"Inception" - Hans Zimmer

Inception

Composer: Hans Zimmer

Release date: July 13, 2010

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Amazon users rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

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All About Soundtracks Review:
Inception is the third collaboration between director Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer. For this score, Zimmer creates a soundscape that is, well, different.
(Read more.)


Since his scores (in collaboration with James Newton-Howard) for the new Batman franchise, directed by Nolan himself, Zimmer seems to be relying, unfortunately, in the same type of sounds and electronic samples.
Actually, there are two unforgiving coincidences: one, the rhythm at the end section of the cue Radical Notion presents the exact same rhythm one can hear in the end section of Aggressive Expansion from The Dark Knight; and two, the samples and the middle of One Simple Idea are exactly the ones used on that score.
In fact, a lot of Inception sounds like an expansion of the sound and themes from The Dark Knight. Well, not really an expansion, but just a re-use that bugs a lot.
While in Angels and Demons, Zimmer took the style of The Dark Knight and expanded it with violent choral explosions and ethereal violin solos, in Inception the result comparably terrible.
The first two tracks, Half Remembered Dream and We Built Our Own World are extraordinary, in the sense that they’re able to achieve nothing musically.
Waiting For a Train, the biggest cue on album, was obviously expected to be the trademark climatic-overlong-Zimmer-cue. However, it’s all overlong and nothing climatic.
The last cue, Time, imitating the style from Chevaliers de Sangreal (from The Da Vinci Code) should be a showstopper and a definite highlight. Instead, it turns out to suffer from the same problem that the rest of the score suffers: almost all the tracks are overlong and based on repetition of simple motifs. Nothing of exciting.
The main identity of the score is the brass blasts heard in Dream Is Collapsing and Dream Within a Dream. Even that one is mostly loud music than exciting music, even if the sound is so electronically processed.
Even the refreshing (comparing with the rest of the score) track Mombasa suffers from the problem of the overlenght and repetition.
Zimmer delivers a boring score based on sound design rather than music. For those who praise these abilities in Zimmer, I advise: in a movie production there is a reason for separating the Sounds Effects team and the Music team. Because the score is supposed to be music, not sound.
This score fails to be good music and might let down even some Zimmer hardcore fans, something that I thought I was too, but after this, I’m not sure.
Of one thing I’m sure though. Inception is the let down of the year.

Ups: might please those who like Zimmer's usually heavy-bass electronic music.

Downs: fails to be good music anyway, suffering from extremely long cues and tiring repetition throughout.

Noteworthy tracks: Dream Is Collapsing, Mombasa, Time.

Score note: 3/10

Preview:
Track 3 - Dream Is Collapsing


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