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Posted: |
Apr 18, 2025 - 11:18 AM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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The Budget for Star Trek 2 ..was 12 Million..Could Not Afford Jerry Goldsmith
The Budget for Star Trek 3 was 16 Million. Could not afford Jerry Goldsmith
I never understood this, Goldsmith scored low budget films in his career. King Solomon's Mines cost less than Star Trek II three years later.
Link was $6mil
Psycho II was $5 million.
I think that, regardless of what some folks said, Paramount wanted to distance themselves from the first movie in every way they could, including the music.
Well, it's not like music is an automatic specified percentage of overall budget. Every movie spends its budget in different ways. That money can be spent on all sorts of things, but when you spend it one place, you can't spend it in others. So it's all a matter of what you think is most important for this particular movie. In the case of something like the second Star Trek film, some costs could not be avoided – you needed the cast, you needed the Enterprise sets, etc. – and some were more flexible. If they could get good music and save money by hiring an unknown, that was money well spent.
As for "Paramount" (I really wish we'd stop talking about these studios like they're monolithic entities rather than a series of revolving creative executives), I doubt they thought the Goldsmith music was known enough to most moviegoers at the time that they had anything to distance themselves from. Surely, changing something like the uniforms (as they did) was something much more apparent to most viewers.
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The other day I took a long walk and listened to the existing soundtrack along with the pieces I recreated and I can understand why Horner didn’t include them on the original album. The thematic material is well covered in the other cues so that the overall effect is a bit repetitious. Now that you’ve heard them, what do you guys think? Should Horner have included them on the original album? And of course there’s still the short dissonant pieces…
I certainly wouldn't have minded their inclusion. I would guess Horner wanted to emphasize the longer cues, and perhaps felt they made for a better-flowing album.
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I certainly wouldn't have minded their inclusion. I would guess Horner wanted to emphasize the longer cues, and perhaps felt they made for a better-flowing album.
I remember watching BRAINSTORM years ago, and while I don't recall every single cue that was in the movie, I do remember that there wasn't any significant music missing on the recording Horner did with the London Symphony Orchestra. There may be cues not on that album, sure, but it wasn't a case like ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, were complete character themes were left of the original soundtrack albums, or PLANET OF THE APES, where such a significant cue as "The Hunt" was not on the original soundtrack album.
The way Horner presents the music on that Varèse Sarabande recording is excellent, a thrilling musical ride that stand independent of the movie, with great musical flow.
I was under te impression that the album was no longer than 2 x 15 minutes because of costs.
I doubt that was a cost decisions, as the soundtrack was newly recorded for the release anyway, so the classic "re-use fee" was not an issue, and there may be only a few minutes missing from the released album (as BRAINSTORM isn't a very long score to begin with).
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Posted: |
Apr 19, 2025 - 8:54 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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The other day I took a long walk and listened to the existing soundtrack along with the pieces I recreated and I can understand why Horner didn’t include them on the original album. The thematic material is well covered in the other cues so that the overall effect is a bit repetitious. Now that you’ve heard them, what do you guys think? Should Horner have included them on the original album? And of course there’s still the short dissonant pieces…
I don't mean to offend you, but I haven't listened to them -- although I'm sure it was fulfilling work for you! Sometimes, when an OST is as perfect as BRAINSTORM is, they become kinda "holy entities" for me, and I don't want to listen to anything else for the rest of my life. I don't want anything to interfere with that. Same reason I've never heard the expanded JURASSIC PARK, for example. I've tried it a couple of times in the past, like getting the expansions of Arnold's GODZILLA or Horner's ALIENS, for example, and they've almost ruined my entire relationship to the scores. I thankfully got rid of them in time.
So I prefer to stay in blissfull ignorance of "what's left out" (something that never really interested me in the first place), and just enjoy what is.
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I've tried it a couple of times in the past, like getting the expansions of Arnold's GODZILLA or Horner's ALIENS, for example, and they've almost ruined my entire relationship to the scores. I thankfully got rid of them in time.
Horner's ALIENS was always a "good" score, but it was in its expanded form that it became an actual favorite Horner score of mine. It's a better rounded composition and therefore listening experience in its expanded release.
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Horner's ALIENS was always a "good" score, but it was in its expanded form that it became an actual favorite Horner score of mine. It's a better rounded composition and therefore listening experience in its expanded release.
Endless military percussion and tenuto suspense strings...it drove me up the friggin' wall!
A sight of relief came about when I went back to the beautifully curated OST with just the perfect balance of these elements. Not only is it a BETTER listening experience, it IS a listening experience. The expanded version wasn't even remotely that.
I remember eagerly awaiting the score for Aliens, certain it would be one of Horner's best. I even bought the LP the day the film was released (just a few hours before going to see it).
I was disappointed. I still think it one of his weakest scores, certainly it's among the most guilty of re-used licks (from his own and others' music). The "otherworldly" moments work well in the film (when they aren't cribbing from Khachaturian) but I just don't think Horner was a good action composer. The Wolfen / Klingon motif doesn't augment visceral suspense and violence. And apart from the movie, the album doesn't hold any standalone appeal for me.
It doesn't ruin the film (which I love). But a different composer ought to have scored Aliens. I wish Silvestri had done Aliens, and Horner done The Abyss.
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Not only is it a BETTER listening experience, it IS a listening experience. The expanded version wasn't even remotely that.
No, it is clearly the other way around.
Cues like the more sonoristic ""The Complex", "Med.Lab.", and especially "FaceHuggers" really give depth to the score.
As I said, I agree that the original album was already good, but it was the expansion that put the score to the top of my favorite Horner scores (in fact, I have often listed it as one my favorite Horner score).
The score shows that Horner really studied his "classics", not just Khachaturian, though the Khachaturian connection makes musically more sense in the score as well, but also Penderecki.
It's a one of those scores that didn't just get "longer" with the expansion, but richer and better.
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Brainstorm and Aliens are both very high on my list, not sure which one I'd prefer.
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Posted: |
Apr 19, 2025 - 11:11 AM
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By: |
jkruppa
(Member)
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The other day I took a long walk and listened to the existing soundtrack along with the pieces I recreated and I can understand why Horner didn’t include them on the original album. The thematic material is well covered in the other cues so that the overall effect is a bit repetitious. Now that you’ve heard them, what do you guys think? Should Horner have included them on the original album? And of course there’s still the short dissonant pieces…
I don't mean to offend you, but I haven't listened to them -- although I'm sure it was fulfilling work for you! Sometimes, when an OST is as perfect as BRAINSTORM is, they become kinda "holy entities" for me, and I don't want to listen to anything else for the rest of my life. I don't want anything to interfere with that. Same reason I've never heard the expanded JURASSIC PARK, for example. I've tried it a couple of times in the past, like getting the expansions of Arnold's GODZILLA or Horner's ALIENS, for example, and they've almost ruined my entire relationship to the scores. I thankfully got rid of them in time.
So I prefer to stay in blissfull ignorance of "what's left out" (something that never really interested me in the first place), and just enjoy what is.
I completely understand that, not offended at all!
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I agree with you Paul, Aliens comes across as a score with a lot of filler, a lot of fall backs to the rat-a-tat-tat military stuff, it has the overall experience of something stitched together without a through-line of cohesive inspiration. Moments of it are fine, although so terribly repeated in and out of the film now that they have become veritable pop-jingles. It evokes the impression of what a much younger less refined composer would do with the settings, in many ways pretty conventional stuff. He was not in his top form with this score.
Completely disagree, I think ALIENS is actually one of Horner's finest scores ever, and it showed he was very much in top form and a fully fledged composer. Cues like "Med.Lab." and "Face Huggers" are among the most interesting cues in Horner's oeuvre, he did not often unleash such ferocious avant-garde sonics in his later works.
I'd be hard pressed to name a Horner score I like more than ALIENS, though BRAINSTORM is certainly up there as well.
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Thanks to this thread this score is my new obsession for the moment so I've started doing mockups of the more substantial missing cues. First up is 6M4:
https://soundcloud.com/jason-kruppa-507123971/brainstorm-6m4
I love the contrast between the angelic boys' choir and the growling low notes of the contrabass clarinets, harps, pianos, cellos and basses, all anchored by a one-note ostinato in the violas. Simple but effective.
Finally got around to listen to this clip, indeed, that's quite nice. Well done. It's more threatening than the cues that ended up being re-recorded.
The other clips are quite nice to.
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Horner not a very good action composer? Really?
I think he was a phenomenal action composer and Aliens demonstrated that in spades.
Krull, Star Trek II, Uncommon Valour from his first few years amply demonstrates this. Dozens of other examples.
Sorry, I should have qualified my statement.
I do agree Horner was a fantastic composer for more "old school" heroic action -- Star Trek II, Krull, Willow, Zorro, etc. Krull is one of my all-time favorite scores. In fact I wish Horner had scored Prince of Thieves because I think his Willow music suited the tone of the film better than Kamen's original score...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhz5aB-u77Q
However, I don't think Horner was good at visceral, R-rated, "kick-you-in-the-gut" type of action type of flicks -- i.e. 48 Hrs., Commando, Aliens, etc. I don't feel he was really able to get an effective handle on the action elements of those movies. His scores certainly "work" but I don't consider him the best choice for that genre.
Horner was a mild-mannered person who collected toys and was a little too polished and gentle a soul for those kind of movies. This is in contrast to Jerry Goldsmith, who was an acerbic, chain-smoking "take me as I am" kind of fellow. That blunt personality was an asset to "gut punch" scoring (Capricorn One, Rambo, Total Recall, etc.).
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