Soundtrack Review: Watchmen (2009)
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This is a review of the motion picture score Watchmen by Tyler Bates.
“It’s not the sound explosion you might expect to be coupled with such a visually stunning movie, but it’s not bad, not bad at all.”
The long awaited score to the graphic novel made movie Watchmen is finally here. The composer is Tyler Bates and a preview of it was released some time ago. Some liked it and some didn’t. At least it gave some sort of idea of what to expect. What a lot of people felt was that it sounded a bit like the score to 300. I wouldn’t mind that at all, because I really liked the score to 300. Tyler Bates is certainly capable of composing for such a movie, but I was very curious to which way he would go and if the sample that was previously available was the defining sound of the score. Here’s is Tyler Bates Watchmen.
Track List
- Rescue Mission (*****)
- Don’t Get Too Misty Eyed (***)
- Tonight The Comedian Died (****)
- Silk Spectre (*****)
- We’ll Live Longer (****)
- You Quit! (****)
- Only Two Names Remain (*****)
- The American Dream (****)
- Edward Blake – The Comedian (****)
- The Last Laugh (****)
- Prison Fight (*****)
- Just Look Around You (****)
- Dan’s Apocalyptic Dream (***)
- Who Murdered Hollis Mason (**)
- What About Janie Slater (***)
- I’ll Tell You About Rorschach (***)
- Countdown (****)
- It Was Me (****)
- All That Is Good (*****)
- Requiem (***)
- I Love You, Mom (*****)
Love/Hate
I must admit that I have a hate/love relationship with Tyler Bates. He either does brilliantly or he does terribly. Well sometimes he lands in the middle, but not very often. After listening to the preview of it a while back, I have to admit I got very excited. It sounded just like I hoped it would. I knew that every cue couldn’t be of this quality of course. The cue I am talking about by the way is ‘Prison Fight’ which I will get back to later.
I was very happy when listening to the first cue ‘Rescue Mission’ which was everything I hoped it would be. Hard, heavy, edgy and massive. It has epic potential, but not in an orchestral way. It is a very electronic sounding cue with choirs, guitars and horns. A great start to hopefully a great score by Mr. Bates.
I quickly fall down to the ground with ‘Don’t Get Too Misty Eyed’ which is a serenade-ish string cue. I did not expect that already now, and to tell you the truth, I am not impressed. Let’s get back to the fun stuff shall we? The reason we all picked up this soundtrack in the first place, the grand action. ‘Silk Spectre’ is the theme song of well… Silk Spectre. It is a great superhero theme which only fault is it’s short length of just over a minute.
Blade Runner
Before I go further, I have to mention something very cool. The cues ‘We’ll Live Longer’, ‘You Quit!‘ and especially ‘Edward Blake – The Comedian’ sounds very Blade Runner-ish and that’s not a bad thing! Of course Tyler Bates is no Vangelis, but it’s certainly not bad. He tried this before with success in Doomsday so it’s not a new thing. Back to business with ‘Only Two Names Remain’ which is a great little electronic action cue. The beginning is enough to warrant it five stars. It goes a little astray in the middle, but it’s a cool cue.
Let’s go back, or forward in this case to track 11 which is ‘Prison Fight’. That’s the only cue previously released and was available to buy digitally befor the full score was released. I really like this cue. The more I listen to it, I can appreaciate it’s raw sound. It’s very edgy and rough which is exactly what I like.
Linger Between Good And Great
The really good cues are few and far between unfortunately, but there are lots of good material in between. Cues like ‘The American Dream’, ‘The Last Laugh’ and ‘Just Look Around You’ are very dramatic cues, but not action cues. They kind of linger between good and great. It is however, the action cues which are the highlights of the soundtrack with the exception of a couple of cues near the end.
The cues I am talking about are ‘All That is Good’ and the ending cue ‘I Love You, Mom’. They are just beautiful themes which doesn’t need action to show off their greatness. ‘All That is Good’ is a dramatic orchestral theme and ‘I Love You, Mom’ is a beautiful plucked guitar theme with a lot of reverb. It reminds me a little of the music from Friday Night Lights which of course Explosion In The Sky composed for. Quite a nice sending off for Watchmen and I can just imagine the scene in my head.
Conclusion
Watchmen has it’s flaws, quite many in fact. It’s not the sound explosion you might expect to be coupled with such a visually stunning movie, but it’s not bad, not bad at all. Don’t listen to it just once, listen to it a few times and you are bound to find some great material in here like I did. It will grow on you.
Listen to Watchmen by Tyler Bates below:
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Soundtrack Seek
so I’m not alone in noticing the FNL sound! Anyways, I concur on a few points. The opening track was fairly exciting and did get my hopes up, and the subsequent material did come crashing down. On the whole, the reason I’d rate the score lower than you do stems from its anonymity. There’s no strong throughout, making the whole experience feel fairly…standard. It was an explosive pallet from which to create an explosive, wonderfully new sound, but instead Bates went in a bunch of different directions. Sometimes it wants to be a choral score, sometimes it wants to be a Lethal Weapon tribute, and sometimes it’s just boring. Had all these identities been mixed, then perhaps I could qualify it as serviceable. But too often I was yearning for what Elliot Goldenthal, Brian Tyler, or, best of all, Don Davis could have done with the material. A huge missed opportunity, though given my lackluster attitude towards Tyler Bates it is thankfully not a disappointment.
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