Films that would be improved by removing the score

John Alvidson's "Neighbours".

Thread necro, eh?

There are a lot of films from the 80s which suffer from cheap synth scores. The score for Terminus (1987) is so impossible bad that the film would have been better with no score at all, but then again the film was so impossibly bad that the improvement wouldn't matter.

Nolan films would be a tiny bit better without the BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM effect in their soundtracks.

__________________
Being kind to others never goes out of style.

Yeah, that is the Blaster-Beam sound of the new century.






Our media is over-saturated plug-and-play crap. Hand-held, snapzoom, BRAAAAAHM sound fills the room, caped-crusader fights doom, cheap drone shots. Insert LGBT themes, listen for the Wilhelm Scream, CGI of everything! We didn't start the fire. It was always burning!

Wow! You could write new lyrics for the whole song... but all pertaining to the modern state of movies & media.

(During the pandemic there were several "We Didn't Start the Fire" updates on YouTube which were quite entertaining!)

Beyond the fact that it has been overdone and has become a generational cliche in film scores, there is nothing wrong with Hans Zimmer or even that particular approach.


Like anything that suddenly falls into fashion, it was overdone to shit, but that doesn't negate how great and unique and Zimmers scores were for a couple of years.

The Keep.
It’s too loud and distracting.

The sound mix/balance could be improved. I think the Tangerine Dream score, however, is an important part of the tone/feel of the film. We're in this foggy, story-book village of yore entering an ancient keepsafe that was built backwards.



The film seems like a rough draft of a movie and not the finished product. Consider the improvements Mann made to HEAT when he remade L.A. Takedown.

Improved can be a pretty relative term, so I don't necessarily mean this would have been a classic - but I found The Greasy Strangler nearly impossible to watch because of Andrew Hung's score.

I'm sure there are people out there who'll kind of be into it though, probably? Go ahead. Knock yourself out.

__________________

Thx 1138

Oh no. With no music, it's just a grim reaper festival from the nazi era. With Tangerine Dream, it's like a grim nazi era movie sonically illustrated by Miami Vice. The music is half of what makes that movie so surreal, like being lost in a nightmare while the TV is still on, tuned to the 80's, but with nazis.

I really can't think of one. Being a musically oriented person, movie music is the emotional barometer of the plot line for me. If you want something like movies with no music, it's trying to be live theater, which is very different from movies, acted very differently. In live theater, which I've seen a lot, actors emote and gesture much more than they would in movies. Theatrical acting in movies doesn't work very well, so movie actors are generally flatter and understated. The music provides a lot of the emotional accents as well as foreshadowing, like the dark, low pitched notes when Jaws approaches a swimmer. Musical themes create characters, remind us of how Italian The Godfather is and tell us when Darth Vader approaches. Movies are a different genre without music. I can't think of any reason to not have music.

I felt this way the first time through. But the second time through I liked that it's borderline overwhelming. I really warmed up to the film the second time through.

"I just watched The Greasy Strangler and I was so distracted by how Hung--"

"I KNOW, RIGHT!!! I kept thinking, that HAS to be fake!"

"--by how Hung's score intruded into the scenes."

" . . . yeah. That's . . . also what I was talking about. The score."

Gravity was my first thought when I saw the thread title. I know there was a limited blu-ray release that has a version without it, but it's a lot of money for a movie I don't care much for.


My other pick is High Noon.

JAWS ruined a quaint little fishing movie with that damned score.

The Brannagh Frankenstein w/ De Niro comes to mind. I saw that for the first time last year and it seemed like orchestra music was playing constantly. Like nothing was able breathe and undercut a lot of DE Niro's scenes as the monster.

The atmosphere is so chilling but the soundtrack just does not fit the film at all in my opinion.

Scarface. I challenge you to try and watch it today. That early 80s nails on the chalkboard techno club high pitched crap traumatized me more than the chainsaw scene.

^the hell you say, I'll get back to you after my next rewatch

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Scarface is about gaudy superficial 80's excess. Even if one doesn't like the music of Moroder (which I guess is an opinion one can have), his score compliments everything which is wonderful about that film.