The Mysteries Of The Hook Score

[Kevin McCallister 0]

I've been listening to my custom made 3-Disc set for Hook and I reread John Takis's score analysis and then took a look at the assemblies on the pirated releases. A lot of questions began to pop in my head and perhaps. may never be solved, but I'd like to make some points here and see if anyone else may know or be able to figure out some of these points. Here we go -

1) I've been listening to the 3 versions of "The Arrival of Tink and Flight To Neverland" lately and I'm almost convinced that one of the alternates probably isn't real. The one that I think is real is the alternate with the film version ending. How the music was edited in the film is a mystery. Is the film version ending on the film version of the cue just unreleased, or did they cut the ending off the alternate and paste it on for the movie? Either way the other alternate has nothing different form the film version IMO besides the fact that the scene of Tink in the doll house is missing as it is in the other alternate. The orchestrations don't even sound different, while in the other alternate, they do. Am I missing something, or am I onto something?

2) Apparantly Williams composed seven original songs for Hook when it was going to be a musical. Two showed up in the theatrical release and then we have the "Childhood" piece. What about the other four songs? Did Williams ever record them? Or were they dropped completely?

3) When looking at the first boot (the one with mis-nomered tracks and poor sound, or the "NON-Concorde version"), I saw that several cues were broken down, even single cues were broken into Parts (e.g. Flight To Neverland, Remembering Childhood, and Farewell Neverland). On my set, I was able to find enough single cues so that only 6 of the 48 tracks had cues combined. However, the representation of the cues on this boot makes one think. Did Williams compose only portions of certain cues and then combine them in the final mixing process? Or was this boot just cleverly edited by its creator?

4) Is it just me, or does the 0ST version of the Ultimate War sound like an alternate of the film version? If you compare it to the Concorde version, the OST's sounds like it has much more bass and harder orchestration and there are even two sections on the OST that are different from the Concorde version.

5) The OST and Concorde versions of Banning Back Home must be either alternates or severely edited down. The film version differs very much in terms of music and orchestration. Could it be true?

What do you guys think?

[John Takis 206]

No big mysteries, Kevin...

1) I've been listening to the 3 versions of "The Arrival of Tink and Flight To Neverland" lately and I'm almost convinced that one of the alternates probably isn't real.

Several of the "alternates" on the Concorde boot are either no such thing or too similar to tell apart. My personal cut splices the OST version of "The Arrival of Tink" with the film version of "Flight to Neverland," culled excellently from the DVD. My alternate uses the shorter rendition of "The Arrival of Tink" from the Concorde boot -- sans dollhouse music -- spliced with the OST alternate version of "Flight to Neverland."

2) Apparantly Williams composed seven original songs for Hook when it was going to be a musical. Two showed up in the theatrical release and then we have the "Childhood" piece. What about the other four songs? Did Williams ever record them? Or were they dropped completely?

See the thread: "Williams hates Hook!" Apparently, final versions of the songs were never recorded or set to film, after Williams and Spielberg saw the first song and decided it wouldn't work as a full-fledged musical. That said, I'm sure Williams recorded demos, if only to hear how they sounded. Will we ever hear these demos? Even if they still exist, probably not!

3) When looking at the first boot (the one with mis-nomered tracks and poor sound, or the "NON-Concorde version"), I saw that several cues were broken down, even single cues were broken into Parts ... Did Williams compose only portions of certain cues and then combine them in the final mixing process?

Yes. This is actually standard practice when it comes to large film scores. If you're doing a score like Star Wars, where you might have forty minutes of cues that blend and segue right into each other, you don't record one big forty-minute take. You break it up by scene, by reel of film, in places where it makes musical sense. This also adds to the score's flexibility ... music can be dropped when scenes are cut, or shuffled, and if the director decides he wants silence, he may be able to do it without a rescore or awkward edit.

4) Is it just me, or does the 0ST version of the Ultimate War sound like an alternate of the film version?

It is. In addition, some re-scoring was done in the film, particularly Pan's entrance and a brief bit with the Lost Boys -- the two sections you mention.

5) The OST and Concorde versions of Banning Back Home must be either alternates or severely edited down. The film version differs very much in terms of music and orchestration. Could it be true?

It is plainly true. The cue on the album is a re-arrangement that features more prominent solos, including a bass feature, which would have been distracting in the film.

Hope this was helpful.

[Kevin McCallister 0]

Thank you very much for the explanations John. Actually I looked close and saw that some of the cues that were broken into multiple parts on the first boot were either minomered, or contained alternates of it inserted into the body of the score. It turns out that only the really long cues like Remembering Childhood and The Ultimate War were broken down into 4 or 5 cues. I guess seeing 3 parts for a short cue like Flight To Neverland kinda confused me.

One last question though. Are the alternates for the Never-Feast on the Concorde boot identical to each other? Besides the 2 second cut off on one, each cue sounds exactly the same. Do you know?

[Guest macrea]

I'm convinced that some of the HOOK alternates only SOUND like alternates because of the difference in sound quality of the two boots. Some of it is unlistenably bad.

And yes, what we hear as finished "tracks" are often several cues designed to be edited together so that it is easier for the orchestra to perform accurately. Examples that most here probably don't realize... "Desert Chase" in RAIDERS is 3 cues. "The Flying Sequence" from SUPERMAN consists of 4 cues. And "Ben's Death" and "TIE Fighter Attack" from STAR WARS are 2 separate cues. The latter was actually called "Here They Come" which is why the concert version has that title.