The 13th Warrior - End Credits.

It's been ten years since the release of the 13th Warrior, and while the movie bomb at the box office the score did quite well, and became one of Jerry Goldsmith's more popular pieces of work. The movie did have its fair share of difficulties to overcome while it was being made, one big problem was the constant fighting that Michael Crichton, and John McTiernan would have during the making of the film. The budget sky rocketed and the movie was put on the shelf for some time before it was finally released. As the movie production chugged along McTiernan would eventually be fired and Crichton would take over as the director. The movie had a very long troubled history and took forever to be completed, and that also includes the score to The 13th Warrior, which was originally helmed by Greame Revell. Crichton had his own idea on who should score the movie (Jerry Goldsmith, a close friend of Crichton) and Revell, was not the man he had in mind. From what I've heard Crichton didn't even hear Revell's score completely before tossing it aside and bringing in Goldsmith.

When Goldsmith, came aboard the release of the actual movie was nearing, and Goldsmith was brought in on short notice. Rather odd he would accept because after Air Force One, Goldsmith, did state that he wouldn't work on another movie with a short time period ; maybe it was due to the fact that he was friends with Cricton that he accepted the job, either way I, and several film score fans are glad he took the job. The 13th Warrior, is not a score that beams with originality in fact, it's far from it, but it does have the incredible ability to entertain and enthrall the listerner. Many believe this to be Goldsmith's last great score, and his best score in 1999 (which many also believe to be his last great year as a film composer before battling cancer) but even though the score gets such high praise most of the time it is rather unsettling that a composer of Goldsmith's caliber would re-use so much of his own material. The Arabic theme that's used here is a virtual copy and paste from The Mummy, and there are even traces of Legend, that seep through. The most unsettling aspect is in fact the main theme, which sounds as if it was molded after Hans Zimmer's Crimson Tide, despite this it is still a solid and noble theme, although a bit overly heroric. The re-usage of material by Goldsmith, is nothing new and he had done it frequently during the 1990s, but here in this score and I suppose through out the decade it would foreshadow just how Goldsmith would score movies during his final four years a life (massive re-usage of material). Goldsmith's score cannot be fairly compared to Revell's work because he scored a much different movie, from what I've read (rumors obviously) the original cut of the movie was around 3 hours long, and compare that to the 90 mintues that Goldsmith scored, each of the composers work is bound to be different in nature.

Revell's created the better score in my opinion when you get down to its technical merits, but Goldsmith's music is a far more exhilarating than Revell's work. Despite it's unoriginality the score does captivate the listener and it's hard not to get caught up in the sheer ferocity of "Horns Of Hell", "Fire Dragon", and "Valhalla Viking Victory". Now the "End Credits" track was not included in the commercial album, and I don't quite understand why, but the commercial release of The 13th Warrior is a fine album, but it could have benefited from the inclusion of the "End Credits" suite. The "End Credits" doesn't really offer any new material but just a mixture of themes presented through out the score. It starts off with a slightly altered version of "Old Baghdad" and then transitions into a slightly altered version of "Exiled".

The original album ends on the track "Useful Servant" which appears when Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan is writing down the events that took place at the end of the movie. The "End Credits" can be found on the bootleg copy of the score, and I do wish it was included on the commercial album, but either way both the commercial and bootleg copies of The 13th Warrior score are fine albums.