Such a nice touch on the best movie ever! I was glad to wait this long for the DVD cause it includes sooo much...this is what DVD's are all about!!!!

I admit I like the score, too, dammit.

And if so...WHAT KIND of cheese are you?

About the cheeshead thing. Actually its like that cause several years ago when I needed an online name, I wanted cheesehead, but i couldn't type very well, so I missed the E in the middle. It actually works out better this way, cause nobody registers anything with cheeshead anyway (hotmail etc)

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Gustav Holst? Doesn't ring a bell, who is he?

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tell me youre kidding

The kids have taken over!

Seriously though, I thought that Zimmer's blatant references to Mars and various selections from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen actually helped the score - they fit in perfectly with the rest of the darkness.

HOWEVER, it was downright negligent of him to not credit these in the album booklet - most of the masses would not be able to pick out these "homages." Zimmer has even admitted to his references in several interviews.

As for the score itself, I absolutely despised it upon the first few listens. It seemed to be spitting in the face of Alex North and Miklos Rozsa. However, for some reason I continued to listen to it and finally began to appreciate it for what it actually was rather than what it was SUPPOSED to be. As much as I usually despise Zimmer, I have to say that Gladiator is one of the best scores of the year. (Pretty sad when Zimmer eclipses Williams (whose Patriot score was IMHO the epitome of mediocrity)).

<uh-oh, time to prepare to be flamed! or at least chastised harshly... >

Gustav Holst was a classical composer who wrote a suite of pieces inspired by the planets and their supposed personality. Many film composers sometimes make references to this music, especially Mars, the Bringer of War.

ZIMMER: one of the most ridiculous "composers" of film noise.

"Wow...he must know something we don't!"

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Originally posted by Quill:
Mission to Mars is wonderful and artistic film music, while Gladiator is simply noise. Well...you've got me scratching my head in wonder!

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Perfect! You got it!!
I wouldn't change a line, Quill (well, maybe you should just give up this scratching thing...)

If you can explain how you create such a distinction between a "fitting" and powerful score such as Gladiator and the drivel that is Mision to Mars...I might by into it.

Or are you simply more enlightened than the rest of us?

Mission To Mars is drivel, but original, compelling works such as Gladiator (the product of not one........not two.......not three.........but--at least-- composers, not even including the main contributor, one Gustav Holst!) are "powerful"? I just want to make sure we're understanding each other.

If nothing else, have you heard Morricone's scoring of the space walk sequence in Mission To Mars? I'm not the biggest fan of the score or the film, but I will at least concede that Ennio nailed that sequence. I guess it's unfortunate that an uneducated composer like Morricone is unable to bring himself to write loud, "Hey look, I'm cool" music to be played by a series of iMacs.

Not everything can be action music, friend.

Shaun

NP---Unbreakable (this is another topic waiting to happen, but I seem to be the only one of the opinion that James Newton Howard lost it 5 years ago and has been recycling and recycling ever since---I'm going to exclude "Tarawa" from Snow Falling On Cedars, lest I be chain-whipped by JJH)

So, I will just copy and paste (like James Horner) two very interesting reviews writen by Michael Ware on Filmscoremonthly about this hideous pice of musical crap AND a great analisys of MISSION TO MARS, the last masterpiece of Ennio Morricone, writen by Andy Dursin.

Enjoy!

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By Michael Ware:

GLADIATOR is scored with varied textures by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard. Certain gestures are smooth and vaguely pleasant, as with the LION KING-like vocal-plus-worldbeat textures used as closure to the hour-long album ("Now We Are Free"). Otherwise the score is an impersonal and blank set of contrivances propped up with such blatant references to familiar cliches swimming on top of the usual Zimmerry drones that you can hardly believe a filmmaker of Scott's stature would be this clumsy in his tastes (then you remember the words ALIEN, and LEGEND). Zimmer's abuse of Holst's Mars Bringer of War cross-pollinated with a new refit of the IRON CHEF (i.e, BACKDRAFT) theme in the major set-piece cues ("The Battle", "Barbarian Horde") is so arch you'd think the composer was ridiculing the film. Nothing in the score relates to who the people in the film are, what they are about. Maximus' Sergio Leone, Lost Family & Home Life situation should drive the score's most serious propulsion, but there is only a bit of anonymous BROKEN ARROW twangy guitar and barely melodic PRINCE OF EGYPT-like female vocalese to indicate human involvement, almost as casual ly pleasant a backdrop as someone's aquarium. Upward emotional swings are outlined with variants of CRIMSON TIDE and a few seconds of material reminiscent of Vangelis' 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE, and a repeated attempt at Wagner's Siegried Death music (just like in EXCALIBUR). The big heroic licks don't achieve grandeur or power, they just get louder. Every development is scored as its own product-orientation commercial, rendering the whole film as a catalog of clichČs. Whether this is the result of cynicism or just naivete is beside the point. Future people will remember us (probably fondly) as having soundtracks that forced the expected response rather than risk signaling the individual composer's identity.

Disc rating is *

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An Aisle Seat Entry By Andy Dursin

Last week at the movies, I was continually frustrated by Brian DePalma's MISSION TO MARS, which had all the makings of a legitimate piece of science fiction. Not warmed-over garbage like ARMAGEDDON, but an escapist entertainment grounded in an actually intelligent premise. Say what you will about the rest of the film (and I'm about to, don't worry), but the story has a fair degree of believability as it chronicles a NASA expedition to Mars and the ramifications that happen when a group of astronauts discover some kind of life hidden there.

Unfortunately, MISSION TO MARS could have served as an ideal issue of the old Marvel Comic "What If??," as in, "What If MISSION TO MARS had dialogue that didn't sound like it was written by a group of seventh-graders?" Director DePalma assembled a first-rate cast (including Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, and Don Cheadle), produced some breathtaking visual imagery (kudos to frequent cinematographer Stephen H.Burum), and even managed to end the movie with an inspiring finale, but somewhere along the ride, the filmmaker settled on filming a script with dialogue so inane it makes SUPERNOVA's prose sound positively Shakespearian.

Too bad, too, because there are many worthwhile elements in MISSION TO MARS -- particularly a conclusion that's more inspiring and satisfying than the comparatively stilted ending to the similarly themed CONTACT, and a music score by Ennio Morricone that is, simply put, a glorious piece of film scoring, one of the best I've heard from the composer and easily one of the most memorable soundtracks I've listened to in the last few years.

I'm not going to tell you that this score isn't at times overwrought, or heavy-handed when matched with the dramatic context of the film, because there are a couple of times when it is (it also doesn't help that, aside from the ending, the movie never comes close to eliciting the emotion present in the music). I'm also not going to guarantee, if your favorite Morricone score is THE THING, that you're going to appreciate the often romantic, flowing lyricism of this score, which at times sounds as if you crossed a Georges Delerue work with Bill Conti's THE RIGHT STUFF.

What I am going to say is that MISSION TO MARS is one of the first soundtracks to come along in a while that actually made me sit up, take notice of the music, and want to rush out and buy the album the second the movie was over.

You might have noticed I don't spend too much time in my Aisle Seat columns discussing soundtracks. Once in a while I'll be moved or interested enough to write something specific about a film score, but to be honest with you, there's been little of note musically speaking in the film music world to come down the pike in the last few years. Every week labels like Varese release a handful of nondescript film scores that are a far cry from the soundtracks that inspired me to gravitate towards film music when I was in grade school, the kinds of albums that made Lukas even begin publishing FSM in the first place. (How excited can you be when every CD you listen to produces this kind of reaction: "I'm listening to the score album from END OF DAYS, which sounds like THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, which sounds like ALIEN 3, which sounds like?.").

What makes MISSION TO MARS so compelling and listenable, effective and moving? Well, the music has a timeless quality almost completely absent from most of today's music. It's a flesh-and-blood, real, legitimate soundtrack, written by a composer in his own musical language and style. The music bears the distinctive mark of a composer who knows how to write film music and doesn't play by the rules normally associated with modern film scoring. (Producers, studios, all sorts of executives get in the way now of a movie's post-production since there's often too much riding on the movie's financial performance; hence, they demonstrate their complete and total disregard for a film's music by virtually placing the soundtrack in a category of "focus group tweaking" by insisting that every soundtrack sound exactly like the other. You know their thinking, and you can hear it in the music).

By comparison with most of today's soundtracks, MISSION TO MARS is almost too melodic, too distinctive. It doesn't sound like everything else; maybe THAT'S why I was so struck by the music in this film.

I cannot count myself as a die-hard Morricone listener; there are the well-known scores of his that I have in my collection (THE MISSION, THE UNTOUCHABLES, and several compilations), but I noticed in this score a genuine enthusiasm and energy that I haven't heard much of lately from the composer. His rejected effort from WHAT DREAMS MAY COME was melancholy, but like a lot of his recent work, it was redundant. One theme played over and over again, something I've noticed in many of his scores over the last ten years or so.

MISSION TO MARS, for some reason, doesn't have that problem. It has several distinctive themes and melodies -- enough to fill several newer Morricone soundtracks -- that are played eloquently and effectively at various points throughout the film (a gorgeous, delicate melodic line for Gary Sinise's character and his wife; an elegant horn passage that wouldn't be out of place in APOLLO 13, but is used only sparingly; a CLOSE ENCOUNTERS-like use of chorus and an otherworldly motif for the Martian finally glimpsed at the end of the film, and even a powerful, uplifting conclusion, marked by a choral and orchestral flourish, that finishes the score off perfectly).

Morricone mixes synthesizers and live chorus in with the preceding, and includes at least one cue with a pounding bass line that's very THING-like. Even a track that sticks out with a firm dissonance (when the astronauts' rescue mission almost falls apart due to a "leak" in the ship's hull) contrasts nicely with the remainder of the work. If there are times when the music becomes too melodramatic, it's almost always the fault of the film for failing to match the inspiration of the music. Morricone gives life to a script that's lifeless except during the final act.

MISSION TO MARS is a throwback movie that doesn't quite come off, but at least it's an admirable failure. However, to place Morricone's score in the proper context, this really is the kind of music that was being written twenty-plus years ago when STAR WARS ignited a rash of outer-space epics. You had Jerry Goldsmith scoring STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE, and John Barry venturing into galaxies far and wide with THE BLACK HOLE.

MISSION TO MARS is Morricone's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, alright, and while it may be a pair of decades after the fact, it only augments how deficient so much of today's film music is. It's a true musical feast just when you thought that you might have heard it all.

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Perfect! I couldn't have say it better!!

Cheers...

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Ennio Morricone's score for Brian De Palma's MISSION TO MARS is a notable example of the composer's unusual and off-center approach to movie music.

Hand him a Western, and he reinvents a stylized Western sound with electric guitars, Jews harps, and choir. Hand him a biblical epic, and he responds with chanted, rhythmic choir. Hand him a remake of a ferocious, classic sci-fi horror film, and he concocts a perfectly passionless tone poem for the frozen Arctic. Hand him a fast moving Mafia revenge tale, and he provides a strident rock and roll score. Hand him a period story set at the dawn of man, and he creates an ethereal score for stylized pop vocalisms.

Hand him a rescue mission to Mars and the result is equally unexpected. Avoiding tried-and-true space movie music, this is a lush and a quiet score. Morricone, as usual, does not score the setting, and you'd never know this was a movie about Mars from just hearing the music. Morricone is again scoring the subtext of the material, the feel of the scene or the visualizations of the story. As with THE THING, Morricone captures a neat desolate feel for the Martian landscape and the dreary journey through space, a feeling that is carried over into those cues centering on the emotions of the crew. The score is slow-paced understated, suggesting, almost in slow motion, the languidity of the space mission and the underlying subliminalities of the characters. But the score is rich in tonality and feeling, if not melody. From its omnipresent static rhythms emerges some of Morricone's most eloquently emotive music of the last few years The music is lyrical but subdued, resplendent but desolate. Emotions in a vacuum... a heart in space. The main theme emerges at the 3-minute mark, a gently rhythmic motif for horns over strings and choir. It bears a lot of resemblance to the style of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, very introspective music. The electric guitar returns near the end of the cue, plucked quickly in contrast to the slow moving lethargy of the violin melody in typical Morricone fashion.

The organ theme heard in "A Martian" has a resonant tonality quite reminiscent of IL DESERTO DEI TARTARI, bridged by a pretty woodwind, piano, and choir motif which assumes the ascending traveling feel of MARCO POLO or the wistful nostalgia ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. A subtle use of choir embellishes the theme, which becomes an eloquent romantic melody, swelling into a glorious upsurge of orchestra and choir, and then softening to a slow and poignant finish for high-end trumpet A particularly noble variant of the main theme emerges from the score's omnipresent repetitive tonalities in the lengthy (13: 15) and poignant "Sacrifice of a Hero." The cue's restatement of the theme becomes a noble soliloquy from trumpet over snare drum, ultimately overcome by a swarm of buzzing, electronic effects that first counterpoint, then complement, and finally subdue the orchestral sound. The cues varies from emotional warmth to strange dissonance, as woodwinds clash against sustained synth tones and Morricone's trademark suspense motifs - varied taps and tones and figures from various instruments, in turn, from dignified veneration to harsh, dissonant chordal phrasings. Typically, Morricone plays against the film, and the result is probably one of the oddest scores for a science fiction spectacle of the last decade or more. But, then, Morricone was never one to go along with tradition, and the feeling he gives MISSION TO MARS is peculiar and distinctive. The music is, at its heart, very human music, and Morricone underlines what must be at the core of De Palma's science fiction adventure, an affinity and an understanding that must underly any truly effective film story.

- Randall D. Larson

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I could sit here for hours and squabble over this for hours. The thing is, is that just like in regular music, there are different styles of music, RAP, Rock, Metal, Classical, etc. Why can't there be different styles of scores for different types of movies.

And don't give replys like "Piece of crap" without some kind of meaningfull reason. Otherwise we are no better than teeny boppers arguing over nsync or backstreet boys

Oh, and one more thing.

"Nothing seemed to link up, it was all over the place."

Cheeshead, you've summed up my EXACT feelings toward the score for Gladiator. You forgot to add the word "bastard", though.

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I just really like Zimmer's style...some people call it synth crap, but it's his own unique style. Maybe its not classical scoring, but I think that all the scores that zimmer has done have fit the film perfectly (peacemaker, broken arrow, backdraft)...I think that counts most of all.

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In a recent FSM issue, there was a review of the summer films, and the off-the-cuff comment about Gladiator, that Zimmer scored the film pretty much how you would expect him to score it, pretty much sums up the problems with the score (and Zimmer in general). It is not specific to this film.

There is never an attempt by Zimmer to do anything specific with his film music. Every score is like a retread of his last one.

Given the effect that Ridley Scott seems to have been going for, I wish he would have worked with Vangelis on this project.

Regarding whether or not the music was effective in the film, I would actually say that the music in Gladiator actually did the film more harm than good; the music at times seems to hang over the film like a weight, often slowing scenes down interminably. As I mentioned before, there are some scenes (such as Commodus gloating over Lucilla towards the end of the film; the "Am I not merciful" scene) where the music almost sounds like it's going somewhere, but ends up twisting back into boring drone country, almost as though Zimmer thought he was on to something and then lost his train of thought.

One of the worst things a film can be is predictable. The same goes for a film score. And when the stupid adaptation of "Mars" from "The Planets" shows up, a lot of people roll their eyes.

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Originally posted by Swashbuckler:

Incidentally, your comment that the score for Backdraft was perfect for the film was true. I can't think of a better accompaniment. Ear-splitting, headache inducing empty calories.

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Anyway, I think Cheeshead answered to your novel-length posts quite well. The fact is that movie scores are not written for critics, whether they be for film or music.

Pages or rhetoric about how a film score is genuine, monumental, or groundbreaking has little significance in the context for which it was intended. Morricone was commissioned to compose a score to integrate and enhance a film...if you poll most people (or the few who actually suffered through it)and they even noticed the music, they would probably give it a poor mark.

On the flipside, Gladiator's music would receive a positive reviews...because it works. I'm sure you have your reasons for hating Zimmer, but your so absolute. By calling all of Zimmer's music noise you are not showing respect to the man's talent...unless your enlightened sensibilities allow you to understand movie scoring in a way the entire movie industry cannot.

the best stuff wasn't written by Zimmer, but by Gerrard.
Her vocal stuff is great.

The battle music for the most part is Spanish scales mixed with a good chunk of Mars rhythms. the music for the 2nd gladiatorial contest in Zucchabar is pretty good, too, just before the flyover shot of the Roman Collosseum.

Still, I long for what someone like John Williams could have done with this score.

1) I find quite amusing to see people saying "I don't care about what critics have to say" - particulary if that come from someone who ASKED for a more detailed analysis than the simple "Gladiator Sucks" statement).
And lets face it: we all care. What happens is that we tend to pretend we ignore the negative critics about what we love, with that average snob attitude (one can find on Cheesyhead's and Quill's posts above), while we get quite happy when someone write good things about it.

2) A critic is nothing else than someone like you and me who loves the subject of his analysis. One most love movies to be a movie critic - but this doesn't mean he must love ALL movies.
Some people make this their professions, while others, like you Michael Ware, and me do it for the simple pleasure.

3) I copied and pasted (ala James Horner) those analyses above just because I agreed with them 100%. So, just because a so-called “critic” wrote them you will ignore it?? Well, next time I will just copy and paste it and add my name at the end (like James Horner), ok?? Them maybe you'll pay attention to it...

4)

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On the flipside, Gladiator's music would receive a positive reviews...because it works. I'm sure you have your reasons for hating Zimmer, but your so absolute. By calling all of Zimmer's music noise you are not showing respect to the man's talent...unless your enlightened sensibilities allow you to understand movie scoring in a way the entire movie industry cannot.

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Just because the masses loved GLADIATOR does it means it's good?? What kind of argument is that???

Hollywood will probably produce a dozen movies similars to it in the next years - and probably a sequel: GLADIATOR: RESURRECTION. Zimmer or one of his pets (or all of them together at the same time) will score most of them.

But does it means they will be good movies?? No. It just means they will make lots of money, just like THE BACKSTREET BOYS, VANILLA ICE, ARMAGEDDON, CON AIR worked with the masses - or "simple folk" as some prefer.

Last, sorry for this "novel-length post". Next time I will just write: Zimmer sucks. The rest you figure out for yourself...

And as for you pitiful comments about Morricone's outstanding score for MISSION TO MARS I can only say this:
I DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT CRITICS HAVE TO SAY...

Cheers!!

Actually, my point in regards to movie critics is this...often times (not always) a critic will delve so deeply into a movie in the desperate attempt to find some deeper meaning...some novel concept that will elevate your consciousness if you could only discover it. Then they drown their so-called discovery in rhetoric, in the hopes that they have elevated themselves to some higher plateau of understanding.

It is invigorating to find a reviewer who can simply say, "Gladiator provides us with no brave new territory and is ultimately predictable, but...its a fun, emotional ride anyway."

The same can be said of music...Gladiator is a good listen, as a healthy majority of folks on this board would attest. And does your posting of an "enlightened" (if not pretentious) review of the score mean that we are all lost in the dark, as to what good film music is...no.

I like both Zimmer and Morricone--they both compose excellent film music. You won't hear me spouting "all of Zimmer's work in noise, everything out of Morricone's mind is genius, and James Horner can burn in hell, because heh, every melody he commits to paper has been written before!"

If you could grant a little here of there I would consider your arguments, but as it stands you just sound like a hater.

As always with our conversations, I see nowhere else for this one to go. Maybe, in some bleak future you and I might agree on something. Until then...have a nice day.

And I loved that!

Quill is really trying to prove something, altought is very hard to decipher his point -aparently he thinks those who can't share his views about the lame GLADIATOR are "enlightened snobs" (sic)...
A real good argument, I think: "Ah, you don't like the movie which the masses loved? Pffff... you're such a snob person". Well, what can I do? Give me "BLADE RUNNER" anytime over "GLADIATOR"! Oh, I am so "enlightened"...

But one thing is clear: he cares about what critics say after all. No doubt about that!

Clay G.

NP GLADIATOR <Track 14, the best one-along with 17> (Hans Zimmer)