Q: Another film you’ve done which is more fantasy oriented is LEGENDARY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON, which touches on a bunch of things – it’s an action film, it’s a fantasy, it’s a little bit of a caper movie, and it’s also a monster film. How did you come in and treat those various elements?Paul Leonard-Morgan: Do you know what? The timing on that was just brilliant, because without getting too deep and heavy, my second child had been very unwell - she’s fine now, but I’d basically been living in hospital with my wife for about two and a half months, so I wasn’t speaking to anyone, and then she got out and she’s fine and my agent said “I’ve actually been putting these people off for the last two and a half months, but you probably don’t want to do it because you’re getting your head together, but there’s this kind of caper movie.” I asked what it was, and it was bizarre because the previous two years had been THE NUMBERS STATION and LIMITLESS and DREDD – really dark, murdery, twisted stuff – and suddenly, my daughter’s born and then she’s fine after being in hospital for a time, and that year was just a year of these fun, happy soundtracks! So I had this caper thing. then I had the MINIONS shorts come along, and then I had WALKING WITH DINOSAURS and suddenly it’s “hey! He’s the happy animation guy!” That’s fine - let’s forget about the deaths and drugs, I’ll go for the happy animation guy anytime! So LEGENDARY came along, and I read the script, and thought “You know what? I can do with a bit of happiness in my life!” It was basically a family movie and I’d never done one of those before, so I thought I’d give it a try! It was actually a rollicking ride – it had a sense of humor and lots of big action pieces where I could really get into the orchestral stuff and have really bombastic drums. It was just one of those films where you’re going to go and have a bit of fun for a couple of months.
Q: One of the things I like about that score, beyond its overall tone, is how you’ve treated the monster – the dragon. It’s always kind of iffy in the film – is it really a monster, is it a figment of legend, and you’ve got this music which really adds a presence to that creature as they’re investigating it.Paul Leonard-Morgan: I think there are two sides to the film. One is obviously the kind of caper side where they’re just going around trying to find clues – one of the tracks is called “Fun at the Morgue,” so it was always going to be tongue-in-cheek. But as far as the actual creature itself, it was a case of “how do you make something scary, without doing what’s been done a million times before?” So I got some really raw percussion – let’s think back to what it was like in The Land Before Man with these monsters, and if you didn’t have electricity or you didn’t have machines, you had people hitting things, whether that was a cave man hitting walls or people just hitting some sort of metal, that was the idea behind it. Then I thought well, yeah but also need to make people feel for this creature, whether it’s fear or empathy or however you’re feeling towards the creature; so I got some brass instruments, trombones and horns and everything, which I can’t play for the life of me but I just blew into them. Then de-tuned them and tied them together, layered them up against some other samples, and you’ve got this really, raw, shouting-from-the-depths of this dinosaur creature. So that was my thinking: percussion and raw, de-tuned brass.
Q: How did you treat the more muscular action music? Apart from everything else you’ve also got these two rival action heroes, Dolph Lundgren and Scott Adkins, and they’re at odds. Paul Leonard-Morgan: It’s funny, isn’t it? You’ve got these martial arts guys in there, and then they’re going around trying to steal secrets! It’s one of those films where you just don’t take it too seriously. I think if you start going, wow, we need to kind of do this, or do that, then you start questioning, well, why are they in China chasing after dragons?
Q: It’s like suddenly we’re in a Jackie Chan movie or something!Paul Leonard-Morgan: Yeah, totally! And then out come the guitars and we’ve got PULP FICTION and RESERVOIR DOGS….! Dolph does these fantastic baddie faces: do you trust him or do you not trust him? Scott is clearly a Hollywood heartthrob who everybody loves, so it’s going back to a comic book character, one’s the villain and one’s the goodie. Let’s play them up a bit and have a little fun with it.