Wednesday 13 July 2011

Super 8 - Michael Giacchino

I think Super 8 was my most anticipated score of the summer. Giacchino has turned into one of my "must have" composers where I'll buy everything he puts out, confident of it being worth the investment, with Super 8 at the top of the 2011 list. Therefore, it pains me to say that it doesn't quite excite me like I hoped it would. Several listens later and the first half still feels rather patchy, not helped by an inordinate number of brief, unrelated, but occasionally not hugely exciting cues. True, 30 second tracks can be a miniature epic of condensed genius, but more often they are incidental and that is largely the case here. The first half is largely suspenseful and feels a little laboured with so many short bursts of murmuring.

Giacchino presents several major themes which are typically memorable and delightful, although for some reason put me in mind of Howard Shore's score to The Last Mimzy, particularly in the finale track, Letting Go, which seems to be heading for an ET style finale, but never quite gets there. The fact that Giacchino doesn't do a great deal with his themes doesn't help matters. Indeed, lack of variation and invention in the use of his themes is surprisingly problematic in Super 8. Compared to the dazzling invention in Up or Ratatouille where the main themes are contorted and played with all over the place, Super 8 feels surprisingly pedestrian. The aforementioned Letting Go should be the point at which the main theme (or themes) get a full and glorious workout, but they are merely presented a few times getting a bit louder each time.

Perhaps it's unfair to have ET so strongly in mind, but the film clearly echoes Spielberg's classic and has been marketed as a throwback to those movies. Further, the trailer made excellent use of James Horner's Cocoon and Horner, for his faults, does a lot more interesting things with what is a fairly simplistic melody than Giacchino manages here. Elsewhere there's some fine action writing, World's Worst Field Trip, The Siege of Lillian and Creature Comforts are the major contenders, although it's not as structurally satisfying as some of his Pixar work. A three note motif that puts in mind Cliff Eidelman's Star Trek VI score doesn't help.

Sometimes, despite my slackness of updates, I try to put out reviews quickly to be ahead of the curve but halfway through my review of Super 8 I was disappointed at what I was saying so hoped that giving it more of a chance might help. It didn't. True, the various motifs that run through the score become more apparent with familiarity, but don't really form a greater, satisfying and more unifying whole. However good we want a composer to be - especially on a particular project - you simply can't will the music to be better than it is. Super 8 is not a bad score; there's plenty of energetic writing and a collection of memorable melodic ideas, but it doesn't push the material to the same extent as I know Giacchino is capable of doing and that marks it as something of a disappointment.

Go online in the mothership to acquire Super 8 from Amazon.

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