It took just two Terminator films to make a lasting impression on popular culture. Unlike for many sci-fi-based films and series, er, let’s say, Star Trek which took countless iterations – both television and feature film – to become pop lexicon, the sight of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ravaged visage as The Terminator is as identifiable as Spock’s pointy ears. Part of the success of the Terminator films has been the creative force of it’s creator, James Cameron, the groundbreaking visual effects, and the pants-soiling action. Perhaps just as important, but often overlooked — and not surprisingly because it’s film music — is Brad Fiedel’s original music. Fiedel breathlessly rendered Terminator with crude synthesizers, and for the sequel injected more scope and breadth into his palette, while retaining the elements that made the first score so effective: an unrelenting terror of metallic percussion hunting the soundscape.

Despite the success of Terminator 2, it took years for the third film in the franchise, Rise of The Machines, to take shape. Feeling no love for his traditional orchestral score, Marco Beltrami (who at the very least deserves credit for giving Fiedel’s original Terminator themes a muscular orchestral rendition during Rise’s end titles crawl) quickly learned that scoring Rise of The Machines would prove to be a thankless task, as Beltrami’s entry was ultimately (maybe a bit unfairly) maligned.

What the fourth film in the series really needed was a composer seemingly impervious to (but not unaware of) fanboy disdain. Enter Danny Elfman, a surprise pick by director McG, but a composer not unfamiliar with busting-blocks with mega-budget summer action tent-poles. Looking closely, Elfman seems like a natural choice, given his affinity for percussion and writing, well loud as hell, film music that can compete with an overwrought sound effects track. The result of Elfman’s effort is a towering inferno of brass clusters, fevered string rhythms, and a healthy dose of percussion to accurately essay the feel and tone of a cyborg onslaught on a band of hapless humans. Elfman balances things out, however, giving the film a noble brass theme (first heard in “Opening”) and a tender variation for solo guitar (“Fireside”), lending the score an equal part humanity to balance out the barrage of barbaric action cues.

01. Opening (6:01)
02. All Is Lost (2:45)
03. Broadcast (3:19)
04. The Harvester Returns (2:45)
05. Fireside (1:32)
06. No Plan (1:43)
07. Reveal/The Escape (7:44)
08. Hydrobot Attack (1:49)
09. Farewell (1:40)
10. Marcus Enters Skynet (3:24)
11. Solution (1:45)
12. Serena (2:28)
13. Final Confrontation (4:14)
14. Salvation (3:08)
15. Rooster – Performed by Alice In Chains (6:15)

To hear additional clips from tracks 8-14, visit Danny Elfman Music for a Darkened People.

Links: Reprise Records / Purchase at Amazon.com