After his successful scores
to Titanic and The Mask of Zorro, James Horner was hired to
compose the music for this film about a comet that collides with Earth. If
the basic plotline sounds familiar, it was the second-half of '98s twin
outer-space disaster flicks. The other, Armageddon, was a
testosterone-pumping, slash edited, and overwrought piece of dead carp
from director "I-just-ruined-Pearl-Harbor-for-pretty-much-everyone"
Michael Bay (as you can probably tell, I'm not to pleased with him). Out of these two films,
Armageddon is the only one I have seen so far, which is unfortunate. I
have heard some good reports about this one from various friends. In
addition, James Horner's score is somber and reflective, a mood that is
the total antithesis of Michael Bay's romp.
I first bought this CD way
back when it was first released. I had just finished listening to The
Mask of Zorro and upon seeing this release in the local Wal-Mart I
decided to purchase it, erroneously believing that it would be filled with
a lot of intense action music at its best. Make no mistake, Deep Impact
barely registers on the excitement scale. There are very few cues that
offer anything in the way of action or suspense. This is very much a
darkly romantic character score. The effort is not made to show humans
once again beating back Nature into submission, but rather showing the
last moments of those who will be affected by a worldwide catastrophe.
Thusly, it was promptly forgotten after a really short review that
appeared in the initial version of this site. I eventually scratched that
review, and now after having a lot more experience with Horner's work, and
also having matured in musical taste to a point which would allow me to
critique this score to the best of my abilities, I dragged it out of CD
limbo and give it a more thorough listen.
While Horner is usually
pretty good at scoring the quieter, romantic moments, the music here comes
across as rather bland. There are some excellent sections in here, but they
are found amongst the otherwise forgetful (and quite long) cues. There are
two main themes that I could make out and both of them are pretty good,
but not as strong as other Horner themes, and I could swear I've heard one
of them someplace else before, but I can't think of where it was exactly.
Knowing Horner's reputation, I can't be quick to just chalk it up to my
initial listen three years ago. Some of the more interesting selections
involve that famous theme from Aliens that
just seems to pop up quite often in different scores, only here it is
transformed enough to actually be really interesting. You can tell what it
is, but it sounds so different that I won't even accuse Horner of ripping
himself off here (although he does so in other places).
So, after three years of
musical growth, has my initial reaction been found to be in error? Not
really. I appreciate it more now then I did before, but the score
still suffers from a case of blandness. In those three years since I first
listening to it, there have been other scores of this nature that have
been far more interesting (take Christopher Gordon's excellent
On the Beach for example). Perhaps
actually seeing the film will make this score more enjoyable, but until
then, the verdict stands on Deep Impact being just an average
Horner score. ***1/2
