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Top Ten Hans Zimmer Musical Themes

A couple months back, I took a look at the unforgettable musical scores written by the legendary composer John Williams, but for this top ten list, I wanted to spotlight another film composer who has also been among the most influential of the last several decades.  Hans Zimmer may not have as robust a resume as Mr. Williams (and unfortunately he also has fewer trophies as well), but Zimmer’s influence on the soundscape of cinema is just as impactful.  While John Williams had Steven Spielberg and George Lucas , Hans has worked with the likes of Ridley and Tony Scott, Terrence Malick, Guy Ritchie, Denis Villeneuve, and Christopher Nolan.  One of the things that has distinguished Zimmer as a composer is the undeniable modernity of his music.  Some would call his style global in that he combine sounds from many different cultural influences and combines them in a way that makes the music sound unique and unlike anything you’ve heard before.  He has always been an experimental composer, always making the atypical choice in how to use music within a scene.  This has been what has made him such a valuable composer in Hollywood for many years; especially with filmmakers behind big epic productions.  His use of heavy brass, pulse-pounding rhythm, and unconventional beats have made him the king of action movie music.  But, he’s also a highly versatile composer as well having composed for small dramas and romantic comedies in addition to the big epics.  And even in those movies you still see him working on unique rhythms.  Certainly the movies that have spotlighted his work the most have been the big epic films, but what makes his work on those films so memorable is the fact that he was allowed to break the rules of film composition and make the unexpected choice.  This is the guy who had his violists pluck on their strings with razor blade just because it would create a sound unlike anything we’ve heard before.  When you’re making a movie that requires a whole new kind of soundscape for maybe an alien world or a bygone era in time, Hans Zimmer is most often the guy you would want to go to.

Born in West Germany in 1957, Hans was largely a self-taught musician who over time became an expert keyboard player and synthesizer.  When he moved to London as a teenager, he began to fall in with the New Wave band culture , where his use of synth sound became very handy.  He worked with many bands around that time, including the Buggles, and he even can be briefly seen in their music video for “Video Killed the Radio Star,” which of course famously launched MTV a couple years later.  After a couple years working in studio sessions, Hans career path changed when he partnered up with British film composer Stanley Myers.  Myers, who had credits on over 60 films, wanted to combine Zimmer’s modern sounding electronic sound to his more classic style, and the two worked on multiple films together, including Moonlighting (1982) and My Beautiful Laundrette (1984).  After working under Myers’ mentorship, it was time for Zimmer to set off on his own.  His first solo film score was for the thriller Terminal Exposure, but the big break for him would come a year later.  Director Barry Levinson  was looking for a unique sound for his Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman starring drama Rain Man (1988).  Supposedly, Levinson listened to the soundtrack that Hans did for the anti-Aparteid film A World Apart (1987) and like it so much that he sought out Hans personally.  This would result in what would end up being Hans first ever Oscar nomination, and more importantly it opened more doors for him in Hollywood, making him one of the most sought after composers in the business.  In the nearly 40 years since, Hans has earned 12 more Oscar nominations as a composer, including 2 wins.  And he’s still very active, composing not just for film but also for television and even video games.  To show how impactful Hans Zimmer’s music has been, I’ve compiled what I think are his top 10 musical themes.  They of course range from the pulse pounding epic to the surprisingly intimate and comforting, showing that he’s a film composer capable of working in any kind of medium.  So, let’s take a look at the Top Ten Musical Themes from the legendary Hans Zimmer.

10.

“HOMELAND” from SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON (2002)

In addition to the many scores that Hans Zimmer has composed for live action film, he has also been prolific in composing for animation as well.  He famously worked on Disney’s The Lion King (1994), but for the most part, he’s been a Dreamworks guy.  He composed the scores for all four of the studio’s hand drawn animated classics, and then would later be a composer for many of Dreamworks computer animated movies; most notably for the Kung Fu Panda movies.  But one of his best themes for Dreamworks Animation was in the little seen animated Western called Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.  The soundtrack for the movie is often derided because of the Bryan Adams pop songs that were shoehorned in, which was the trend in animated movies at the time; a trend that Hans helped to start by the way when he collaborated with Elton John on the songs for The Lion King.  While the Bryan Adams are most hit or miss, Hans score is still top tier, and shows him working at the peak of his talent.  The best melody in the film is the one that opens the movie itself called “Homeland.”  This sweeping overture sets the stage perfectly for the movie, played over sweeping views of natural landscapes, which were beautifully animated in what was the only hand drawn animated film from Dreamworks in the Cinemascope format.  In this piece, we hear Hans Zimmer at his most pastoral, underscoring magnificent vistas with a regal orchestral sweep.  But there still that modern electric sound underneath that to show that Hans is still experimenting with a different kind of rhythm to help make the music sound unique.  Despite the fact that this musical theme was written for the animated medium, it could have just as easily been written for live action two.  There’s just something about the melody that make you get the feeling of a natural world, like it was composed for a national park’s welcome center.  If you can get over the Bryan Adams influence, you can definitely find some really beautiful music in this underrated animated classic, and that’s in large part due to the skills of Hans Zimmer.

9.

“DISCOMBOBULATE” from SHERLOCK HOLMES (2009)

For a great example of Hans Zimmer’s experimental method in composing a film score, look no further than this Guy Ritchie directed adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth.  When developing the score for the film, Hans bought an out of tune piano at a flea market for $200, solely because he wanted an instrument that was broken and out of tune to add a quirkiness to the music he was writing.  It’s unorthodox, but it kind of matches the character of Sherlock Holmes himself, especially this version played by Robert Downey, Jr.  The theme “Discombobulate” is the main theme of the movie and the one that opens and closes the film during the titles, and it is a great example of Hans Zimmer at his most playful.  Taking cues from Cockney Victorian English melodies, the theme is aggressive and flashy in an almost parody like way.  That out of tune piano proved to be a wonderful find, because it really sets the tone regarding the criminal underworld that Holmes is about to explore.  You get the sense of this piano having a history, like it came out of some back alley pub deep in the worst neighborhoods in London.  But it’s not just the piano that makes the melody stand out.  The percussion has a very metallic sound to it, like someone is banging on steel pipes, and the cello strings are being plucked rather than strung.  In every part of this theme, Hans is breaking all the rules of orchestral music and that’s what makes it sound so unique.  Holmes himself is someone who solves mysteries by seeing the world in a way that other people can’t, and Hans Zimmer’s score matches that out of normal space vibe perfectly.  It’s a great example of how Hans Zimmer can create a wholly different kind of sound for the music of a movie that also gives the movie more character, mostly by subverting expectations for how the music should sound in the first place.  And that means even going to the extremes of using instruments that are intentionally supposed to sound bad like a broken down piano.

8.

“LEAVING WALLBROOK” from RAIN MAN (1988)

We certainly need to spotlight the turning point moment in Hans Zimmer’s career as a film composer.  Barry Levinson’s Oscar winning drama about a road trip taken by a young business man and his older autistic brother across the country is not the kind of film you would expect to hear African style rhythms as a part of the music score.  But Levinson wanted Hans Zimmer to bring that same kind of sound that he used for the South African set A World Apart to this movie.  Levinson’s reasoning was because of Hoffman’s character’s severe autism, which disconnect him from the rest of the world and leaves him in a world of his own mind.  So Levinson wanted to match that with a score that fells like in his words, “a world music for a world that doesn’t really exist.”  Hans would be just the right person for that assignment, because he could take all of those cultural influences he absorbed from working on a movie like A World Apart.  In the film’s main theme called “Leaving Wallbrook,” there’s definitely an African influence in the the percussion beats, but he also combines it with Peruvian style flutes, and of course his own synth beat underneath it.  In all it makes the music feel like its coming from everywhere in the world, and also from nowhere in particular.  And of course this is all for a movie about a road trip across America.  It’s a prime example of Hans bringing an atypical approach to scoring a film.  It’s something that would define his style over the course of the decades after.  He’s the guy you go to when you want to make the surprising choice in how a movie’s music will sound.  It may not have been as atypical as Vangelis’ music for Chariots of Fire (1981), where that synth score really stuck out compared to it’s time and place in the story.  Oddly enough, Han’s score for Rain Man actually felt like it fit with the story being told.  It proved that Hans was a unique voice in film composition, and of course we would see many more great things to come in the years that followed.

7.

“THE KRAKEN” from PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST (2006)

Of course one of the movie franchises that Hans Zimmer had a strong influence on was the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  But it probably surprises most people that he wasn’t the one who did the music for the first film that launched the series.  Producer Jerry Bruckheimer wanted him to score the first Pirates film, but he was already too deeply in the middle of scoring the movie The Last Samurai (2003).  Instead, Hans offered Bruckheimer one of his proteges, Klaus Badelt, to work on the score though Hans did contribute some uncredited melodies to the film, including the main theme itself.  But after the success of the first Pirates movie, Hans was committed to scoring the sequels that followed.  He would be the sole credited composer for both Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End (2007), contributing some of the franchises most epic and memorable themes.  His best contribution to the scores would probably be this composition written for the mammoth sea monster that hunts after the pirates in the movie.  “The Kraken” theme is a fantastic chaotic piece that really matches the ferocity of the monster itself.  It’s big and orchestral, but Hans also throws in some electric guitar to add a little bit more unpredictability to the music.  The music itself does kind of feel like a monster on the hunt as the piece starts low and then builds to a concussive wall of sound.  The low, pulse beat that Hans opens the piece with sounds very much like a reference to John William’s iconic two beat rhythm from the opening theme of Jaws (1975).  But instead of a shark, Hans is writing music for a giant squid, so when the score finally builds that moment of attack, the music goes wild and hits from multiple directions, similar to how a squid’s tentacles would lash around wildly.  It’s definitely the standout piece in the film Dead Man’s Chest, and perhaps the best thing he wrote for the entire series, except maybe the main theme himself which he was partly the author of.  It’s hard to imagine that Hans Zimmer wasn’t always the composer of these Pirates movies, because his signature style is all over them.  But, once he was fully involved, these movies certainly brought out the best in his talents.

6.

“YOU’RE SO COOL” from TRUE ROMANCE (1993)

Proof that not all of Hans Zimmer’s scores had to be big, epic productions.  Sometimes all he needed was just one instrument.  For this particular piece, he composed a tune for nine marimbas played in unison.  The unique sound of this tune is catchy and joyful, which is a stark contrast to the film that it’s found in.  It’s hard to think that Hans Zimmer wrote this romantic and bubbly tune for a hyper violent and gritty thriller directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino.  But, that’s exactly what the movie called for, because at the center of all the stark violence in the movie, there is this tender and heartfelt love story between two star-crossed misfits played by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette.  Amidst all of the violent action, their romance becomes the heartbeat of the movie, and Tony Scott wanted a melody that matched that.  It stands out in stark contrast from the rest of the movie, but that is honestly what Hans Zimmer has always been good at.  In most of his other films, he’s been called upon to write music that added a modern edge to a film, but here he does the opposite.  His romantic theme called “You’re So Cool,” is used to soften the edges of the film, and help it live up to what the title says.  It’s another great example of Hans Zimmer doing the unexpected, only this is a move that is unexpected in contrast to all of the other music he’s written.  One of the reasons why Tony Scott wanted such an upbeat tune in his hyper violent movie was because he viewed the romance between Slater and Arquette’s characters to be like a Fairy Tale.  It’s a bright light in an otherwise dark world, and he trusted Hans to find that in the music as well.  It also shows Hans experimentation in full display, managing to create a unique sounding tune that only required one kind of instrument, which itself is used in a very unexpected way.  Hans is a composer who can definitely go big, but here we see that he’s just as brilliant when he goes small and simple too.

5.

“NO TIME FOR CAUTION” from INTERSTELLAR (2014)

Certainly one of the strongest collaborations that Hans has had with any filmmaker is his time working with Christopher Nolan.  Hans first worked with Nolan on the score for Batman Begins (2005), working alongside James Newton Howard.  They would continue working together on all of Nolan’s films up to Dunkirk (2017), before Hans started getting involved in the Dune series and Nolan started working with Ludwig Goransson (because of Hans’ suggestion by the way).  Through that decade of collaboration, Hans wrote some of his most impressive and epic themes.  One of his most celebrated scores was for Nolan’s space epic Interstellar.   For a movie about exploration in the vastness of space and looking for a new home on alien worlds, Hans was certainly the right guy to score this adventure.  It’s probably the most haunting of musical scores in Hans Zimmer’s body of working, with him using pipe organs as a key instrument in the film, possibly as a nod to Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathrustra” which was famously used in Stanley Kubrick’s own space opera 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  One other thing that also was a continuing theme in Nolan and Zimmer’s collaboration was the idea of time passing.  Zimmer’s scores in Nolan movies always had this pulsing beat to them, like a ticking clock, and that’s certainly found in this piece from Interstellar.  The theme “No Time for Caution” plays during the harrowing docking scene where Matthew McConaughey’s character has to push the space ship to the limits of survivable G-forces in order to match the spin rotation of a damaged and out of control mothership in order to dock.  Hans keeps building that pulse of a score to more harrowing heights in order to match the tension of that scene, and once it resolves we get that release from the pipe organ.  While Hans Zimmer has worked mostly with modern sounds in his scores, this is a great example of him using classical instruments to create music that is quite literally out of this world.  If anything, this is probably Hans at his most harrowing as well, with a music theme that’s all about driving up the tension to an unbelievable level.

4.

“WORM RIDE” from DUNE: PART TWO (2024)

Speaking of the series that Hans left his partnership with Christopher Nolan for, this is another great example of Hans Zimmer using his knowledge of global music to create music for a world that’s never existed.  In this adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic, director Denis Villeneuve wanted to have a score that was big and orchestral, but still very modern, fitting the movie’s far distant futuristic setting.  Hans’ musical score for Dune: Part One was certainly great in itself, and it even earned him a long overdue second Oscar win.  But it’s in Part Two where Hans was really let loose to go big and heavy with the orchestrations.  In particular, he created a fantastic piece of music for the pivotal scene when Timothee Chalamet’s Paul Atreides proves his worth by learning to ride a sand worm for the first time.  It’s an epic moment in the movie, with the sand worm being this colossal monstrosity that makes the scene all the more harrowing.  It’s here where the main theme of the series hits it’s apex, and the moment hits with a heavy triumphal note.  Hans Zimmer’s music is just as much a part of the character of this film series as anything else, sounding uniquely of his style, while at the same time still showing the composer trying out new things to make the unexpected choices.  The moment where Paul Atreides takes command of that worm is a crucial moment in the story, and Hans gives it the epic weight that it deserves.  The unsung element in this piece of music is vocalist Loire Cotler, who does the chant at the center of the piece, and can also be heard through much of the rest of the film’s score.  She really gives a haunting  and otherworldly element to the music, making the moment in the movie almost a religious experience.  It’s not the first time that Hans Zimmer has used vocals in his orchestrations, but few are quite as iconic as the one used in the Dune movies.  Thankfully, Hans is once again scoring the upcoming Part Three, so it will be interesting to see what he has left to do in this franchise.  Thus far, it’s been some of his best work in recent years, with this piece from Part Two being a definite highlight.

3.

“STAMPEDE” from THE LION KING (1994)

Hans won his first Academy Award for his one and only Disney Animated film.  The choice in having him score the film was quite a departure for the studio at the time, as most of the other Disney Renaissance films were scored by Alan Menken.  But Hans was exactly the right man for the job, bringing his African influences with him into the orchestration of the film.  One of the most important choices he made in his development of the score was writing it an African vocal choir in mind.  This led him towards working with South African musician Lebo M, who was instrumental in helping to bring an authentic African sound to the movie.  Lebo was the one who would conduct the choir himself and he even provides some of the vocals as well.  His voice is even the first thing you hear in the movie with the iconic sunrise opening and his “Naaaaaaah” chant to kicks off the film.  There are a lot of iconic musical moments throughout the film, but perhaps the one that demonstrates Hans at the peak of his abilities is the music from the pivotal Wildebeest Stampede scene.  The scene shows Hans using all the tools in chest to create this cacophonous musical moment, creating the feeling of a stampede rushing by you with incredible force.  It’s especially effective in the way that it starts off small, with the eerie feeling of danger approaching from a distance.  And then the first waves of that tsunami of sound come crashing in and doesn’t relent.  Lebo M’s choir chanting through it all also gives the moment an extra special boost, acting almost like a Greek chorus lamenting the tragedy that’s unfolding.  All the while, that distinctive electronic sound that defined much of Hans Zimmer’s early film work also can be heard underneath.  While many people throw a lot of praise towards Elton John’s songs from the film, you also can’t deny that Hans Zimmer had the most profound effect on the movie’s emotional core with his unforgettable musical themes, his “Stampede” theme being an especially iconic highlight.  It’s why this music has endured not just as a legacy of the movie itself, but also as something that helped to make The Lion King a huge hit on the stage as well.

2.

“TIME” from INCEPTION (2010)

If there was ever a movie that represented the best out of the collaboration between Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer, it would be Inception.  In creating the music for Nolan’s dreamscape heist movie, Hans in a way went on to influence a whole generation of action movie scores.  It was because of this movie that action films began to have that oppressive “BWAH” sound in their scores.  The reason it was used in Inception was because Hans was creating the feeling of music itself being slowed down as time is experienced differently within dreams.  In particular, Edith Piaf’s rendition of “Non, je ne Regrette rien” is played throughout the film and when played at normal speed in the real world, it becomes this booming ticking clock to the characters within the dream.  It’s a plot device in itself that becomes part of the character of the score itself.  And while the whole movie is full of incredible, pulse-pounding music (especially in the hallway fight scene) it’s the final closing piece of music that shows Hans Zimmer at his absolute best.  In a piece called “Time” we see the characteristic Nolan and Zimmer motif of time ticking away in a clockwork like rhythm, but here Zimmer creates it into this triumphal sounding march.  The film actually plays out the final scene in the film with little to no dialogue with the music instead guiding the moment.  But even as it sounds triumphant, there’s also this uneasy feeling underneath pondering if it is all actually real.  That’s the mystery that Christopher Nolan leaves in the final moments of his film, creating an open-ended question that he never intends to answer; did our heroes escape or are they still stuck in that dream?  The brilliance of that ending is given even more weight by Hans’ music, especially at the end.  Nolan finishes the movie with a shot holding on a spinning top, a symbol that determines if the world is real or a dream.  The top continues to spin, but right before you think it’s about to stop, the movie cuts to black.  Brilliantly, Hans Zimmer brings the music down to almost silence and then throws in a slight sharp sting right before the screen goes black.  Inception represent the best in what Hans Zimmer and Christopher Nolan could do together, and it still represents a peak in both of their respective careers.

1.

“NOW WE ARE FREE” from GLADIATOR (2000)

Out of all the scores that Hans Zimmer has written throughout his career, the one that feels the most complete in it’s majesty is the one he composed for Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning epic Gladiator.  The movie was both a throwback to classic Hollywood sword and sandal epics and at the same time a boldly modern reimagining of legends from Ancient Rome.  A lot of what makes Gladiator such a iconic film is undeniably Hans Zimmer’s score.  He pulls out all the stops throughout the film, from the opening battle against the barbarians, to the melancholy of Maximus’ tragic return home to find his family already killed, to the climatic gladiatorial battles in the Coliseum.  But no other piece of music sticks with you more than the closing theme of the movie.  After Maximus (Russell Crowe) himself succumbs to his wound and rejoins his family in Elysium, Hans Zimmer takes over the emotional weight of the movie’s closing moments.  We see Djimon Hounsou’s Juba symbolically burying the figures of Maximus’ wife and son in his own blood spilled on the Coliseum floor, where we tells his fallen friend the titular words of the piece, “Now we are free.”  And the music carries us out of the film and into the credits like the final movement of an opera, which is fitting because the movie we had just watch had an operatic quality to it.  Like many of his other film scores, Hans works in some incredible vocal arrangements into the music, and for this piece he called upon the angelic voice of Lisa Gerrard, who worked closely with Hans on much of the film’s music with her even being credited as a co-composer on the soundtrack.  Lisa’s voice beautifully carries the emotion of the piece, making it sound somber in remembrance of Maximus’ sacrifice, but also triumphant in recalling the way Maximus was able to avenge his fallen family and do what no one else could do which was defy and defeat the tyrannical Emperor Commodous (Joaquin Phoenix) and restore order to Rome.  This particular theme has become a favorite piece of music people have used to remember lost ones in their lives, given how it both mourns a death and celebrates a life purely through music alone.  This represnts more than anything Hans Zimmer’s ability to reach for something truly profound in his music, and that’s what make it (in my opinion) his greatest piece of music from his entire body of work.

Undeniably one of cinema’s greatest composers, Hans Zimmer has left a lasting impact on Hollywood.  One of his greatest lasting legacies has been his ability to craft new kinds of sounds from unlikely places.  Whether it’s using a broken down piano for Sherlock Holmes or basing the motif of your film score off of a slowed down version of an Edith Piaf song in Inception, he is a film composer that definitely thinks outside of the box and refuses to repeat himself.  What really has defined him is the ability he has to create soundscapes for new kinds of worlds.  That’s what has made him so valuable in creating musical scores for epic fantasies, like with the Pirates of the Caribbean and Dune series, because you can always count on him to make the music of it’s own world.  He’s also the kind of composer you can count on to create the unexpected choice, like he did by adding African rhythms to a small road trip drama like Rain Man, or a single instrument love theme to a violent thriller like he did with True Romance.  Despite having been in the industry for over 40 years now, Hans is still not done writing music yet.  He’s still a high in demand film composer, and later on this year we’ll see him continue to build upon his previous work with the highly anticipated Dune: Part Three.  The special thing about Hans’ career is that he takes chances as a composer, and thankfully he’s found the right filmmakers who embrace his experimental way of composing music.  The decade long collaboration he had with Christopher Nolan especially proved to be fruitful, and even though they have taken different trajectories in recent years, there is no doubt that they both recognize that they brought out the best in each other.  It’s quite a journey that this self-taught synth keyboardist from West Germany has been on.  He went from backing up new wave rock bands to creating the soundscapes of the cosmos on the big screen.  And it’s a career far from complete as well.  Hopefully this list has been helpful in spotlighting the impactful and memorable body of work that he has created.  It’s one thing to create a soundtrack for the world we know, but also another to create the music of a world we never knew could be possible.

Editorials

The Odyssey of Film – 70MM IMAX’s Epic Journey from Novelty to Cinema’s Best Experience

How many different choices are out there to experience Christopher Nolan’s new epic film, The Odyssey (2026).  There’s certainly the standard digital projection that most multiplexes around the world will make available to audiences.  But, for those looking for something more special, there are also plenty of premium movie experiences available for The Odyssey.  There’s the Dolby Cinema experience, with laser enhanced picture quality, and of course digital IMAX available in most major cinemas.  But for many true cinephiles, the best way to watch a movie like this is when it’s projected on film.  In certain cinemas around the world, the movie is also getting a release on 70mm film.  70mm, a film stock that has been in use since the 1950’s, is know for having incredible picture quality and has been used to film and exhibit some of cinema’s greatest epics such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Sound of Music (1965), and 2001: The Space Odyssey (1968).  Any film that gets a brand new 70mm print is incredibly lucky given the limited infrastructure in place to manufacture and screen those kinds of films today.  And yet, even this is not the most exclusive way to screen a film.  The Odyssey is in a rare class of film that has been designed and filmed purposely for one particular format in mind, and that is the 15perf 70mm IMAX format.  This is Christopher Nolan’s preferred format of filmmaking, and he has utilized it more and more on every film he’s made since The Dark Knight (2008).  But what is 15perf 70mm IMAX and why is it such a big deal in cinema right now.  More than anything else, it is quite simply the biggest possible format that can capture images through a camera, given the captured image the highest amount of detail possible without the aid of digital enchancement.  To film with it is one thing, but to screen it, theaters not only need to have a massive amount of specialized equipment set up for it, but they also need to have a screen big enough to do justice to the image quality possible with IMAX 70mm (mainly in the 80 to 100ft height range).  It’s a specialized kind of film that can only play in a specialized kind of theater, and in The Odyssey’s case, only 25 theaters are playing the film this way in all of North America.  So, count yourself lucky if one of these is your theater.

Universal Pictures, the studio behind Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, were so confident that screenings at these 25 theaters were going to sell out that they put tickets up for sale a full year in advance, and they did almost instantly.  Even while cameras we still rolling on set, there were sell out shows for this movie.  This is very much a testament to the selling power of not just Christopher Nolan as a name, but also 70mm IMAX as a format.  You can imagine people buying passes for a concert or a convention a year ahead of time, but for a movie?  This wasn’t entirely surprising either.  70mm IMAX has been steadily climbing in esteem, particularly in the last couple of years, and Hollywood is taking notice that these rare format screenings are becoming hot ticket events.  Watching a movie in 70mm IMAX is now being looked at as the peak of the movie going experience.  There are many other theaters out there in the country that advertise that they have IMAX, but in reality what they have is a digital IMAX projector that can play a IMAX quality image on a standard size screen.  Sure, it’s better than the average digital projector, but it’s not a “true” IMAX experience.  That’s why a lot of these types of IMAX theaters are referred to as LieMAX.  For a true IMAX experience, you need a screen taller than a mid-rise office building, the most start of the art sound system in all corners, and a steep slope of stadium seating that puts the audience as close to the screen as is comfortably possible.  What this gives you is an immersive experience, where it feels like the screen is enveloping you.  One thing to help spot a true IMAX theater in your area is to see a section of a multiplex that looks like it is jutting out from the rest of the building.  These screening rooms are so big that they often require their own footprints as to not take up the majority of the space inside the rest of the theater.  For myself, I fortunately live near one such theater; the Universal Cinemas at Universal Studios CityWalk in Hollywood, CA.  The architecture of this building is interesting, as it looks from the front like a standard multiplex, but when you step back, you’ll see a large blocky extension rising from the back of the building.  That’s the IMAX theater, which has been a part of the building since a 2000 remodel and expansion.  It’s been my go to IMAX theater since moving to the San Fernando Valley 15 years ago.  It’s also why I’m not reviewing The Odyssey this week, because I could only get a ticket for Sunday, past my Saturday deadline, and I don’t want to see it first in any other format.

So, instead of a review, I wanted to discuss exactly why seeing it in this format is such a big deal.  Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is the first film ever to be entirely shot in 15perf 70mm IMAX.  Up to this point, most films have had select scenes shot in the format, but never the entire film itself.  This is often because of the limitations of the equipment involved.  The film backs that hold the 70mm film in the camera can only hold enough stock for 5 minutes of screen time in a single spool.  Not only that, but the camera itself is also extremely loud and cumbersome given the size of the film that it has to shuffle through.  The noise factor alone makes 70mm IMAX unusable on set for quiet, dialogue scenes, because it would drown out the actors’ voices.  That’s why up to now, IMAX cameras have been more widely used for action scenes in movies, where the camera noise is less of a factor.  For the last couple of decades, 70mm IMAX films have typically been hybrid films, switching between different formats in various parts of the movie, with noticeable aspect ratio changes to indicate which format was used for what scene.   When a movie couldn’t use 70mm IMAX for a dialogue scene, the filmmakers would instead use a standard 70mm camera, or some other standard format.  In the early days, IMAX shots were often very rare, but over time, filmmakers would find more and more use for them, to the point where a sizable chunk of a film’s run time would be in the IMAX format.  Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker that has continually tried to push the format further with ever new film that he makes.  It started with using the format for aerial shots in The Dark Knight, but Nolan also managed to create two entire sequences of the movie using the 70mm IMAX format; the opening bank robbery scene with the Joker, and the Bat Pod chase sequence in the middle of the film.  He even put out the bank robbery scene in its entirety as a teaser trailer in IMAX theaters months before the film’s release.  While the movie got rave reviews across the board, many also took notice of the special experience that the IMAX showings provided.  For all his movies since, The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020) and Oppenheimer (2023), more and more of the movie’s runtimes are shot with IMAX film.

To understand the significance of an all IMAX movie like The Odyssey, we have to know a bit about what led to here, because IMAX of course had been around a long time before Christopher Nolan.  70mm film stock dates all the way back to the turn of the century, but it wouldn’t be used for filmmaking purposes until the late 1920’s when Fox Films used it for what they called the Grandeur process.  It only resulted in one film, 1930’s The Big Trail starring a young John Wayne, before being abandoned due to the high cost.  Then in the 1950’s, 70mm film was seen as a viable format for creating widescreen films to compete with television.  While other formats like Cinerama and Cinemascope already existed, 70mm was celebrated for it’s incredibly sharp picture quality.  Producer Mike Todd combined his spherical camera lenses with 70mm to create a new process called Todd-AO, which first premiered with the movie musical Oklahoma (1955), and with it came a boom of big film projects all using 70mm film to create magnificent widescreen extravaganzas.  While the epic movie craze died over the years, the use of 70mm did not.  It would remain in use for many years after that on select projects, and also as the film stock of choice by special effects artists, such as the wizards at ILM who used 70mm to create the effects in the Star Wars movies.  At the same time 70mm was coming up in the 1950’s, another format was also being popularized using the more commonly used 35mm film stock.  For most movie cameras, film is shuffled through the aperture vertically, with the captured image size being about 4 perforations (sprocket holes on the edges) in height on 35mm, or 5 perforations on 70mm.  But a new format called Vistavision changed the way film was shuffled through the camera by having it move horizontally past the aperture as opposed to vertically.  What this resulted in was an image on 35mm stock that was 8 perforations wide, creating a much larger image overall that could contain a lot more detail.  This was a favorite format for Alfred Hitchcock in particular, who used it for some of his most popular films like Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959).  It was also used to create incredible vast epics like The Ten Commandments (1956) and The Searchers (1956) feel even grander.  But, it would also lead some filmmakers to wonder; could they do with 70mm film stock what Vistavision did with 35mm?

The first to experiment with that idea were Canadian filmmakers Graeme Ferguson and Roman Kroitor who formed what would eventually become the IMAX corporation in 1967.  They initially had develop a multiscreen large format that would create one large image out of multiple projections, but found difficulty in the synchronization.  They instead looked towards creating the same kind of large screen experience with a single camera and projector.  They took the idea of flipping 70mm film stock on it’s side like Vistavision did with 35 and designed a camera system that was capable of handling that a format that big.  Their results culminated in a camera that could capture an image a full whopping 15 perforations wide.  This 15/70 format was first used on a short film from Ferguson and Kroitor called Tiger Child, which was screened publicly at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan.  The 17 minute short would play on a loop for expo quests in a rotating theater, creating an immersive experience.  Little did the people who saw this exhibit know that they were looking at the future of cinema.  But, it wasn’t a future that would happen overnight.  IMAX was a very costly format to both manufacture and exhibit, so it was limited to just a couple of projects at a time; mainly documentaries.  Hollywood and multiplexes weren’t quite ready to go all in on IMAX, but Science and History museums were.  Through the 80’s and 90’s, the likeliest places you would find an IMAX theater was in one of these museum spaces, playing documentaries about nature, space, and even the Titanic, which had a 1992 film called Titanica about the exploration of the wreck which for many years was the highest grossing IMAX film, at a paltry $8 million.  This was also my own personal introduction to the format, as I saw it on a class field trip to a science museum in Portland, Oregon.  Still, narrative use of 15/70 IMAX film was thought to be unlikely as studios thought the format was too niche.  And then the Walt Disney Company decided to use IMAX as their format of choice for their new animated film Fantasia 2000 (2000).  This would mark the first ever studio made movie to premiere in IMAX cinemas, and they would get an exclusive 6 month run before the film would open everywhere else.  It was the kind of mainstream acceptance that IMAX finally needed, although it would be some time before Hollywood would actually fall all in with IMAX.

For a while, the studios were more interested in screening their movies in IMAX theaters, as the size of the screens offered a much more premium experience than a standard multiplex facility.  On the heels of Fantasia 2000, Disney would also re-release some of their animated classics in the format, such as Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994).  Meanwhile, big action franchises like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Transformers would also use IMAX to screen some of their films.  But these movies weren’t shot in the 15/70 IMAX format, but rather received a blow-up as their standard format was printed onto an IMAX reel.  It would get the IMAX size, but not the image detail.  One big tell you were watching a blow-up movie in IMAX is that it still has the letterbox effect, creating black bars on the top and bottom of the image in order to make it fit within the 1.43:1 ratio dimensions of 15/70 IMAX film.  A true IMAX image wouldn’t have that letterbox effect, and instead would fill the entire screen from top to bottom.  That’s the thing that people noted whenever they watched a film shot with 15/70 IMAX in mind.  This was only true for the most part with the documentaries that screen the most often in these specialty cinemas, but that would change dramatically once Christopher Nolan began to arrive on the scene.  He saw the dramatic potential in the format, and he even went directly to IMAX themselves to discuss how it could be implemented.  On each film they have collaborated on, Nolan and IMAX have tried to find new ways to push the format to it’s limits.  On Dunkirk, they mounted IMAX cameras on the wings of WWII era fighter planes.  In Tenet, they experimented with running IMAX film backwards in the camera.  And with Oppenheimer, IMAX did something they never had before by inventing black and white IMAX film stock.  With The Odyssey, Nolan and IMAX wanted to finally solve that annoying noise problem, so they re-engineered the camera itself to be lighter and more insulated.  They even created a massive new sound blimp to house the camera in in order to cut the noise down even more.  The result allowed IMAX to finally have it’s dream become a reality; a full length studio made film shot entirely on their format.

While Christopher Nolan is certainly the filmmaker that has pushed the IMAX format the most into the mainstream, he’s also not the only one who has used the format in recent memory.  More and more filmmakers are now looking to 15/70 IMAX film as an ideal format to use for their event films.  In 2022, filmmaker Jordan Peele used IMAX for the biggest action moments in his sci-fi thriller Nope; even going as far as to hire Christopher Nolan’s go to cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who has quickly gained the reputation of being the world’s best IMAX cameraman.  Denis Villeneuve has also turned to IMAX 15/70 for his series of Dune films, and like with Nolan’s Odyssey, his Dune: Part Three has already sold out screenings months in advance.  Last year, Ryan Coogler managed to make a big splash with his own use of the format in the Oscar-winning Sinners (2025).  The interesting thing about how the format was used in Sinners was in the way Coogler also mixed it in with another rarely used film format called Ultra Panavision 70.  Ultra Panavision has the widest aspect ratio of any format at 2.76:1, so there’s this incredible juxtaposition between extremes in the film, between the ultra wide Panavision in some scenes and the ultra tall 15/70 IMAX in others.  The night club scene in that film also accomplished a feat by creating a long tracking one shot, which is nearly impossible given the small amount of film that one camera can carry at a single time.  The way it came together in the final film even impressed Christopher Nolan who gave a Ryan Coogler and his cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw massive amounts of praise for their work on the film.  And earlier this year, Christopher Miller and Phil Lord had a big hit with the space adventure Project Hail Mary (2026), which also made extensive use of the 15/70 IMAX format.  So, while Christopher Nolan has been the top standard bearer for the IMAX format for a long time, he now has a lot more company among his peers who now use the format regularly in their own film projects.  If anything, there is a renewed interest in all analog film formats recently among filmmakers, with long dormant formats like Ultra Panavision 70 and Vistavision making comebacks of their own thanks to movies like The Hateful Eight (2015), The Brutalist (2024) and One Battle After Another (2025). Because of all this, IMAX no longer is a niche format in cinematic filmmaking, but perhaps the future of cinema itself.

If anything, the fact that we can now produce an entire film in the 15/70 IMAX format tells you that the sky’s the limit with regards to IMAX’s future in Hollywood.  Not only will Nolan continue working with the format, but so many generations after him will also be making their films on the format.  IMAX has come a long way since it’s novelty as an attraction at museums and expos around the world.  Now it is the hottest ticket in town, with people scrambling for tickets even before the film is finished filming.  It wouldn’t surprise me if theater chains start looking at remodeling their buildings in order to fit screening rooms big enough for 15/70 IMAX projection.  And there are still more boundaries to break in this field as well.  Apparently the maximum amount of film that IMAX film projectors can hold for a single movie is just a little over three hours.  Nolan really pushed that limit with his exactly three hour long Oppenheimer, and The Odyssey comes close with it’s 2 hour 52 minute run time.  It might not be too long before we see IMAX innovate some more in order to break beyond that 3 hour limit.  It will also be interesting to see how different filmmakers use the  format in creative ways, like with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners.  But there’s no doubt that The Odyssey will be a historic achievement in how it showed that the format could be used for a full film; quiet parts and all.  As of writing this, I still have not seen it for myself and am eagerly waiting my turn.  I was lucky just to get the one ticket that I did; literally one of the last seats left.  I’m also lucky to be seeing this movie in what Christopher Nolan considers to be his personal favorite theater.  My introduction to the CityWalk IMAX actually coincided with Nolan, as I went there for the first time to see Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011), which had the opening prologue of The Dark Knight Rises as a teaser.  I mainly went for that one teaser, but also ended up enjoying the main film itself, which also made use of 15/70 IMAX with the Burj Khalifa scenes.  Since then, all of my IMAX screenings have been there, including every Marvel move, every Dune movie, and of course every Nolan movie.  I hope The Odyssey is an event worthy of a year of waiting.  At least I’ll know one thing for sure, and that’s that I would never want to watch the movie in any other way.  With 15/70 IMAX, you really feel the closest to feeling immersed in the movie itself.

Movie Reviews

Moana (2026) – Review

Disney has had a turbulent time as of late with their trend of turning their animated films into live action ones.  During the 2010’s, this was a money printing machine that greatly filled the coffers of the Disney Company, with remakes of The Jungle Book (1967), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994) all crossing the billion dollar mark at the worldwide box office.  They were making a mint by re-packaging all the classic films they had made before with a new live action sheen to them.  But even though these movies were making a killing at the box office, it was also alienating long time fans of the originals.  Many people saw these movies as a shameless cash grab that was exploiting the Disney brand and creating a feedback loop that was stunting the creativity at the studio.  From their perspective, it appeared that Disney is more willing to cash in on audience nostalgia than putting the effort into creating bold new things that could sustain the future of the studio.  These remakes very much represent an era of creative stagnation at the studio, which seems more inclined on doing what’s safe and easy rather than what’s daring and risky.  That’s not to say that every remake of theirs has been terrible.  The one’s that actually make the most to change up enough in their film to help make them distinguishable from the original tend to be the best, such as 2015’s Cinderella (2015), which is a genuinely great movie on it’s own.  While this trend of remakes has been a big money maker in the past for Disney, their results have been a bit more mixed in the 2020’s.  They experienced a lot of success with the remakes of The Little Mermaid (1989) and Lilo and Stitch (2002), especially with the latter as it became a billion dollar grosser.  But those successes were dampened by the colossal box office failure of their Snow White (2025) remake, a movie that Disney took a massive financial hit on.  It makes many wonder if this remake trend has hit it’s breaking point, as audiences seem less interested now in these nostalgia bait films.

Another thing that Disney has to contend with is that their well has tapped out when it comes to the movies that they can adapt into live action.  They’ve already remade all the biggest films of the Disney Renaissance era, and the ones that remain un-remade are the ones that weren’t box office successes to begin with.  They are also learning that it’s more difficult to remake the movies of Walt’s era as well, as the failures of their remakes of Snow White, Pinocchio (2022) and Dumbo (2019) will attest.  But, at the same time, the Disney company did see Lilo and Stitch (2025) cross the billion dollar mark, so there are some in the company that still see money to be made in mining their library.  It seems to be less about the different eras of Disney Animation and more about what individual movies have their own built in audiences.  One thing Disney is learning about is how well the fandoms of these movies carry over through each film.  Despite the divisive reaction from critics, 2019’s The Lion King still landed with audiences and became a massive success.  And that success surprisingly maintained itself as Disney followed that film up with a prequel called Mufasa: The Lion King (2024).  While that movie didn’t make nearly as much as it’s predecessor, it still put up an impressive worldwide gross of over $700 million, showing that even a prequel of a remake of The Lion King was still able to capitalize on it’s built in audience.  So, Disney is making it’s choices of remakes more geared around what they know has worked well for them in the past.  One of the studio’s current heavy hitters is the animated classic Moana (2016).  The final film from animation legends John Musker and Ron Clements, Moana had a fairly respectable run at the box office when it first released, but it only has grown in esteem since then.  Moana has consistently been one of the top performing films in streaming, putting up bigger watch time numbers than even Disney’s Frozen films on the same platforms.  It is an indisputable hit for Disney, and it prompted them to scrap a straight to streaming animated series in favor of an actual theatrical sequel, which then of course went on to break several box office records.  Moana 2 (2024) proved that this was a juggernaut franchise for Disney, so it’s not at all surprising that they rushed forward to create a live action version as well, marking the shortest window between any Disney remake and their original.  But is this a journey that was worth taking for Moana and Disney, or is it washed out to see like many of the other recent remake stumbles.

The story of Moana will be familiar to anyone that has seen the original, as it pretty much is beat for beat the same.  Moana (Catherine Laga’aia) is being instructed by her father Chief Tui (John Tui) in the ways of running the community on their island of Motunui as she is next in line to become their chief.  But Moana sees a different destiny for herself as she longs to break her father’s decree of never leaving the security of the reef and explore the greater ocean beyond it; a destiny that her Gramma Tala (Rena Owen) encourages.  Fate intervenes when the crops begin failing on the island, which puts stress on the survival of the islanders.  Thanks to Gramma Tala, Moana learns that her ancestors were voyagers that sailed out into the ocean to find new land and that there is a reason why the island is in danger now.  A thousand years prior, the heart of the goddess Te Fiti was stolen by the shape-shifting demi god Maui (Dwayne Johnson), and with the heart stolen, a curse was placed on the ocean, with disease and famine spreading from island to island.  That curse has now reached the shores of Motunui, and Tala reveals to Moana that she has been chosen by the Ocean itself to find Maui and force him to return the Heart of Te Fiti to it’s rightful place.  Moana leaves her home island behind, venturing out onto the open ocean alone (apart from her bird brain pet rooster Hei Hei).  She manages to stumble upon a deserted island where Maui has been exiled for hundreds of years, and discovers that he is powerless due to having lost his magic fish hook, the source of his power.  In order to reverse the curse placed on the islands in the ocean, Moana and Maui must band together and locate Maui’s hook so that he can then restore the heart and undo the mess he has made.  But to do that, they must face a harrowing trial of dangers, including facing the dreaded tribe of Kakamora, a giant treasure hoarding crab named Tamatoa (Jemaine Clement), and the fearsome lava monster Te Ka that guard the island of Te Fiti.  Will Moana and Maui manage to restore the heart and restore life to the ocean?  If you’ve seen the original movie, you probably already know the answer.

I’ve had fairly mixed feelings about the Disney remakes.  On the whole I find them pointless, because for most of them, they come nowhere close to matching the original movies.  And yet, I still find nuance in my reactions to them, because even though they are remakes, that doesn’t mean that they are all bad.  I already stated that I think the Cinderella remake is a genuinely great movie, and one worthy of carrying on the legacy of the original while also being it’s own thing.  I also was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked The Little Mermaid (2023) and Aladdin (2019).  They were still flawed and nowhere near as good as the originals, but there was enough good things in them that I still enjoyed watching them.  The same goes for the movies that aren’t quite remakes but are inspired by the original films like Cruella (2021).  Otherwise, for the most part I just feel like a lot of these movies are just pale imitations, like Lilo and Stitch (2025), The Jungle Book (2016), Peter Pan and Wendy (2023), and yes even Snow White, which was far from the worst one.  The ones that I genuinely don’t like are the remakes that completely miss the point of the originals or just fumble the adaptation so poorly, like Beauty and the Beast (2017), Maleficent (2014), or Pinocchio (2022).  But the worst of the bunch are the movies that don’t even try to be anything other than just a copy and paste job, changing nothing except the visual look of the film going from animation to live action, which is always a downgrade.  This was made me hate The Lion King (2019) remake so much, because it was a shameful low effort remake that just did the whole film again almost shot for shot, but removed all the charm that the original had through it’s animation.  I hate to say it, but that’s what this Moana remake is as well.  While this remake does get points for actually using real actors unlike The Lion King’s all-CGI “live action,” it at the same time is the same low effort copy and paste job as that movie was.  They literally changed nothing, except for the live action part.  It’s the same exact script, and the movie even recreates exact shots from the original.  You are going to get a weird sense of Deja Vu while watching this movie because it repeats every single beat, and yet feels lifeless by comparison.

The film was directed by Thomas Kail in his feature film debut, and it definitely shows.  Kail has previously been a director of stage musicals, most notably helping bring the musical Hamilton to Broadway for it’s historic run.  The reason he got this gig directing a Moana remake is because Hamilton’s creator and leading man Lin-Manuel Miranda also wrote the hit songs from the original movie.  That connection likely landed him this job, as Disney already had him in the family due to the premiere of the Hamilton pro-shot version of the musical that he also directed that premiered on Disney+ to great success.  Kail is no doubt a skilled director for the medium of the stage, but directing for a feature film is another kind of disciplined, and it probably wasn’t good for Kail to cut his teeth on a project of this scale right off the bat.  Despite the movie using the blueprint of the original, the film just feels lifeless.  You always get a sense of the actors acting in front of a green screen as there is a very stagey way to how the film is blocked and framed.  The only time the movie tries to dazzle us with it’s impressive scale is when it is literally calling back to shots from the original film.  If there was ever a movie that stressed the superiority of animation, particularly when it comes to these remakes, this is the one.  There is no surprise to this movie; it’s just the same exact movie over again, but done worse.  All the jokes are the same, but somehow land with less impact (yes, they even do the Disney Princess joke again, word for word).  As much as I criticize what Kail brought to this film, I don’t want to put the blame on him solely.  He was hired to do a job, and he tried the best he could given his limited experience.  It’s not his fault that the movie is just a mediocre rehash; that’s Disney’s fault for not taking any chances.  There could have been a decent remake of this movie made had they tried to change things up to make it more surprising.  Hell, even Snow White did better at this by changing parts of the story to differentiate itself from the original.  You can make these remakes better if you give us the thing that we didn’t expect to happen and also have fun with that.  Moana doesn’t take any chances and it just believes that it’s audience will show up no matter what even if we are getting the same movie all over again.

Like I said, at least we have real actors this time on screen as opposed to the CGI animals with celebrity voices in The Lion King.  Austrailian actress Catherine Laga’aia has the daunting task of bringing the iconic character to life on screen.  To her credit, she looks the part and she does try her hardest to play the part right.  The problem is the lifelessness of the rest of the film, which likewise leaves her looking lost on screen.  There’s no way she can manage to match the liveliness of her animated counterpart, and sadly her singing voice (while still good) can’t quite hit the high notes as well as Auli’i Cravalho did in her vocal performance.  But as wooden as Catherine’s performance may be at times, it’s nothing compared to Dwayne Johnson’s performance as Maui.  The strange thing is that this should have been a cake walk for him as Dwayne originated the role in the animated film.  His vocal performance as Maui in the original is rightly praised for the energy and personality he put into the character, and he continued to do that in the sequel alongside Auli’i who also reprised her role.  But all of that is missing here in this version of Maui.  Dwayne just looks bored throughout the film.  He’s delivering the same exact lines, but he comes across as more aloof and distant.  Also, it’s clear that he can’t pull off Maui’s look either.  It’s obvious those aren’t Dwayne’s real muscles and flowing mane of hair just looks like a cheap wig.  It’s not the first time we’ve seen an actor reprise a role from animation to live action, as Gerard Butler did the same in the How to Train Your Dragon remake from last year.  But Butler actually put in some effort to bring his character to life in live action, and honestly gave the best performance in that film, which is really saying something.  Here it just looks like Dwayne Johnson is just going through the motions to collect a paycheck.  Sadly he has absolutely no chemistry with Catherine Laga’aia, which really hurts the movie because the chemistry between the characters of Moana and Maui is central to the story.  There is one performance that does manage to shine in this film, and that’s Rena Owen as Gramma Tala.  The veteran Maori actress takes on the role originated by fellow Kiwi performer Rachel House, and she brings a wonderful sense of warmth and soul to the character.  She easily steals every scene she is in, even if all of it is exactly a repeat of the original film.  The other positive about this movie is that it’s likely the first big budget studio film to have the entire cast be of Polynesian ancestry, which is historic in it’s own right.

A large reason why people still watch these movies is because they want to see what these animated worlds look like when brought into live action.  This often is a mixed bag when it comes to these Disney remakes.  While some characters manage to translate successfully into live action, like Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, other times the live action translation just doesn’t work out.  Check out the monstrosities that were the enchanted appliances in Beauty and the Beast, or the expressionless animals of The Lion King.  Disney also ran into hot water by making the Seven Dwarves CGI characters rather than casting real little people in the roles for Snow White.  While the use of real actors for the main roles is a positive, the film also loses something when bringing the animals to life in this movie.  Hei Hei and Moana’s pet pig Pua are entirely CGI animated, and of course lack any of the personality of their cartoonish counterparts.  The same goes for Tamatoa, who has that weird live action/cartoonish hybrid look that also made Sebastian from The Little Mermaid feel off in that remake as well.  I guess it is nice that they got Jemaine Clement to return to voice the character, though it’s kind of pointless given that he’s just doing the same lines all over again.  You could’ve used all of the original vocal tracks and no one would’ve known the difference.  One of the many problems with these remakes is that they often feel over produced.  There is so much visual effects work put into the film to make it exactly like the original animated movie, that you wonder why they even felt it necessary to remake this movie at all.  The budget for this film was a reported $250 million, which is probably twice the amount that was spent making the original.  And it barely looks realistic at all, which is kind of missing the point of remaking something in live action.  The credits say it was shot on location in Hawaii, but I couldn’t tell you what, because the whole movie has this whole desaturated feel that makes it feel like all of it was run through a computer with the actors performing in front of a digital background.  It’s not AI levels of detached reality, but it also shows that even the best computer animation that money can buy can still feel flat when you don’t know how to use it.  If anything, it just shows why animation is vastly superior in telling a story like this because it allows for more creativity in the visuals than being weighted down by the limitations of what you can shoot on set.

Unfortunately, this Moana is in the lowest tier of Disney live action remakes, and that’s mainly due to it lacking any identity unto itself.  It is quite simply an inferior version of the original in every way.  On the bright side, it’s so utterly forgettable that I don’t think it’s going to ruin the legacy of the original.  If anything, it’s going to spotlight just how much better the original Moana is by comparison.  But, even so, this is another warning sign that these movies are not doing any favors for the Disney brand other than a short term financial gain, and even that cash cow is running dry.  It’s only been 10 years since the original film hit theaters, which I don’t think has even been long enough for audiences to have built up a feeling of nostalgia for it.  One of the reasons why the Disney Renaissance era classics led to these ultra successful remakes is because the audience that came of age during the release of the originals are now adults with their own kids today, and that’s what made them come to the theaters in such high numbers, through that sharing of their love of these stories through multiple generations.  The people who grew up with Moana are still likely kids themselves, and haven’t had children of their own yet to bring to the theaters with them yet.  I don’t know ultimately how this movie will perform, but it likely won’t be enough to justify the $250 million price tag.  If anything, Disney needs to reassess whether or not it’s worth putting in a quarter of a billion dollars into making a movie that they already made before.  Sure, you do occasionally get a Lilo and Stitch like payoff (which cost much less to make by the way, thus making it more profitable), but you also risk a steep financial cost if it doesn’t work, like with Snow White.  And Snow White actually looks better than Moana by comparison, because it actually attempted to do things different.  I feel like people are just going to ignore this remake in favor of rewatching the original.  There already seems to be signs that Disney is winding down their remake pipeline, with only a Tangled (2010) remake and a Lilo and Stitch sequel in the foreseeable future.  They got some big wins, but those are now being overshadowed by the failures, and they should probably put a stop to them before they do any more damage to the Disney legacy.  They need to be innovators again, and not just cashing in on their past glory.  This Moana is unfortunately dead in the water and no amount of nostalgia magic is going to come to it’s rescue.

Rating: 4/10

Off the Page

Off the Page – Johnny Tremain

The United States of America is a nation unlike any the world has seen before.  Now in it’s 250th year, it is a nation of nations, built over all that time through the migration of people from all over the world coming here for the hope of a better future.  And the reason why the world has looked to America as a great beacon of hope is because it is a nation where freedom has been one of it’s founding principles.  Of course, America hasn’t always lived up to that concept of freedom in it’s history, as Americans have battled within it’s own borders just to make common sense things like the abolition of slavery and votes for women and minorities a reality.  And there have been several other movements in America that have fought to uphold the rights for indigenous, queer, and disabled people in society.  But all of that struggle is another reason why America has become a great nation, is because it is a country where our ability to speak out is enshrined into law.  The U.S. Constitution is the greatest gift that the founding fathers left us because it guarantees us of those rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  And it is a document that is not set in stone, but rather can be amended to adapt to changing times, as long as it is done with the consent of the people of this nation.  This helps to make our system of laws greater than any government that we put into power.  It grants us the power to govern ourselves while also limiting the authority of those who govern us, preventing us from becoming the very thing that we fought to break ourselves away from; a monarchy.  It’s not at all surprising that the very first right enshrined into the Constitution is the freedom of speech, because it enables all the other rights that follow it.  It’s a right that has helped America prosper beyond most other nations, because with it, we’ve seen the American people exercise their ability to speak up for their own rights and against injustice.  This has been a valuable thing to have in the world of politics, especially for those who often are made voiceless in other parts of the world, but it also has been valuable in culture as well.  In America, we’ve seen freedom of speech lead to a flourishing of art both in the physical sense as well as with the written word.  And it’s also been especially true with an artform that began in America as well; cinema.

American History has often been a popular subject to tackle in filmmaking.  The stories of American progress through the years have made for some profound works of film, and often with the complexity needed to tell the truth about what made America the country it is today.  However, cinema is a very potent kind of artform that when used the wrong way can also distort history.  One of the most unfortunate things about the history of cinema is that one of the movies that was most instrumental in creating the language of filmmaking for the century that followed was D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), a horribly racist film that lionized the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan in it’s depiction of the Civil War.  With a movie like Birth of a Nation, we see cinema used for the purpose of propaganda, telling a skewed account of history in order to satisfy the agenda of a particular group.  Fortunately, the viewpoint of that particular film did not last long beyond it’s release, and civil rights in America took hold instead.  What it does show is that American filmmakers have a responsibility to their audiences when they tackle historical subjects.  Creative license can be useful, but it can also make a film feel dishonest when faced with actual historical facts.  That’s why so many of the best historical films are the ones that incorporate historical fiction.  Basically it allows for storytellers to tell their own story with the backdrop of a real historical event while at the same time not feeling constrained by the limitations that real history may put on their ability to tell that story.  That’s how our best depiction of the D-Day invasion comes from a movie about fictional soldiers called Saving Private Ryan (1998).  It’s not about showing us history as it happened, but allowing us the viewer or reader to experience history as it happens.  It’s about putting us in a time and place, often through the eyes of a witness who is a complete fabrication for the story that the author wants to tell.  The witness may participate in actual historical events, or their journey may just be to show us the life that one would have lived in those times.  In any case, these stories are valuable in helping to make history come alive.  Hollywood has certainly used historical films to help define our understanding of American history, especially through war and the struggles for human rights.  But strangely, one part of American history has largely been overlooked over the years, and that’s the story of America’s founding.

“There is a time for casting silver and a time for casting cannon.  If that isn’t in the Holy Writ, it should be.”

The Revolutionary War is one of the most defining moments in America’s history, and one that still to this day is influential in defining this nations identity.  But on the big screen, the American revolution has been underserved.  Most of the dramatic interpretations of America’s founding have been centered on founding fathers like George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.  But the War itself has often been treated as an afterthought.  It wasn’t a war of ideas like the biopics on the founding fathers seem to show, but a bloody conflict that tested the fortitude of the people of America against the Colonial British forces.   There have been some films, most notably the Al Pacino flop Revolution (1985) and the Mel Gibson war epic The Patriot (2000); neither of which are very subtle in their depictions of American history.  But, there are many worthwhile tales to be told about the Revolutionary War that do a better job of placing their audience into the shoes of the early American patriots.  One such story is that of Johnny Tremain, a fictionalized participant in key revolutionary events like the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere’s midnight ride.  The novel Johnny Tremain was written in 1943 by historian and novelist Esther Forbes.  Esther had written many fiction and non-fiction books about colonial New England during the 20’s and 30’s, but it’s Johnny Tremain that is her most famous work. It won the prestigious Newberry Medal for it’s contribution to children’s literature.  Though Mrs. Forbes was not exclusively a writer for children, her book nevertheless served as a valuable entry point into American history for young readers, and it remains a popular choice for classroom curriculums to this day.  Despite being a work of fiction, it is still a meticulously researched tome that recreates life in colonial Boston during the start of the Revolution.  And young Johnny is an easily relatable child that proves to be a valuable witness to the sweeping movements of history around him.  The book was an enormous success, and it’s not surprising that Hollywood took interest in it too.  Naturally, there was one place in the industry that this story seemed to be tailor made for; the Walt Disney Studios.

“Isn’t it odd?  These Indians seem to prefer principles to profit.”

Disney was in it’s prime in the Post War years.  Not only were they reaching their Silver Age with their animated films, with hits like Cinderella (1950) and Peter Pan (1953), but they were also achieving huge success with their live action films as well, including the blockbuster 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).  Not only that, but Walt Disney was gambling big on another major expansion of his company, with the opening of Disneyland.  Part of what was helping to drive this booming Disney’s business was the success they were finding on television, particularly with the show Disneyland.  On the Disneyland program, Walt Disney was able to tell stories in different ways than he would on the big screen.  In the Frontierland segment on the show, Disney would showcase stories about the American west, which often drew upon legends and true stories of historical figures.  One of the breakout hits that came from this segment were the episodes about real life American pioneer Davy Crockett.  Those Davy Crockett episodes became a phenomenon that spread fast across American culture, with young boys across America wearing coonskin caps just like Davy in the show.  Because of the success of Davy Crockett, Walt Disney wanted to look for other stories about American history that could also capture the imagination of young audiences.  He found the ideal match in Esther Forbes’ Johnny Tremain, given it’s youthful protagonist and connection to real historical events.  As the production went into development, Walt saw that it was going to be a more ambitious project than the usual episode of Disneyland that they produced.  So, the choice was made to give Johnny Tremain a theatrical release instead of the original two part adaptation they had planned for television.  A lot of care was put into recreating the Colonial setting of the story, though not a single frame was shot in the real city of Boston.  The movie was actually mostly shot on the Disney Studio lot in Burbank, California, with the Lexington battle scene shot on ranch land in nearby Canoga Park.  And yet even still, the movie does a fine job of transplanting it’s audience into Colonial times.

While Disney put a lot of work into the production value of their adaptation, they also oftentimes have the habit of sanitizing their subjects as well in what many call Disneyfication.  For a story like Johnny Tremain the problem with looking at it through the Disney lens is that you’re not really getting a true account of history, but the Disneyfied version of history.  Disney is first and foremost an entertainment company, and even when they tackle historical events in their storytelling, it will come in a sanitized fashion mainly due to their commitment to family entertainment.  That only becomes a problem if they are presenting their story as a more profound depiction of history; case in point, the historical revisionism that you find in something like their animated Pocahontas (1995).  Johnny Tremain was already a story written for young readers, so there wasn’t much to sanitize already, as Esther Forbes made her book a more palatable read.  But, there is a sense that you are not getting a true sense of the real history either while watching this movie.  It’s an idealized version of historical events, which can at times be misleading.  For instance, the depiction of the Boston Tea Party is portrayed in the film like it’s a well organized and peaceful protest where the patriots even clean up after themselves in a polite manner.  This is very much not even close to what the tea party might have been like, as most protests (even peaceful ones) tend to be more chaotic and rowdy, even if the protesters are in the right.  What Disney is giving us is the G-rated version of American history that is more palatable for all audiences.  We like to think it was this clean and planned out, but the true history probably differs significantly.  That’s not to say that the movie is intentionally trying to mislead us when it comes to the history of the story.  It does feel more honest in it’s depiction of Paul Revere’s midnight ride as well as the battles that follow (albeit without the blood).  The movie’s purpose is to draw your attention to the story being told and not to the minutia of it’s historical accuracy.  What it primarily is meant to do is to make us feel connected to the history that is happening, mainly through the eyes of it’s young protagonist.

“We stand by our orders, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

Johnny Treamin as a character is an interesting one to put into the center of this kind of story.  What most people remember from the book is that Johnny is left crippled in a silver smithing accident, with his right hand horribly burned and scarred, making him unable to perform many tasks he needs to do in order to provide for himself.  In Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes displays a perfect example of the American spirit, as even someone with a crippling disability at such a young age is still able to rise up and make a difference.  Despite the loss of function in his hand, Johnny is still able to run communications between patriot organizations, doing his part to help spark a Revolution.  In doing so, he meets important figures like Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, James Otis, and John Hancock.  The book is very much a coming of age story that shows Johnny maturing very quickly through the experiences he goes through during this tumultuous time.  He’s also described as being very young as well, barely into his teens.  In Disney’s version, they age up Johnny a bit, with him being in his late teens, perhaps so they could fit in a romantic subplot for him with a girl he likes named Priscilla Lapham (who is in the books as well and younger than even Johnny).  Actor Hal Stalmaster was 16 when he landed the role of Johnny, and he clearly looks much older than the way Johnny is described in the book; though his short stature does give him a bit more youthful character that helps to make him close enough to the ideal portrayal of the role.  Hal does a fine job portraying the character of Johnny, though the way he is written in the film makes him more of a passive character than the cocky, strong willed character in the book.  The movie’s version of Johnny is mainly there to be the witness to events rather than an active participant.  Yes, he takes part in the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Lexington, but those events seem to be happening around him rather than as an active part in Johnny’s development.  We see Johnny participate, but we don’t get to see the impact they have on him as a character.  The book very much treats Johnny’s development as a much more key part of the narrative, showing how extraordinary times shaped the people who lived through it.

What gets lost in the translation is the long term effects that the story has on Johnny Tremain.  One of the biggest changes to the story in the film adaptation is the fate of Johnny’s best friend Rab.  In the book, Rab (the one who helped Johnny get more involved in the revolution) is fatally wounded in the Battle of Lexington, which leads to Johnny becoming more involved in the fight for independence so that his friend’s death would not be in vain.  It also leads to Johnny seeking out the help of another patriotic character, Dr. Joseph Warren, who helps to surgically remove some of the scar tissue from Johnny’s hand so that he can at least have the ability to shot a rifle.  In the movie, both events are either changed or removed completely.  Rab Silsbee is portrayed in the film by future West Side Story (1961) alum Richard Beymer, and like the character in the book, he acts as a mentor to Johnny’s patriotic awakening.  But the movie changes his fate completely, allowing him to not only survive, but also it has him fighting side by side with Johnny in the battle.  The reason why Johnny is able to fight in the film is because they took the choice for him to have the surgery on his hand, which is how the book ends, and places it in the middle of the story, during the Boston Tea Party scene in fact.  The next we see of Johnny afterwards, he is miraculously healed with a fully functioning hand.  While it’s clear that the filmmakers wanted to have Johnny be a more active player in the battles that follow, it at the same time undermines the journey that his character should be going through.  For Disney, they wanted things to have a nice easy flow in the story, with the characters getting what they want in the end and sacrificing nothing.  It’s wholesome, but it undermines what Esther Forbes’ narrative, which was the cost that it took to achieve American independence, and how it still shapes us as a country today.  While the changes Disney made are not in malice to the actual history of America, it at the same time steals the story of the emotional impact that it may have otherwise have had.  They wanted this movie to be another Davy Crockett; a rousing adventure that audiences of all ages could enjoy.  But in doing so, they also lost a bit of the emotional impact that this adaptation could otherwise have had.

“We fight.  We die, for a simple thing.  Only that a man could stand.”

It’s one of the reasons why filmmakers should be careful when putting history on the big screen.  There’s much about our country’s history that could be lost in the need for making it more entertaining.  While Johnny Tremain is no where near the worst offender in sanitizing history for the sake of cinema, it still shows that some things can be manipulated in order to maximize the appeal to a mass audience.  It’s interesting looking at Johnny Tremain as a story through the context of it’s time period.  The movie came out in post War America, a time of fervent Patriotism that extended into the culture itself as America emerged as a global super power.  While it was a time of national pride, it was also a politically volatile time that also saw the rise of the Red Scare and the blacklist in Hollywood.  Was the intent of movies like Johnny Tremain to do justice to the fascinating history of America, or was it made to present an idealized version of this country in order to reinforce it’s place in history.  The most interesting thing about the movie Johnny Tremain is what it leaves out from Esther Forbes’ book.  Not mentioned in the movie is that Johnny is an immigrant to America.  He was born in a convent in France before his mother brought him to Boston when he was still little.  America has always been a country that has thrived through the influence of immigrants, including with founding fathers like Alexander Hamilton, and that’s just as much a part of Johnny Tremain’s story as anything else.  But with movies made in the ultra-patriotic 1950’s, the drive was to show America as being more of a home grown phenomenon.  Though Walt Disney was very much a patriotic man himself, his interest in a story like Johnny Tremain was more out of an interest in the time period than any sort of agenda it had.  Disney loved American history and wanted to show it off not just on film, but in his parks too.  It’s the reason why there’s a show devoted to Abraham Lincoln to this day in Disneyland, and in Disney World a whole land called Liberty Square lovingly recreates Colonial America, including having a Liberty Tree lit up with lanterns like the one in the movie.  Johnny Tremain is a fine piece of entertainment, but a better adaptation of the book should still happen.  Johnny Tremain as a character especially still feels underserved, and if Disney ever decided to do a remake, they should put more effort in showcasing the emotional side of Johnny’s story.  Johnny Tremain represents so much of what America should stand for; perseverance and concern for those who have been hurt by injustice.  He is America’s son of liberty, and a great symbol of patriotism that transcends politics and culture.

“It’s a tall old tree, and a strong old tree.  And we are the sons.  Yes, we are the sons.  The Sons of Liberty.”