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Gandy
Bree
Dec 22 2014, 6:40pm
Post #1 of 22
(1572 views)
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The Butchering of Howard Shore
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So many bizarre choices with BOTFA but for now - Shore's music was mangled, amateurishly cut, disregarded, put in the back row of aural importance, and the movie is worse for it.
Shore's score made LOTR the success it became. It was a character itself. Without that character, LOTR would have been a blip in film history. It is loud and prominent at the proper moments. No matter how heavenly the music is, if the director and sound editors butcher it into a quiet, incohesive mess, then the music cannot save a movie. Music can save a poor movie, and music can lift a good movie to greatness.
Shore's BOTFA's score was of a level great enough to save a poor movie - cover its numerous flaws, replace the awkward visions in our eyes with true soulful emotion in our ears and make our hearts forgive and forget the plot, pacing, etc.
The movie was notably disjointed with, frankly, bizarre plot choices and obviously rushed editing. The music editor, and ultimately the final word of PJ, chose not to embrace Shore's contribution and use music as glue to bond together the randomness and choppiness of so many sequences of shots slapped together the day before release. Shore was not allowed in as a character and thus couldn't lift the movie off the ground and hide its ugly side.
Listening to the soundtrack, so much was chopped, oddly mixed, badly patched together, abrupt non-transitions, and worst of all the volume of the music was shockingly low. Moments of great importance and emotion that featured the Durin theme, Dain's wonderful new theme among others - the music was not in the forefront exploding our minds with emotion. Instead it was sound effects, rushed editing and insulting editing and cutting of incredible movie-saving themes. At low volume! Three different theaters - Imax HFR, regular, Real3d - all equal in their bad sound design. So no, it isn't a theater problem. They got my money 3 times just so I my brain could finally really accept that this came from the same people who made LOTR.
After the first viewing I was stunned. Speechless, thinking back on how I felt, the expectations, when The Hobbit was announced years ago with PJ returning. But it just kept getting worse and worse. Visually, their Middle Earth will always grab me and I always want to be transported there. But after the awe of ME cools, there are the actual stories to be dealt with.
PJ, you had a lot of messy editing and awkward "emotional" moments, and Shore was your magic paint brush to hide the too-late-to-fix stuff, and you dismissed him. Why? After what he did for LOTR, how could his music be sidelined like this? Inexplicable.
It is clear that so much was patchworked together in the last week of editing. It's more and more sloppy as the movie reaches its end.
The most insulting, final nail in the coffin of music happened when the Eagles came. That famous, favorite, best of the trilogy new choral theme was embarassingly hacked into oblivion. Just 33 seconds long originally, they cut it into a very quick few seconds summarized as abrupt, incomplete, with zero sense of transition. After that mess they jump into a quick Nature theme. On the soundtrack it is reversed - Nature to Eagles. The best 33 seconds of music and they still cut it to 8 seconds of choppiness with low volume. That Nature to Eagles moment on the soundtrack pulls you to heaven and they butchered it because they first butchered the scene editing. That brief scene summarizes the music editing in BOTFA.
That entire, abrupt Eagle scene with Beorn is such a sad reminder of what SHOULD have been. All categories are encompassed there - rushed plot, bad character arcs, rushed editing, failed music editing. AAAAAAArrrrgh I wanted that scene so badly, I wanted Beorn so badly in this trilogy, it hurt so much. Beorn could've replaced the both Legolas and Tauriel in both movies. EE or not, there is no importance given to him anyway. The music being destroyed in that scene was the last straw. We saw for 3 seconds how Beorn would've been an army of one.
When you have visual editing troubles and no time in a Middle Earth film, Howard Shore is your savior. But since music far behind in importance than CGI this time, it was just cut and pasted with rushed indifference.
AUJ and DOS had slightly better editing and volume, with all 3 substandard in editing. Did they get a new music/sound editor? Still, PJ makes the final call. I think he was physically and emotionally spent for the final weeks and left it to unqualified people who screwed it even more.
I'll never understand how they forgot or don't even realize how much Shore made them, PJ, WETA, into the juggernaut they are today. How could a director's mind change that much? LOTR's brilliance and everything since then wouldn't have happened without the prominent editing, volume, and emotional glue of Shore's music. This trilogy wasn't a case of a lesser Shore. Something just went very wrong in the editing room. Different sound people than LOTR? Even with keeping the exact same plotlines and bad CGI, better editing of music would have covered a lot of mediocrity.
I felt almost no emotion that they wanted me to feel in BOTFA, almost no emotion at all. Lot of emptiness. Very few and very far between. Constantly cut short. Teases of reaching the emotional payoff of a scene and then CUT. Just teases of coming emotion here and there. The grass was pretty at the end, though.
Oh, and Thorin's final words were near impossible to catch unless you already knew the words from the book. I don't think anyone understood them in my theaters. Sad. So raspy and unclear. Wish they made a clearer take since that is a rather important and famous line.
End of words.
(This post was edited by Gandy on Dec 22 2014, 6:47pm)
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Lindele
Gondor
Dec 22 2014, 6:47pm
Post #2 of 22
(944 views)
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that there is anyone out there more in love with Howard Shore's Middle-earth scores than me, and while I agree with some of your points I personally think you missed the mark a tad, and are being a little too harsh on PJ and the editors. This same editing treatment to Shore's score was in LOTR. As far as the mix goes, I definitely didn't get the sense that the score was an afterthought to the level that you are describing. I thought the score was pretty powerful and very present in BOTFA. If anything I thought the score was more present in BOTFA than the first two.
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Dec 22 2014, 6:48pm
Post #3 of 22
(850 views)
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Poor Howard. Did they find enough body parts for a burial?
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Ham_Sammy
Tol Eressea
Dec 22 2014, 6:53pm
Post #4 of 22
(779 views)
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Thank you for your questions, now go sod off and do something useful - Martin Freeman Twitter chat 3/1/13
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[STARS}TyranT
The Shire
Dec 22 2014, 6:58pm
Post #5 of 22
(806 views)
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Is the score more complete on the album them? Are there entire chunks of score missing compared to released soundtrack?
And does the score in places refer to moments that aren't in the film at all?
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smtfhw
Lorien
Dec 22 2014, 7:02pm
Post #6 of 22
(789 views)
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I'll say what I've said elsewhere. On the first viewing it felt like there wasn't much music. On second viewing it turns out that I was very, very wrong about that assumption.
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Glorfindela
Valinor
Dec 22 2014, 7:06pm
Post #7 of 22
(760 views)
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I beg to differ on virtually all of your points.
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priell3
Lorien
Dec 22 2014, 7:10pm
Post #8 of 22
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After the first few moments...
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...of "Fire and Water", I didn't even notice the soundtrack in the movie. Not until the end credits of "The Last Goodbye" did I pay any attention to the music.
MikeP
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QuackingTroll
Valinor
Dec 22 2014, 7:10pm
Post #9 of 22
(749 views)
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There are some great documentaries that explain the power of quiet, minimalist soundtracks
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Almost any soundtrack documentary, book or composer will tell you that one of the greatest soundtracks in cinema is The Birds - a movie with no music. The composer (I think Bernard Hermann?) worked on the sound design and, instead of music, trusted the sound of silence and bird noises to create tension in the scenes.
What I simply think has happened is that Shore wrote big themes for each aspect of the movie (which he includes on the OST) and then used these themes in a quiet and minimalist way, to allow the story to do the talking. It's an artistic decision and not a big deal at all. Just be thankful we have the OSTs so we can hear the big themes in their full glory.
(This post was edited by QuackingTroll on Dec 22 2014, 7:12pm)
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CathrineB
Rohan
Dec 22 2014, 7:45pm
Post #11 of 22
(698 views)
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I just made a post about Ironfoot elsewhere on the board that it took me the second viewing to notice the melody playing. It's in a quite epic moment, but kind of easy to miss sadly. I wish they just allowed that moment to notch up the epic music a bit.
I think AUJ had more musical moments (though in that case it was mainly LotR themes).
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Loresilme
Valinor
Dec 22 2014, 8:02pm
Post #12 of 22
(730 views)
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The score is now the musical expression of a story over 6 movies, not 3
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The 6 movies tell a story that starts small, grows larger, goes a little up, goes a little down, again grows larger, up, down and then again up, always in an ascending direction to the climax which is the most important, where the biggest obstacles are encountered, the stakes are the highest, etc. That climax is towards the end of ROTK. As compelling and expressive as the end of BOFA is, the whole story now starts at AUJ and ends with ROTK. The score therefore now has become the musical expression of that story, the entire story across 6 movies. The grandest, biggest, loudest, most expressive musical moments must come later in the story, must culminate in the '11 on a scale of 10' type of musical expression in ROTK.
I believe what Howard Shore accomplished with the score in The Hobbit movies was brilliant, and IMO, it was a phenomenally, insanely difficult thing to do. Because he had to work backwards. He had to go back and find the seeds, the core elements of themes in LOTR, work backwards to the incipient ideas and then rework them forward into hints and allusions and variations without overplaying it, without overdoing it, without taking anything away from the perfectly realized final forms of the music later on in LOTR.
And on top of all that, he created new themes that blend into and bring into the existing world new ideas that add to or contrast where necessary to further express the story and the characters.
The result, in my opinion? Sheer, utter, complete brilliance and mastery of his craft. We are lucky, LUCKY beyond words, to have more of Howard Shore's incomparable music of Middle-earth in The Hobbit movies.
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Lindele
Gondor
Dec 22 2014, 8:19pm
Post #13 of 22
(662 views)
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could not agree more
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Dipling
Lorien
Dec 22 2014, 8:29pm
Post #14 of 22
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that the volume is too low (don't understand why). In AUJ and also in DOS it is OK. Specially in AUJ.
Soundtrack as it is is great. Maybe it's the combination of Jabez Olssen movie editing and wrong music editing. But they should get the volume right. They showed they could (AUJ).
Music could release emotions, but does not. It is not allowed.
I hope they will repair it on BR, i prefer on EE.
(This post was edited by Dipling on Dec 22 2014, 8:29pm)
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BlackFox
Half-elven
Dec 22 2014, 9:03pm
Post #15 of 22
(626 views)
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I agree wholeheartedly.
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hobbitylass
Bree
Dec 22 2014, 9:48pm
Post #16 of 22
(595 views)
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I definitely noticed that the music was hard to hear too
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I will pay more attention to the music the next time I see the film, but I remember specifically thinking that the music was not as noticeable in this one compared to the others.
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nymmerod
The Shire
Dec 22 2014, 10:03pm
Post #17 of 22
(607 views)
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I find most of this argument to be extreme. I noticed many familiar themes on my first watch. Most notably the Smaug theme as Thorin broods in madness, the entrance of the eagles and the charge of Dain's company mixing with the Mirkwood elves theme and Tauriel's theme doing some interesting things throughout her subplots. I also noted the shire theme and the One Ring theme at the end of the film.
I am sorry you didn't catch any of that. Maybe the theater had bad speakers or something.
It didn't cross my mind once during my two viewings of the film so far that the music was too quiet in the mix.
http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=96226
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Glorfindela
Valinor
Dec 22 2014, 10:22pm
Post #18 of 22
(567 views)
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My cinema had very good sound and I could hear the music very well – I was admiring it today, in fact.
Perhaps the people who are experiencing issues with the music might mention this to employees at their cinemas?
Maybe the theater had bad speakers or something.
It didn't cross my mind once during my two viewings of the film so far that the music was too quiet in the mix.
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Skaan
Lorien
Dec 22 2014, 11:24pm
Post #19 of 22
(546 views)
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I too believe the music didn't receive the respect it deserved in this trilogy. Although i actually thought the third movie had the best music editing out of all 3 movies. AUJ didn't seem to have any volume issues, but instead there were lots of great moments from the OST that were either changed or dialed out. With DoS, there weren't as much changes from the OST, but this time the music was too quiet for my taste (especially during the Smaug scenes at the end, which were my favorite parts on the DoS OST).
My only gripes with BOFA, is how quiet the Sons of Durin choral piece was when the dwarves charged out of Erebor, and like you mentioned already, the butchering of the Eagles/Nature music. I also didn't like how they removed Smaug's death music (although i'll have to see the movie again because i don't exactly remember whether they completely removed the music, or if it was just too quiet). But other than these, the movie had quite a few moments where the music was really allowed to shine.
With every release of a Hobbit movie, i kept hoping they would fix the music or make it a bit louder in the theatrical/extended editions, but i never got what i hoped. With BOFA, i'm still hoping that they'll up the volume a bit and that the EE will maybe include the non-butchered version of the Eagles and Nature theme. But it seems like there never was much hope, just a fool's hope.
I always secretly wish that PJ (or anyone else from the production team) would read these complaints and that he would up the volume a bit for the theatrical/extended editions, but perhaps that's just me being a bit too selfish and having too much wishful thinking
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elentari3018
Rohan
Dec 23 2014, 4:14am
Post #20 of 22
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I agree with Eagles theme -- i didn't catch it all in the 3 times i went in to see it and thought that that should be elongated along with Beorn kicking everyone out there. I thought Thorin's famous line was ok volume though because he's almost about to die anyway so i didn't expect him to shout it.
You give me one more thing to think about it when i watch it again... :)
Great thoughtful post.
"By Elbereth and Luthien the fair, you shall have neither the Ring nor me!" ~Frodo
"And then Gandalf arose and bid all men rise, and they rose, and he said: 'Here is a last hail ere the feast endeth. Last but not least. For I name now those who shall not be forgotten and without whose valour nought else that was done would have availed; and I name before you all Frodo of the Shire and Samwise his servant. And the bards and the minstrels should give them new names: Bronwe athan Harthad and Harthad Uluithiad , Endurance beyond Hope and Hope Unquenchable.." ~Gandalf, The End of the Third Age , from The History of Middle Earth series
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Dipling
Lorien
Dec 23 2014, 7:31am
Post #21 of 22
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Sons of durin was to quiet (emotions should boil up). Also Dain had almost no arrival music (to quite). No music at Gundabad first sight, no music with Gundabad army marching out or the first time we see Azog army, ...
I really liked the movie (and the soundtrack) and am impatiently waiting for the EE. But cannot get over those music issues. Maybe my third time watching the movie (this time in 2D) will change that.
(This post was edited by Dipling on Dec 23 2014, 7:32am)
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Aragorn the Elfstone
Tol Eressea
Dec 23 2014, 7:46am
Post #22 of 22
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If anyone wants to talk about the butchering of a score, they should refer to Jerry Goldsmith's work on Alien (1979). Or, really, any number of Ridley Scott films.
"The danger with any movie that does as well as this one does is that the amount of money it's making and the number of awards that it's got becomes almost more important than the movie itself in people's minds. I look at that as, in a sense, being very much like the Ring, and its effect on people. You know, you can kind of forget what we were doing, if you get too wrapped up in that."
- Viggo Mortensen
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*mods up* //
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