@Another User said:

PS, I work in the film industry in a creative (non-musical) capacity

And if you actually do, you ought to learn a little more about the art of film music.  Because it is an art form though people like you deny it. 

It's pointless so never mind. 

I watched Hobo with a Shotgun the other evening. Fantastic!

@PaulR said:

I watched Hobo with a Shotgun the other evening. Fantastic!

 I'm a bit confussed here Pual.  You watched a flick called "Hobo" with a shotgun in your hand?  They let you in the theater with a shotgun? 

Or you watched a flick called "Hobo with a Shotgun"[:^)]

It's called 'Hobo with  a Shotgun'. It's basically Batman on a very low budget with an excruciating score. In fact, every about it is excruciating. Fantastic stuff! Are you saying you've never seen or heard of it? [|-)]

Hi,

I don't think there is an answer to the question the OP posted here. 

Funny... I don't even think Mr. Zimmer knows what his best score would be.  

We all have different perceptions, tastes, evaluations, standards, ...etc. when it comes to music and film scores.  So, imho. no one can seriously answer this question.  I'm a big fan of Mr. Zimmer's scores, they all show his wonderful talent as a very creative, cutting-edge film composer who likes to ventures into new areas of composing for media, and does it with his unique sonic signature, and with a lot of style. 

Cheers,

Muziksculp 

You know one thing Plato neglected to mention in The Republic, was that 'the' cave also had a basement...

By the way, Beowulf is dead.

@Another User said:

Mr. Zimmer's scores, they all show his wonderful talent as a very creative, cutting-edge film composer who likes to ventures into new areas of composing for media, and does it with his unique sonic signature, and with a lot of style. 

But sadly you're mistaken.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0395mzs/BBC_Proms_2013_Season_Proms_on_Four_John_Wilsons_Hollywood_Rhapsody/

Budget for Hobo with a Shotgun? About $30. Maybe 35 at a push. Most of that probably went to Rutger Hauer though. [:'(] Great film!

There's a couple films that Mark Kermode has been on about recently I would like to catch. One is Danish film set on a hijacked ship - one is called Bernie - there's new American one out about dysfunctional families (which is basically what every American film is about if you think about it) I want to see eventually (I don't go to the cinema).

The Hollywood Rhapsody night at Friday night Proms was good. 90 minutes of the John Wilson orchestra. They can really play. They did a good programme. One I really liked was the Aria by Bernard Herrmann from Citizen Kane. The singer debuted and the whole thing worked very well. The second movement (as it were) from The Adventures of Robin Hood by Erich Korngold was sublime. Psycho was good but missed a couple of sections. The 'mutes on' or sordino quality was great. They did Ben Hur. That was great. They finished up with Scott Bradley Tom and Jerry pieces - so fast it was a blur. Encore was by Franz Waxman (forget the name) but it was great too. The whole evening was first class. If you can somehow get that you would be well rewarded musically.

Sadly, no Hans though. [:'(] [:'(] [:'(]

My biggest Gripe with Hans, is that his name is up in lights, yet it's mostly done by 16 other composers. Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, John Barry .. Did it all themselves. With perhaps an orchrestrator to flesh out parts but the composition was done by them. Hans can't claim this.

Although I did get a shock when I saw that he did the score for the 2009 Sherlock Holmes film. A score which I thought (at the time without knowing Hans did it) was very good and original. So perhaps Hans (Generic) Zimmer ain't so talentless after all. Maybe he's a good composer who happens to work on boring movies with directors that insist he writes boring music. At least he did a good job on the Sherlock movie.

Funny enough, he wrote the orchestral parts of Disney's "The Lion King". I would say that probably stands as his best score.

@PaulR said:

Budget for Hobo with a Shotgun? About $30. Maybe 35 at a push. Most of that probably went to Rutger Hauer though. [:'(] Great film!

And I bet Rutger Hauer earned every penny.  I guess he's most remembered for Blade Runner but my favorite Rutger Hauer film was Nighthawk where he played the psycotic terrorist and Sylvester Stallone played the cross dressing NYPD detective with a speech impediment.  Wait a minute, Sylvester Stollone has a speech impediment in every film he's in. [:S]

@hetoreyn said:

Although I did get a shock when I saw that he did the score for the 2009 Sherlock Holmes film. A score which I thought (at the time without knowing Hans did it) was very good and original. 

Yes, I enjoyed that score too and was quite surprised our buddy Hans composed it.  Or maybe it was composed by one or two, three, four... of his underlings.  We may never know.

As I said before, I think he takes on way too much but it seems to me that the culture in Hollywood is such that a big budget blockbuster just isn't a big budget blockbuster at all unless Hans Zimmer composed the score.  He's almost like the default composer that everybody goes to now and because he has his "team" working with him the next time his name is up in lights it should read: "Hans Zimmer Inc."  This might be a disturbing trend in Hollywood today but since everything else is done by committee (writing, production, direction) why shouldn't the scores be composed by committee too.

@hetoreyn said:

Although I did get a shock when I saw that he did the score for the 2009 Sherlock Holmes film. A score which I thought (at the time without knowing Hans did it) was very good and original. So perhaps Hans (Generic) Zimmer ain't so talentless after all. Maybe he's a good composer who happens to work on boring movies with directors that insist he writes boring music. At least he did a good job on the Sherlock movie.

Or... maybe he's like a broken clock who gets it right at least twice a day.

Hans is a 1-trick pony, and it is a lamentable trick at that. You can bet that when a score of his seems to transcend the customary lobotomotive spiccati over Symphobic crass brass chords, it is because he is rewriting on a very specific temp-track, or that he has happened to hire an actual musician as an assistant for the specific movie, instead of the usual DJ programmers/orchestrators. The five huge, disparate, and composers' dream-films (in that they offered the composer so much space and colour to fill in) that immediately spring to mind where he could have shown his great range (if he only had any) - Gladiator, TRON 2, Inception, Pearl Harbour, Batman - he blundered appallingly. 

The sequels to the original Star Wars are to be filmed soon. In case John Williams won't be around to score them, can you imagine what they are going to sound like with those great, "cutting edge" composers like Hans and his imitators (Giacchino, Trevor, and the like...)? Instead of those majestic, sweeping fanfares that score the opening, escalator-like, written out narrative that unfolds into space, you'll get: chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga|1st brass chord|arpeggiator-arpeggiator-arpeggiator-arpeggiator|2nd brass chord|someone-else's-programming-a.k.a-InactionStrings-MacSessionsStrings-OrkestralLicentials-etc............................ Marvellous......... It's not that hard to imagine. Just compare Goldsmith's Star Trek fanfare to this new Main Theme from the latest installment, for the shape of things to come...

Be afraid. Be very afraid!

(The Fly wasn't it?)

I saw the Downey Sherlock Holmes pastiche and can't remember the music.  I do remember being reminded of the beautiful music by Patrick Gowers in the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes, with its great incorporation of solo violin and wonderful scoring throughout that great series which has got to be the best Sherlock Holmes ever.  

Of the films Errikos mentions Gladiator sticks out horribly - that was a great job of directing by Ridley Scott, and obviously a huge sweeping story filled with drama, fascinating recreation of ancient Rome, unique bits like the awesome Oliver Reed burning up the screen as only he could do, but the music?  There was nothing there.  Just think what Miklos Rosza would have done with that story!  He would have gone berserk!  Rosza spent an entire year to write the score to the 3 hour 45 minute film Ben Hur.  It is an unbelievable accomplishment of such magnitude that it ranks with great symphonic compositions. And this was only one of many fabulous scores he did.  I recently got a new 2-CD recording of El Cid that features all of the music that was composed.  It is another gigantic symphonic composition that just happens to fit the film flawlessly.  That is an achievement that has been forgotten by today's "quickie" composers. 

O.K., I'll be quiet now. [A]

This might be an interesting read.....

http://www.soundtracksandtrailermusic.com/2013/07/hans-zimmer/

Gaute Storaas

www.gautestoraas.no

Thank you for this interesting article. I smiled all the way through it. Here is this guy that supposedly wishes to justify Hans' success against those nasty people who - as he says - go around gossiping that he doesn't do the actual composing himself but hires ghostwriters in the back room etc. Imagine... Even for the puerile stuff he churns out there are rumours that he can't even do those and others have to help him. Now why aren't there any rumours like that for other, great composers in film?... Anyway, I personally don't give credence to any of it...

However, the fun begins when this guy proceeds to attempt to prove that Hans deserves all his success, and ends up proving exactly the opposite!

1) He's great at spotting(!!)... Well that does it then... As opposed to? (Insert name of "another" great film composer here). Hans is an outstanding dramatist(?!?!) Yeah... That is never elaborated upon with examples of course, but then we have the first great bit: He asked us to record a set of variations on 2(!!) notes. This involved a fair amount of interpretation (i.e. no composing on his part). For those familiar with classical music, it was John Cage meets Phil Glass (how much more damage can you do to the guy's reputation that he doesn't write his own stuff?). This guy also provides a video in the article (to prove Hans' visionary greatness I presume), where 10 drummers are asked to play the same grooves in order to be slightly off and create a supposedly interesting sound... Yeah, very visionary and original... See Terry Riley, Gyorgy Ligeti, and least of all Vangelis (Mythodea).

2) Hans works very, very hard! A lot of composters work very hard; not commensurately with the quality of their output. (In defence of the blogger, his article is about proving Hans' deserved success; not his creative prowess).

3) Hans is the best film music producer in the business. (Well let him do that then and refrain from composting) And here we have a cascade of knives in the back: We're not talking about technical music skills(!!!) Of course, we're talking about all the other music skills...?? Hans is a so-so pianist (now we all know this means Grade 1), and his knowledge of academic theory is, by intention(!!!!!!), limited (Grade 0). He doesn't read standard notation well either (i.e. at all - Bugger me, repeatedly...). But no one reads piano roll better than he does. Which gets to the heart of the matter (How exactly?): Hans knows what he needs to know to make it sound great... Well! Why didn't he just say so? That great music skill alone covers up for all the other unnecessary, superceded, antiquated skills we have. I knew that Williams sounded like shyt for SOME reason; I just couldn't put my finger on it... He knows harmony, he knows counterpoint, he knows form, he knows voice-leading, he knows polyphony, he knows orchestration. Aaahhhh! He cannot read piano-roll.... That is how he doesn't know what he needs to know to make it sound great.......

4) Hans works with great people. Take a look at the composers who have worked for Hans (and he proceeds to throw over a dozen composers, some recognizable names, who have worked for Hans). Oh that's great! Keep stabbing... For in what capacity exactly did those composers work for Hans? I don't remember whole rosters of composers having worked for Rota or Morricone (the two composers this blogger admires). Were they there perhaps to show Hans where middle C is on the piano, or explain what an oboe looks like?

5) Hans' love theme for Megamind. Now I am not saying this is a bad track. But it is copy-paste from old French film music (just like Glarpeggiator is of 1492), and there is a co-composer on the track's credit. Surely that cannot constitute the flagship of Hans' defence as a competent composer...

This thread has clearly reached a point where it should be continued in form of private communication rather than in a public forum.

 I haven't tuned into this forum for awhile.  Seems to me this Hans Zimmer thing has been going on a spell.

No doubt the HZ movie scores have been going downhill.  I listen to many if not all of them and am rarely pulled in anymore.  But that is not to say he hasn't ability or hasn't done good work earlier in his long career.  William, check out "Wings of a Film" a live concert of Zimmer stuff selected from various scores and conducted by Hans.  It shows range and melody, I think.  Also, the brooding score of "Beyond Rangoon" held my attention for a long time.  Granted, this is early stuff.  Lone Ranger didn't grab me.  Niether did the Pirates scores, although they had their moments.