Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Save The Whales

I've swooned over composer James Horner for years on this blog.  I fell in love with the man's music back when I saw Star Trek II in the theaters back in 1982.  Then nearly died when I heard his score for 1984's Star Trek III.  It's a historical fact that Horner's score for Star Trek III:  The Search for Spock is the greatest film score of all time.  Literally no one on this earth disputes this fact.


Then came Star Trek IV:  The Voyage Home.  Back then you had to pretty much scan movie posters in theater lobbies to see who was scoring a film.  Seeing a name other than James Horner was a sacrilegious experience.  But I had high hopes for a composer I never heard of before:  Leonard Rosenman.  Misplaced hopes, unfortunately.  Turns out he was a friend of Leonard Nimoy and James Horner didn't want to score any more Trek films (learned that years later). 

I wish I could say Rosenman nailed it, but he didn't.  His Trek theme was more like a Christmas song...  and his incidental music was like something out of the 60s (I'm being generous).  If you think I'm being cruel, click on this link for his music for ROBOCOP II:  CLICK HERE.

Anyways, where I'm going with this hateful post is that apparently, I'm not the only one who is bothered by the absence of a James Horner score in the wonderful Star Trek IV.  In the video below, the music has been replaced.  And it works perfectly.

Click below...


4 comments:

Holy Tarra said...

I can tell you've lost some sleep laying awake at night pondering this issue. Just want to validate your feelings.....YOUR RIGHT! I couldn't even make it through the whole clip.....AWFUL!!!! I remember kind of being "Ho hum" about that one but I totally forgot how hideous the sound track was. And it seems like they kind of went overboard with trying to work in the comedy.

Daf said...

Hahaha I'm the crazy dude who made that video, finally catching this post two years later. Great to see I made someone's day. Personally I have a certain soft spot for Leonard Rosenman's oddly Christmas-like score (even it made more sense when he used it the first time in the 1970s Lord of the Rings cartoon... and people always accused *Horner* of repeating himself, yeesh!), but yes, the dream of the lost complete "trilogy" for the James Horner Star Trek themes always lived on, hence the video.

Also a hearty (and friendly!) LOL that Holy Tarra seems to have misunderstood which music was used in the video (unless she's talking about the Robocop 2 link, but I don't think so). Honestly I can understand the reaction if you go in already prepared for it to be awful, and I admit I mixed the music slightly louder than it would've been in an actual film so I can understand if it may come off overly bombastic/obnoxious to some (I also don't think Horner would've used Klingon music if he'd actually scored it IRL!).

Rot said...

Haha thanks so much for stopping by to leave a comment!

Rot said...

There needs to be a Horner redo of the battle for peace from STVI. ; )