Hans Zimmer Appreciation Thread

[LSH 1,062]

7 hours ago, Mephariel said:

I wonder if the music will be a spiritual successor to Rush.

 

It will most certainly be rushed.

[dyemery 6]

19 hours ago, Mephariel said:

 

I didn't like Top Gun Maverick on album that much (works like gangbuster in the film) but I also didn't like Spiderhead either.

 

I thought both Zimmer and Trapanese could have done better.

I just watched Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F and the score was surprisingly decent. I wasn’t a fan of the fully orchestral cues whenever Axel and his daughter had emotional moments together since it sounded too generic compared to everything else. The rest did a mostly good job at paying tribute to Faltermeyer’s sound while adding its own new beats as well.

 

After listening to his scores in Bad Boys 3 & 4 plus Axel F, maybe Lorne should’ve just scored Maverick from the very beginning. The only new cue I kinda remember liking in that was Darkstar, which he was credited for (and this is coming from the guy who was not a fan of his score for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning in the slightest).

[Mephariel 493]

On 06/07/2024 at 10:59 AM, dyemery said:

I just watched Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F and the score was surprisingly decent. I wasn’t a fan of the fully orchestral cues whenever Axel and his daughter had emotional moments together since it sounded too generic compared to everything else. The rest did a mostly good job at paying tribute to Faltermeyer’s sound while adding its own new beats as well.

 

After listening to his scores in Bad Boys 3 & 4 plus Axel F, maybe Lorne should’ve just scored Maverick from the very beginning. The only new cue I kinda remember liking in that was Darkstar, which he was credited for (and this is coming from the guy who was not a fan of his score for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning in the slightest).

 

I don't know. It depends on what you think of Maverick. Balfe mainly worked on "Darkstar" and some of the action stuff. Zimmer mainly did the Lady Gage arrangements and the emotional bits. I thought the music from Balfe and Zimmer both worked very well in the film, but pretty pedestrian on album. With that said, I think they both would have done a better score today without pandemic restrictions. 

 

My bigger issue with Balfe is that even when he is good, he is the king of good-but-not-memorable composing. Like if Balfe did a concert right now, what themes or pieces are you looking forward to watching live? Nothing. His music just escapes you after a while.

  

[Edmilson 9,065]

1 hour ago, Mephariel said:

 

I don't know. It depends on what you think of Maverick. Balfe mainly worked on "Darkstar" and some of the action stuff. Zimmer mainly did the Lady Gage arrangements and the emotional bits. I thought the music from Balfe and Zimmer both worked very well in the film, but pretty pedestrian on album. With that said, I think they both would have done a better score today without pandemic restrictions. 

 

My bigger issue with Balfe is that even when he is good, he is the king of good-but-not-memorable composing. Like if Balfe did a concert right now, what themes or pieces are you looking forward to watching live? Nothing. His music just escapes you after a while.

  

I liked the Maverick score in the movie, but still didn't get around to listen to it on album.

 

But if LB did the action cues and Zimmer the emotional parts... What did Faltermeyer do? Because he is credited with "Music By" on Maverick, alongside Zimmer and Gaga. As far as I know, I think those music credits should be something like "Music By Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe, Original Top Gun themes by Harold Faltermeyer, New songs by Lady Gaga".

[Stark 564]

Maverick had a messy music production, I believe Zimmer and Faltermeyer primarily wrote the original score and then Balfe replaced much of it with, effectively, a second score.

[Edmilson 9,065]

Thanks. I like the music that ended up in the movie, perhaps Balfe's best action score.

 

Not a fan of the Lady Gaga song though.

[Mephariel 493]

25 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Thanks. I like the music that ended up in the movie, perhaps Balfe's best action score.

 

Not a fan of the Lady Gaga song though.

 

I thought the score works incredible in the film. But to me, the best Balfe action score is Black Widow. I mean, it is probably his best score period. 

[Stark 564]

I’ve liked both his Bad Boys scores and the recent Beverly Hills Cop as well.

[Edmilson 9,065]

On 04/07/2024 at 9:41 PM, Quppa said:

Zimmer's latest commission:

 

https://www.iwc.com/en/journal/hans-zimmer-fugue-of-time-and-eternity.html

 

 

 

Zimmer has recently been involved with all kinds of weird stuff. I just found out today on the fansite that he (alongside two other Bleeding Fingers composers) scored a Mr. Beast video back in 2022 lmao

 

https://hans-zimmer.com/discography/1/project/4045

[Edmilson 9,065]

 

I was on the HZ fansite reading about Batman Begins while listening to that OST when I came across this thread of discussion:

 

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Curious to hear everyone else’s thoughts about this: I’ve always seen Batman Begins as the start of the “modern” Hans that we know today, I feel like it’s the first score that really was a true split between synths, sound design, and orchestral arrangements. Pretty much all of his scores before BB we’re either 90% orchestral or “live” instrumentation (Gladiator, Thin Red Line) and the others were all samplers and synthesizers (Rain Man, Black Rain), BB was the first one where it was half synthesizers half orchestral and it was also where his now iconic ostinato patterns, ambient soundscapes, and synth pulses were really introduced into his writing and sort of defined his style. I always breakdown Hans career into two parts; pre-BB and post-BB. What do you guys think? Agree? Disagree? I’d love to discuss this more and hear everyone else’s opinions

 

Another person added:

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I think Lorne Balfe played very big part in this Or maybe He learned that from James Newton Howard

 

Others agreed and added to the discussion:

 

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I think throughout Zimmer's career you can see his style evolve as he explores new territories. But I too agree that the jump to Batman Begins was the biggest one. Not just in Zimmer's career, but in all of film music. It redefined everything.

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This score was a defining moment I guess, If we consider it's his first collaboration with Chris Nolan. For me Nolan marked the beginning of the great experimentation period for Hans which was always reaching its peaks then with his movies and now with Villeneuve's. I also find it similar to the way Bruckheimer and the Scott brothers helped him establish his epic half-symphonic half-rock sound in the 90s.

 

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Happy to see that you guys agree, and I do think Lorne is an important part of that equation too, BB was his first project with Hans and Lorne’s style definitely changed the way Hans’ scores started to sound as well. BB (and TDK even more) redefined film scoring and that influence is still being felt to this day. It’s interesting to listen to scores that came out right before BB and then what came after, there’s a pretty big difference, that’s why I’ve always felt it represented the biggest shift in Hans’ sound

 

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Begins was definitely the start of the shift for Hans, but TDK was the solidification of it. BB still had a lot of extended melodic parts, and then Hans did Da Vinci Code and POTC 2 and 3 in 2006 and 2007, which were more in his traditional orchestral mode. It was only after TDK that Hans adopted his definitive post-Nolan approach, and that lasted through about Dark Phoenix. Then orchestral/melodic Hans came back with WW88, Bond, and Top Gun.

 

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Another way to look at this is that after The Dark Knight, Nolan's style of filmmaking and usage of score became the standard for artistic, intellectual films. And it is really the start of a new paradigm for auteur directors such as Villeneuve, Garland, Fincher, Lee Isaac Chung, Todd Philips, etc. to either experiment or continue to embrace unconventional scores. To me, the death of historical period films was a turning point as well. I think after Kingdom of Heaven, those big epics with booming orchestral scores sort of faded away.

 

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Definitely true, BB was the start of that of that change, and TDK is the fully realized version of it. I find the BB score to be criminally underrated and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to start this discussion on it’s impact on Hans sound/career as well as its impact on film scoring as a whole. TDK is the one everyone will remember, and rightfully so, but BB was the start of it all, it was the catalyst for that change

 

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That does seem to be the case, TDK score feels more structured, like the music editor had a much heavier hand in the arrangement of the cues, whereas BB has much more scene by scene variation in the music with less repetition, feels more composer heavy than music editor heavy. I still prefer TDK, but BB has a real flowing beauty to a lot of the cues that subsequent scores lost, but that’s probably just because JNH had such a big hand in the score

 

What do you guys think? Agree that Begins marked the beginning of a new, less orchestral and more unconventional era for HZ?

[HunterTech 1,281]

I've grown to have the opinion that The Dark Knight is Zimmer finally getting to fully realize the sound he was wanting since half-realizing it with Black Rain. I don't doubt that he likes being able to occasionally be his more MV self with projects like WW84 and The Creator, but I did get a sense that his early career sound was something of a compromise between his own interests in sound and what the studios expected out of 90s-2000s film scores.

 

He mentioned in the LLL booklet for his first Ridley Scott collab how his work there was heavily trashed when the film initially released, which probably must've stung. It certainly would make sense then that his next few projects would hew more melodically, while still occasionally throwing in little bits of sound design here and there. It wasn't until Batman Begins that he'd gotten more of a license to be able to freely experiment (especially depending on which story you believe in regards to how the main two note motif became the theme for those movies), even if he still needed to get some of the MV energy out of his system in areas.

 

Plus, there's also this:

 

 

It's not exactly a flawless theory, since he definitely tends to have more melody in his works than some often think he does. Hell, BR has some of his best ear worms, but it is more dominated by sound design before it is those particular moments.

[bruce marshall 1,374]

On 08/01/2021 at 5:49 AM, Jay said:

Jurassic Shark, take your Zimmer bashing to other threads, this is the appreciation thread

Three years and counting.... 🐷

[Thor 8,478]

13 hours ago, Edmilson said:

What do you guys think? Agree that Begins marked the beginning of a new, less orchestral and more unconventional era for HZ?

 

Sure. More motivic, more cellular, more "riffs". No power anthems. But it wouldn't have happened if his former pupil John Powell hadn't opened up a whole new approach to action scoring than what was customary at the time, with his BOURNE stuff.

[Tallguy 4,527]

17 hours ago, Edmilson said:

What do you guys think? Agree that Begins marked the beginning of a new, less orchestral and more unconventional era for HZ?

 

It's not a decisive break, is it? (That Black Rain clip is blowing my mind.) For instance right after BB he did Pirates 2 and 3.

 

But BB has got to be in the ballpark, doesn't it?

[Edmilson 9,065]

4 hours ago, Thor said:

But it wouldn't have happened if his former pupil John Powell hadn't opened up a whole new approach to action scoring than what was customary at the time, with his BOURNE stuff.

Indeed. And I'd add that it wasn't just on the music but rather on Hollywood action cinema as a whole. Both the Bourne movies (particularly Supremacy) and Batman Begins caused such a ruckus in how Hollywood approached action that it's kinda funny to compare late 90s/early 2000s action movies (Mission: Impossible 2, Gone in 60 Seconds, xXx, Fast & Furious 1 and 2, Torque, The Matrix Reloaded, Charlie's Angels 1 and 2, Bad Boys 2) with what came just a couple years later.

 

Early 2000s action stuff was rooted in high energy, high attitude, badass protagonists carrying machine guns and walking away from explosion, 90s rock and hip hop, martial arts and most of all: looking VERY cool while destroying your enemies.

 

Then, after Supremacy and BB it was all about anguished, paranoid protagonists, conspiracies, surveillance, don't trust anyone... It was more suspense and thriller than action. Not only because of 9/11 but suddenly after Columbine and the Michael Moore documentary it wasn't "desirable" anymore for the media to portray cool heroes with sunglasses with a machine gun in hand destroying everything. So the action got more realistic.

 

And the scores had to follow that. No more power anthems or anything, now the music had to be more tense, darker, more disturbing (as Drax would say). In other words: with everyone in Hollywood aiming to copy Batman and Bourne, their scores had to copy those scores as well.

32 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

 

It's not a decisive break, is it? (That Black Rain clip is blowing my mind.) For instance right after BB he did Pirates 2 and 3.

 

But BB has got to be in the ballpark, doesn't it?

Batman Begins was the "beginning" (lol) of this revolution but it was finished with The Dark Knight. Listening to the two scores you can still hear some 2000s epic power anthem Hans Zimmer in Begins but not so much in TDK. On the other hand, Pirates 2 and 3 were like the last works of their kind before TDK completed this revolution.

 

Another good comparison that makes this change clear: The Da Vince Code with Angels & Demons. The first one came out in the same year as Pirates 2 and is one of the most beloved "epic orchestral Zimmer" scores while the other came less than a year since TDK and is much "darker and more disturbing".

[Stark 564]

Angels and Demons still has a fair amount of epic orchestra (especially 160 BPM), plus there were still some more such “epic” scores by other composers after 2008, like Streitenfeld’s Robin Hood or Haslinger’s extremely temped Three Musketeers. I think it’s more Inception that caused other scores to become so “serious”.

[Edmilson 9,065]

I dunno, last time I heard A&D I thought it had a considerable amount of sound design and darker ambient stuff and was much less "classical" than TDVC. Not coincidentally, Lorne Balfe apparently had a considerable hand in Angels, more than in Da Vinci.

[Stark 564]

The sound design is more Mel Wesson’s work I think. Also don’t forget the Science and Religion suite!

[tomsmoviemadness 3,544]

 

 

[Thor 8,478]

Very interesting. Looking forward to whatever Zimmer can come up with for that -- hoping for something exotic, he's so good at that.

[Trope 808]

He'll likely write the main theme and some of the Bleeding Fingers crew will put the main body of the score together (based on he's tackled other series). 

 

But it would be really cool to see him do the whole thing (primarily) solo.

[Edmilson 9,065]

Apparently the score to The Tattooist of Auschwitz (another minisseries featuring HZ and someone from his production company) is pretty good, even though I haven't heard it myself.

 

But yeah, based on his past TV scores he'll just write the Main Title theme and then supervise the work from someone else at Bleeding Fingers. 

[Thor 8,478]

1 hour ago, Edmilson said:

Apparently the score to The Tattooist of Auschwitz (another minisseries featuring HZ and someone from his production company) is pretty good, even though I haven't heard it myself.

 

It's very good, but requires some whittling. A brief comment here.

 

1 hour ago, Trope said:

He'll likely write the main theme and some of the Bleeding Fingers crew will put the main body of the score together (based on he's tackled other series). 

 

But it would be really cool to see him do the whole thing (primarily) solo.

 

Indeed. THE CREATOR, which he did mostly solo (some cues with Mazzaro), was amazing. I dream of something similar.

[Edmilson 9,065]

11 hours ago, Trope said:

He'll likely write the main theme and some of the Bleeding Fingers crew will put the main body of the score together (based on he's tackled other series). 

 

11 hours ago, Edmilson said:

Apparently the score to The Tattooist of Auschwitz (another minisseries featuring HZ and someone from his production company) is pretty good, even though I haven't heard it myself.

 

But yeah, based on his past TV scores he'll just write the Main Title theme and then supervise the work from someone else at Bleeding Fingers. 

Turns out we were right!

 

https://filmmusicreporter.com/2024/09/05/hans-zimmer-kara-talve-to-compose-music-for-bbcs-lord-of-the-flies-tv-series/

 

It's the same guy who worked with him on Tattoist of Auschwitz and a strong contender for the "next Lorne Balfe" post.

[Doo_liss 6,559]

7 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

 

Turns out we were right!

 

https://filmmusicreporter.com/2024/09/05/hans-zimmer-kara-talve-to-compose-music-for-bbcs-lord-of-the-flies-tv-series/

 

It's the same guy who worked with him on Tattoist of Auschwitz and a strong contender for the "next Lorne Balfe" post.

Guy?

 

[Edmilson 9,065]

I didn't see her picture before posting here so I assumed she was a dude... Turns out I was wrong lol

[HunterTech 1,281]

Admittedly, I always kept thinking Batu Sener was a woman, for some weird reason. Maybe it's his look.

[Mephariel 493]

13 hours ago, Trope said:

He'll likely write the main theme and some of the Bleeding Fingers crew will put the main body of the score together (based on he's tackled other series). 

 

But it would be really cool to see him do the whole thing (primarily) solo.

 

I actually love that he is working with Kara Talve on this. Ever since she did Prehistoric Planet with Zimmer, it was apparent that she has orchestral chops. I am glad he didn't just cast her aside and is giving her more opportunities to work alongside him. 

 

 

[Toillion 264]

Zimmer posted this video on Facebook talking about touring. He called himself an "ex-film composer" in it. Is he officially retired from film?

 

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HdhgGFMYcgERvnw/

[Muad'Dib 1,874]

7 minutes ago, Toillion said:

Zimmer posted this video on Facebook talking about touring. He called himself an "ex-film composer" in it. Is he officially retired from film?

 

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HdhgGFMYcgERvnw/

 

Easy jokes arriving in 3, 2, 1...

[Edmilson 9,065]

It's just until Denis Villeneuve starts on Dune 3 

 

Either way, after Batman v Superman he also said he wouldn't be doing superhero movies anymore, only for signing on Dark Phoenix 3 years later.

[fenrik 49]

NEW TOUR!!!

[HunterTech 1,281]

[John Dutton 7,474]

Happy Birthday buddy

[The Train Station 8,819]

He's now eligible for the Aged Pension in Australia and can now quietly retire.

[LSH 1,062]

17 hours ago, Unlucky Bastard said:

He's now eligible for the Aged Pension in Australia and can now quietly retire.

I don’t think he has any intention of going quietly.

 

Hans Zimmer: The Next Level

[pete 991]

Hans just did a Williams and cancelled a concert - the Sept. 13 Baltimore concert due to an acute illness. Fingers crossed for a speedy recovery. From the Hans Zimmer & Friends Facebook.

 

He performed the night before in New York. Next scheduled concert is Sept. 16 in Boston.

 

 

[John Dutton 7,474]

Everyone's getting sick right now

[The Train Station 8,819]

The great plague