My Lion King Forum

Like I said, this was composed by Badelt, but Zimmer changed it into what it is now! Whenever I hear this, it's stuck in my head for hours! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRh-dzrI4Z4

Actually, the history of who composed that theme is a little shaky. After Alan Silvestri's music was dropped due to Bruckheimer desiring a different kind of style of music, Hans Zimmer was the one originally intended to be the first choice to do the replacement score. However, he was contracted to do The Last Samurai at that time and couldn't be involved. Still, he wound up composing most of the motifs(including "He's a Pirate") and Badelt would finish up the project doing by a lot of the final arrangements, with Zimmer being left uncredited due to the aforementioned contract. So essentially, it was Zimmer's theme all along.

Other people were involved with the score and contributed cues of their own as well(Geoff Zanelli, one of those worker bees involved, is actually the one who did the final He's a Pirate arrangements). This is apparent as some material shares similarities with past Zimmer works, like that small theme for the Black Pearl's pirates(originally used back in Road to El Dorado which he co-composed with John Powell) and such.

What's funny is that "He's a Pirate" itself seems to have been a musical idea of Zimmer and his associates for some time before that, though. There was a very similar motif used in Lion King II's score by Nick Glennie-Smith(someone who often collaborates with Zimmer and also contributed some work on PotC), and Zimmer's work for Gladiator also had a theme with a similar melody. Then comes PotC and we hear it fully realized. It'd be interesting to see how far back that idea went and where it first started, although it'd probably be difficult to recognize in its earliest form.

---------------------

One of the forums I go to is pretty devout when it comes to hating hans zimmer but even then most admit that his score for the first tlk is good.

Neogaf, one of the biggest enthusiast forums for gamers. It's also full of ... To put it lightly, people who are very critical of their entertainment.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1051023

Right in the first post 'kings of the past' is brought up.

I think most anti-Zimmer film score fans can agree that he his late '80s to early '00s works were usually pretty excellent.

The hate is mostly directed to his post-2004 scores, where he really started getting into a lot of minimalistic and ambient stuff, lacking as much depth as his melodic scores. Every now and again he'd go back to something more traditional, like when he composes/co-composes DreamWorks animated film scores as well as a gem in-between, but the more famous type of scoring he's known for today leaves a bitter taste in film music fan's mouths.

I think some disdain also stems from the fact that, due to working on a lot of projects at a time, he sometimes winds up mainly just writing some reoccurring themes to be used for a movie, and then has a group of ghost writers arrange and compose everything else.

I don't know how much of it was his but his kung fu panda score was good. I also liked his batman begins/man of steel/interstellar score.

i am going to hans zimmer in concert this tuesday, in Rotterdam! shall i take pics?

.

[quote="lelizwe"](I think Mancina could've also been responsible for some of the magic; if you listen to his score for Brother Bear you'll notice how well he is at producing chants)[/quote]

It's a bit hard to find more evidence of much ghostwriting other than vague "additional music" being credited to some of the contributors of the score, but if I recall correctly from Hans-Zimmer.com, someone said that Mancina was the one who did the "Simba, It's To Die For" and "Nala, Is It Really You?" cues.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was true, given that it's a more quirky-oriented befitting of his sort of material, and the grandiose action segment of the cue that plays when Nala chases Pumbaa and fights Simba does sound a bit more distinctive compared to other "epic" segments within the score. Even though Zimmer didn't truly establish his particular sound until some time later, you can definitely tell it's his handiwork in some of the other action material, but that fight music has a different feel to it. It fits in pretty seamlessly overall, though, especially when you hear him arrange some of Zimmer's motifs in there to thematically tie it all together.

I think the same post that stated all that also mentioned that Nick Glennie-Smith did some arranging in "Didn't Your Mother Tell You Not To Play With Your Food" and the second half of "Hyenas in the Pride Lands."

.