Watchmen

When it was announced that Tyler Bates was going to helm the all new adaption of Watchmen many film music fans must have slapped their foreheads in disappointment. Watchmen, a film that needed a bold yet structured score to cover each layer of detail in that universe, was going to receive a score from someone who considered sound design to be music composing. Was it a right choice? Possibly yes and no.

The album is opened off nicely with "Rescue Mission", which pumps up the guitars and somehow manages to create a heroic motif that resembles some of Danny Elfman's superhero material. These bold motifs are later repeated in "Silk Spectre", to note. As the surprisingly short album treks along, Bates toys around with Rorschack's theme, a darker melody that contains a mixture of simple soundscapes and small notes. Throughout the album (especially in "The Last Laugh") Bates unlocks his horror score side and brings out harsh guitar themes. Dissapointingly, the action material is highly lacking. "Prison Fight" and "Countdown" are the only two cues that amount to more than mellow music and both are highly disappointing, in each respect. Truthfully, the best cue on the album is Requiem, sampled from Mozart.

To be fair, taking on a project like this is very daunting and difficult. Tyler Bates doesn't manage to even grasp the level of music that is needed for a film like this. In the film itself, Bate's music is mostly overshadowed by 60's/70's era songs and a beautiful sample of music from Philip Glass. Even Mozart's Requiem stands out more than Bate's score. Sadly, the music is just not strong. The album itself is also very poor, only containing 40 minutes of repetitive, mellow music while not featuring some of the better musical highlights in the film. Overall, a very poor attempt by Bates.