Empire Australasia — December 2017

ALAMY, PIERRE FUTSCH

YOU’RE SO COOL

A mid-set cool-down as Zimmer follows

the bombast of Pirates Of The Caribbean

with his quirky, bouncy theme for Tony Scott’s

True Romance.

“I can’t play the marimba part,” admits Zimmer

of the distinctive instrument that powers the tune.

Instead, he takes to the timpani, which allows him

time to refl ect on “Tony, and how wonderfully

creative he was”.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO

DO WHEN YOU ARE NOT SAVING

THE WORLD?

The fi nal track from Man Of Steel.

“It starts off with a small, quiet piano,” before

soaring into the skies. “It’s pretty short and

succinct. It’s changed a little since we did

the video.” Zimmer’s talking principally about

the inclusion of his Wonder Woman theme from

Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice. Now, it

segues straight into the Wonder Woman

character theme with electric cello assistance

from Tina Guo. “The DVD was recorded before

Wonder Woman was even written!” he says of the

song’s omission from his live DVD.

THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY

As the concert begins to near its end, Zimmer

hits the audience with his big guns, starting

with a stunning medley that encapsulates his

work on Chris Nolan’s Bat-trilogy.

“It’s a 22-minute piece of punk,” he says.

“I wanted to see if we could get away with

a 22-minute piece. It’s not pretty, but I think the

intensity and the ferocity works really well.”

AURORA

The calm before the storm of the fi nale comes

as Zimmer performs a piece that won’t be found

in any movie. He wrote it for the victims of the

mass shooting at a screening of The Dark

Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado.

“I really did want to keep the memory alive of

these people and the tragedy,” he says of the

piece, which he wrote in just a couple of hours

upon hearing of the massacre back in 2012.

“I was devastated and had to say why it was there

and what it meant, and what it meant to me.”

INCEPTION MEDLEY

Of course, Zimmer ends with perhaps his most

famous piece, the iconic score for Inception. But

there’s a more personal reason behind it. It’s a

tribute to his former agent, Ronni Chasen, who was

murdered in 2010, just after Inception came out.

“The fi rst thing she ever had me play was Driving

Miss Daisy,” he says. “The last was Time. So

I always play that piece and I play it for myself,

thinking about Ronni.” In an echo of the

beginning, the show ends with Zimmer alone on

stage. “I get to play the last few moments for

myself, in a way.”

HANS ZIMMER: LIVE IN PRAGUE IS OUT NOW ON

DVD AND DOWNLOAD

HERE’S HOW INFLUENTIAL Ray

Harryhausen is. He didn’t direct Mysterious Island

— that was Cy Endfi eld. Nor Jason And The

Argonauts, which was a Don Chaffey joint. And

he didn’t call the shots on First Men In The Moon,

either, for which the credit goes to Nathan Juran.

Yet when those three fi lms are released in a box

set in the UK, they’ll be under the title

The Wonderful Worlds Of Ray Harryhausen.

Because the stop-motion animation effects that

Harryhausen provided have become the fi lms’

defi ning glory; and so completely in control of

the process was he that he was, effectively, those

movies’ director. Here are Harryhausen’s fi ve

greatest creations.

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG

Harryhausen got into the business after being

inspired by Willis O’Brien’s pioneering work

on the 1933 King Kong. So it’s apt that his fi rst

signifi cant work was animating a giant ape

alongside O’Brien for this 1949 mini-Kong.

THE CYCLOPS

Not the bloke from X-Men, but instead a

gigantic creature with cloven feet, a horn, a single

eye and a taste for munching down on men, this

creation from 1958’s The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad

creation is, some say, even more convincing

than Tye Sheridan.

THE SKELETON ARMY

Hugely infl uential — a skeleton army showed up

recently in Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home

For Peculiar Children — this sequence from 1963’s

Jason And The Argonauts, in which the titular

titan and his gang come up against a seemingly

unstoppable bunch of boneheads, is simply

breathtaking. Almost impossibly intricate, it must

have taken Harryhausen ages to do something

Pixar could now knock up in a lunch hour.

KALI

By the time The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad rolled

around in 1973, Harryhausen could basically

animate anything with a head and six limbs. Enter

Kali, a multi-armed statue that comes to life and

has a go at our hero. There’s even a sequence where

the statue negotiates some stairs. Show-off.

THE MEDUSA

1981’s Clash Of The Titans, Harryhausen’s last

movie as a producer/effects creator (he would

cameo in several fi lms following this) saw

him come up with one of his most enduring

monsters: the snake-headed Medusa that very

nearly turns a young Harry Hamlin to stone.

THE WONDERFUL WORLDS OF RAY HARRYHAUSEN,

VOLUME TWO: 1961-1964 IS CURRENTLY AWAITING AN

AUSTRALIAN RELEASE DATE

The best effects by legendary

animator Ray Harryhausen

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

Ray Harryhausen works on

The Medusa. Below: The

skeleton army in action in

Jason And The Argonauts.