Phantom Menace Ultimate CD Review
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace The Ultimate Edition ***1/2
JOHN WILLIAMS
Sony Classical S2K 89460
Disc One: 35 tracks 68:07; Disc Two: 33 tracks 55:51
I come to this review in what is, for me, an unusual position. I've
seen each of the first three Star Wars movies dozens of times --
each. I can safely say I have every minute of each of these films committed
to visual and aural memory. So in listening to each of the numerous versions
of their soundtrack albums, I can usually pinpoint exactly what is going
on onscreen during any point of each individual music cue; I'll tell you
which music was recorded for but not used in the movies; I'll explain what
was tracked into or written especially for the re-edited "Special
Editions;" I know which bassoonists were playing on which cues. In
short, Jeff Bond is a Star Wars soundtrack nerd.
This is not so regarding The Phantom Menace. I saw this movie
exactly once. I haven't fallen for George Lucas's video-only ploy, so I
haven't even watched the movie a second time on my television. And even
though John Williams' score reminded me a whole lot more of a Star Wars
movie than The Phantom Menace did, I found the truncated single-CD
soundtrack release so lacking in excitement that I listened to it only
a few times. I go into this review facing another raging controversy among
soundtrack collectors who will not rest until they have every nanosecond
of Star Wars music ever written. These collectors were infuriated
when Sony Classical released a 70-minute, single-disc soundtrack album
for The Phantom Menace last year. This was not without precedent,
as the 1983 release of Return Of The Jedi originally boasted a single
disc soundtrack LP, something not corrected until a decade later in a boxed
set of Star Wars music that restored much of Jedi's missing music.
At 70 minutes, the original Phantom Menace soundtrack had as much
music as the 2-LP sets of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back,
although it also repeated at least one cue.
Since the "Ultimate Edition" Phantom Menace album is
a two-CD affair boasting, according to its packaging, "Every note
of the original music that John Williams composed" for the movie,
you'd think everyone would be happy, right? Well, not quite. In what some
feel is a spiteful case of taking fans too literally at their words, the
album producers have reportedly recreated the Phantom Menace score
EXACTLY as heard in the movie. Of course, a movie score is not recorded
in one uninterrupted take while the movie plays in the background -- it's
assembled out of many bits and pieces of performance, and even after that
the cues can be sliced, diced, rearranged, repeated or left out altogether
during the final edit of the film.
Much of the music heard on the original Empire Strikes Back soundtrack
album was actually written for but never used in the film. And all of Williams'
Star Wars albums (the original Phantom Menace CD included)
have concert arrangements of specific themes which allow Williams to develop
his melodies in what he feels is a more listener-friendly manner.
The new "Ultimate Edition" soundtrack album includes not only
jarring edits between bits of music, but also repeats lengthy sections
of music and adheres to a musical flow that will outrage fans who expect
to hear every note Williams recorded for the film in the order he originally
intended them. Williams himself has often confounded fans by taking a real
interest in how his scores play as music, often rearranging the order of
cues and "segueing" from one cue to another, mixing and matching
in a way that is often completely different from the original score's chronological
flow. The original Phantom Menace album was done this way, and the
"Ultimate Edition" also has his stamp of approval. However, the
announcement that this album would follow the film order of the music precisely,
edits and tracking included, has so incensed certain fans that they've
already tried to organize a letter-writing campaign for Sony Classical
to release an ultimate "Ultimate Edition" of the score that will
present the music in the way Williams originally intended.
This raging controversy actually ran neck and neck with the Florida
Presidential voting as a national crisis in November, but I can't say it
interests me much. In fact, for those frothing at the mouth over this issue,
I would simply say that Sony is offering the anal-retentive listener something
they rarely get -- a literal duplication of a film's movie score as heard
on screen, warts and all -- and in good sound. I have to admit that there
are certain films whose clumsy music edits are so ingrained in my memory
from multiple viewings that it's actually jarring to hear the "correct"
version on a soundtrack album. This, and the unavoidable fact that Sony
will surely release yet another "Ultimate" edition of this score
when Episode Two hits screens, or when the Star Wars DVDs
are released, or when George Lucas faces his next IRS audit, should placate
fans at least a little.
Any John Williams genre score is going to be coveted by fans, and The
Phantom Menace does recreate a lot of the atmosphere of the original
Star Wars movies. But I can't help wondering how much better the score
would have been had the movie not been such a talky, uninspired waste of
time (and before I get inundated with letters responding to that sentence,
let me assure you that this is just one man's opinion and I'm sure TPM
is the equivalent to Citizen Kane for at least one large demographic
of fans). I mean, some of these track titles do not exactly inspire tingles
of listening anticipation: "Anakin's Midi-Chlorian Count," "Jar
Jar's Run-in With Sebulba," "Anakin, Pod Racer Mechanic,"
and my personal favorite, "Talk of Podracing." Whew! Let me just
get my heart rate down for a minute.
The biggest strength of the new album is that it includes all of the
action music from the movie that was almost completely missing from the
first CD (which often played like underscoring for a broadcast day on C-SPAN).
But because so many of the battles in TPM are played for comedy (I'm thinking
orange frogs versus duck-shaped robots here), the lion's share of the action
music in the back-half of the album evokes uncomfortable memories of the
goofy Endor Forest battle music from Return Of The Jedi. The only
full-throttled Star Wars-style action music comes in "Escape
From Naboo," a wonderfully developed bit of military bustle that also
underscores most of the Pod Race (in the album's most egregious -- but
oddly welcome -- bit of retracking) The initial burst of Korngold-esque
brass in "Fighting the Destroyer Droids" is also exciting.
A lot of the incidental writing is well-worth having, particularly the
rich, dignified music for violas and cellos in "Anakin is Free"
which tries to ennoble a completely flat-footed dramatic scene in the movie.
There's also jaunty militaristic writing in "The Queen and Group Land
on Naboo" and "War Plans," although both cues quickly give
way to more directionless underscoring. It would probably be impossible
for any composer to maintain and develop excitement and suspense over a
three-way battle as lengthy and unfocused as the one that wraps up The
Phantom Menace, and indeed Williams had similar difficulties bouncing
back between space action, drama and farce in the final third of Return
Of The Jedi. In Menace "The Battle Begins" could easily
pass as Ewok battle music. Some of the climactic war music ("The Gungans
Retreat and The Queen Surrenders") was identified as the Pod Race
music on the original album. Williams wraps the gargantuan land/space battle
up with a redress of the old hammering "Mars, Bringer of War"
rhythms he originally employed in the first Star Wars film but there's
not a hint of the breathtaking excitement Williams brought to "The
Last Battle." Maybe that's because there's no clear goal in the Phantom
Menace battles and Anakin essentially wins the space battle by dumb
luck.
Capping off the album is a "dialogue version" of the film's
"Duel of the Fates" cue. You might think this is a straight soundtrack,
dialogue and effects version of the big light saber duel scene, but it
actually seems to be a reproduction of the MTV video which strung together
dozens of scenes from the movie underneath Williams' music. The result
only reinforces my decision to not let this movie take my cash a second
time -- it's a farrago of lame, portentous dialogue and indifferent, if
not outright bad, dialogue readings. -- Jeff Bond
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
|
