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Rate and discuss David Arnold's score to Godzilla


Jurassic Shark

How do you rate the score and the movie?  

25 members have voted

  1. 1. How do you rate David Arnold's score to Godzilla?

  2. 2. How do you rate the movie?



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It's a fun creature feature with memorable one-liners and a cool, gloomy but colourful look. But the monster behaves nothing like Godzilla. Hollyweird didn't get that bit right until 2014, and refined it even further in 2019.

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The movie is exactly what it wanted to be at the time....the American rip-off of Godzilla. It's your standard Roland Emmerich nonsense. Not really a Godzilla movie, but it's a movie. It's bad. But it's fun to watch because it's bad.

 

The score is by far the best thing to come out of the film.

 

 

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17 minutes ago, TSMefford said:

Yeah honestly the Siskel and Ebert jokes are not the worst pieces of humor in that film.

I know but I've put it out of mind😒

28 minutes ago, PuhgreÞiviÞm said:

How dare they ridicule film critics?

If they used "KAEL" and " CANBY" I would have given it Two thumbs UP!😁

I thought the ' eggs in the Garden' was a.nice touch and there was real pathos in her attempts to protect them. A different director might have made something good. But Emmerich, can only do campy versions of genres.

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Indeed. Never understood what people's issues were with this. I guess I can understand it if you're a hardcore Godzilla fan, and the film was too radical a departure from the design or tradition of the old movies, but personally I never gave a toss about that. As a monster flick, it's very good!

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11 minutes ago, Thor said:

Indeed. Never understood what people's issues were with this. I guess I can understand it if you're a hardcore Godzilla fan, and the film was too radical a departure from the design or tradition of the old movies, but personally I never gave a toss about that. As a monster flick, it's very good!

 

I'm as hardcore a traditional Godzilla fan as it gets and I still enjoy the '98 movie.

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Ok movie (3 stars) more fun and less pretentious than ID4. Fantastic score (Arnold’s best IMO) - 5 stars!

The promo album was great but missed one of my favorite tracks: the submarine pursuit. Such an exciting track.
It is great to have it in the complete score release. If I want a great sampler of the score I listen to the album, if I have the time (long car trip) I go with the complete score and on occasion I put only the submarine track and listen to it at a high volume.

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14 hours ago, PuhgreÞiviÞm said:

 

I'm as hardcore a traditional Godzilla fan as it gets and I still enjoy the '98 movie.

He shouldn't have shot in Super 35 for one thing.

G is a vertical character and he uses a.process only suitable to photo a snake!😵

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6 minutes ago, bruce marshall said:

He shouldn't have shot in Super 35 for one thing.

G is a vertical character and he uses a.process only suitable to photo a snake!😵

 

The 2014 and 2019 ones were in anamorphic and looked alright. A widescreen format worked for the 1998 one because he's longer than he is tall. Not to mention all the 60s and 70s films in Tohoscope.

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15 minutes ago, PuhgreÞiviÞm said:

 

The 2014 and 2019 ones were in anamorphic and looked alright. A widescreen format worked for the 1998 one because he's longer than he is tall. Not to mention all the 60s and 70s films in Tohoscope.

Super 35 is not anamorphic. It's two perf spherical . Like TECHNISCOPE it has a very narrow field of vision( think the Leone westerns).

The other films you mention are anamorphic which gives you a WIDE image ,  not narrow; BIG difference.

 

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3 minutes ago, bruce marshall said:

Super 35 is not anamorphic. It's two perf spherical . Like TECHNISCOPE it has a very narrow field of vision( think the Leone westerns).

The other films you mention are anamorphic which gives you a WIDE image ,  not narrow; BIG difference.

 

 

Yes, I know.

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3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

Really? Could you give us some highlights?

 

I'm terrible at remembering track titles, as usual. But "Leaving Manhattan" and "Finale" are probably the best tracks. Classic 90s Arnold. I wanted to give a Youtube link to "Leaving Manhattan", but can't find it, and I don't know what it corresponds to on the 2CD set.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Honestly, this will forever be my favorite David Arnold score. Is Independence Day a better score? Yes. It has better dramatic music and more memorable themes in comparison. But I don't know, this score is just such a rush. It's relentless, especially in its second hour... I mean, holy crap. And I have honestly always loved the film. I'm with Thor on this one. Was never big on Godzilla's original films or anything else, so having him reimagined to look like a dinosaur iguana wasn't a big deal to me. Of course, as you can see, I am really into Jurassic Park; and I remember seeing this as a kid when it came out and was absolutely thrilled with all the references and etc. And the music made the film so exciting, again especially in its final hour, that I really was carried away with this film at the time. I remember the audience really enjoying it, actually! Maybe I just saw it with a good group, because I definitely see its faults now and also understand why people don't like it, especially if they were original Godzilla fans (I have since only seen the original film, and it is quite good!)... but I can't ever NOT like this film. It's goofy as hell and dumb, but never not fun (well... okay maybe the mid-section kind of drags). I am actually REALLY curious to check out its animated series it had... which continues right where the film ends. I'm told it's actually quite good and improves on a lot of the film's issues, even with the characters, including Godzilla himself. From clips it looks like a lot of fun. Don't think it uses Arnold's score though, haha.

 

I remember finding the promo bootleg during the Napster days... and man... was so happy when I did. I have fond memories of that presentation of the score, and it just didn't make sense to me why it was never officially released, and instead a album of unrelated rap songs? I never understood that trend, and never will. I remember I was coming home from work one day and saw the e-mail newsletter about Godzilla being released by LLL. I cannot tell you... other than LLL's release of Jurassic Park/Lost World... I don't think I had ever been THAT excited for a release before. At that time, such a thing felt impossible... I thought for sure Independence Day would have happened before it ever had a chance to, for example. But no... Godzilla came first. And I knew from watching the film what amazing music had been left unreleased all these years, buried in a lot of SFX to be extracted properly, and I remember at the time always saying "if it ever got a complete release, it would be one of the greatest action scores of all time." I wasn't as well-rounded with scores back then as I would like to think I am now, but I still think I was actually pretty accurate still in saying that.

 

Shockingly, I actually did sell off my set... but that was only because there was that 3-disc reissue that came out from BuySoundtrax. It included a couple more alternates which was cool, but I really got it for the first legit release of that promo album (which I am PRETTY sure has an alternate or two of its own in there). Having that back for nostalgic purposes was a huge treat, honestly, even though I prefer the whole score. I really recommend getting it if anyone here somehow still doesn't have this release. It's actually still in print.

 

https://buysoundtrax.myshopify.com/products/godzilla-the-ultimate-edition-original-soundtrack-by-david-arnold-3-cd-set

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  • 1 year later...

I recently picked up the 2007 La-La-Land release of this at a yard sale for $1.

 

I know it's not quite as complete as the BSX release but I think that was a pretty good deal. I'm excited to give it a listen from all the great things I've heard about it here.

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