Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest score review part 1

Hans Zimmer has had a steady and successful career in film scoring. While his extensive work ranges from heart felt dramas to mindless action movies, his work seems to always spark some kind of reaction from movie score fans. Some people are fans of most of his work, while others can’t stand his mixing of rock, orchestral work, and synthetic music. On the other hand, I like his some of his work, such as Batman Begins, Gladiator and Last Samurai, and yet I despise the hard rock mess called MI2. With this knowledge, it should be noted that Zimmer seems to use both styles in POTC2 this score.

For some reason, I bought the CD to the Score of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. While my thoughts on Zimmer’s take on Klaus Badelt’s themes from the first movie are slightly better than when I watched the movie, I still can’t get over some of Zimmer’s instrumentation choices. There’s no need to use an electronic guitar for a period piece.

Because another composer was fired from the first Pirates movie, Badelt had to rely on more synth than live performers to finish the score in time. And yet, Zimmer’s version of Badelt’s themes sound much better because there’s less sampling and computer work done to the tracks, which was smart move by Zimmer. It’s fun listening to Badelt’s music with a full orchestra.

1. Jack Sparrow: This theme is playful and fun. It’s interesting to listen to Zimmer build on Badelt’s Pirate theme and make it a completely new theme solely for Jack Sparrow. I love the use of the strings, which turns into the entire orchestra joining in. This theme is used a lot in the movie. This is one of Zimmer’s better tracks, and it seems to fit into the time period. Very nice…

2. The Kraken: The first half of this track has some really cool music with the bass, organs and choir. Zimmer has some dark stuff working in the first half of the track, but the track falls apart with the strange use of rock music, and it begins to sound like Mission Impossible 2. The use of the bass guitar does make this track sound cool because it’s connected to the Kraken, but the second half just turns into noise.

3. Davy Jones: It’s interesting to hear the playful music box play the tragic Davy Jones theme and there’s some nice work with entire orchestra building on the same theme. I loved the way the music box bookends the track. Good work here.

4. I've Got My Eye on You: While the use of the Back Pearl theme is nice, I didn’t care for the choir stuff here. However, I liked hearing a full orchestra play the Pirate of Caribbean theme.

5. Dinner is Served: First half of this track is neat with its tribal beats. However the playful waltz is fun to hear and I wish it were longer.

6. Tia Dalma: There is a bit of Gladiator music thrown in, I really don’t care for the track that much. Yet, here’s an interesting fact, if you listen carefully there’s a music box tune thrown in there too, which gives support to the theory that Davy Jones and Tia Dalma were lovers.

End of Part one

Many people attack Zimmer for reusing a lot of his own work, and maybe he does, but he is not even close to being a hack like James Horner. Horner rips complete themes from his older pieces and reuses them without giving a damn.

BTW, an online friend who interviews Film Composers has stated that Zimmer is one the most laid by composers he’s met, while Horner was a complete asshole.