Danny Elfman to Score "Terminator Salvation"

Should we be worried? Will he finally stop composing on toy pianos and get serious? Not to deride him or anything, some of Elfman's scores are fantastic. But others are not as complimentary as they could be, and they all sound sophomoric to me. This film seems like it could really benefit from a Kronos/Baraka type score with visceral, mechanical score.

Er, ***tones. Not 2nd score.

Elfman is versatile when he wants to be. He can go from the Simpsons theme to Serenada Schizophrenia in a heartbeat, and sure some of his work is gothic dark, but he needs to take a long hard look at Feidel's iconic theme to give the audience something that compliments T4's roots. Ambient scores are fine to fill in the gaps to set the mood when the audience is mostly distracted by the rising action or lingering tension, and Elfman can provide that filler. His Planet of the Apes and Batman soundtracks have the generic darkness, but none of the memorable on-the-fly juxtaposition of loud mechanical clanging with a mellow-tempo'ed main tune that is so much associated with the first and second Cameron terminator films. Even Beltrami, though he tried and provided a decent T3 score, just couldn't pass muster and deliver on anything that surpassed the visual material. I mean, T3 is a filmatic dog, no doubt, with some nice patches, but otherwise disposable if not entirely avoidable, so had Beltrami provides something standout, composed a score that made the movie pop out like heavy weighting in a concept or comic sketch, he would have provided a further detriment to the film. I guess Elfman is a either a safe choice, or everyone else is simply just busy. I'd prefer Clint Mansell or John Murphy. Sunshine's soundtrack is great. But again, either these films, T4 and T3 simply want to tread their own misbegotten path without Cameron's allure, or they just can't match his witty and insightful skill and vision. It seems that these directors and writers truly desire making terminator films but lack the heart and brains to deliver, and they pick composers that can't or won't dig deep to give us something epic. I have no doubt Elfman can deliver a competant score that meets the baseline, generic darkness of the last two films, but he certainly won't offer anything like Feidel's original score track. A bland score for a rather bland movie.

By last two films, I mean T4 and T3.

I'm pretty sure Elfman can't possibly compose anything on a 44-key toy piano. Then again, the tools don't make the artist.