Soundtrack Review: Battleship (2012)

Battleship Soundtrack Review: This is a review of the film score Battleship by Steve Jablonsky.

“Battleship isn’t bad at all because it has some wonderful cues to back it up.”

Battleship judging by the trailers is Transfomers 3.5 and as luck would have it, Steve Jablonsky is on board to hopefully create another great score. Michael Bay is nowhere to be seen however as Peter Berg takes the helm of this year’s metallic blockbuster. A fleet of ships is forced to do battle with an armada of unknown origins in order to discover and thwart their destructive goals. Starring Aleksander Skarsgård, Brooklyn Decker and Liam Neeson this film looks as cheesy as they come, meaning it’s usually a fun popcorn flick. As I already mentioned, Steve Jablonsky is doing the score.

Track List

1. First Transmission	80
2. The Art of War	100
3. Full Attack	80
4. You’re Going to the Navy	100
5. The Beacon Project	80
6. Objects Make Impact	80
7. First Contact Pt. 1	40
8. First Contact Pt. 2	60
9. It’s Your Ship Now	80
10. Shredders	80
11. Regents Are on the Mainland	60
12. Trying to Communicate	60
13. Water Displacement	80
14. Buoy Grid Battle	60
15. USS John Paul Jones	100
16. We Have a Battleship	100
17. Somebody’S Gonna Kiss the Donkey	80
18. Super Battle	60
19. Thug Fight (Featuring Tom Morello)	100
20. Battle on Land and Sea	100
21. Silver Star	100
22. The Aliens	40
23. Planet G	80
24. Hopper	80

Well, the sound is unmistakably similar to what you might have heard in the previous Transformers scores, but the biggest problem is that this score is too long and there are some less passionate cues that tarnishes the score overall. Cues like ‘The Art Of War’ is great because you have a theme and some kick-ass percussion and power which we all know Steve Jablonsky can deliver. In fact, the first 6 cues might fool you into believing that this will be another guilty pleasure, but you would be wrong.

Cues like ‘First Contact Pt. 1′ and ‘First Contact Pt. 2′ are teasers and that’s fine, but as standalone cues they fail to excite me. ‘Regents Are on the Mainland’ and ‘Trying to Communicate’ are guilty of the same thing. Luckily amongst the duds are some delightful action cues like ‘You’re Going To The Navy’, ‘Battle on Land and Sea’ and ‘Thug Fight’ that features Tom Morello.

Conclusion

Battleship isn’t bad at all because it has some wonderful cues to back it up. If it had just cut out some of the tracks or been edited a little differently, then this score would have been close to being as good as the Transformers scores.

Geek Score: 78.3

Listen to the Battleship soundtrack by Steve Jablonsky:

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