Soundtrack Review 2: War of the Worlds

By Douglas Strassler Jul 22, 2005, 12:04 GMT

Not that a piece of music has to be catchy to be great.  It’s just that Williams’ best work with Spielberg – and it has almost all been with Spielberg, including E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List, and one of the most influential film scores of all, Jaws -- has been as spirited as any of the characters in his movies.  Now, there seems to be an inverse effect at play: the characters and the musical score taste like vanilla.

This is a score that doesn’t really work on its own, where most Williams scores do, but doesn’t work in concert with the film either.  He includes a lot of bombast – pulse-pounding chords that should provide jolts with the appropriate visuals of murderous alien invasion but don’t – and also some more subtle, ominous tones.  This is true of the first track, “Prologue,” which includes a muted synthesizer with piano and woodwind notes playing, only to add brass and quickly build up to a crash (when the title sequence appears in the film).  This effect comes off almost as cheesy.  Williams lifts here from the cliché; if War were a comedy, this kind of effect would be campy and successful.  But given how self-serious Spielberg and company are on the movie, these effects are rather laughable.

This soundtrack does not follow the same order in which these pieces appear in the film, which might contribute to a greater thematic effect if the album contained music with lyrics.  Without the scenes from the movie playing along with it, some tracks, like the nine-minute-plus “Escape from the Basket” seem to be merely filler.  The tracks themselves divide among several distinct sounds.  There are several numbers, including “Probing the Basement” and “The Confrontation with Ogilvy” that demonstrate great string proficiency.  “Ray and Rachel” and “Reaching the Country,” combines soft strings and horns.  Williams also adds in horns on the climactic “The Separation of the Family,” a scene that even with music never realizes its full dramatic potential.

Though never thrilling, the War of the Worlds soundtrack makes some attempts at excitement with middling effect when Williams attempts a more military sound, as he does on “The Return to Boston,”  “The Attack on the Car” and, to a lesser extent, “Escape from the City” also create a zip of excitement.  But this music, well-played though it is, never generates excitement that lasts very long.  Like all of them, this entry in the John Williams canon is worth owning.  But it belongs at the back of the pile.