Kraemer to tell him he wasn't hiring him for Fallout earlier this year.

 

So in this case, Balfe is not replacing Kraemer in the way that he usually replaces composers.

 

 

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23 minutes ago, elvisjones said:

PS - I apologize for dragging Star Wars into this thread.  Back to the subject at hand - as reported earlier, Joe Kraemer was not replaced by Balfe on MI6.  Joe Kraemer was never hired for MI6.  Apparently, McQuarrie stopped talking to him after MI5 came out, until he emailed Kraemer to tell him he wasn't hiring him for Fallout earlier this year.

 

So in this case, Balfe is not replacing Kraemer in the way that he usually replaces composers.

 

 

He stopped talking to him? That's a bit extreme considering that they have worked together for so many years. They must have had a really big falling out on MI5...

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1 hour ago, Mr. Who said:

I really would have liked a Desplat non star wars sounding score for Rogue One! Too bad we got Giacchino's poor attempt.

There are plenty of non Star Wars sounding scores by Desplat anyway.

If all we would've gotten had been something that doesn't belong to the established world of Star Wars, I'm glad events took a different turn.

 

12 minutes ago, Mr. Who said:

He stopped talking to him? That's a bit extreme considering that they have worked together for so many years. They must have had a really big falling out on MI5...

Indeed! That's really sad. :(

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1 hour ago, elvisjones said:

I explained all of this in a previous thread (the one about the remastered CDs, I think).

 

I can't provide a specific source as this is all stuff I know firsthand and it obviously wasn't printed in the Hollywood Reporter or Variety or an article on FSM.  

 

I have a good reputation on the board - I don't post often, but when I do, I post accurately.

 

My post is not a thesis, it's what happened.

 

Consider this - AD was offered and took the job because he had worked with Gareth Edwards on Godzilla.  Having already followed JW's footsteps with Harry Potter, he made it clear on this one he wanted to make his own contribution to the Star Wars universe of music, rather than just ape JW's style.  To that end, he insured with the filmmakers that he wasn't going to use JW's themes or style.  This is all fine with everyone involved at this point because the movie is SUPPOSED to feel different.  He doesn't want any SW music used in the temp scores, he wants to do his own thing.  Now, a year or so later, Disney has mandated that the film's tone needs to be completely rethought, including the music, which should feel like Star Wars.  They don't mean a quote of the Imperial March here or there, they mean a ground-up rethinking of the film's score to be comfortably in the Star Wars style, to do what AD considered to be "aping" JW's sound.  The entire temp was redone from scratch using over an hour of JW"s scores from the 70's.  The way Hollywood works, if AD says "no, I quit", he gives up the balance of pay due him.  If he refuses to quit and waits to get fired, the studio has to pay him the balance he's owed.  So, savvy businessman he is, AD understands he has no reason to give up on his ideals of not imitating JW - if he sticks to his guns, the studio will either back off and let him write what he wants, or fire him and he gets paid anyway.  Up to this point, the Oscar-winning AD had never been fired from a project, so he felt bulletproof.  On top of that, the longer Disney waits to replace him, the less time the replacement has to write a score, something which also works in AD's favor.  The filmmakers dragged their feet on this decision for over a month, from August to September of 2016.  Part of the reason was loyalty to AD, part of the reason was that R1 had already replaced so many key people on the film that they feared replacing another would doom the film's publicity.  In the end, no one wanted to insult anyone, no one wanted to hurt anyone else's careers, so they allowed the story to be that AD had to leave due to scheduling, which is all fair and good, and minimized the damage done to the publicity by making it AD quitting the movie rather then being fired.

 

Again, I can't prove this to you, so feel free to not believe it, but I promise you on my reputation here on the board, which is all I've got, that it's true.

 

 

Well, if you would have written it like this the firs time it wouldn't have raised questions. Though i still find the it curious with what they ended up with - which doesn't sound like 70's WIlliams at all.

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@elvisjones, can you elaborate on why JW had the "major quotes" of his themes removed from Rogue One? Was it a case of the themes not fitting the scenes, or was he being a bad sport because he didn't get to write the score?

 

Also, are you implying JW wanted to write the music to Shadows of the Empire, a book?

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7 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

John Williams was asked to compose music for Shadows Of The Empire and turned it down. But he didn't want someone else to do it, apparently.

 

I've no idea what Shadows of the Empire is but he probably rightfully didn't want it done at all.  

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I had not heard that JW was offered Shadows and turned it down, I had heard that he was not aware of it until the CD came out.  Interesting!

 

22 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

@elvisjones, can you elaborate on why JW had the "major quotes" of his themes removed from Rogue One? Was it a case of the themes not fitting the scenes, or was he being a bad sport because he didn't get to write the score?

 

 

My understanding is that the nature of the quotes in the original versions of the cues was such that JW felt it was a direct presentation of his music rather than an oblique reference to it.  Basically, if the score to R1 was going to use actual pages from JW cues from other Star Wars movies, the credits for the music on the film would need to be rewritten (i.e. Music by John Williams, arranged and adapted by....), giving JW top billing on the music card.  This would probably have also meant even more expense for Disney in the form of some kind of payment to JW.  The easiest solution was to remove these major quotes and replace them with less derivative music.

 

By major quotes, I mean the way JW's Superman theme was used in Superman Returns (which literally used the conductor's score for Superman March), only more intrinsic to the fabric of the entire score.  The term I heard used was "cut-and-paste" in reference to the way JW Star Wars themes were being quoted.

 

Honestly, I wouldn't blame JW if he WAS being a "bad sport".  He's a human being like the rest of us.  Getting back to the main subject of this thread, I don't imagine Joe Kraemer would be very happy if MI6 "cut-and-pasted" his Solomon Lane theme into Fallout after the way things have gone....

23 hours ago, publicist said:

 

Well, if you would have written it like this the firs time it wouldn't have raised questions. Though i still find the it curious with what they ended up with - which doesn't sound like 70's WIlliams at all.

 

I meant no offense

 

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9 minutes ago, elvisjones said:

 I mean the way JW's Superman theme was used in Superman Returns (which literally used the conductor's score for Superman March)

 

I thought he redid it by ear?

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9 minutes ago, Fal said:

I thought he redid it by ear?

Who, John Ottman?  Nope.  Damon Intrabartolo conducted it from the original conductor's score (maybe even the Hal Leonard signature version (I'm not sure about that, though))

 

11 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

So did JW really want to write the music to Rogue One?

 

I suspect he did, but I don't know that for a fact

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On 23/05/2018 at 7:47 PM, Stefancos said:

John Williams was asked to compose music for Shadows Of The Empire and turned it down. But he didn't want someone else to do it, apparently.

 

I don't think that's accurate.  Elvisjones' account tallies with what I have heard.

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No big mystery. Lucasfilm asked McNeely (the big Williams successor back then) without consulting Wiiliams, when Williams 'got wind' he was muffled.

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Is that what I said?

18 hours ago, elvisjones said:

Honestly, I wouldn't blame JW if he WAS being a "bad sport".  He's a human being like the rest of us.  Getting back to the main subject of this thread, I don't imagine Joe Kraemer would be very happy if MI6 "cut-and-pasted" his Solomon Lane theme into Fallout after the way things have gone....

 

Are you Joe Kraemer?

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