Bond 25 + Future Bond Score Composer

MilleniumForce

Who would you like to see do the score for Bond 25 or beyond?

I'd love to see David Arnold return, but, after some excellent work in Fury Road and BvS, I would love to see what Junkie XL could do. Especially for a more action heavy film.

hehadlotsofguts

As much as i like Newman's work in other films, i don't think he is a good Bond composer because he uses cues that we've heard before.

I'd like to see David Arnold return. He is sorely missed.

HowardB

Newman's Bond scores were "uninspired". Repeating some cues film to film isn't bad in a series like Bond (Barry did it) but the key is having good cues. Historically, music has been an integral part of a Bond film. The Newman scored films, not so much.

IcePak

While Arnold's scores have been very hit and miss for me, I'd like to see him return. When he was good (eg. TND, QoS) he composed some fantastic soundtracks. Now that he's been absent for a few films, it would be interesting to see whether he would add any fresh elements to the soundtrack. Plus, he knows the Bond sound, even if at times he can overplay it so it sounds very samey.

Bmorelli11

My vote is for Michael Giacchino. The music from the TV show LOST is very grand, and cinematic (especially for a television series) and his score for The Incredibles has plenty of nods to John Barry. I think he'd do an excellent job on Bond 25.

walther p99

Bmorelli11 wrote:

My vote is for Michael Giacchino. The music from the TV show LOST is very grand, and cinematic (especially for a television series) and his score for The Incredibles has plenty of nods to John Barry. I think he'd do an excellent job on Bond 25.

I second this, would love to see Giacchino take a crack at Bond. His score to the original Medal of Honor is one of the greatest most rousing scores I've ever heard.

Matt S

walther p99 wrote:

Bmorelli11 wrote:

My vote is for Michael Giacchino. The music from the TV show LOST is very grand, and cinematic (especially for a television series) and his score for The Incredibles has plenty of nods to John Barry. I think he'd do an excellent job on Bond 25.

I second this, would love to see Giacchino take a crack at Bond. His score to the original Medal of Honor is one of the greatest most rousing scores I've ever heard.

Giacchino could do an excellent job, as he proved with The Incredibles. He's one of the greatest film composers of the past two decades, along with Alexandre Desplat. I don't think we'll ever see Giacchino or Desplat do Bond because they're probably in too high demand and thus too expensive. Then there are still John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Danny Elfman and Howard Shore, all a bit (or a lot) older and would never do or be right for Bond. Most of the other big names like Thomas Newman, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard aren't in their league as composers (no matter how successful they are). Though David Arnold isn't a top film score composer in any sense (though more talented than Zimmer and his disciples), I think he does great with Bond and I'd be ecstatic for him to return.

Chriscoop

I agree Matt, I'd love to see Arnold back, he has a special affinity with bond for me, but just putting this out there as a left field idea, I simply love a lot of daft punks score for tron, if Eon decided to go different I think they could do a good job.

Matt S

GoldenEye was their experiement at trying to be different, and it failed miserably. I don't want a repeat of that!

Chriscoop

No I wouldn't want that either goldeneyes score has aged badly . I wouldn't want another Newman score!

Matt S

Chriscoop wrote:

No I wouldn't want that either goldeneyes score has aged badly . I wouldn't want another Newman score!

At least the Newman scores won't date the films so much. But what the damage they've done is much worse.

Oddjoblofeldraxorin

Giacchino or Arnold would be great, but I would like to see Bill Conti came back for one more.

zaphod99

walther p99 wrote:

Bmorelli11 wrote:

My vote is for Michael Giacchino. The music from the TV show LOST is very grand, and cinematic (especially for a television series) and his score for The Incredibles has plenty of nods to John Barry. I think he'd do an excellent job on Bond 25.

I second this, would love to see Giacchino take a crack at Bond. His score to the original Medal of Honor is one of the greatest most rousing scores I've ever heard.

He would be a very good choice.

MarcAngeDraco

hehadlotsofguts wrote:

As much as i like Newman's work in other films, i don't think he is a good Bond composer because he uses cues that we've heard before.

I'd like to see David Arnold return. He is sorely missed.

I have the opposite feeling with Newman. I don't mind his Bond efforts - there are some great cues in both SF and SP - but I'm not a fan of his other work. His compositions almost always feel so cold, soulless and steely. Of course, this crept into his Bond scores in parts, but out of all his scores, both SF and SP are my two favourite of his.

I too would like Arnold to return - I've always been impressed with efforts except for maybe CR, which is the blandest of Bond scores IMO. But if we get something akin to TND, TWINE or QOS, I'd be a happy man.

Other composers? Dario Marionelli and Alexandre Desplat would be my top picks. I'd also love if Ennio Morricone could score a Bond film, but I'm don't think this would happen.

BruceMurdock

David Arnold, Michael Giacchino or Joe Kraemer would be my top picks for Bond Composer. I'm so sick of Newman's bland copy/pasted efforts. I want the Bond sound, not the Hans Zimmer Dark Knight sound.

Gassy Man

The contemporary composers all seem pretty interchangeable. John Williams is about the only one left who has his own signature, now that James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and Basil Poledouris are gone. Hans Zimmer isn't bad, though his techno tracks start to sound the same, and Carter Burwell has some style. But I can't really think of anyone that makes me amazed while listening.

HowardB

I'm not looking for originality or genius, just the composer who does the best variation on the Barry style which IMO is the Bond style and makes for a better Bond film. Arnold fits that mold and did a fine job with CR and QOS (although in QOS he was a bit hampered by not being involved in the theme song; which wasn't very good). Giacchino would probably be a good choice also.

Matt S

HowardB wrote:

I'm not looking for originality or genius, just the composer who does the best variation on the Barry style which IMO is the Bond style and makes for a better Bond film. Arnold fits that mold and did a fine job with CR and QOS (although in QOS he was a bit hampered by not being involved in the theme song; which wasn't very good). Giacchino would probably be a good choice also.

True. That's really all Bond needs. I could write a Bond score in Barry's style. It's unfortunately not common today for a score composer to write a theme song to a film, and I doubt many could do it successfully. I really think David Arnold is the only person today who can write a Bondian score as well as a great song.

Thunderpussy

Agreed, Get D Arnold BACK ! -{

Gassy Man

HowardB wrote:

I'm not looking for originality or genius, just the composer who does the best variation on the Barry style which IMO is the Bond style and makes for a better Bond film. Arnold fits that mold and did a fine job with CR and QOS (although in QOS he was a bit hampered by not being involved in the theme song; which wasn't very good). Giacchino would probably be a good choice also.

That's the thing, though -- Barry works so well because he was rather original at the time. He basically took pop and jazz concepts to orchestration, relying heavily on repeating chords and percussion. You can immediately tell a Barry score from it. He wasn't the first to do it, of course. Henry Mancini was doing much the same, for example, especially with Peter Gunn's theme. But each had their own style.

Today's composers all sound pretty much the same, like the anonymous composers to video games. Any of them could imitate Barry if they chose to. For instance, Steve Jablonsky lifts some of Barry's deep chords and percussion for "Scorponok" in Transformers, though as people have noted, he also borrows from John Carpenter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDFns0LA7O0


Arnold is not a bad composer, though I think his action music often sounds discordant (the opposite of Barry's) and more like he's doing riffs on Michael Kamen. The exception is the soundtrack for Tomorrow Never Dies, which is smoother and at times imitates Barry's later work on films like The Living Daylights. Arnold's strength is his themes more than his incidental music. His most Barry-esque moments are bits like Bond's arrival in the Bahamas in Casino Royale, but that's helped because he's essentially woven in the Bond baseline.

Matt S

Gassy Man wrote:

Today's composers all sound pretty much the same, like the anonymous composers to video games. Any of them could imitate Barry if they chose to. For instance, Steve Jablonsky lifts some of Barry's deep chords and percussion for "Scorponok" in Transformers, though as people have noted, he also borrows from John Carpenter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDFns0LA7O0

That really sounds like everything else today, since he's part of Hans Zimmer's studio. It has none of the depth and heart of Barry's music. I can see where you hear the Barry-esque chords, but I think Jablonsky took them from Zimmer. What Barry percussion do you hear? An electronic version of Dances with Wolves?

Gassy Man

Oh, it's updated certainly, just as Barry updated in The Living Daylights with synthesizers. But it uses some Barry-esque elements -- the deep chords and natural progressions, for instance, though it is interspersed with a lot of rapid, sometimes discordant notes that is current, a la David Arnold and some of Hammer's scissoring strings.

The deeper bass and chords remind me of Zulu, not as a reproduction but as faster, more modern take:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1fzh5ZwXTY

Gassy Man

But then a lot of music sounds the same. Arnold's theme for Vesper, for instance, always reminds me of a more serious take on Bernstein's theme for Winger in the comedy Stripes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL9-pfXUsOw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmp64zyU4Dk

Barbel

These earlier threads may be of interest:

http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/46997/future-composers/
http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/44653/who-should-score-bond-24/
http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/43637/bond-soundtrack-to-give-the-composer-of-the-next-film-as-an-example/

HowardB

Here's a hypothetical to throw out to anyone who cares to comment: I know the idea of Tarantino directing a Bond film is not the most popular concept on these pages, however, if Tarantino was hired by EON for Bond 25, as is his tendency to mine other films for music, do you think he would mine the original Barry scores for Bond 25 and what do people think of that idea? I could see him lifting tons from TB and OHMSS along with "007" from FRWL....but not the actual theme songs.

Loeffelholz

HowardB wrote:

Here's a hypothetical to throw out to anyone who cares to comment: I know the idea of Tarantino directing a Bond film is not the most popular concept on these pages, however, if Tarantino was hired by EON for Bond 25, as is his tendency to mine other films for music, do you think he would mine the original Barry scores for Bond 25 and what do people think of that idea?

I think he would absolutely go there! He would press for a very 'retro' feel, I think---probably to a fault. It's a fun hypothetical question, for sure.

jasper_lamar_crabb

Giacchino is a dull, overrated hack. His score for Jurassic World was so bland that it was even mentioned in some reviews. We really don't need him anywhere near a Bond film.

Matt S

jasper_lamar_crabb wrote:

Giacchino is a dull, overrated hack. His score for Jurassic World was so bland that it was even mentioned in some reviews. We really don't need him anywhere near a Bond film.

How about his Pixar scores, Lost or The Incredibles? I don't know the Jurassic World score, but I know with Star Trek he did some bland work, though when you're working with the legacy of Goldsmith, Horner and the many greats who were involved with the music of the Original Series it's just impossible to compete. Giacchino is hardly bland when you compare him to Thomas Newman's truly bland Bond music, Hans Zimmer or any of the Media Ventures composers (who are only able to copy Zimmer, which takes just about no musical knowledge).

BIG TAM

Loeffelholz wrote:

HowardB wrote:

Here's a hypothetical to throw out to anyone who cares to comment: I know the idea of Tarantino directing a Bond film is not the most popular concept on these pages, however, if Tarantino was hired by EON for Bond 25, as is his tendency to mine other films for music, do you think he would mine the original Barry scores for Bond 25 and what do people think of that idea?

I think he would absolutely go there! He would press for a very 'retro' feel, I think---probably to a fault. It's a fun hypothetical question, for sure.

One could have a bit good of fun with this. Concoct your own pick 'n' mix Tarantino Bond score using previous tracks & other spy-related themes from one's CD collection. I might give it a go at the weekend.

Gassy Man

There's not much "body" and "weight" to a lot of film scores today, which is odd considering they use bigger and bigger orchestras. Compare what you hear in a standard action film to day to, say, this stupendous bit by the great Miklos Rosza in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which, too, reminds me of some of Barry's earlier work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1kKfU_4Sns

HowardB

I compare Barry's Bond scores to Bernard Herrmann's Hitchcock scores....they played a significant part in the films both dramatically and in contributing a unique identity. Other great composers had this effect to an extent (certainly John Williams w/ Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc) however I must agree other than Danny Elfman and the gentleman who scores the Game of Thrones series there's very little of that in today's film scores which sound very generic to my ears.