As Gergely Hubai wrote on Fb 007 group - his entire track by track analysis:
1. Gun Barrel (00:55) One of the new innovations of the Craig era is the involvement of the opening logos over the music. The beginning is pretty much like SPECTRE - added bars of the vamp morph into a brief quotation of "You Know My Name". Then the rest is the same, including the new setup of the Craig-era gunbarrel. For refreshers, most gunbarrels use the bridge-vamp-riff structure. Up to the Craig era, only three gunbarrels differed: TSWLM (vamp-vamp-riff) as well as TND and TWINE (vamp-vamp-coda). The traditional gunbarrels of the Craig era however used bridge-vamp-coda - NTTD is very similar to SPECTRE, except the ending has a little tension music (think of Sherlock Holmes for that section).
2. Matera (01:59) The early release cue of the score already created controversy. The opening pretty much gives it away that City of Lovers was consulted for the beginning, before a straight quote of "We Have All the Time in the World" from OHMSS appears. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what the context might be. Then the other love theme comes back with a woodwind solo (typically used for dialogue scenes in order not to overpower whatever it is said). Expect Vesper stuff here, but with Tracy music, because of course the composer didn't get the memo about the reboot.
3. Message From An Old Friend (06:35) The opening 50 seconds of this track will have few fans. It's part of Hans Zimmer's more experimental sound design world which he most recently flexed in Dune. The percussion pattern resembles The Dark Knight Rises (it wouldn't be that obvious - but it's reused in a later cue in a much more direct manner and now I can't unhear it). The action part is pretty standard (including a quite bridge built only for percussion), but it does have an interesting crossover with the theme song as the opening notes are built into the music - and each note is played as the opening phrase of From Russia with Love (a technique Arnold also used, especially in TND, but in a more direct manner). Microcuts within the cue suggest this is edited down from the full version.
4. Square Escape (02:06) This one has another biggie. An action cue based around "Chateau Flight" from Thunderball. Before anyone believes Zimmer & Co. has a deep understanding of Bond music legacy, this particular quote most likely came through David Arnold's own adaptation of this theme into his TND score (specifically the "Bike Chase" cue). The motive is the same, but the orchestration choices are exactly the same as Arnold's, so I'd suggest that's as far as their musical archaeology went. Before anyone accuses the two gentlemen of preying on Barry, the Maestro himself made a lazy retread of the same motive in A View to a Kill (the unreleased music from the fight at Stacey's house).
5. Someone Was Here (02:56) The flavour of "You Know My Name" returns before a natural transition of the James Bond Theme's vamp, with a few added shakers. Then comes a new theme, which I will just call the villain theme. Its structure is pretty similar to the Two-Face theme from The Dark Knight - here's it's just sped up, stripped down and given an Oriental tint with exotic flutes. Is... Is this related to Rami Malek? Who knows...? Then the vamp comes back, a bit of You Know My Name (2:07) before the villain theme return - the crescendo suggests a fake reveal. I hope it's going to be a chimpanzee with a bottle of champagne in its hand.
6. Not What I Expected (01:24) Going against the title, the cue features what you'd expect from the setting. The opening unravels new romantic material, while the guitar stuff sounds akin to the string of Zimmer's $1 dollar scores from the mid-2000s. These projects were small movies that he felt were important and did for the nominal sum of one dollar each - or at least that's how the story goes. Of course these zero budget affairs didn't get big epic scores - most often they were done with guitarist Heitor Pereira (look up Casi Divas if you are into this sound)
7. What Have You Done? (02:14) Male choir... Haven't heard that in a while. If you think about it, Bond movies rarely used choirs (there's the Slumber Inc. scene from DAF, the space music from MR, the "Look at the size of that umbrella" choir from DAD) - but of course now it's essential for film scoring to make them sound more like trailer music. Before you get too excited, we go back to the vamp, and a little bit of the James Bond Theme / NTTD theme hybrid.
8. Shouldn't We Get To Know Each Other First (01:21) The new romantic material returns, before... seriously, the vamp again? There is a pleasant Arnold throwback to the casino music from TWINE, then... yes, more vamp. I can definitely see a pattern here. This is why I said this score uses the vamp more than anything else.
9. Cuba Chase (05:40) The sound design bit is back for the opening of this lengthy action cue that also had an early excerpt released on a podcast. Of course the approach calls for direct comparison for Arnold's relatively cleaner application of the mambo sound to the James Bond Theme in DAD... But I'm going to be more professional than that. What immediately struck me about this cue is that despite the combination of orchestra and tons of electronics, the mid-section solo (02:52) feels a bit like an afterthought and isn't shining as much as it should. But at least there's a bit of fun going on in this one - I'd say this will be a big hit for those who want David Arnold back (except for the sound design opening which I honestly think should have been cut off). And yes, the "Chateau Flight" theme is back with the added bonus of having the same orchestration as the Port-au-Prince chase music in QoS. Keep an ear out for the speedaway brass (an effect created with an assortment of brass instruments, mimicking the sound of a car speeding by).
10. Back To MI6 (01:30) A fade from the Two-Face-based villain theme takes us to... the vamp? I guess so. It is the first full appearance of the James Bond Theme where even the riff joins the fun. (Monty Norman will clearly not be a fan of this one). The cue ends with the guitar lick - the same one that gathered so many fans at the end of the Billie Eilish theme song.
11. Good To Have You Back (01:17) If you know that this has the On Her Majesty's Secret Service theme playing in it, you know exactly what's happening here. (You remember, what Bond did in that movie and how he got to Switzerland?) Certain aspects of this arrangement bring Over and Out to my mind, but maybe it's just me...
12. Lovely To See You Again (01:25) So we get to the ticking... Thanks to Christopher Nolan's insistence on having time games in all his movies, Zimmer has become reliant on using clock ticking in order to create tension. It's in The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar (where it's used to symbolize the time difference between planets) and Dunkirk (where Nolan's own watch was used as a sample). This method has become very popular in contemporary film scoring (check out Johan Söderqvist's The King's Choice for a non-Zimmer example), but of course he brings it back. The orchestration sounds a bit like Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (where an unused passage of the score was rather similar) - but then we get to the theme song for better or worse.
13. Home (03:45) The solo female voice, Zimmer's favourite tearjerker method since Gladiator is here in a unique balancing end between the first and the last theme song of the Craig era. This is what I usually call the mid-movie foreshadowing of the final cue. Some of Zimmer's biggest movies have massive, self-contained final cues that become kind of cross-over hits, "Time" from Inception maybe the most telling example. However, their self-contained nature gave them a looser thematic link to the main score, so a few recent examples have these mid-movie foreshadowing - a brief, more condensed version of the final cue - so it wouldn't come out of nowhere.
14. Norway Chase (05:06) More ticking, except its much faster now and we get to the part that sounds a lot like The Dark Knight Returns. I already mentioned the unique percussion pattern a few cues back and here the parallel becomes more obvious because it uses a male choir just like the Nolan film. Back in that movie, the idea behind THAT choir was that the music was performed by hundreds of fans over the internet - here the singing is achieved in a more traditional fashion, but it's used to a similar effect. The only way it's made more Bondian is that the vamp is put in there. Because of course it is.
15. Gearing Up (02:53) What if we take the vamp of the James Bond Theme on strings and place... the vamp of the James Bond Theme on top of it, but with guitars? Wonder no more - this is your answer! The theme song returns in the middle of the cue, but instead of piano, the opening notes are played with the guitar sound heard in the finale.
16. Poison Garden (03:58) The villain's theme returns and the similarities to the Two-Face theme becomes a bit more obvious. If you know how that scene goes, expect a lot of monologuing, a dangerous countdown that can only be resolved by sacrifice and an out-of-the-box idea by a quick-witted hero. I mean that's what happens whenever Hans Zimmer uses this type of cue in his scores - but we might be surprised. A guest appearance by the THX logo music adds weight to the nefarious villain.
17. The Factory (06:42) An old-fashioned Zimmer sound goes into my own personal favourite moment... Can you name the music between 1:20-2:20? Maybe not yet, but it will return in the next cue. The villains' material returns from around 2:35, so you know shit's about to get real when the strings start to match their tempo with the clicking clock sound. Plus the THX logo music keeps coming back so expect to spill out your drinks in the theatre. My main concern is that the structure is all over the place with this one - Zimmer & Co. can do great action cues that follow through the one idea they have, but that's not one of those cues.
18. I'll Be Right Back (04:59) Okay, this is too much of a spoiler - if you've been following up with the themes, you know exactly what's happening here. But here's the clincher - 1:20-2:20 is a classic Zimmer theme, just like in the previous cue, except now it's more noticeable and maybe you can get it. And the answer is... this is Charlie Loses His Head from Black Rain. Or you may know this theme as Molossus from Batman Begins. (For those not keeping up with the bat-punning titles of the score, this was the music for the Batmobile chase). It's one of my favourite Zimmer themes, but hearing it for a third time in a major action picture... That's just a gift I wasn't quite ready for.
19. Opening The Doors (02:44) And "Chateau Flight" makes three... Okay, now I wonder if they really know this theme is "Chateau Flight" or just think it's something punchy from the Brosnan era. I mean it's not as obvious as the OHMSS lifts, but taking significant cues from two 60s Bond movies is a bit weird when we all know those movies are nothing compared to the shining eternal brilliance of Daniel Craig. Oh well...
20. Final Ascent (07:25) This is the money shot. I'm betting the producers got Zimmer for this cue - they want their own "Time" (or it's lesser-known cousin, "Solomon Northup" from 12 Years a Slave). Or if you want other examples, go for "Chevaliers de Sangreal" from The Da Vinci Code. Now I don't feel this cue yet, it doesn't have the rigorous monothematic minimalism of "Time" (aka the true secret of its success). For me, it stays a bit too long and the quiet piano-based mid-section removes the sweeping momentum that makes the typical Zimmer finale cues such a smash success. However, I'm sure important lines will be spoken during that part, possibly the last ones of the Craig era. I for one cannot wait to get over the nightmare.
Weird everyone forgets Dalton's Bond was doing gritty and dark before the Craig era.... maybe because that was the year that Batman kicked Bond's ass at the box office...
Weird everyone forgets Dalton's Bond was doing gritty and dark before the Craig era.... maybe because that was the year that Batman kicked Bond's ass at the box office...
The Dalton films - Licence to Kill especially - got the balance right between gritty and dark, and still having humour and a lightness of touch, something I personally feel the Craig movies have got consistently wrong.
Craig’s Bond seems to be habitually depressed and naval gazing, constantly pissed off about something and perpetually either resigned from or on the verge of resigning M16. That’s not what I want to see in Bond.
And before anyone say that is how Fleming wrote Bond, it really really isn’t. Craig is VERY far from the literary 007.
I don’t have an issue with dark and gritty - Licence to Kill is actually one of my favourite Bond movies - but not at the complete and total expense of charm and wit.
Weird everyone forgets Dalton's Bond was doing gritty and dark before the Craig era.... maybe because that was the year that Batman kicked Bond's ass at the box office...
The Dalton films - Licence to Kill especially - got the balance right between gritty and dark, and still having humour and a lightness of touch, something I personally feel the Craig movies have got consistently wrong.
Craig’s Bond seems to be habitually depressed and naval gazing, constantly pissed off about something and perpetually either resigned from or on the verge of resigning M16. That’s not what I want to see in Bond.
And before anyone say that is how Fleming wrote Bond, it really really isn’t. Craig is VERY far from the literary 007.
I don’t have an issue with dark and gritty - Licence to Kill is actually one of my favourite Bond movies - but not at the complete and total expense of charm and wit.
Respectfully, Fleming‘s Bond is habitually pissed off and on the verge of resigning. Dalton‘s Bond was as close to that as Craig‘s.
Craig was also on The Late Late Show in Ireland on Friday night. Must feel like a never ending cycle of interviews for them..
Craig, like all celebrities and sportsmen and women, is obscenely overpaid. Being bored doing a round of interviews over a month or so, while being out up in expensive hotels, being wined and dined on the company credit card and even having your designer wardrobe paid for…. Yeah, it’s a hard life!
Lucky bastards in DB5...