Is Hans Zimmer overrated as a composer?

[Kaleb Davis]

Went through an hour long compilation of Zimmers compositions and, yes, while there are some interesting and creative compositions (e.g. “now we are free”), plenty (I find) is simple chord progressions with excellent sound design.

Not trying to poke on Zimmer here, and with all respect, but what is the opinion in the community?

I know Verta has criticism on the unrealistic compositions, from an orchestral perspective, but thats not the issue here really, could it be that Zimmer just does quite simple chord progressions sound amazingly good in the commercial field?

Is this question allowed to ask, or am I going too close to something holy here?

Label me an HZ fan to straw-man my opinion away, however: an absolutely excellent sound designer, masterful at forming music that serves the story and characters in novel ways without slapping long themes on the hero / villain (The Dark Knight, Pirates, Sherlock are examples), fathered a unique sound in film scores that have been copied by many ever since Gladiator, and let's not forget that he scored The Lion King (that one causes cognitive dissonance in some people). No, he's not Williams (and I love JW as well), no, he doesn't make the most sophisticated orchestrations and long, romantic melodies, and no, his music cues that aren't main themes and action scenes aren't that worth listening to without the film, but he's a damn good composer for the medium he serves. I think the reason why he is seen as overrated these days is because film directors want him making that iconic sound of his over and over, and worse; many, MANY composers have imitated his sound to death (BRAAAAWM, for example). I think comparing Zimmer, Williams, Powell, Newman, etc., is like comparing apples to oranges.

EDIT: I live in Taiwan, so we already had Christmas, That's why I'm posting on Christmas morning for US folk!

 

[Nevermeister]

Big fan here! It was 2006, i went to local cinema to watch Dead Man's chest. That day i felt in love for film music.
Before then i was a diehard rocker, after that he created a weirdo. Now i love the music of Zimmer, Williams, thomas Newman, John Debney etc. It doesn't matter if their music is complicated or not, their music moves people and it serves the movies in a sublime way. That's the only thing that matters. Sorry for poor english. Merry Christmas to all.

 

[ProfoundSilence]

Hard to say really... never sure if you're hearing HZ or RC, and Hollywood suffers from severe nepotism issues.

It's far safer to hire a blanket name like zimmer even if a lot of work is sourced to other talent underneath him... because no name creative people don't sell tickets - and HZ's quality control does help sell tickets. He gets the job done 100% of the time, and I doubt any of the producers care how. The critique of simple music however is unwarranted... HZ scores are completely digestible by the commonfolk, and that's priceless.

It's film music - not a concerto. He's there to add to the images on the screen, not the other way around. Criticizing simple film music is extremely disconnected from what regular people want - and quite ivory tower. You don't need 5/8 over 13/16 polymeters, quintuplets, or 12 tone serialism to score a parent tucking their child in at night.

 

[Kevin Fortin]

Overrated by which or whose criteria? Perhaps the question undermines itself.

 

[Dave Connor]

Objectively, Hans Zimmer is a world class composer. I say that because if you compare {for example} his minimalist textures such as in the Batman trilogy, to acknowledged world class ‘legit’ composers works such as John Adams (Harmonielehre) and Phillip Glass (Akhnaten) you see what level of talent is operating in this ‘film’ composer. Instead of the type of weak copied-writing you find in James Horner’s Shostakovich emulations (Patriot Games) Hans completely makes the style his own and in every way. It is his hybrid orchestral sound, his rhythmic sense and percussion instrument choices, his far more arresting and hip modulations and gorgeous low end bass movement and his sense of drama, passion and excitement. In essence, he takes the minimalist style into it’s next phase of development and nearly spoils the listener to its less adventurous beginnings.

When a film composer decides to tackle and employ a modern form in Western Art Music and hits that type of grand-slam homerun it can be none other than the work of a gargantuan talent. Consider both Korngold’s and Steiner’s Mahler emulations in Elizabeth and Essex and Gone with the Wind (both from the 6th symphony): they are pitiful copy and paste attempts (and I like those two composers as I like Horner.)

If you consider that the above is HZ doing just one of the countless styles he writes in (most of which are his own inventions) you realize you should evaluate each on its own terms and merits. For some strange reason people will latch on to {say} the Pirates and Gladiator large and more simple gestures and consider that his ‘style.’ Not just an unscientific survey but unfair and inaccurate. Whether, The Pacific, The Thin Red Line or whatever, he hardly struggles at subtle informed writing but excels at it - and beautifully.

You could write not just a chapter but a book on HZ’s pure sound experiments and that is essentially a completely diffferent art and science to ‘composition’. Once again he is a leader in the field and the definition of world-class. I think he is underrated at the present time but will undergo a serious more scientific analysis and be recognized not just as the historic innovator he already is but as an immensely talented pure composer, apart from the numerous other signature devices he has invented or borrowed. The guy is a true phenomenon.

 

[gjelul]

You keep hearing this ”two types of film composers” or the ”williams school and the zimmer school”. Is it really a simple dichotomy like that, or is this just some phrase you guys learned to repeat like parrots.

These days they even say we got something like 100 genders. To distance from the cult, me saying there are 542 types of film composers. The 3 chord zimmer style with perfect pitch is one of them.

To simplify it for you, there is film composers that know how to read music, and film composers that do not know how to read music. Zimmer, etc. fits in one, Williams, etc. fits in another.

As for repeating like parrots, this is my first time expressing my opinion as this topic is raised. If too much for you then maybe you should skip it. However, if you want to enlighten us with your opinion on the topic, please do so.

Peace and Merry Xmas!

 

[SterlingArcher]

Merry Christmas!
Please don’t forget that none of you actually know me. I’ve become a sort of brand to most people. They forget that I’m actually just a normal guy inside this hurricane. Not the greatest composer, not a good businessman (I stay as far from the business side as I can...) and I’ve been lucky and grateful to the directors that let me run with my ideas. I do what I do because I love it. And I’m unemployable and without any other qualifications.
But I thought Henry Jackman was under appreciated when I first met him. He, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, Lorne Balfe, Ramin Djawadi - we where just Musicians...
I can’t speak for myself, but here is a thing I just saw of Henry’s...

When it comes to all movies, but especially comic book movies, two of the absolute benchmarks for me are The Dark Knight and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The scores of those films by Rctec and Henry are one of the major contributing factors to my great, great love of those films.

 

[NoamL]

Gracious response to a ridiculous thread.

BTW Jackman is incredible. Should have been nominated for Jumanji!

 

[SterlingArcher]

Reading through all of the responses in this thread reminded me of this video which I'll post below. It may provide some insight to the discussion, it may not. But it certainly was interesting to me. Have A Look.

A Theory Of Film Music

 

[germancomponist]

(which actually comes easiest to me, but doesn’t really work for most films, I feel...)

+1
"I feel" ...., adorable!
I think, all your music is the result about what you feelt when you saw the pictures.Yes, no?

 

[Rctec]

+1
"I feel" ...., adorable!
I think, all your music is the result about what you feelt when you saw the pictures.Yes, no?

Well, sort off. But you know what I really try to “feel”? What’s inside the psychology of the writer/director. That’s where the film is buried. At the end it all turns into a long quasi-psychology session. A Terry Malick (for example) will have things hidden away in his psyche that you need to dig out of him, if you want to make a coherent score...since he writes, shoots and directs from a very subconscious place. All the good one’s do. At the end, all I do is score dreams. I try to be as good a composer as I am at that moment in time. We all do. Not having gone to music school I have a weirdly clean palette, which means I have to approach my music from a non-formal way and invent my own devices - for better or for worse. I was never taken down path of dissecting or intellectualizing music to a place where I couldn’t find the simple pleasure in I-IV-V. Plus, I’m not completely untrained. Just not in a normal and formal way. I learned by being right there at the beginning of sequencers, so funnily in one way I was ahead of what they where teaching, so it only makes sense to me to be fluent at reading music in a key-editor (after all, a far more precise way of notating music, since each note is expressed not just in pitch and length, but with a full set of dynamic attributes attached) than black dots on a page.
Curiously, the two directors I first worked with and maybe learned the most from, just died recently within two weeks of each other: Nic Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci. Both are considered as “intellectual”, but I experienced them as great visualists and dreamers. I was only a small part of it, but when I saw the first cut of “The Last Emperor”, it was in linear time. The finished film (as is every single Nic Roeg film...) was a dance with time...

...as far as who the best Beatle was? There is no such thing. The strength was that they all contributed, collaborated, brought out the best in each other (is there a more maligned drummer than Ringo, while most real musicians and great drummers recognize how integral and musical he was to their songs) - as did George Martin, who gave me my first job... so, Thank You, George!

-H-

 

[kevthurman]

Yes.

 

[kevthurman]

He's not overrated. Hans is not a traditional composer in the John Williams sense of the word.He can do that stuff, but his bread and butter is more in making soundscapes. It's almost like he's a sound designer with notes.
And the little Zimmer wannabes all try and draw from the same thing, the "epic' sound, with the low string ostinatos, etc. But he's more than that. Maybe he's not Herrmann or Williams, but nobody could have written a more appropriate score for POTC, or Inception, or many others. I'm not saying he's my favorite composer (though he's up there) but he's definitely not overrated.

I really don't think he can do that stuff anywhere near the level of someone like John Williams. Especially not something like Star Wars or Indiana Jones.

 

[Paul Owen]

I really don't think he can do that stuff anywhere near the level of someone like John Williams. Especially not something like Star Wars or Indiana Jones.

What really bothers me about these kind of threads is how people, through the protection and anonymity of their screens and profile tags/names feel the need to criticise someone's work and career, chime in about one's perceived weaknesses or subject someone to the kind of scrutiny that is not becoming of what they have achieved. How helpful is it really to create a thread like this when there's no defined objective?

Musicians helping musicians? Nope.

I like this forum and find the wealth of knowledge valuable to the point that I visit regularly but feel there is a contingent of butt hurt idiots wanting to disable the train of good feeling. Go to Twitter, you'll settle in well there.

One last thing, remember when people like Thomas Bergersen were on here? They f*cked off cos of threads like this. I think Daniel James nearly did for the same reason.

A select few on here would do well to remember that Hans, DJ and others don't have to be here and provide knowledge that hobbyists (like me) would pay for and as my mum keeps telling me "don't look a gift horse in the mouth".

All the best

 

[Parsifal666]

I don't know of any modern composer who has taken so many people along with him. You really should do your research because Hans has helped so many other writers and players and always given them credit.

This kind of thread is depressing and why I have stayed away from VI for the past couple of years. Bummer, really.

Maybe it's because of the way you put things...as if you don't know what you're talking about. I made sure to mention above that I was simply speculating (you seem to have conveniently missed that).

I put on no pretense of authority, but from what you've written above you most certainly do...without giving us any clue as to what/whom gave you this authority. My gut tells me nobody.

Perhaps you really should do your research when it comes to this thread...either that or take a nice nap before you post.

 

[Parsifal666]

If you rate him as a good composer, who has a good eye for music to picture, who knows how to add color and texture to a film, and who knows how to move the story along, then he's not overrated.

If you rate him as one of the best composers ever, and put him in the same league as John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and Bernard Hermann, then he is overrated.

I sympathize with this (though you left out Rozsa and Alfred Newman); however for his time I imagine HZ is considered as impactful as those other names. It's only from the big picture (taking into account all time frames and composers) that he might suffer a bit, but to be honest the more I think about this the more I'm sympathetic to HZ as a fine composer whom probably should be taken according to his own, highly esteemed, efforts.

 

[Jono]

The short answer is no....

 

[Parsifal666]

A select few on here would do well to remember that Hans and others don't have to be here and provide knowledge that hobbyists (like me) would pay for and as my mum keeps telling me "don't look a gift horse in the mouth".

All the best

I could be wrong, but having been here for years and seen plenty of HZ's posts, it seems to me he wants to be here...likes it! Forgetting the trolls and people who seem determined to force their misguided views on the rest of us, Vi-Control is a good place to hang out!

 

[Erick - BVA]

Overrated by which or whose criteria? Perhaps the question undermines itself.

Exactly, isn't this all subjective?
There is no question that Hans Zimmer has merit and is extremely talented.
But can one compare his music to Wagner's? No. But I'm sure that's not the point. (some of you probably don't even like Wagner's music)
All composer's have something to offer. My opinion is that there is good music and bad music, and mediocre music. He probably has written music matching all 3 of those criteria. And what composer hasn't?
I despise the idea that it's not "realistic" --you know, can't be orchestrated or anything. Who cares?
To me it would be similar to hundreds of years ago when they were like "we're going to write this on paper? we're not going to memorize it?".....modern day version "we're not going to write this down or make it orchestrate-able? It's only possible through computer manipulation and sound design?"
All that matters to me is the end result.
That being said, he's completely capable of writing his music for an orchestra.

 

[Paul Owen]

I could be wrong, but having been here for years and seen plenty of HZ's posts, it seems to me he wants to be here...likes it! Forgetting the trolls and people who seem determined to force their misguided views on the rest of us, Vi-Control is a good place to hang out!

I agree completely and too, like popping in. It's just threads like this are completely unnecessary especially when they're designed to provoke a response (in the hope) that they mirror the OP's own views.

As for Hans, I'm guessing you're right, he didn't get to where he is being a pussy and caring about what others think...