Air Force One's Last Minute Soundtrack

image via Thrillist

Air Force One was a blockbuster hit from 1997 that featured President Harrison Ford single-handedly fighting off terrorists who have taken over the president's personal aircraft. From beating the sinister evil Russian, to the night-time special operations raid, all capped off with an enormous plane crash, the film is so full of "America, fuck yeah!" motifs you'd think George Washington himself had directed it.

Capping off the massive patriotic tone of the film is the score by Jerry Goldsmith. The music for the film is enough to make anyone within a fifty foot radius pop a freedom boner, which is surprising since Goldsmith haphazardly threw the entire thing together at the last minute as a favor to director Wolfgang Peterson.

image via CuttheCrap

It was either that, or face Harrison Ford's wrath,

Turns out Peters had originally commissioned legendary composer Randy Newman to create the score for the film. The only issue was that Newman had never done the score for a serious action film before. And the soundtrack Newman was most famous for at the time was the score of the film Toy Story, not exactly a solid resume builder for a Harrison Ford film.

image via DMGEntertainment

"You've got a frieeeend in me."

When Peterson heard the proposed score, he thought Newman was joking. Deciding it was more fit for a parody film, he scrapped the entire thing. Needing a score fast, he turned to Jerry Goldsmith and asked for one, also telling him he had a mere twelve days to come up with it.

Please note, this is a task that can take up to three months.

image via Memory-Alpha

"Nobody will notice if I just remix the national anthem right?"

So how did he manage to squeeze what normally takes months into less than two weeks? He realized he didn't have time to write an entire score from scratch so he looked over what he had done for previous movies. In the end, he basically took the score of Star Trek and AMERICA!!'d it by adding a snare drum.

Seriously, just listen to it:

videos via Youtube

Start the Star Trek theme at 0:39 and Air Force One at 0:27 to really hear it.

Even with this shortcut, Goldsmith was still wiped out by the process and vowed to never ever ever take such a last minute assignment again.  Even though the theme was thrown together at the last minute, it worked beautifully with the film, with Goldsmith being praised for the film's patriotic tone.

Meanwhile, Newman would hold onto his original score, which was later worked into the film Toy Story 3. In other words, a rejected score for a political/action film with Harrison Ford that was replaced by a rehashed score from a Star Trek film, was used in an animated children's movie about toys that come to life.

image via Youtube

Though this would explain track titles like "President Kills Terrorist" and "Air Force One Crashes"