Saw a bit of Captain Philips on TV the other night and the score reminded me of something. Then I realised that I think it was some of the score from United 93. Then I saw that it is the same director for both films, Paul Greengrass. Anyone else notice similar sounds in both scores?
Saw a bit of Captain Philips on TV the other night and the score reminded me of something. Then I realised that I think it was some of the score from United 93. Then I saw that it is the same director for both films, Paul Greengrass. Anyone else notice similar sounds in both scores?
CAPTAIN PHILLIPS was clearly temped with UNITED 93. It's unfortunate that John Powell couldn't score it. In the end, Henry Jackman's score is based heavily on the temp. His main theme is simply the main theme from UNITED 93 - the exact same two, long, sustained, mournful, rising notes.
And the entire final portion of CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, lasting about ten minutes, does not even have original music, instead it is tracked with the actual cue from the finale of UNITED 93, the cue is titled "The End".
I was completely taken out of the film by this, but I recognize that I'm probably one of only a minute handful of viewers who were.
It's a shame, but it was because I think that cue is one of the most staggeringly brilliant achievements in film scoring of the last decade, much like the film UNITED 93, which I think is easily the most impossibly awe-inspiring accomplishment in film in the same period. Greengrass managed to make a film that honored the event, yet did not pass judgment on it, instead it managed to simply feel like a documentary crew was there that day.
Maybe there was a very limited time to get the score done, but you'd think that someone of Greengrass' reputation would try to get something original in there...
Maybe there was a very limited time to get the score done, but you'd think that someone of Greengrass' reputation would try to get something original in there...
I think John Powell was originally meant to score it, before his semi-retirement.
I'm not surprised they ended up doing the music that way, the same thing happened on the third BOURNE movie, which is a mix of new pieces by Powell and pieces reused from his scores for the second and first films. I think that was due to a time crunch, I would assume the same was true for CAPTAIN PHILLIPS.
Thanks James for your interesting and enlightening comments.
It is indeed an incredibly powerful film (I've seen it twice now). Didn't realise until 2nd time around that some of the real people "on the ground" played themselves. It does have a very powerful "documentary-style" feeling to it. And the score really supports it all very well.
Thanks James for your interesting and enlightening comments.
It is indeed an incredibly powerful film (I've seen it twice now). Didn't realise until 2nd time around that some of the real people "on the ground" played themselves. It does have a very powerful "documentary-style" feeling to it. And the score really supports it all very well.
Almost everyone on the ground plays themselves, and all the pilots and flight attendants on the plane are real pilots and flight attendants, as I understand it. Only the passengers are played by actors, out of necessity, and they were intentionally chosen to be unfamiliar to the audience. They each worked with the families, to research the people they played. Greengrass refused to make the film unless EVERY family signed off on it, which they all did.
The film was largely improvised based on a timeline, as he describes it. They bought an old plane, put it on a gimbel, and the actors ran the entire hijacking over and over and over, from beginning to end, for weeks, and the camera crews recorded it all, endlessly, with new crews coming in to replace each other as reels of film ran out. I went to a Q&A with the editors, who truly performed a herculean feat. I believe most big films shoot under 100,000 feet of film (or did, anyway, when film was used). On UNITED 93 they shot over 1 MILLION feet of film, in order to get the material they needed to complete the film to Greengrass's vision.
I think it's the greatest accomplishment in film in the last ten years precisely because there was such a risk that it wouldn't turn out right. It's not tough to do a Marvel movie or a Harry Potter movie and have it be competent, but UNITED 93 was a colossal gamble, because if it had been anything other than a flawless masterpiece, it would have been an outrage and an affront to those who died. Greengrass knew this risk, decided the story was important enough to try anyway, and succeeded.
He said the reason to make the film was that the people on that plane, due to the random accident of the flight being delayed, were the first people on earth to inhabit the post-9/11 world, because they alone among the planes knew what was happening outside, and faced a choice. It's that choice which the film dramatizes, the choice we all faced as a culture, of how to respond to terrorism. I found it truly heartbreaking, yet profound, that he ended the film on the image of the passengers' and the terrorists' hands grappling for the controls of the plane as it goes into the ground.
Sorry to ramble, but I truly stand in awe of this film.
