The Gunbarrel (Spoilers)

You can blame Arnold for that! I'm not a massive fan of it either.

Someone has made a sort of possible version of the gunbarrel using it:

https://twitter.com/antovolk/status/131 … 13092?s=20

I didn't expect it to sound so similar to Spectre's gunbarrel music. Clearly once again we are going to have some slowly building Bond vamp under the studio logos, which I don't mind too much. But I'd agree with Matt S that the opening fanfare should coincide with the dots moving across the screen, and not play over a blank screen.

I'd also prefer if they stuck to a more traditional gunbarrel structure of leading into the main guitar line after the gunshot, rather than moving straight to the final bars of the theme, which Arnold first introduced in Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough. I didn't mind having that a couple of times, but I'd love a return to a more traditional format.

There's nothing like discussing Daniel Craig era gunbarrels to make me feel like a sad, moaning git...there always seem to be a whole lot of nits to pick with them.

The music sounds much better than in SP but I've been feeling this massive disappointment since GE. The gunbarrel is nothing less than the franchise's signature, for God's sake ! The Brosnan and Craig eras are just not decent on that point.

To me, TLD remains the last movie where the gunbarrel sequence is a classic one.

Last edited by SeanIsTheOnlyOne (2nd Oct 2020 09:45)

I also like the way Bill Conti arranged the Bond theme in FYEO. Great gunbarrel, directly opening to Tracy's grave with these particular few notes...

In LTK for instance, Michael Kamen tried to put something darker into the movie, which is quite logical considering the level of violence in this one. He did a decent job but I can't say I'm thrilled when I hear it.

Last edited by SeanIsTheOnlyOne (2nd Oct 2020 09:49)

Sometimes I wish they reuse one of the previous scores from Barry instead of creating a new disappointing one.

To me, Newman is by far the worst composer ever in the entire franchise. He managed to spoil the pleasure of listening to the Bond theme in SF and Sp.

Only for the end credits. The rest is his own arrangement and I think it's a failure.
I expect nothing from Zimmer. Perhaps I will be positively surprised...

It's not the same to me. If you listen to the scores of CR and QoS, you can hear the difference. I have nothing against Newman, but I still don't get why they didn't keep Arnold. The score from QoS was one of the few good elements of the movie. I know Newman and Sam Mendes had worked together in the past (Road to Perdition in 2002 with...Daniel Craig), but I don't see any reason to get rid of Arnold whose work was appreciated by many fans.

Regardless of what the gunbarrel music may or may not leave to be desired, I think it should be mentioned that having it included on the soundtrack album is a cause for joy. Too often the gunbarrel music has been left off the album.

Can't lie, sad to see, unlikely as it was, Boom Shot Dis missing from the track listing.

Hope it's playing in the Jamaica club background...impossible since seeing that behind the scenes short to hear it and not walk like a panther...as Dana Broccoli might observe.

A few times the people who scored the trailers did better than the people who scored the films. Like the Parodi-Fair music for the GoldenEye trailer was far superior to what Eric Serra came up with for the film. But film scoring is a different industry than trailer scoring. But while the OHMSS theme was exciting in the SP trailer, I would have been very disappointed if that theme showed up in another film.

That will be nice, but I did like seeing Bond go back to wearing a suit in the gun barrel, recalling some of the early gun barrels with Simmons, Lazenby and Moore.