Inception. The Thin Red Line. Driving Miss Daisy. Gladiator. Dune. Any one of these films – and dozens upon dozens more – could be argued as Hans Zimmer’s best score. But what does Zimmer consider the peak of his oeuvre?
Guy with a Movie Camera aka Reece Feldman recently challenged Hans Zimmer to find out what the composer thought of his own scores. To start off the single-elimination tournament, it was Pirates of the Caribbean against The Lion King, for which Zimmer earned his first Oscar. Zimmer easily picked the 1994 Disney classic for personal reasons, also noting it was his first score for an animated film. “Lion King is written for my daughter. I didn’t really wanna do the movie. I didn’t really want to do animation. And then the movie really surprised me because it’s about the father dying and my father died when I was six years old. I never dealt with it and suddenly I had to go and deal with that.”
But when The Lion King was put up against Inception, he had no matata siding with the Christopher Nolan movie (after all, the collabs did result in some top-notch films). From there he voted for Interstellar, which was then pitted against Dune. However, Zimmer made the case that he wasn’t fully done with Dune and so instead it went against Thelma & Louise, which stood no chance against Christopher Nolan’s film. (It’s also a bit of an oddball choice considering how extensive Zimmer’s filmography is. What, no Rain Man?) On Inception, he said, “It’s one of the few movies where I’m going, ‘Actually, I think I did OK…’” Bit modest there, aren’t ya, Hans?
In a choice that will make any fans question everything they know about film music, the score for Inception was beat out by Sherlock Holmes. How’s that for a mystery? But the reigning champ in this particular set of scores would go to The Dark Knight, which beat out Kung Fu Panda in the final matchup.
Personally, I think I would choose The Thin Red Line as my favorite Hans Zimmer score, one that’s so powerful that Terence Malick actually played portions of it on the set to set the mood for the actors.
What is your favorite Hans Zimmer score? Drop your picks – and the needle – in the comments section below.
