X-Men Days Of Future Past – The Rogue Cut Soundtrack Review: This is a review of the film score X-Men Days Of Future Past – The Rogue Cut by John Ottman.
At a glance:
Geek Score: 87.1
Total Minutes Of Excellence: 48.12
Album Excellence: 43%
How are the scores calculated and what does it mean?
X-Men: Days Of Future Past is a 2014 American superhero science fiction film directed by Bryan Singer and starring Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. It is the seventh instalment of the X-Men film series. The X-Men send Wolverine to the past in a desperate effort to change history and prevent an event that results in doom for both humans and mutants. The score is composed by John Ottman.
Wait a minute, why are you reviewing the score you reviewed last year you might ask. Well, turns out, this is a new expanded 2CD version called The Rogue Cut released by Sony. So what is The Rogue Cut? Well it’s a new version with 10 additional minutes of film. Well, the 10 additional minutes of film apparently warranted a new expanded score and that to me is a complete and utterly positive surprise. Usually we’ll have to wait years before some expanded version might arrive, but someone thought differently and that person is now my hero. More of this please! It so happens I quite liked the original score which was quite lengthy in itself at 69 minutes. The Rogue Cut expands on that by 42 minutes, which is no small feat. So what is different? Well, some cues are split up. For example, ‘The Future – Main Titles’ from the original score is now split in two so you can hear both cues separately. I love it! There are some brand new cues like ‘Xavier’s Plan’, ‘Trask Hearing / A New Era’, ‘Clothes Off / Goodbye Peter’ and a bunch of others. So this is exciting! Let’s see what The Rogue Cut has in store for us.
It opens up with the magnificent ‘Main Theme’ which is heroic and bold and of course contains the main theme created by Ottman in X2 which is short but sweet. The best cue on the original score was ‘Hope (Xavier’s Theme)’ and it probably still is the best one on The Rogue Cut. It is such a beautiful cue. It’s one of those slow building cues with a super theme and lots of ostinatos. Think Hans Zimmer’s “Time” and a lot of others. It’s one of my favourite types of cues and Ottman really brings the awesome with it. Again, I love how they split up ‘The Future / Main Titles’ into separate cues, if only to have the great main title on it’s own. ‘The Future’ is not bad either, a sort of ambient heroic theme. I completely forgot, but this score has some very nice choral music as well. Maybe not as much as Powell’s X-Men but still, it’s dark and delicious. So some new stuff with ‘Xavier’s Plan’ which is an interesting “investigative” cue. Ok, so it’s not super exciting, but it’s still good.
There’s one thing though, one thing I didn’t expect and that is the fact the I liked it a lot more last year than I do now for some reason. Even the cues I rated 5 stars like ‘Paris Pandemonium’ feels more like a 4 star cue now. Furthermore, the new material isn’t helping much except for few standouts like ‘We Need You’ and ‘Charles n Charles’, but there’s one cue in particular which is quite fantastic and that’s the 5 minute long ‘Saving The Future’. That one deserved to be on the original score. It’s a great action cue, energetic and fun. The other great Rogue Cut only cue is ‘You’re Here!’ which is basically a more developed version of ‘Hope (Xavier’s Theme)’ for the first half. They’ve somehow managed to remove one of the better cues of the original, ‘Time’s Up (Film Version)’ which is a shame. The good thing is that they have wisely removes the two songs that was present in the original album and focused on score only.
Should you get this expanded edition? If you loved the original, then yes, you probably should. I loved the original album but found out that I didn’t quite feel the same for some cues, but most were right on the money. As for the new cues, there was ‘Saving The Future’ and ‘You’re Here!’ that was more than good enough to be on the original album. It’s still a really good score, one of the best in the X-Men series, and that’s why I recommend you check out The Rogue Cut.
HIGHLIGHTS:
CD1
1. Main Theme
2. Hope (Xavier’s Theme) *
4. Time’s Up
5. I Found Them
10. He Lost Everything
19. We Need You
20. All Those Voices
21. Charles n Charles
22. Off The Tracks
24. Contacting Raven
CD2
6. Raising RFK – Magneto Descends
7. The Attack Begins
8. Saving The Future
9. Join Me
11. I Have Faith In You – Goodbyes
12. You’re Here!
13. Welcome Back – End Titles