German composer (and former member of The Buggles) Hans Zimmer should be recognized as one of the greatest film composers in history. People like John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, and Zimmer have produced soundscapes that will live on in people’s memories and artistic expression for decades to come. Zimmer had taken home an Oscar back in 1995 for “The Lion King,” but he repeated the accolade in 2022 with his score for “Dune.”
Sadly, he won’t have a chance to repeat that success with “Dune: Part 2″ because the score is ineligible for a nomination.
The problem the score for “Dune: Part 2″ comes from the nature of making music for a sequel. Or for anything that’s part of a franchise with common elements. The award category is not for Best Score, but for Best Original Score. That’s where the problem is. One might argue this is a bit unfair. After all, when two films are part of a larger whole, of course they’re going to share commonalities from themes to leitmotifs. This is a fair criticism.
As fair as this critique is, the Academy does have an allowance for situations like this. A film can reuse preexisting material from other installments, but that music cannot be more than 20% of the overall score. Unfortunately, Zimmer’s score went past that threshold for “Dune: Part 2,” rendering it ineligible for an Academy Award nomination.
It will still be eligible for the Golden Globes, BAFTA, and Grammys.
The logic makes sense; what good is calling something an original score if it was previously used? But an argument could also be made that a film is nothing if not a story and if the story takes more than one film to tell, should the composer be effectively punished for that?
In any case, the nominations will be announced on January 17th, 2025. If you haven’t already, you should pick up the 4k of Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune Part Two” here. You can also pick up the official score album on vinyl here.
