So James Horner just lost some brownie points

[meapet]

According to AMC, instead of writing all new material for the movie Patriot Games, he stole bits from Aliens as filler. That seems odd. And wrong on some levels.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

name a film composer that doesn't reuse ideas.

go ahead.

Elfman's written the same score 10 times over.

Williams twisted the "Nazi" theme from Indiana Jones III to make the Trade Federation theme for Star Wars Phantom Menace. For most of the 80s his "action" sequences followed very predictable patterns in their motifs.

And 100+ years ago, nobody would have batted an eye if a composer reused melodies and ideas from earlier works, like Brahms playing with his "lullaby" to make a movement in the 2nd symphony, or Mozart tweaking a piano concerto movement out of an opera aria. Happens all the time.

it's not odd. often composers are hired *because* the director wants specific sounds and motifs that the composer has used in other works. It's very rare that one hires a composer and still gives them 100% free reign to make what they will.

[greendalek.livejournal.com]

Williams has even snuck in deliberate references to his own material --at the very end of Star Wars Episode III, during the moment when Obi-Wan hands off an infant Luke to Beru and Owen, there's a brief but very recognizable "Harry Potter" melody --to echo, I guess, the same kind of emotional weight in the scene in which Dumbledore and McGonnagal deliver an infant Harry to the Dursleys.

I imagine the director didn't have it in his heart to object... *grin*

[meapet.livejournal.com]

I guess its more to me about just using the exact same score, not just little riffs here and there but full tracks....