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Comments
Yeah, true....I think as Awesome as his GE score is, it would have been more Unique like his other scores. But one has the feeling, Serra was treading softly with Bond, so he doesn't offend EON too much. He obviously had more freedom with his other scores, that's why they truly had that enigmatic and ethereal feel.
Yeah, and Barry's 'The Specialist' is a masterful unofficial Bond score. In Barry's case, I think he was simply trying to outdo himself as usual....Love that score, together with Serra's 'Léon' as well.
But LTK is where I draw the line. That film is going for something else, evidently. It's trying to keep up with the Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Miami Vice infusions into the action film genre. LTK needed Kamen's less refined, more brutal work. Clearly, Barry would have scored the film if throat surgery hadn't blocked his schedule, but no matter how much I love Barry's music, I doubt that he could have found the same rawness the film went for.
Same thing with GE. It is for sure an inferior score compared to anything that Barry could have written in his sleep, but it's an effective score that matches the "tunes" of the film.
Yeah, Barry is obviously Bond. But I really like Martin's LALD & Hamlisch's TSWLM as well. I can't really say the same about Conti's FYEO & Kamen's LTK, Coz I discovered I usually have a more seamless listen with Martin, Hamlisch & Serra. But with Conti & Kamen, I have to select few tracks to listen to....not the entire Score though.
I’m sure I remember a bit towards the end of Léon which just is exactly the same as Experience of Love (the GE end titles song), just without the vocal. Is that right? I haven’t seen it in years!
:)
Here it is:
I can only speak for myself of course, but I really like that end title song.
An utterly fantastic way to end the film.
Well my dear @DarthDimi, I'd go even further, the end title songs from TLD, LTK and GE are all among my favourite song of the franchise. So that includes TEOL, which I absolutely love.
Yes! Thank you; that’s the one! Haha- Eric was a bit naughty there!
I must admit I kind of like that song too. The tune kind of sticks in the head.
Adding that to my Goldeneye playlist. Did he use that anywhere else in Leon?
Thanks anyway
Did he? Which are you thinking of?
It’s a very similar tune to Runaway- it almost sounds like one of those non-copyright infringing legally dissimilar ripoffs you get of stuff like the Bond theme(!) (and I was listening to the score from Rocky 2 the other day I think and there’s that same phrase from the end of Runaway that he uses as a bridge in that one) but it’s not quite exactly the same, unlike what Serra did there! :)
Thanks for that though- never heard that before, very cool.
A motif from Godzilla pops up in TWINE, as well!
Off the top of my head: when the first lady dies <=> Bond and Paris in the Hamburg hotel room.
Another example of Arnold re-using material: Bond and Elektra goes skiing <=> Bond and Jinx having fun with diamonds after the climax of DAD.
It's not a complaint, mind. Merely an observation. ;-)
Did Barry get a credit on TND for those, out of interest? If the LTK theme had to acknowledge him for the opening notes you’d have thought TND would have to for the phrases from OHMSS and FRWL.
The Goldeneye GB sequence is one of my favourite and that's predominantly due to Serra's take on the Bond theme.
Still though, we have 11 great Barry Bond scores and only 1 Serra score. I'd hate to miss out on that sole Serra score.
As for GE, I'm sure a Barry score would have made the film "lovelier" but it would also have made the film different. And that's something I'm not sure I'd want. Example: Onatopp's little car chase game with Bond. Okay, that's some weird 'new age' funky stuff--almost undefinable. But here are these two larger-than-life characters in their supercars under a beautiful sun in one of the most enigmatic places in all of Europe. And this isn't serious stuff; this is about Bond playfully showing off the size of his ... engine. Technically, it's also the first time we see James Bond in the 1990s. The music makes that time-jump literal. It screams "wild '90s" to me. And lest we forget, when the night falls and Bond goes a little more into "spy mode", Serra brings a pretty Barryesque suite to the iconic casino scene. Right there and then he's telling us that we needn't worry, it's still Bond alright.
But when the Tyger gets stolen and the Severnaya thriller begins, electronic music emphasises the "high-tech" nature of the story. Let's not forget that Arnold went there too, in DAD for example. That score is replete with artificial sound effects, weird remixes of orchestral pieces and techno beats, especially when there's some super-techy stuff on the screen. Serra simply did it first. And I, for one, like his almost surreal music.
Let's zoom in on the final act of the film. Xenia kicks Bond's ass. I have no name for what Serra does there, but Bond really does get his ass kicked and the music underlines that perfectly. Yet then we see the dish coming out of the water, and Serra brings a slow, synthetic "march" that stresses the threatening and imposing nature of this installation, not entirely unlike the music Hamlish wrote to get us really frightened of the Liparus as a metallic monster in TSWLM. Once inside the dish installation, when all the dangerous computer stuff begins, dark and thunderous sounds take over, suggesting that this is serious business and Bond is facing off against one of the toughest adversaries ever. But when Alec goes after him like a madman, the music hits like lightening when a steel door slams shut and Bond finds himself a fleeing and open target for Alec's loud bullets. The GoldenEye re-entering our atmosphere is not a particularly speedy event and so neither does the music falsely suggest "ACTION!"; instead, it's a moderately rhythmic musical "pounding of the heart" that ends on the villain's failure. And when Alec sees that Bond has chosen the mission over the friend and, in fact, has a pretty effective and (on all accounts) delicious ally coming to his rescue, the soft synth that parallels the quiet sound of the wind high atop the antenna brings relief like a cold afternoon breeze on a hot summer day. The grand apotheosis comes with the explosion of the antenna and Bond's leap of victory onto the helicopter, a moment Serra effectively captures with a bit of heroic over-exposition, but nothing that lasts long enough to overstay its welcome. Lastly, some soft romantic tunes segue comfortably into TEOL, which brings one of my favourite Bond films to its close as end titles start rolling.
Granted, a lot of GE's score relies on sounds and short cues rather than on whistle-along melodies and warm compositions. But somehow, that fits the first computer-era Bond, like DOS commandos being inserted cold and matter-of-factly over a flickering cursor--in stark contrast to when we wrote polite memos and consulted dusty books. The Cold War is over, the film says, and we know it is. But not just because of Brosnan. Many elements in the film make that clear, but few as effectively as Serra's score. While TND returned to the "private villains" of old, giving Arnold an opportunity to go brassy and symphonic once again, GE wasn't necessarily going for warmth and tongue-in-cheek fun. It's a thriller, a somewhat more serious film than most of the Bonds, a film that makes the gap between LTK and this new Bond pretty in-your-face. Would any of the previous Bonds have shown Bond mowing down countless Russian soldiers in cold blood the way he does in GE? Or make Ourumov's pursuit of Bond in the library such a tense scene? The only time this film gets playful is during the tank chase, and so I guess it was the right choice to deviate from Serra's composition for that specific scene alone. But that one slip-up of Serra's notwithstanding, I am a staunch defender of his work for GE. If most other Bond films are warm wood or beautiful marble, GE is strong but cold steel. I doubt any other score would have intensified that feeling the way Serra's score did.
Barry has also stated in an interview that he was very disappointed with the result and had expected something else...