I couldn’t resist.
The hyperlink promised I could listen to the ENTIRE score for The Dark Knight Rises, a full week before the album was due to hit the streets.
At first trepidatious of hearing accidental musical spoilers, I eventually clicked, patiently waited through some nagging buffering delays and, finally, caught a listen to the magnificent, powerful music Hans Zimmer has composed for Christopher Nolan’s final chapter in his Batman trilogy.
I’ve had a thorough listen—okay, okay, several listens on a repeating loop—and if the score is any indication, this film will be absolutely stunning. If you don’t agree Zimmer is the modern-day equivalent of Richard Wagner, you haven’t been paying attention to his cinematic work.
Since the inauguration of the modern-day Batman films in 1989, music has been an integral element in creating the ominous atmosphere of Gotham City and the nighttime vigilante heroics of the Caped Crusader. Let’s recap and revel in some of the musical highlights… and try to forgive a few lowlights.
Danny Elfman’s classical old-school orchestral score boasts an exciting main theme for Batman that is both brooding and triumphant. The board-meeting mentality to the film’s inception, production and marketing resulted in the movie being positioned as a platform for a new Prince album—just five years after the smashing success of Purple Rain, he was still a hot commodity for the corporation — and the event marked the first time an orchestral soundtrack album was supplemented with a separate “songs from and inspired by” album. Elfman’s magnificent score shares a lot of screen time with a handful of the Purple One’s pop ditties, but at least the songs are used with relative restraint.
Now hear this: “Descent Into Mystery.”
Batman Returns (1992)
If Burton was micro-managed by the studio committee on the first film, here he’s seemingly been granted carte blanche to make the sequel his own—unencumbered (nee, unsupervised) by corporate oversight and relatively undiluted by pop-culture influence (another solo album by Prince is out; a solitary single by Siouxsie and the Banshees is in).
Granted, the film has its shortcomings: it’s much smaller in scale, and it’s way too grotesque for the kiddies targeted by an ill-advised Happy Meal tie-in campaign. Even so, Batman Returns remains Burton’s purest expression of Gotham, full of macabre wit and highlighted by a deliciously vampy turn by Michelle Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle/Catwoman.
Trivia bit: it’s also the only one of the original cycle of Batman movies where the actor portraying Bruce Wayne/Batman receives top billing.
Danny Elfman returns as maestro, and he conducts a muscular reprise of the signature “Batman Theme” and offers a melancholy cue for the pathetic Penguin. Elfman’s finest musical flourish for Batman Returns is all about Catwoman: her slinky and mysterious string motif explodes with Selina’s pent-up rage into a deranged music-box lullaby as she destroys the symbols of her virginal childhood and ferociously embraces her inner vixen. Check out Chapter 10 of the DVD/Blu-ray.
Hell here, indeed.
Now hear this: “Selina Transforms”
Batman Forever (1995) /Batman & Robin (1997)
With the advent of director Joel Schumacher, the Batman films retreat from tortured, gothic gloom and sashay toward gaudy, neon-lit, burlesque/mardi gras/carnival/free-for-all mayhem.
Batman Forever is most notable as the film that introduced Val Kilmer as Bruce Wayne/Batman and added nipples to the Bat Suit. Batman Forever and the fourth (and most execrable) film Batman & Robin—the monstrosity with Schwarzenegger & Clooney—unceremoniously ditched Danny Elfman and scuttled his memorable themes.
Pinch-hitting is relative newcomer Elliot Goldenthal, who snagged a few high-profile scoring gigs in the early nineties (Alien 3; Interview with the Vampire), but whose limp themes here don’t come close to equaling the sonic grandeur of Elfman’s symphonic contributions to the previous two Batman films. It’s appropriately damning that the only music anyone seems to remember from Goldenthal’s two Batman movies are extraneous pop/rock songs from Seal and U2.
Batman Begins (2005)
The lush, atmospheric scores for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are the result of a rare collaboration between two impressively prolific composers, Hans Zimmer (Rain Man; Black Rain; Thelma & Louise; Backdraft; Crimson Tide; Oscar winner for The Lion King) and James Newton Howard (The Fugitive; Glengarry Glen Ross; Waterworld; Devil’s Advocate; King Kong; Flatliners; Pretty Woman; nearly every one of M. Knight Shyamalan’s movies).
Blending symphonic music with bombastic percussion and synthetic beats, this dynamic duo create more than a mere musical accompaniment to the workings of Gotham City, they concoct layered, undulating soundscapes of foreboding and heroism. Here you’ll hear the early evolution of what serves as the stirring defacto “theme” for the rebooted Batman.
My biggest bone to pick with the recent spate of superhero flicks has been with the musical composition departments: too few of these films have been christened with a memorable theme, something you’d be humming to yourself as you ambled up the aisle while contemplating whether to spring for the soundtrack album. With the exception of Iron Man, I couldn’t hum a bar of any of the Marvel movies to save my life, but the theme Zimmer & Howard delivered for Batman Begins stuck in my head instantly.
I only wish it was used more often in the film. The track titles on the soundtrack album avoid the pedestrian tradition of identifying scenes or characters and instead are cleverly named for various classes of bats.
Now hear this: “Molossus” – the reboot’s corollary to “Descent Into Mystery” from 1989’s Batman.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Zimmer & Howard reunite for the second installment in Christopher Nolan’s Batman series, and palpable credit for the film’s staggering box office success and phenomenal critical reception goes to their moody, riveting score.
The aforementioned “Dark Knight Theme” is revisited and elaborated upon, and the incessant burn of the Joker’s two-note string motif—the notes “D” and “C” for DC Comics—generates a paranoid feeling of madness and menace.
Now hear this: “A Dark Knight” – This moody and intense 16-minute finale to the initial Dark Knight soundtrack album encapsulates the broad strokes of the entire film in one mammoth, thunderous symphony—from the “Dark Knight” anthem (again, used sparingly) to the psychotic screech of the Joker’s string theme; from the tragic motif of Harvey Dent’s fall from grace to the propulsive tempo of the beating heart of Gotham City. Best heard during a stormy dusk, I advise you to crank up the bass, dim all the lights and pour yourself a tall glass of red wine as Zimmer & Howard take you on a rousing and harrowing musical tour of Gotham City. Truly epic.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
The first thing I did was glance at the track names (spoiler-free, thanks be) and the track lengths. Nothing on the order of the 16-minute capper to The Dark Knight soundtrack here, but there are two stunning 7-minute cuts on the new album that, collectively, serve as a musical trajectory of what I suspect the film’s dramatic arc will eventually carve out. (I could be embarrassingly wrong, of course, but I suspect I’ve heard a musical spoiler or two that I shall not reveal in this column; listen to the whole score at your own risk.)
Only now, with the release of the solo-Zimmer score for the final film The Dark Knight Rises, can I venture to guess what bits came from the influence of James Newton Howard by identifying the motifs absent from the new film. Gone entirely is the signature motif heard in “Molossus” from Batman Begins, but recognizable bits of Zimmer’s influence are expounded upon throughout the new score—so much so, in fact, that I hardly missed the most prominent theme from Batman Begins.
Bane is given a throbbing synthesizer/horn theme layered with a haunting choral chant that ought to send chills down any listener’s spine. In the titanic cue “Imagine the Fire,” Zimmer mutates the two themes for Batman and Bane into one incredible orchestral statement that I suspect we’ll hear during the film’s climax.
If the images on the screen equal the emotions and flights of fancy conjured by Zimmer’s soaring music, we’re in store for a riveting time at the movies!
Now hear this: “Imagine the Fire.” No spoilers (I think).
