https://collider.com/backdraft-movie-is-it-good/
It turns out embarrassing hero worship bordering on propaganda isn't the kind of thing people like to revisit.
does William Baldwin play the person William Baldwin plays, because William Baldwin can't act?
shareI'm surprised they even made a sequel to this and with Billy Baldwin
shareYeah... until the next 9/11 when worshipping people who sacrifice themselves for the safety of others for almost no money at all gets back in style.
share"...for almost no money at all..."
I know fire fighters and cops, and they make good salaries with great benefits and early retirement. Events like "9/11" are extremely rare, and most fire fighters and cops have never experienced anything near that level of danger.
The writers of collider are idiots that belong at MSNBC. I think there's still plenty to love in Backdraft and it's awesome knowing all the staged fire sequences are real.
shareBackdraft is a good movie.
You have Ron Howard directing. In camera special effects (no CGI). Suspenseful scenes, lots of drama and action. Hans Zimmer score (when he did decent scores). A great cast with Kurt Russell, Rebecca De Mornay, Scott Glenn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, JT Walsh, Robert De Niro.
What more do you want?
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Out of curiosity, when did Hans Zimmer stop doing decent scores? His work has been amazing for 30+ years.
shareLast Samurai was his last good score. Everything since has been The Pirates of the Caribbean score repackaged in various ways.
His Dark Knight score is just the search scene music from Black Rain expanded out.
I noticed that POTC had some re-hashed themes from Gladiator (which I think is incredible) but I definitely liked the themes from the Dark Knight and I really thought Interstellar's was a nice departure from the thundering scores that many action movies he's worked on.
shareHe's definitely a good composer but he recycles a lot of stuff. It's obviously hard to keep creating fresh scores for films, though, so I can't be hard on him.
He needs to get back to doing melodic scores like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-3Wg5LppXk
Oh man, that is an INCREDIBLE score! I agree that he, and others, do recycle certain themes - I think that's the nature of the industry they're in. But, yeah, Black Hawk Down is sublime. I have also grown to really like Steve Jablonsky's work - and I know he worked with Zimmer on some stuff. I don't care for the Transformer movies (except the 2007 one) but Steve's score on those is great.
Always good to chat with someone who appreciates the movie music.
Yes, 'Leave No Man Behind' is one of the best pieces of film scoring from this century. I can't think of many other pieces that can match that. The music completely transformed BHD and made it a better film which is what the best scores do.
Here's another really good Zimmer piece, this one from Pearl Harbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxrmYSckgUQ
Always good to chat with someone who appreciates the movie music
Oh man, you had to go there! Haha!
Howard Shore - Return of the King (from the movie of the same name), in fact, most of the scores from all three movies in the trilogy are amazing
Alan Silvestri - The Real Hero (Avengers: Endgame) and Portals is badass... I also liked his work in Cast Away and Forrest Gump as well as Contact (even though that's a rehashing of Forrest Gump's music)
Hans Zimmer (of course) - Days of Thunder, Gladiator, Hannibal, Backdraft, Black Hawk Down, Top Gun: Maverick, too many others to list
Steve Jablonsky - Lone Survivor, Transformers (the first two films have great scores), The Island ("My Name is Lincoln" is my all-time favorite movie piece of music)
James Newton Howard - Titanic (some of those pieces are really beautiful)
Anthony Marinelli - Young Guns
Bill Conti - The Right Stuff (this one is one of my favorites that got me into film scores)
John Debney - Jobs (2013), I really love the "Recruiting Team Macintosh" piece and there's also Daniel Pemberton that did the Steve Jobs movie (2015). I love the "Revenge" piece and the "1998 The New iMac". Very synthy and just catchy.
There's a few others... Danny Elfman is really great for the Burton films and others.
Much respect to the OG John Williams of course, but I always regarded his music as "Themes" where some of the modern composers make "songs". It's hard to describe sometimes.
Some very good choices in there. Lone Survivor was a great score, I think there was some Explosions In The Sky in there as well, very melodic and invigorating music. Zimmer's Days of Thunder and Backdraft were seminal scores, really inspired a lot of music in the the 90s. Silvestri and Conti are among the best. Do you mean James Horner for Titanic?
That's interesting you like the score to the first Young Guns, that's an unorthodox choice, certainly with its use of electric guitars over an orchestra.
As for me, I like...
John Williams - Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back, Jaws, Jaws 2 (his most underrated, incredible undersea themes)
Jerry Goldsmith - Tora Tora Tora, First Blood, Rambo II, Gremlins, The Omen I & II, Total Recall, The Ghost and the Darkness, Hoosiers/Best Shot, Burbs, Innerspace
John Carpenter - Escape from New York
Ennio Morricone - Casualties of War, The Untouchables
Bill Conti - Rocky I & II, Masters of the Universe, Bad Boys (1983)
Alan Silvestri - Young Guns II
Harold Feltermeyer - Top Gun
Sylvester Levay - Navy Seals, Airwolf
Trevor Rabin - Con Air, Deep Blue Sea
Robert Folk - Toy Soldiers
Basil Poledouris - Red Dawn, Conan The Barbarian, Starship Troopers
Hans Zimmer - Black Rain, Black Hawk Down, The Last Samurai, Pearl Harbor
I take it by your name, you're a VH fan? If so, Van Hagar or Diamond Dave?
You nailed some excellent choices there too. I love the Toy Soldiers movie, totally underrated. Basil Poledouris is great for those thundering scores. I love the Klendathu Drop from Starship Troopers. Harold Faltermeyer is outstanding. For so many years, I wanted the track from the training sequence which is a play on Cheap Trick's "Mighty Wings" and they just recently re-released the expanded score. Jerry Goldsmith is great too - a lot of catchy pieces in the movies you mentioned.
I know the first Young Guns is different but I think that's why I liked it. I am an instrumental guitarist (well, I used to be - all vocal now) but I grew up listening to the shredders and I liked the guitarists that you could "sing along to" whilst enjoying a barrage of arpeggios, haha.
Van Halen... well, to put it simply - yes to both. I think they both brought value to Eddie's playing. Humans Being, Dreams, Dance The Night Away, Atomic Punk, Ain't Talkin', Hot For Teacher and even Tattoo. Different singers, different vibe but unmistakably Eddie!
Oh, and thank you for the correction on Titanic's score. It was late, haha.
Great to see someone who knows the Toy Soldiers score, a great piece from a really underappreciated movie. Klendathu Drop is a classic. Yeah, that Mighty Wings instrumental is great, it's also a great song in itself, encapsulates how fun the 80s seemed to be.
What kind of shredders are you a fan of? Do you like guys like Schenker?
I agree. I don't think anything beats Van Halen I but they were a good band with Hagar as well.
Schenker is a great player - he influenced a ton of people. I've been into the Shrapnel folks (Vinnie Moore, Tony MacAlpine, Jason Becker) to the mainstream guys (Steve Vai, Eric Johnson) and the fringe ones (Shawn Lane, Michael Romeo, Guthrie Govan). I agree that King Eddie was good in both versions of VH. I was lucky in that I got to see him live a bunch of times throughout my life.
Oh, and I watched Toy Soldiers again last night. That still holds up!
lol 'shrapnel'. I like that term.
Toy Soldiers is an early 90s classic. Great combination of story, characters, setting and music.
And yes, Pearl Harbor is a great score with some good soundtrack choices as well.
What are your favorite scores/composers?
For me his latest interesting scores are Interstellar, Man of Steel and Amazing Spider-Man 2. So it's been now ten years of nothing particularly interesting, altough I haven't listened everything he's done, I confess.
sharePresent day firefighters should still be considered as heroes for what they do.
sharewhat a load of self indulgent click bait drivel
the bit mentioned is:
One of the major things that sticks out during Backdraft’s slightly too long 137-minute runtime is that the movie is unabashed hero worship at its core. It treats firefighters like the unimpeachable avatars of public service to such a degree that it’s almost hard to believe it was released 10 years before 9/11
Which is not even true if you remember the story.
Other than that its just a loooong rambling picking at the film to make some column inches .