Hello dear reader, this will be a first. It’s now been over three years since I started blogging about films and my little trips to the cinema. There have been over forty films on which I have given my humble opinion. There has been good, Whiplash. There has been bad, Prometheus. And there has definitely been ugly, A Good Day to Die Hard. There has however never been a blog solely devoted to a person. That is about to change.
I woke up today and like many days, I was on autopilot for the first five minutes. Lying in bed at just after seven o’clock in the morning, trying to snap the world into focus and then it happened. At the end of the BBC news on Radio 5, and almost treated like a ‘we have ten seconds to fill, lets chuck this in to make up the time’, it was announced that composer James Horner had died at the age of sixty one. He’d been killed in a plane crash and then they moved on to the sports news.
It was now safe to say that I was awake…
Sometimes you hear things that really upset you. News stories that sneak up behind you, tap you on the shoulder and then sucker punch you straight in the stomach as you turn around. After I heard the news about James Horner my first instinct was to double check what I’d just heard on the internet. Surely they couldn’t be talking about ‘that’ James Horner. As I picked up my phone with the intention on blitzing through my overnight twitter feed I was hoping against hope that I was culturally unaware of some great twentieth century composer who also happened to carry the same name as my favourite film score author. A different James Horner that had silently passed me by. Perhaps a man who occasionally filled the Royal Albert Hall with powerful and moving concertos. A man who’s newest opus would have garnished a two hour special on Sky Arts or the Southbank Show, had it still been running.
A slight wave of panic that had been floating of shore was now headed at full tsunami speed towards my consciousness and a large part of my childhood memories. The first tweet I found was from Empire magazine, the second was from IMDb. Then came tweets from Russell Crowe and Ron Pearlman. It would seem that there is and was only one James Horner and he was now gone.
I think the reason this news has upset me so much is because Mr Horner played a very large part in me becoming interested in film and becoming a fan. I can remember watching films back when I was still in single digits and being totally swept away by their musical scores. The very first film score I remember is John Williams ‘Star Wars’ and I am old enough, or lucky enough to have heard it in the cinema when I was five years old. However the second and third film scores I can actively remember thinking ‘I want those records’ were Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond the Stars and Nicholas Meyer directed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Now Battle Beyond the Stars is a great film. Released in 1980, It’s basically The Magnificent Seven in space. It has Ricahrd ‘John-Boy Walton’ Thomas in it. Along with John Saxon, Sybil Danning, George Peppard and Robert Vaughan, who was also in the original Magnificent Seven film. It also has a claim to fame as being one of the first films James Cameron ever worked on. This films triumph however, is its music. It complements the film perfectly. Glorious space combat and cheesy dialogue are brought to another level by this orchestral masterpiece. It won’t be a film that many people have heard of, let alone seen but if you ever see it listed on your TV schedules, make time to see it. It will be 104 minutes of your time well spent.
Then we get to The Wrath of Khan. Quite simply the best Star Trek film there is and if you don’t’ think so, I’m sorry you’re wrong. From the opening credits to the closing funeral (Spoiler alert, someone dies) its music grabs you by the scruff of the neck and pushes you through nearly two hours of the greatest Space Opera you are ever likely to see on the big or small screen. The Soundtrack only has nine pieces of music on it and there’s no filler. All nine tracks, from the ‘Main Title’ to ‘Enterprise Clears Moorings’ are perfect and heighten the story of a cold and vengeful man that time forgot.
Then we get to Aliens. In 1986 James Cameron released a follow up to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Now Alien and it score, written by Jerry Goldsmith, was and is a completely different animal to its sequel and comparing them isn’t exactly fair. Alien has a haunted house in space feel to it, whereas Aliens is a full blown ‘them vs us’ war movie. In fact Aliens tag line is ‘this time its war’. If you like Alien, and why wouldn’t you. It has the War Doctor suffering from some serious indigestion problems, that’s fine. But if you like Alien more than Aliens then I don’t think we can be friends. For its soundtrack alone it wins hands down. From its hypnotic opening lullaby to its ‘Resolution and Hyperspace finale, I have yet to come across a soundtrack that complements a film as much as James Horner’s does here. It’s quite simply breath taking at times and when you consider the time constraints James Cameron forced him to work under because of editing issues and reshoots, his final score is even more impressive. If you get the chance listen to the track called ‘Bishops Countdown’. Since its original use in Aliens It’s been used in at least three more films that I can think of, including the first Die Hard film. I’ve seen it used in adverts and even a computer game. Aliens was the first soundtrack on CD ever bought and I still own it today. The covers broken and the case is cracked but I’m never going to replace it or download the digital version from iTunes. It’s a soundtrack that I can listen to again and again without it feeling repetitive and the only other soundtrack that I can even come close to saying the same about is John Ottman’s ‘ The Usual Suspects’. Although I may be slightly biased there.
He also wrote the soundtrack for the two biggest films in box office history. Avatar and Titanic, both James Cameron films. Now leaving aside the charming Celine Dion (wont somebody please leave aside the charming Celine Dion) Titanic is another soundtrack that fits the mood of the film perfectly and when it effectively turns into an action movie for the last hour (Spoiler alert, it sinks) the soundtrack comes into its own. There’s not much that can be said about Avatar that hasn’t already been said before. I’ve heard it described as ‘Dances with Wolves’ in space and even ‘an exercise in ego’ but the next time you watch it, assuming there will be a next time that is, don’t’ concentrate of what you’re seeing on screen. Listen to what you’re hearing on screen. You maybe in for a pleasant surprise.
James Horner has been my favourite film composer for as long as I can remember. He always came across as passionate about what he did in interviews and magazine articles. From soundtracks as diverse as Field of Dreams to Braveheart, he always tried to bring something new to the table and saddens me a lot that there won’t be any more. His Titanic soundtrack has sold over thirty million copies alone, he composed
music for over one hundred and fifty different films, TV programs and
documentaries and he won two Oscars for his work.
Goodbye Mr Horner, you will be missed…
Useful Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlzkGd7qaMY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpW2AjQbdbs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOFHi7SRMoU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFcfHSOti9s&list=PLwrjzV6EdAwxSq0DQQAAZ06ZnuzXuSgfK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdoMajMVFQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVssxumkHI4
