The Chef Reviews Transformers: The Score

The Chef

And the score for the new Transformers movie is Satisfied Viewers 359,518,511, Whiny Fanboys 7. Sorry, wrong score. And I didn't even make that joke up; The Chef stole it from Kalidor on the Allspark boards. Regardless, The Chef got his grubby mitts on a copy of the finally-released score album from Transformers and sat down to listen to it. Not surprisingly, The Chef (himself not a Whiny Fanboy) liked it, even though it's barely something original.

First, there is the usual caveat when dealing with score albums. The distribution for Transformers: The Score is shoddy, with some stores not receiving it at all this week, despite the official street date of October 9th. This is probably due to the general lack of respect movie scores receive, even though film buffs like myself enjoy them. Your best hope of getting the album with a minimum of trouble is online through sites like Amazon. The Chef, however, got lucky and found a copy at Borders, on the rack of new CDs they hadn't put out yet. You, young Padawan, can't count on being as lucky as The Chef. Borders had it marked at the exorbitant price of $18.99, but fortunately I had an email coupon for 30% off.

The Transformers score is different than you'd expect from a movie about giant robots duking it out while crashing through busses and generally blowing as much shit up as possible. In fact, it's downright haunting. The action sequences in the movie mostly rely on the alternative-rock of the soundtrack, leaving composer Steve Jablonsky (whose name sounds like either a porn star or a Silicon Valley magnate) to fill in the quieter moments and character themes.

Overall, the sound is a typical Michael Bay Action Movie Score: muted horns, ethereal vocals, and dramatic strings. Think Armageddon, but done better (and for the record, The Chef liked Armageddon, which definitely calls the old boy's taste into question). However, like the soundtrack for the 1986 Transformers animated movie, it goes beyond its little-respected genre to be something more.

There are 20 tracks here, a good number that includes most (not all) of the music used in the movie, with some being extended for the album. They have also fixed the spelling errors in the track listing that originally appeared online. Some thoughts on the individual tracks, in no particular order (well, okay, they're in the order they appear on the album, but the album doesn't follow the movie):

• "Autobots" is the opening theme of the movie, and sounds appropriately epic. Its counterpart, "Decepticons", is more ominous, like some kind of robo-Satanic chant. You can almost see a group of robotic cultists boogying down to it while chanting, "Ia, ia, Unicron fthagen!" (not that Unicron exists in the movie's continuity, but still).

• "The All Spark" starts light and ethereal, with faint halleluiahs, but ends on more epic notes. Nice bit.

• "Deciphering the Signal" is, I assume, the theme for Maggie and Glen when they're doing their alien hacker-catching act. Kind of a pounding, driving mode here, building up to the big revelation.

• "Optimus" is one of the best pieces here, a reworking of the Autobot theme into a piece full of Celtic woodwinds that, to me, sums up everything that is all of the versions of the Autobot leader and his heirs (like Rodimus Prime and Optimus Primal). You can almost hear the comforting voice of Peter Cullen (or Gary Chalk, for that matter) over it. This one sends a chill up my spine.

• "Bumblebee" is another reworking of the Autobot theme, which I believe comes into play when the yellow bugger is signaling his friends. More dynamic and building than Optimus's theme, and more straightforward heroic.

• "SOCCENT Attack" is the music from Blackout's attack at the beginning of the movie, and reused when Megatron wakes up. Pounding, ominous, and evil. Think of it as Megs's version of the "Imperial March".

• "Sam At The Lake", at first listen, doesn't fit in. It's goofy and it's simple, but it nicely breaks up all of the heavy tracks. It and "Witwicky" are the playful themes for the required squishy sidekicks.

• "Scorponok" reminds me of the theme from Jaws, even though it's much less subtle. If you ever doubted that Transformers was a monster movie, this is the track that will change your mind.

• Opposite "Scorponok" is "Cybertron". For those who aren't regular Transformer fans, in most incarnations of the franchise, Cybertron is a dying world, one torn apart by war. In the movie version, the planet is just plain dead (remember Prime's final transmission at the end) and empty, not only destroyed by war but with the All Spark gone, one with no way of being repopulated. This piece captures that feel perfectly - an ancient civilization lost forever.

• "Arrival To Earth", its grammatically incorrect name notwithstanding, is the track everyone wanted. It starts with the Autobots descending as protoforms (fancy fan-parlance for those pre-Earth-mode forms), crashing, scanning their alternate modes, and gathering. Wow.

• "Downtown Battle"/"You're A Soldier Now": Grouping these two together. Both are pretty typical action movie stuff, from the Big Fight At The End.

I could say more about this, but The Chef has gone on long enough. To sum up, this is a score that is much better than it should be from a movie that was much better than it should have been. For anyone who liked the movie and/or likes science fiction/action soundtracks, I'd recommend this album pretty highly, if you can find it. Besides, buying it would annoy the Whiny Fanboys who still think Optimus Prime should be a cabover semi, and who doesn't love doing that?

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