In the brief “Brotherhood” that swirling string motif is back, much more expansive this time and then it’s back to the action in “Turtles United”, dynamically driving forth through murky waters before a fantastic explosion of brass (a hint of John Adams, perhaps and in film music terms it brings back great memories of Joel McNeely’s exceptional Soldier).
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When the much-needed pause for breath comes after all the excitement, in “Origins”, the music remains constantly interesting and even within this piece (which runs for six minutes) there are some bursts of action, including – admittedly briefly – a demonstration of how you can do a “drum orchestra” and not make it sound completely joyless. The difference is that this score is far more action-dominated and that side comes straight to the fore in the fantastic, blisteringly exciting “Splinter vs Shredder”, a spectacular choral section joining the thrilling writing for the orchestra. In tone it’s a bit like James Horner’s amazing Amazing Spider-Man, memorable and unafraid to be emotionally direct. In the amusingly-titled “Adolescent Genetically Altered Shinobi Terrapins” we hear the secondary theme, much calmer and with the choir taking on an almost heavenly appearance at times, a lovely piano melody emerging after another airing of the main theme.
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Bold, brassy and exciting and I’ll use the word again because I can’t overstate how important it is, fun. It’s such a buzz when the theme explodes out – I’ve already read people saying it’s too simple, it sounds too much like this or that, but I couldn’t care less – this is what film music is supposed to be like. It’s a close cousin to his Thor 2 theme, expansive and heroic, above anything else just great fun. The cue slowly builds, a little motif swirling away in the strings before being joined first by some electronic percussion, then a choir, then the brass becoming ever more present – and then the theme explodes forth. The album springs straight into life with the wonderful opening cue, Tyler immediately setting his stall out that this is going to be fun. Last year Tyler showed Hollywood how modern action movies could still be scored with style and panache and be great fun in his two Marvel scores (including his career-best Iron Man 3) and I’m delighted to discover that TMNT is very much a continuation of that style – it’s no-nonsense fun and excitement, there’s a big and memorable theme, no angst-ridden joyless rumination (rumination which has depressingly been allowed – absurdly – to run all the way through far too many big action blockbusters in the last few years) – this is, in other words, exactly how it should be done. Megan Fox stars, with support from Will Arnett, and the film has been an unqualified success at the box office in its opening weekend a sequel is expected in a couple of years.īrian Tyler has scored three of Liebesman’s previous films, including the one that really made me sit up and take notice of the previously-unknown (to me) composer back in 2003, Darkness Falls. After the three live-action films of the early 1990s and the CGI 2007 continuation, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have a cinematic reboot in 2014 courtesy of producer Michael Bay and director Jonathan Liebesman.