In a recent hour and a half long interview about his career, Steve Jablonsky briefly talked about the difficulties and frustrations of creating the music for Transformers: The Last Knight.
“I do think the first film was kind of more put together than maybe some of these more recent ones, like the Last Knight, it was great to work on, we had a blast, but there were a lot of picture changes right up ’til the end,” he said.
Probably the biggest challenge for Jablonsky while working on the Last Knight was the constant shortening of film. After critics and audiences alike complained about the runtime of Transformers: Age of Extinction, the latest film was continuously compacted down to avoid the same issue. This even extended to the end credits, which only lasted through the duration of one song as the credits flashed rather than the traditional scrolling.
“Bay, up until the last minute, was really trying to shorten The Last Knight. So every cut we would get, the scenes would all kind of be [shortened],” Jablonsky said.
The shortening of the film ultimately messed with the timing and tempo of the music, which led to some issues as it would start to no longer fit in the scene, leading Jablonsky to throwing out sections of the music and starting over.
“That’s one of the reasons why I released such an obnoxiously long soundtrack for this new Transformers, because we had so much music and I said ‘I just want to release everything the way I wrote it, not the way it’s in the film, because it’s hard for me to watch the film when I just hear every edit,'” he said.
Jablonsky noted that toward the end of production, it would get to the point where editing changes to both the picture and the music would be made without being notified, which he understands since there was so much going on and it would be impossible to relay that information back and forth so often, however he feels that the music was not the best it could be in the final version of the film.
“There are several scenes that used to have a nice melodic flow through the scene, but now it’s like five notes from the theme and it cuts to the next part and then it cuts to the next part,” he said. “It pains me to listen to this because it was so much better before. I know it was so much better before, but I understand [Bay] needs to shorten his film.”
The entire interview can be viewed after the jump. Jablonsky discusses things such as beginning his work with Michael Bay for the first time, writing the music for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and more. His words on The Last Knight begin at 31:07.
Applejacktimus
I can only imagine how everyone will react when they release the 40 min. longer extended edition and it turns out all of those deleted scenes were human scenes.
On the plus side, the editors spared us from 40 minutes of senseless, irritating drivel. On the minus side, they missed… oh, about an hour or so of exactly that.
Livingdeaddan
Should see you through!
Chaos Prime
Stuff edited out? The movie was 2 and half hours long. A movies like Bayformers are like 80% action and 20% plot. If you can't tell your story in 2 hours or less then you've failed as a director.
fathi_haziq
Yet those 'horny old British ladies' scenes were deemed okay. Ughh….
Moy
All we need now is Bay saying there's a lot of footage that was cut.
daniel 97
It could've been much more, the potential was huge…I think they were trying way too hard on this one.
Chaos Prime
Audiences are starting to get tired of Bayformers. As each movie drags on they're just getting worse,m and worse. And since when would a Bayformers movie have a tight story? They've all be loose and weird.
soundwavejordan
Well that\'s unfortunate! It seems like everything regarding the movie itself along with editing/production/scripting just got all sloppy in the end and it\'s unfortunate that Steve Jablonsky was a victim of this. I know this movie was just frustrating for him.
zachprime86
Maybe this means that there was more robot screen time ?
Livingdeaddan
That they would edit out scenes and shots of transformers, after 4 movies of being told we need humans because it's too expensive to give TFs a personality and keep them on screen to further a plot, this is a real kick in the teeth.
Livingdeaddan
This is the knock on effect of everyone who complained about AOE being too long!!
Of course, if they were shooting from a coherent 2hr script they could expand on instead of a jumbled 3hr script they had to hack shorter…
I'd like to see that longer cut I think.
I wonder if they rearranged the movie for the J release? They've had enough time, it's still not out! What's the US running time? I guess it's not the 3h10m google says it is?!
Super Bumblebee
I figured that there was a lot that was edited out of the movie! I even created a whole thread about it before. I wonder what the story would have been like without all the edits.
That being said, I think Jablonsky did an excellent job with the score.
Powersa
LOL was Optimus Prime edited out? Because he basically disappeared, for like 2 hours. Paramount/Hasbro wanted to mimic a Universe like Marvel/DC? Well Avengers don't let heroes disappear for 3 quarters of the movie. Also where were the transforming scenes in a Transformer Universe?
BarricadeLives
something was off about tlk, even for a filmverse transformers film there was just too much about it that was alien to the established filmverse continuity
5 films in is not the time to try & launch an extended universe..what is wrong with these people? short-sided greed….the film was 'too long' so they cut it up & now it's panned by pretty much everyone so your brand takes a big hit…should have just left the bayverse alone..it was printing money (especially 3 & 4) & didn't need an extended universe
Russian fan
I truly feel sorry to Steve! He tried so hard! Some tracks especially the final battle are really good, but in most of the scenes you barelly hear the music at all But another problem – we haven't a good music, because we almost haven't awesome, inspiring or deep and dramatic scenes, where the music is super important!
Yes, it's truly not logicaly to change working formula so drastically! Also, I would happy to see 3-hour TF-Movie or even longer. Why it's not prohibited for Cameron, but prohibited for Michael Bay? Transformers can be serious. Plus, poor editing is not a main problem, DOTM or ROTF are equal or shorter then 2-30, but they don't look like everyone hurries to airplane. They have enough TF scenes and enough human scenes, calmy dialogs and epic battles. The key is still the script. Ehren Kruger and Michael Bay created the scripts together, so the director could remove some scenes even before the filming to save atmosphere and avoid plot-holes. And, damn, why those, who worked hard and love Transformers so much, must explain people, what was wrong, but producers like Bonaventura and Goldner pretend that everything is normal?!
BarricadeLives
idk i think films like 'armageddon', 'pearl harbor', even 'the island', 'pain & gain' & all of the transformers films were out of his wheelhouse…mixed results but there's great positives in there as well
Ephland
He does have some, yes. But TLK was clearly this franchise's attempt at "trying something new", and it failed miserably. Bay can't step out of his comfort zone without disastrous results.
BumblebeeFan71
I wouldn't say that; Bay has had plenty of good contributions to the Transformers franchise. For example we got a pretty great villain aka Sentinel Prime since instead of being evil for the sake of it, he was more of a leader willing to cross the line in order to save his planet. Megatron is handled pretty well too, while his intimidation factor has dropped over the movies, I would say he was handled very well in the first three movies. Can't say much for TLK Megatron because lack of screentime and I think that he was brainwashed by Quintessa. He also made possibly one of the best written Optimus Prime's in the franchise since through TF1 to AOE it showcased Optimus going through a subtle arc, showing how much the war is starting to take a toll on him. I think that might be why I love Optimus' final line in TLK, "This is a call to all Autobots! It's time to go home!"
Besides I don't think everyone should solely point fingers at Bay and claim he's the mastermind behind the TLK being a disappointment. He was the director, yes, but you need to remember that he had a few others watching him this time and adding their contributions. That would be Paramount and Hasbro. Remember they wanted to push TLK as the foundation for their cinematic universe. That might be why Bay decided to toss out the continuity, probably felt there wasn't enough room since he needed to get the basic information/backstory set up in order for all future Transformers films will turn to. That would be the "Secret History of the Transformers", pretty much the part of the film that seemed like it put the movie on the pause button. Besides I do remember quite a few people saying "With Hasbro overseeing and having more control over the movie production this time, maybe they'll keep Bay from making stupid decisions!" Need I remind you of the Aligned Continuity.
As for Steve Jablonsky, I think I can understand why he's angry. I believe there was a topic on it once, where the editors stated in an interview that they purposely barely used his music. Basically they said that since TLK was going to be a fresh start, they figured they should move away from the "Steve Era" as they put it. I would be mad too if I poured hard work into making a soundtrack and the editors decide to cut out most of the work. Don't know what Bay's stance was on it, he could have had a part, or it could have been the producer's decision. From what I've read, the producer can change up editing, costumes, and some script details.
Energone
Poor guy. I feel for him, rushed schedules are putting more and more pressure on composers to work with the editors, as opposed to the old guard filmmakers like Spielberg who like to take their time with music to set the mood right. TLK's sloppy editing certainly didn't make his job easier.