The Omen Trilogy (sorry, all inseparably great for me)
I have an identical opinion concerning the Rambo trilogy. I gave Rambo III the edge though because I especially like the "sensitive" material and it's the score which IMO Goldsmith made the best use of synths, which was sparingly.
This evening, I listened to STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE, and dang if that still is not one of the best film scores I have ever heard. I find this interesting, as so many times, people talk about nostalgia... but this is not at all nostalgic. The feeling I get listening to this music is a feeling that never left me. Some may say you only love things because they remind you of a time when you were young, when the world felt bigger, and you had more to dream about. Nope, that is not it. Not here. Not for me. Not with this Goldsmith score.
This score does not just hold up; it transcends. I have now listened to it again for the first time in years, probably the first time since I got the La-La Land 3CD presentation. Actually, I just wanted to compare it to the 2CD La-La Land presentation... but I couldn't stop. I just listened to the entire score and letting the music blast into our living room.
I remember when STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE came out. In fact, I still have magazines I bought as a child that announced the movie. Back in the day, I was maybe waiting for the next adventure of the USS Enterprise. Perhaps some wanted action, heroics, the good guys punching their way out of trouble. That's what STAR TREK II - THE WRATH OF KHAN then became. However, STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE gave me something stranger, something vast... An odyssey into the unknown. Goldsmith knew what that meant. He did not just score a movie; he scored space itself. I know the movie can easily be dismissed, I am not blind to its faults, but the thing is: I don't care about its flaws... in fact, I embrace many of them. I like that it's long, I like that for minutes nothing happens and people just... gaze... and take it all in... because that's what I would have done if I were on that space ship in that situation.
And the music is just fantastic. The theme? Immortal... everybody knows it, through the "NEXT GENERATION" series and other movies. It's become iconic. That brass fanfare is clean, commanding, a call to adventure so pure that even Starfleet made it their own later. But the magic? The real genius? That is in the V'ger music. What great music.
It does not tell you what to feel. It does not give you easy answers. It is cold, massive, alien. Dissonant at times, sometimes ghostly electronics, a heartbeat of percussion that pulses like the vast, unknowable intelligence that travelled centuries and lightyears through space. And that blaster beam... that was a BANG! long before there was a BRAM!. And what a bang it is. You listen, and this time, space is not a playground like in STAR WARS. It is a mystery, and you are just a speck. But an important speck (as Ilia's Theme suggests). That's what that music is about.
That feeling, I realize tonight, never faded... and so I assume it never will. Now, some forty years later, I still hear it, and I still get chills. Because this is not just a movie score, it is music about the infinite vast reaches of outer space. About what is out there, waiting.
Goldsmith got that. And that is why this score is one of the greats.
So I think no matter what, this score will always be on any of my "top ten" film music related lists. (Unless some parameters exclude it specifically. I keep to the rules. Mostly. :-) )
And you didn't even mention my favorite part of the score -- Ilia's Theme!
For me, apart from the dozen cues he didn't write, the only flaw in Goldsmith's work on this film is that he didn't give that theme a final development/apotheosis of some kind... except he did, as originally written (but not recorded)! When I came across this Joe Kraemer mockup of his original written version of "The Meld", suddenly everything clicked into place and my biggest pet peeve of the score was fixed:
I would have thought that every professional Goldsmith top 10 list surely would have Alien in it somewhere, so I am surprised that it is actually relatively sparsely included.
I would have thought that every professional Goldsmith top 10 list surely would have Alien in it somewhere, so I am surprised that it is actually relatively sparsely included.
Mike
As I said earlier, it would probably be at the top, or near the top, if I were doing a list on scores as they appear in the films (and yes, I'm one of the few who prefer the Scott/Rawlings version, although Goldsmith's original is fine too). But whenever I do lists like these, it's usually 90% how it works as a listening experience on its own. And ALIEN is not really a soundtrack album I return to very often.
I would have thought that every professional Goldsmith top 10 list surely would have Alien in it somewhere, so I am surprised that it is actually relatively sparsely included.
Mike
As I said earlier, it would probably be at the top, or near the top, if I were doing a list on scores as they appear in the films (and yes, I'm one of the few who prefer the Scott/Rawlings version, although Goldsmith's original is fine too). But whenever I do lists like these, it's usually 90% how it works as a listening experience on its own. And ALIEN is not really a soundtrack album I return to very often.
And I find Alien way more interesting as a pure listening experience, though I also like how it was supposed to work in the movie (as opposed to how it was in the end used in the movie, where it drops to still "pretty good"... Alien is a great movie). But as a pure listening experience, I put it on the level with any Penderecki Symphony (which I also love).
Omitting my Very Honorable Mention to these, which would be on the list if not for being single cue-length pieces: “The Artist Who Did Not Want to Paint” “Fireworks” “Soarin' “
These are mine:
I think Star Trek: The Motion Picture is his magnum opus if anything is, in any form of the full score, just the Goldsmith cues, or even the LP (probably up against other single LPs). The Steiner & Courage cues fit in perfectly, especially as motivated by the film, and feel missing when absent, not just from memory, but as music.
I have my own playlist for ALIEN, blending the two scores into one listen, and it’s terrific.
Poltergeist has no tracks I wouldn’t call my favorite cue on any other score.
Twilight Zone is not only four scores, but four amazing scores. Sometimes I'm in the mood for the album, sometimes I'm drawn to "It's a Good Life," or any of the others.
Islands in the Stream being Goldsmith’s self-favorite makes a lot of sense, as does the ‘battle’ over which version is the best, film tracks or rerecording, because they’re both that good.
Explorers is delightful, lonely, triumphant, wistful - it’s a lot, all stuff the movie could have had had it been allowed to be finished, and all stuff Goldsmith took care of (successfully; I like the movie).
“Autumn Love” grabs me and keeps me. I’ve known it for many years, but Leigh’s recreation rocketed it to where it’s always belonged.
Raggedy Man is a late favorite, and too short for how good it is.
The Flint/Sebastian line is the same cheat I did in the decade polls. They fit together, all three, maybe more closely than the Gremlinses or the Omens.
The Haunting’s music is as good as the movie is bad. I’ve rescored (at least) a silent film with it. It made the film, probably unsurprisingly.
