David Newman - Serenity - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2005)

Firefly, creator/director Joss Whedon's hip and eclectic sci-fi series, may have tanked on the small screen, but it garnered the kind of devoted fan base that takes other similarly cultish programs years to muster. One of the many things that made the show so unique was its adherence to Western themes (as in cowboys), an element that not only informed the program's language and attitude, but its music as well. While composer David Newman -- he has a famous composer brother named Thomas (Shawshank Redemption, Six Feet Under) and even more famous cousin named Randy -- retains little of Greg Edmonson and Whedon's original music on the series' big-screen adaptation, Serenity is still occasionally kissed by a flurry of guitar and banjo, percussion, and pan-Asian flute motifs. Newman has taken some of the quirkiness out -- to many a fan's dismay -- and replaced it with chilly and bombastic action cues that scream mediocrity, but for the most part no great injustice has been done. In fact, Serenity has more in common with Joby Talbot's eclectic score for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy than it does Krull.~ Review by James Christopher Monger