Saturday, April 23, 2011

Mars vs. Gladiator

I wrote a few years back that Hans Zimmer got into a little trouble with the family of Gustav Holst.  The Holst estate claimed that Zimmer ripped off the “Mars” track on The Planet soundtrack. Since I found this video, I figured I had more to talk about on the subject.
Yes, there are movements taken straight from “Mars”, but like I’ve stated before; every composer has sampled or used portions of Holst's The Planets for years. Pretty much modern film scores are deeply connected to Holst's masterpiece.
John Williams' score for “Star Wars: A New Hope” has so much of Holst's music in it, that I am surprised they didn't go after him. Then, Director Nicholas Meyer wanted to use actual music from Holst music from The Planets, but realized he'd have to pay a lot of money to the Holst Foundation and decided to come up with a score that sounded closely related The Planets with Cliff Eidelman.
Because Gladiator is set during the time of the Romans, I can see why he used the Greek-based music from The Planets.  Heck, unlike Gaga, Zimmer has stated in the past that he was influenced by The Planets. 
As some people stated on my older post, the Holst family and Zimmer settled the lawsuit.


           

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