Hercules Soundtrack

This is my first Fernando Velazquez soundtrack. According to the liner notes in the CD, Director Brett Ratner was impressed by Velazquez's "The Impossible" score and brought him on board to provide the music for Hercules. I haven't seen the movie yet but the trailer's look cool. It seems like Hollywood is on a Hercules kick right now having released two films within a short period of time based off the mythological hero. The Velazquez score is largely what you'd expect to find for a film of this nature. There is plenty of epic sounding action music that thankfully is complimented with a "Hercules theme". This is good news because I really hate it when a composer slams a score with tons of action noise and doesn't even bother to give the heroes or villains any sort of musical reference. Track one starts the journey with a big bang introducing us to the major theme of the hero. We hear this again repeated in various ways throughout the score. Brass and percussion pound out the theme and upon first listening to it...it really reminded me of Brian Tyler's "Ironman 3" theme. Maybe it's just the similar instrumentation. Track 2, "Pirate Camp", really throws in a twist that took me back for a second. The composer adds a drum kit to the mix and to me it just doesn't feel right. It seems out of place when compared to what makes up the majority of the score. We hear this drum kit again in Track 17, "Dungeon & I am Hercules". The drum kit makes these cues stand out a bit too much for me.The score isn't all about the action music. Velazquez has incorporated some very nice subtle pieces that you'll be wanting more of. Tracks 5, 6, 8 are some of my favorites. Track 8, "I Will Believe in You" has some really nice choir work in it. These are shorter cues that obviously are focusing on more emotional moments in the movie. The longer tracks in the score are dedicated to what fans what to see more of anyway....the action sequences. These cues are typically 6 plus minutes. The entire score runs at 1 hour and 6 minutes. The standout tracks for me would be 22-25. I especially enjoyed the "Alternate Ending" cue and a real standout is the last track, "Choir Theme". It is a great cue that will give you goosebumps.The CD is released through the Sony music label and the book inside contains liner notes from Mark Helfrich who was the editor for the film. He provides some insight on the movie and the scoring and has some pretty interesting facts about how things came about. The book also has photos from the movie. Looking at the photos from the movie, Dwayne Johnson looks like a giant compared to everyone around him! He certainly is a great pick for Hercules.Not bad for my first Velazquez score. We've got some great action music that incorporates thematic material and we also have some very well done emotionally driven cues to slow things down a bit. I'm glad they released the alternate ending music as well as the choir theme at the end of the disc too. I just didn't care too much for the drum kit when it comes in. To me it makes the score seem a little cartoonish and out of place. I think fans of movie scores are going to like this one so I recommend!

I like collecting soundtrack albums of some of my favorite movies. This is one of them. Fernando Velazquez did a good job of composing the music for this movie.

how cool is that

Nice power play while data processing

I bought this CD thinking that the 'Into the Jungle' song was on it, and it is not! But the CD is good if you are into symphonic music.

There have been lots of films made about Hercules, the muscle-bound demi-god from Greek mythology, over the years. Steve Reeves played him in the classic Italian ‘swords and sandals’ movie in 1957, Arnold Schwarzenegger played him in his film debut in Hercules in New York in 1970, and Kellan Lutz played him in The Legend of Hercules just a few months ago, but in this latest version directed by Brett Ratner the bulging biceps and undersized loincloth are sported by former wrestling star The Rock, now thespianning under his real name, Dwayne Johnson. The film is based on the comic book series by Steve Moore and is a tale of revenge and betrayal involving the death of Hercules’s wife and sons years previously. The film co-stars Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Joseph Fiennes, Peter Mullan and John Hurt, and has done pretty brisk business at the box office in a summer crowded with action blockbusters.Whatever you may think of Brett Ratner as a director, one thing that cannot be disputed is his excellent taste in film music. Ratner gave Lalo Schifrin a brief late-career renaissance via the Rush Hour movies, hired Danny Elfman for The Family Man and Red Dragon, and brought John Powell into the world of super heroes with X-Men: First Class. For Hercules, Ratner gave a first mainstream Hollywood assignment to Spanish composer Fernando Velázquez, one of the leading lights in the group of outstanding young Spanish and Spain-based composers that includes Roque Baños, Federico Jusid, Arnau Bataller and Vìctor Reyes. Velázquez’s scores for films such as El Orfanato, El Mal Ajeno, Mama and The Impossible show him to be a wonderful dramatist capable of truly beautiful orchestral themes and moments of great power. Hercules is a different animal, though, and intentionally so: this is Velázquez’s first attempt at a balls-to-the-wall contemporary action score.I’ve heard some commentators compare Velázquez’s score for Hercules unfavorably with some of the lesser action-adventure works to emerge from Remote Control over the past few years. I have also read some comments about how Hercules is a step down for him, and how he seems to have ‘dumbed down’ his music from its usual standard in order to meet the lower expectations of less discerning Hollywood executives. However, I think that to dismiss this score in such a way is doing a disservice to Velázquez. Yes, there are more electronic elements in this score than we have heard from Velázquez before, and yes, there are even some hard-edged rock and heavy metal moments that are quite unexpected. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the score is still fully orchestral, and very powerful; rather than comparing it to the work of someone like Steve Jablonsky, a better comparison may be John Debney’s score for The Scorpion King, Patrick Doyle’s Thor, or even Joel Goldsmith’s Kull the Conqueror, and in those terms Hercules actually succeeds very well. As was also the case with Debney and Doyle, Velázquez’s knowledge of the orchestra, and his penchant for interesting performance flourishes and artistic timbres, come shining through regularly, elevating the score way beyond the usual run-of-the-mill Hollywood blockbuster mush many of us have come to lament over the last few years.The score’s main theme, which is introduced during the first cue “Son of Zeus”, is outstanding. Strong, majestic, often accompanied by a choir, and versatile enough to play as an action motif, a more heroic anthem, and something more reflective and thoughtful, Hercules’s Theme is one of the most memorable things Velázquez has written in his career thus far. It ties the score together as a leitmotif for the might and nobility of the central character, and provides an anchor point from which Velázquez can develop all his various creative touches in the orchestration and performance as the score progresses. The conclusive performances of the theme towards the end of the score are the best, with “Comrades Stand Together”, “Alternative Ending” and the emotionally stirring “End Titles” being especially noteworthy, while the chorus-only version of the theme in the score’s very last track further highlights its malleability.Some of the compositional embellishments Velázquez introduces into his music are superb, and remind me of the similar flamboyant accoutrements James Horner would insert into scores like Krull, for no other reason than he was amusing himself and having fun. “Lord Cotys’ Palace”, for example, has a regal, pompous little march for cellos that illustrates the formalities of courtly life that Hercules must endure prior to his next bout of skull-crushing. Some of the intricate ostinatos the string section performs are very impressive, as is the phrasing in the brass (just listen to those triplets in “Dungeon & I Am Hercules”!), while some the percussion patterns Velázquez uses to underpin his action sequences are clever and complicated. There are a couple of quieter moments too, including a beautiful performance of the main theme in “The Lion’s Tooth” for flute and harp that is just gorgeous.The action music which dominates much of the score is excellent, with the most memorable moments coming during the magnificent pair “Bessi’s Valley” and “Bessi-Battle”. This 12-minute tour-de-force takes some inspiration from the Brian Tyler school of action scoring; after a few minutes of anticipatory build-up for choir, rattling percussion, nervously energetic strings, and a number of industrial-style electronic pulses that are sure to annoy a great deal of people, everything explodes into a full-throated battle sequence of truly epic proportions that just doesn’t let up. Velázquez builds much of his action music around a repeated five-note motif in the strings, and this ostinato underpins much of the rest of the action going forward. When the main Hercules theme emerges from the rhythms during the second half of the cue, the effect is startlingly good, and the secondary theme that emerges at the 5:13 mark is almost as satisfying as the primary identity – so much so, that I wish the score featured it more frequently.Elsewhere, the trumpet fanfares that herald the “Arrival at Lord Cotys’ City” are bold and arrogant, while the swirling string writing and bright trumpet calls in “Training” have the vaguest hint of Bill Conti’s Rocky about them. “Centaurs” and “The Battle” build on the material introduced in the “Bessi Battle”, but with a larger choral element and more prominent performances of the main theme, while “Dungeon & I Am Hercules” features a brief guest appearance from the familiar ‘wailing woman’ vocal effect, which has now gone so far beyond cliché that it’s almost ironic.Then there are the rock elements, which include an electric guitar and an enhanced percussion section including tapped cymbals, and feature prominently in cues such as “Pirates Camp”, “Lord Cotys’ Palace”, the second half of “Dungeon & I Am Hercules” and “Kill Eurystheus”. These are likely to be the score’s most divisive parts and, at this point, it all comes down to a matter of taste; you either like them, or you don’t, and no amount of purple prose is going to convince you one way or the other. Personally, I think they sound great; the Hercules of legend was a rock star of his time, and the guitar anthems Velázquez introduces suit the swagger that Dwayne Johnson brings to the title role.Compared to some of the scores I mentioned earlier, like El Orfanato, El Mal Ajeno, Mama and The Impossible, Hercules is certainly not at the same level, and if that is the sort of music you expect to hear in your in Fernando Velázquez scores, then Hercules is likely to leave you open-mouthed and aghast. However, once you’ve picked your chin up off the floor, I’d still encourage people to check this score out. Yes, it adheres to many of the cookie-cutter Hollywood blockbuster clichés we have come to expect, but the compositional imagination and technical excellence that Velázquez has still manages to make itself heard above all the pounding drums and chugging cello ostinatos, and if you approach it with an open mind free of preconceptions, you might be surprised to find yourself enjoying it as much as I did.

The song you are looking for at the end credits is 'Jungle" by X Ambassadors featuring Jamie Commons.

Saw the movie on Netflix, the end of the sound track blew me away. Loved it. Vivian

THE COMPOSER IS NEW TO ME,BUT HAVING I FOUND IT MOST EXCITING AND EASY TO FOLLOW THE TRACKS TO THE FILM.WOULD RECOMMEND THIS CHAP TO ANY FILM MUSIC FOLLOWER.

great cd well packed in mint condition many thanks

Sicher passt die Musik sehr gut zu dem Film, keine Frage. Aber wenn man weiß, wie gut Velazquez eigentlich sein kann, dann ist dies leider nur eine Mittelmäßige arbeit, die zwar ganz nett ist, sich aber zu sehr an Hans Zimmers Action-Einheitsbreikompositionen zu orientieren scheint. Na vielleicht haben die Produzenten das ja so gewollt, deren Musikgeschmack ist in letzter Zeit oft sehr absonderlich in Hollywood. Nur 08/15 und selten wirklich originelles oder Qualität!Trifft in weiten Strecken leider auch auf diese Musik zu!Schade, der Komponist kann mehr - wenn man ihn nur läßt!

... que sería como decir que es igual que las otras y no es así. Los temas acompañan muy bien las imágenes de la película, si bien el tema central se repite tal número de veces que no deja más sitio para otros temas de peso. En cualquier caso es una banda sonora que se deja escuchar independientemente de la película. Respecto al servicio de Amazon, perfecto.

Producto entregado dentro de su plazo y en perfecto estado