Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Dennis McCarthy...?

I will say that the three pop songs on the GOF soundtrack were some of the most annoying crap I've ever heard.

 

The songs work fine in the film for what they should be. Dennis McCarthy is a television score composer who did the music for the Star Trek: Generations film. It is clearly the weakest Star Trek score ever and does not hold up to Goldsmith or Horner at all. His "themes" were as weak as Doyle's for GOF.

 

When I saw that there were pop songs from the Yule ball sequence on the album my first though was: Please don't let them consist of cliched Magic themed lyrics!!

They consisted of exactly that... ugh...

"Put you're hands up in the air
Like an Ogre just don't care"

Other magic themed rymes included:

Ghost/Scaring himself the most
Spectre/definitely out to get ya
Crazy Elf/dancing with himself
Hippogriff/Flying off from a cliff
Unicorn/Break of Dawn

That is vomit inducing stuff alright... So now I skip those tracks for fear of getting them stuck in my head during school...

 

I really like the last three tracks. The first two are fun and the last one is very beautiful.

 

Kiera Knightly is beautiful. Sadly, "Magic Works" does not inspire the same appreciation of beauty with me.

BTW I do love the oompa loompa songs on Danny Elfman's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So I'm not a complete pop music hater

 

I dunno... I think those songs work just fine within the film. They work rather well, actually. But outside the film... dunno. I am not a Pulp fan. They're not really my style.

 

The only complaint I have against JW is the overuse of 'Hedwig's Theme'. It drives me crazy while watching the first two films, and makes my value of his score diminish greatly. Though he still is top in my book for favorite film scores other than the HP series. Doyle brought a creative spin on the score for the movie just as Mike Newell did with directing. It works for the film's overall attitude.


But I have to agree on the pop songs

 

Then how would you classify JW's work on the third film, POA? I thought that POA was a very diverse, well-crafted score. It was, in many ways, already a departure from the first two films. Doyle's further departure just pulls us that much further out of the very story into which he was trying to immerse us.

 

Honestly it's no different than the overuse of the Imperial March in TESB or the Raiders March in Raiders of the Lost Ark. John does that sometimes. Oh well. I personally think the only problem with his HP scores lies with Chamber of Secrets being largely rehash of the first score. Had Williams had time to really sit down and compose COS from the beginning, I think he would have progressed more from the first film and the use of Hedwig's theme would have been like somewhere in between Sorceror's Stone and Prisoner of Azkaban.

 

Well, the "overuse" of the IM and the RM in those films is more acceptable considering he at least took more time to vary each performance of those themes in their respective films. In HP, the theme never really seems to develop or change from performance to performance.

 

I think the Hedwig thing gets repedetive so quickly because Williams has three sub-themes that make up the main theme to put on repeat. So he has the first mysterious section, the second awe-inspired section and the more action-oriented section of the theme to play with in a relevant scene, but every time one of them comes on, we know it is just old Hedwig's theme, and write them off as one.

 

IMO I loved John Williams work on the third one especially, with the time turner sequence and the Dementor's theme. It's a very exciting soundtrack with lots of action cues and emotional bits that make it the highlight of JW's musical HP series. And I have to agree I would have liked Doyle not to move too far away from JW's vision, but the blame isn't entirely on him here. WB or the producers or whoever decided to hire a new composer to score the GOF. And that's exactly what Doyle did and its not his fault that it didn't resemble the previous scores close enough because he had a unique idea for how the fourth film should sound.

Exactly.

 

Actually, if you want to blame anyone, blame John Williams for being so busy that he couldn't fit another Potter score into his schedule. Not to mention the rumours that he was burnt out on them anyway.

 

Hmm...interesting. I had no clue that JW 'quit' so to speak. Figures, because I only just recently became an HP fan.

 

Rumours are just that. Rumours. Until there is proof that Williams was sick of doing Potter, it's not true. Williams had too many other scores on his plate that he wanted to do. So he did them and not Potter.

 

The 'too busy' line doesn't really explain why he isn't doing OOTP, though. He isn't doing any scores next year, as far as I know.

 

Williams was asked about this recently, and said that he had to opt out because of schedule conflicts. Not that he's really too... honest in interviews.

 

Yeah, he's hardly going to say: "I opted out because I HATE DOING HARRY POTTER SCORES!!!", and then proceed to hit the interviewer about the head with his baton, is he?

But the fact that he isn't going to say it doesn't mean it's true, either. I'd be actually slightly puzzled if it were true, as probably his most creative work in the last 6 or 7 years was POA.

 

No the reason why he is not doing OOTP is more that once Williams steps out of a franchise he doesn't step back in.

 

I certainly agree. "MAGIC WORKS" is definetely the most vomit inducing. It just makes me cringe thinking about it.

What has han_solo been smoking?!

 

Hence the dangers of listening to pop music.

 

Well I like all music so some pop music can be good.

and I liked all three songs a lot because I don't just like one or two types of music I like it all. I except all music as it is.

and Magic Works is a very good songs. To bad this thread is full of people who clearly don't like any songs that have WORDS!

 

I'm a big fan of musicals. Slowing getting into classic rock, as well.

The GoF songs still suck, to me. Is there any music you DON'T like, Han?

 

All songs have words, silly!

 

I have never heard a song without words.