To some, a film’s musical score is simply background noise which is quickly forgotten, a viewpoint likely enhanced by the way musical scores are often used as literal background noise at movie theaters. For example, as I was at my local theater to see Inside Out this weekend my trip to the concession stand was accompanied by James Horner’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan score playing over the PA system in the lobby. How did I know it was Horner’s score? Because I am one of those people who absolutely loves film scores, cheerfully humming John Williams’ Indiana Jones theme as a little kid, mesmerized by Brad Fiedel’s scary synthesizers in the Terminator score as a pre-teen, and compiling various Spotify playlists of musical scores as an adult. Heck, I’ve listened to my “Star Trek Musical Score Highlights” playlist so many times I even knew which specific Wrath of Khan track was playing at my theater: “Enterprise Clears Moorings,” i.e., the moment the ship leaves dock for the first time.
Sadly, James Horner reportedly died in a plane crash yesterday, his lasting legacy most likely being his work on James Cameron’s Titanic, for which he won two Oscars (Best Original Score, Best Original Song – “My Heart Will Go On”). He also composed the scores for Cocoon (1985), Aliens (1986), An American Tail (1986), The Land Before Time (1988), Willow (1988), Field of Dreams (1989), Glory (1989), Patriot Games (1992), Braveheart (1995), A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Avatar (2009). What put him on the map, though, was Wrath of Khan.
Horner’s first major film was 1979’s Lady In Red, but after that he toiled away for several years on B-movies, such as Roger Corman’s Humanoids from the Deep (1980) and Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing (1981). He showed he could get things done on time and affordably, which made him an ideal candidate for Wrath of Khan’s producer (Harve Bennett) and director (Nicholas Meyer). They were both new to the Star Trek franchise, Bennett replacing Gene Roddenberry since he’d let Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s budget spiral out of control. The only way Wrath of Khan was going to happen was if Harve Bennett could make it for cheap, which he pulled off, finishing with a budget just over $11 million compared to the $46 million it cost to make The Motion Picture. However, the cost cutting meant they couldn’t afford to bring back The Motion Picture’s composer, Jerry Goldsmith, nor could they afford Miklos Rozsa, whom Nicholas Meyer knew from their work together on Time After Time. So, while Horner was most definitely not their first choice he was the first person they could afford.
Ironically, Horner, who was very unfamiliar with the Star Trek TV show, actually sat in on Jerry Goldsmith’s recording sessions for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, taking mental notes on the mechanics of writing and recording a score with a large orchestra for a big budget movie. By 1982, the then-28-year-old Horner was Goldsmith’s replacement, a tall task considering that the best part of The Motion Picture is arguably Goldsmith’s iconic musical score, later re-purposed as Star Trek: The Next Generation’s theme song.
Jerry Goldsmith’s Enterprise Theme from The Motion Picture:
However, Wrath of Khan was a purposeful soft reboot of everything Star Trek, shoving Gene Roddenberry’s wide-eyed idealism aside for a world in which people get old, forgotten vendettas come back to haunt us, Starfleet is basically the outer space Navy, not a glorified UN, and the old costumes were trashed in favor of more nautical-themed militaristic uniforms. So, if Star Trek was going to look different it should, by extension, also sound different.
As Meyer later explained, “[Nicholas Meyer] told me what his ideas where, which were very literary, very sea-faring in his mind. The producer, Harve Bennett, would have probably been more comfortable had I re-used material from the television show, but I chose not to do that and Nick backed me up on that decision. They didn’t want to repeat the theme of Star Trek 1. They wanted a new theme. Nick wanted it to be seafaring. So, they didn’t want to re-use or reference anything from Star Trek 1. That was history now. So, we had to come up with a new theme, and it had to be very musical and memorable.”
James Horner’s End Theme from Wrath of Khan:
Goldsmith and Horner’s respective scores are both perfect complements to the movies they were paired with, the ponderous, 2001-wannabe The Motion Picture and the nautical-adventure-in-space and revenge tale of Wrath of Khan. Horner’s philosophy on the subject was, “I believe that you had to have 2, maybe 3 maximum, themes that the audience could keep track off. So, it was important that your three themes be your principle themes, and then you have maybe a motif or two that were very short but narrated other things. Themes tended to be long narratives, and the motifs could be short blasts of things.”
What the heck does that mean? Well, it’s perfectly apparent throughout the battle scenes in Wrath of Khan where Horner helps us follow the action by assigning a short motif to Khan via eight French Horns, used to communicate Khan’s power, and a long melodic theme for the Enterprise. As he explained, “That way these chases could be very easily theme driven because there was a lot of battle music and it was incessant. I had to find a way to musically say what was what, who was who, who was damaged, who was not damaged, and that helped a great deal knowing how the battle was going. Otherwise it’s just action music.”
You can really hear it in the following clip from the movie, starting off with Khan’s motif, switching to the Enterprise theme and then back to the Khan motif:
As Horner said, “You shouldn’t be aware of the music. It’s the visuals and music working together that make that moment dramatically.”
However, while Horner’s music helps us follow the fantastic action scenes throughout Wrath of Khan it’s also there for the film’s most memorable moment: Spock’s death, which Horner recognized as being the true heart of the movie, “I wanted to make much more of Spock than had ever been done before, and that unique undercurrent of the film between Spock and the Captain. That was a relationship which had never played in anybody’s approach. It played into a little of what they did on the series, I was told, but I wanted to make that bond very tight. I wanted to tell the story of two men and their friendship, and that’s what I gleaned out of the series and out of the first movie. The closer I could play that bond during the movie the more I could make of that bond’s separation when Spock dies, the more I could break the audience’s heart at the end of the movie.”
And holy shit did he ever break our hearts with Spock’s death, a scene which actually begins without any musical score before kicking into a sad reprisal of Horner’s Spock theme the moment we hear the line, “Don’t grieve, Admiral.” You may have seen the scene so many times and never noticed this before, but Horner actually breaks from the sad music to punctuate Spock’s final line “Live long and prosper” with a brief reprisal of the iconic Star Trek theme as if to suggest there might be some life left. However, it disappears the moment Spock crumbles to the ground and dies, Kirk looking down and mournfully muttering, “No.”
Excuse me. I need a moment. I have something in my eye [wipes away tears].
Horner returned to score Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in 1984, but by the time Nicholas Meyer called him for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986 he was out of their price range, having come full circle from the young up-and-comer replacing an expensive veteran to an in-demand talent who demanded top dollar. Over the years, he gravitated toward composing far more sentimental scores for far more sentimental, heart-string-pulling movies like Braveheart and Titanic. He gained a reputation of re-using elements of his scores across movies. In fact, Wrath of Khan’s score is sprinkled throughout Aliens, particular the way Khan’s French horn motif is repurposed for the action scenes with the marines (which actually appeared in an earlier form in a pre-Wrath of Khan filmed called Wolfen). To be fair, Aliens was a nightmarish experience for Horner, James Cameron characteristically behind schedule and tough to talk to and his producer Gale Anne Hurd inexperienced with music production. So, Horner was forced to write portions of the score, particularly the climactic moment of Ripley defeating the Alien queen, essentially overnight. It’s understandable that he pulled some familiar melodies and motifs out of his back catalog, although others hear a bit of Aliens in Cocoon and even in Patriot Games. His most notable recent score might have been for 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. However, the score I go back to the most is still Wrath of Khan.
What about you? What are some of your favorite James Horner scores? Or has his music and the types of films he scored never quite been your thing? Do you think his music in Wrath of Khan is overrated? How dare you! You better explain yourself in the comments section.