James Horner's music for Avatar

Seeing this tomorrow night, will reserve judgement till then.

I heard there's a credits song though.... Oscar bait. :rolleyes:

That's because John Barry > James Horner.

The least he could have done, especially after hyping that he was working with an ethnomusicologist on the score, would have been to go out and find an instrument that nobody had ever heard before outside of a small village somewhere, and base the sound of the Na'vi off of that. Come on Horner, it's time to start walking the walk.

I agree - a lot of 'ethnic' film music is just of the generic bongo-drum-and-pan-pipe-bits variety, which is mostly a commercial conception of what folk music is thought to sound like. Real folk musics can be really, really strange to our ears - ever heard real joik, gamelan or Papau New Guinean sacred flutes in a mainstream picture? The trouble is, film music is an accompaniment to the pictures and, as Horner says, can't be too weird otherwise it's distracting and alienating (even though the film is about aliens, I know...)

There were parts of the score that I enjoyed and other parts that I didn't like at all. All in all it was solid and effective at supporting the film but nothing that made me want to rush out and buy the soundtrack right away.

The Good:

*The 3D. Wow. Lots of fun, although it is almost superfluous to all the other visual stuff in this movie.

*The CGI - flawless. Beautiful.

*Facial expressions - to me the aliens seemed MORE expressive than the live action people. Amazing.

*Acting - surprising performances by Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, doing more than justice to their roles.

*The Navi aliens - as cliche as they are, the combination of story, CGI and acting creates real empathy for their side of the story.

*The interesting (if anvilicious) parallels the story draws between the machine "avatars" (mechas, link-ins etc) and the aliens' biological avatars (soul-sharing with animals).

Reality will seem a little less real when you exit the theater.

The Decent to Mediocre:

*The story (middling) and the script (poor).

*The overdone action scenes at the end.

*The Marine character.

*Ripping off the Matrix "unplug" scenes (except somehow the avatar and the person both still remain alive, which is even less justified here).

The Bad:

*Michelle Rodriguez is. so. bad at the "macho action girl" roles she always plays.

*James Horner. :facepalm: :facepalm: For one of the most innovative, interesting and impressive movies of the year he turns in a schlock score. It is, at best, serviceable. At points the music seems to misread the scene and draw you out of the picture. And of course he uses his 4-note theme again which would be annoying even if it weren't self plagiarism.

Luckily the movie is such a visceral visual experience, and Michelle Rodriguez is in the movie so little, that these little issues do not detract much from Avatar.

The Verdict: A, see again

Am I the only one who noticed this?

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: (I like the Avatar version much better tho)