James Horner RIP

James Horner RIP

From The Hollywood Reporter, ((James Horner, the consummate film composer known for his heart-tugging scores for Field of Dreams, Braveheart and Titanic, for which he won two Academy Awards, died Monday in a plane crash near Santa Barbara. He was 61.

Horner was piloting a single-engine S312 Tucano turboprop plane when it crashed into a remote area about 60 miles north of Santa Barbara, officials said. ))

I was in shock to hear he died and it happened in a plane crash. That's messed up. I know he hasn't been on my radar for a while, but he is a part of my pop culture history. Behind Williams and Goldsmith, there was Horner. Elfman sort of took his spot for a while though. But, Horner did some amazing things with music in the 80s. You knew his sound and his chords.

As a child, I would sit through the end credits of Star Trek II and III that were on those old VHS tapes. Horner's music would be come out of that old mono speaker on that old wood-encased TV. And, I loved listening to Horner's sweeping and action-packed score for both of these movies. His trek scores had a different sound than the music in the Star Wars movies.

I loved those scores.

In some ways, his scores for the trek movies were a departure from the beautiful yet slowing moving score from Goldsmith for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Goldsmith had that sense of wonder whereas Horner's stuff was action based. However, Horner did an interesting thing. He paid tribute to TMP and Goldsmith by including the famous blaster beam in both of Horner's scores.

I think Horner sort of got into a runt and pattern. He started to completely recycle his own music for his newer scores. Sometimes note for note. I wasn't the only one that complained about his self-offs. I felt it came to a head with his score to the first Amazing Spider-Man movie. It was a boring mess and Sony sort of agreed with me and brought in Zimmer for the second one.

Take a listen...

Horner had talent, but he seemed to phone it in his later years. However. It doesn't take away from his entire career. RIP. I could only wish I had that legacy to leave behind.

~Aliens was another good score by him. Again, he used elements from Goldsmith's Alien movie, but made it his own. I heard he had a lot of trouble on that one and the pressure was really unbearable. They even threaten to fire him but they didn't.

~Zorro movies: I love the scores to these two movies. It even has the sound of someone stepping across a wooden floor. He sort of used portions of this score in other movies, which is a shame.

~Troy: It had a good score for the most part. They brought in Horner after they rejected the original score. I forgot the other composers name, but the old score was very nice, but Horner's quick replacement isn't too shabby though. However, he is using some of his copy and paste action cues and themes throughout.