Composed by: Tyler Bates

Released by: Reprise Records March 3, 2009

Watchmen; Big sigh. As a (previous) follower of the work of Mr.Zack Snyder, mostly due to its aesthetic and primarily visual merits, I made the mistake of also watching this. Obviously not knowing how bad it actually is, i sat down through some 186 mins of the director’s cut version (like if the initial 162 of the official release weren’t enough). Watchmen is a very long, shallow, messed up and confused false-scientific nonsense about some aging retired half-super heroes who’re trying to save the world from a third world war between USA and Russia and obviously, from a nuclear holocaust.

Tyler Bates (300) was not as confused as his director and frequent collaborator who dressed his movie with source music ranging from Bob Dylan to Richard Wagner, Mozart, Philip Glass and even Jimi Hendrix. The original score then follows Tyler’s usual recipe, i.e. rock / metal-oriented rhythmic guitar riffs in 300 self-plagiarisms, most notably in the piece “Prison fight” which escorts one of the film’s very few prominent scenes. What fills the rest is the usual messy underscore based on moody electronic synths, percussive loops and sparse female vocals with synth male choirs. The also standardized american electric guitar on overdrive and light distortion is there to create atmosphere too, together with snippets of piano. The pseudo-apocalyptic choirs, orchestra and brass clusters that all sound too fake but are always under the Goldenthal-esque outbursts stamp, couldn’t be absent either. This time they escort some idiotic pseudo-philosophical scenes on planet Mars, and surprise surprise – Graeme Revell’s Red Planet tunes in here too. Overall, it really isn’t as bad as some of his previous efforts, but the striking unbalance of Tyler’s material in contrast to brilliant source music like Philip Glass’ piece “Prophecies” from Koyaanisqatsi is ironic. You’ll enjoy it if you’re used to not-intruding background listens that demand nothing from you. What’s sure though, it that you definitely want to avoid this if you seek any kind of melodic and thematic coherence in your film scores, or musical continuity and character whatsoever.