O for a point that I might miss it entirely!

I commented favorably a month or so back about the movie Tristan and Isolde, also noting that I enjoyed the film's score, a nicely minimalistic effort by Anne Dudley that doesn't strive for the faux-epic tone with lots of Celticisms that one might have expected from a less creative Hollywood composer.

I haven't picked up that score album yet (although I intend to), but I got quite a laugh out of some of the comments on the score's Amazon page:

I can respect that the composer for the motion picture wanted to create her own musical adaptation for the epic, but it's almost ignorant to not even acknowledge Wagner in a simple thematic context. It's not to say works shouldn't be reinvented, but it's also hard to say anyone stands up in comparison to Wagner when it comes to opera.

Upon hearing that there was going to be a movie adaptation of this age-old tale, my thoughts turned immediately to Richard Wagner's timeless Opera. If you have read previous reviews, you already know that my expectations for this score were not met. While it's true that the Wagnerian references would have been lost on most audiences, it seems irresponsible of the composer to have completely neglected them.

I was slightly perplexed and, frankly, disappointed at the blatant omission of any musical reference to Wagner's masterpiece score to the opera version of this tale. I realize that it's not entirely necessary, since the story of Tristan and Isolde has been around for ages. However, I do believe that it is negligent to ignore one of the greatest works of music ever composed when it so directly relates to the film.

I wonder if these same folks complained about the Troy score CD on the basis that James Horner didn't reference Berlioz?