Music Review...

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (score)

Composer: Steve Jablonsky


 Available on iTunes for $9.99 (there was supposed to be a physical release originally too. However, the entry on Amazon and other websites is gone now so I'm not clear if that's coming later or this will be an exclusively digital release).






Track Listing:

1. Dark Side of the Moon
2. Sentinel Prime
3. Lost Signal
4. In Time You'll See
5. Impress Me
6. We Were Gods Once
7. Battle
8. There Is No Plan
9. We All Work for the Decepticons
10. The Fight Will Be Your Own
11. Shockwave's Revenge
12. No Prisoners, Only Trophies
13. The World Needs You Now
14. It's Our Fight
15. I'm Just the Messenger
16. I Promise
17. Our Final Hope

Total Running Time:  59:47


I recently purchased the instrumental soundtrack to the recent live action Transformers movie and decided to share my thoughts. Then I realized there were about the same as my review to the original 2007 score Jablonsky did so I mostly re-posted that here.

In case you don't keep up with this stuff, there are two TF soundtracks to the recent movie. The first one is full of pop/rock songs that are in the movie/inspired by the movie. This is the other one with strictly instrumental music on it (and this is a digital release as previously noted while the other version is also out on CD).

In short, the music is grand and orchestral. It befits an epic storyline full of action and excitement. As with Jablonsky's previous efforts, the music doesn't really stand out in my mind. It's not bad by any means--certainly, it's sufficient for any modern action epic. But it doesn't capture my imagination the way some soundtracks of the past have. The original TF movie soundtrack by Vin Dicola is far more distinctive as are soundtracks like James Horner's beautiful Star Trek scores, John William's Star Wars music and Chris Franke's Babylon 5 compositions.  Interestingly, this time around I caught a couple of tracks that sound as if they were borrowing elements from The Dark Knight ("We Were Gods Once" is an example as is "We All Work for the Decepticons"). It's also possible they just both share a few common elements and I'm hearing stuff that isn't there--but that's a bad commentary on the sameness of so many soundtracks these days.

All and all, a good effort. Not outstanding but still a solid release and worth checking out if you like instrumental soundtracks.