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| Zimmer |
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| Howard |
Batman Begins: (Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard)
After the eventual fizzling of the original
Batman franchise in
the late 1990's, Warner handed one of its most prized characters to
director Christopher Nolan in hopes of resurrecting the once dominant
box office champ. Taking the Bruce Wayne character back to its origins,
Nolan's
Batman Begins reveals the beginnings of Bob Kane's
character for DC Comics and further explains Bruce Wayne's childhood
trauma and formation of the Batman character twenty years later. With
surprisingly consistent critical praise and a widely talented cast of
performers,
Batman Begins is easily the best film in the
franchise since the classic original directed by Tim Burton. Much has
been said about how the 2005 entry is different from all those before it
in its more realistic style of art direction and color usage, but the
prequel film interestingly ties directly to the original
Batman
in many ways near its conclusion. Despite Nolan's attempts to create a
distinguishing atmosphere throughout his work,
Batman Begins
treads very closely to Burton's darkly rendered, ironclad vision of
Gotham and its character by the climactic battle between Batman and the
film's two sets of collaborating villains. Always of upmost importance
in any superhero film, the original score for
Batman Begins
marked a deviation in the approach to the concept. Inspired by Danny
Elfman's classic score for the original 1989 entry, the previous films
in the franchise had alternated between strictly orchestral and
score/song mixtures throughout their history, not succumbing during that
time to trends in synthetics. Nolan had been in talks with renown
composer Hans Zimmer for an entire year before Zimmer officially
replaced Nolan's usual collaborator, David Julyan, on the assignment.
Zimmer, however, was hesitant about the score because he was at a point
in his career when large orchestral works didn't interest him. He had
always wanted to collaborate with his good friend and fellow first-rate
composer, James Newton Howard, and after a dozen years of talking about
the prospect of working together, the two signed on to compose
Batman
Begins as a team.
The collaborative effort was just that: collaborative on
each and every cue. There isn't a "Zimmer section of the score" or a
"Howard theme," as would be the case with their continuation for
The
Dark Knight a few years later. The two literally sat in rooms across
a hall and for 12 weeks ran each piece of new material by each other as
they composed. The resulting score is indeed very fluid, although
collectors of both Zimmer and Howard's scores will find the finished
score's style to point clearly in the direction of Zimmer's body of
work. As expected, the score is heavily laden with electronic
embellishments and sound effects. "I think this one has more electronics
in it than anything else," Zimmer stated at the time of its debut. "I
didn't want to do straight orchestra because Batman, he's not a straight
character. I mean, where do you get those wonderful toys from and the
technology? So I thought I could embrace a bit more technology in this
one. There isn't a straight orchestral note on this score." The
orchestral ensemble of about 90 players from various London groups has
the usual Zimmer emphasis on cellos and other lower-range instruments,
and he utilizes his electronics to further sink the score into the realm
of brooding darkness. Zimmer enjoys a chaotic scoring environment, a
"completely anarchistic way of working," as he says, and this label
applies more than ever to the two hours and twenty minutes of recorded
music for the
Batman Begins project. The most fanatic followers
of the Batman franchise are obviously most curious about the musical
connections between this score and the related ventures of Danny Elfman
and Elliot Goldenthal. Elfman's original is considered one of the most
poignant superhero scores in the history of Hollywood, and some of his
fans even prefer the more varied thematic and instrumental approach
Elfman took in
Batman Returns. Elliot Goldenthal, for his two
sequels, slightly altered Elfman's theme, but maintained usage of its
spirit throughout the next two sequels. Both Elfman and Goldenthal were
carefully considerate of subthemes for the often paired villains in each
film, creating a structured environment for their themes that usually
led to creative and occasionally brilliant interpretations of those
themes. Both knew when to bang the gong, ring the bells, and let rip
with some heroic brass.
Zimmer and Howard throw all of the franchise's prior
methodology out the window. It seems to have been Zimmer who made the
fundamental structural and thematic choices about the overarching style
and spirit of the score, and although Howard's sensibilities do shine
through occasionally (as in the opening half of "Eptesicus"),
Batman
Begins is saturated with Zimmer's recognizable techniques from top
to bottom. The themes for Batman and his love interest are both
extremely simplistic in Zimmer's typical methodology for stringing a few
melodramatic chord progressions together. The Batman theme itself is a
rising two-note minor key progression set over a systematic ostinato
rhythm of similar two-note alternations by real and electric strings.
Perhaps the synthetically-enhanced brass version of the theme at the
forefront represents the big bat in the rubber suit while the chopping
ostinatos underneath represent the swarm of bats that inspire him, but
that's stretching for an intellectual reasoning when one may not exist.
The ostinato is utilized often, typically spanning several scene
changes, though the title theme itself is only heard a couple of times
in full. As a pace-setter, the string ostinatos are sufficient as an
agent of propulsion, moving through the film at a steady pace. They
certainly inspired Hollywood filmmakers to request them in a plethora of
forthcoming projects by other composers, most notably in the
Transformers franchise. The sensitive theme for the love
interest, as well as scenes with Alfred and the numerous flashbacks to
Wayne's childhood, are handled with a soft piano motif (as at the end of
"Macrotus"). Several scenes of swooshing, terrifying bat attacks are
handled with crazed string chaos. The two heavily electronic techniques
in the film come first in the form of a distinct sound effect that
Zimmer concocts to represent the flapping wings of Batman's suit at the
very beginning and end of the film. The second major use of electronics
at the forefront comes in Zimmer's only action motif for
Batman
Begins, heard three times and most prominently during Wayne's
explosive escape from The League of Shadows at the start and during the
monorail battle at the end of the film. Neither of these electronic
ideas is very creative; the thumping sound at the outset of the film is
uninteresting and any basic Zimmer collector will be able to recognize
the action music (especially in "Antrozous") as being a poor adaptation
of similar sequences in
The Rock and other earlier Zimmer action
scores.
There is no carryover of musical ideas from the prior
films in the franchise, and the foreshadowing of music in
The Dark
Knight is haphazard (a wayward motif in the latter half of "Mytois"
inexplicably becomes the Harvey Dent theme in the second film, for
instance). Regarding the musical history of the franchise, Zimmer states
something that would seem to make sense when taken for face value. "Why
would I want to do a sequel to something? That's a boring thing to do.
We went for dark and brooding. I think probably one of the things is
that we're a lot darker than any of the stuff that's gone before. I was
working on a Chris Nolan movie and ultimately you serve the film in
front of you. I don't think you need to be relevant to the history that
it comes from, in a way. That's what the guys pay me for: invent!" He
continues by saying: "Nobody ever mentions the Elliot Goldenthal scores.
And of course I'm not mentioning any of that either, because quite
honestly I didn't go and look at the old Batman movies again." The above
statements are fascinating, because Zimmer exposes a critical component
in his methodology that plagues his score for
Batman Begins and
others of the same era: laziness. Whether he likes it or not (and the
same can be applied to Nolan),
Batman Begins finishes in almost
identical fashion to Burton's two films, with surprisingly similar
treatments of scene, character, and action. Viewers even see the "rising
building" shot where Batman is silhouetted atop a tall structure. The
theme that Zimmer conjures shares the same basic dual-personality
superhero idea of alternating between major and minor keys. And whether
Zimmer realizes it or not, he didn't invent the concept of brooding in
the Batman franchise; Elfman clearly did. The problem with Zimmer's lack
of attentiveness to the franchise is the simple fact that he attempted
to reinvent the wheel for the concept's music and did do poorly. He
chose not to pay attention to the music that fans of the series already
have ingrained in their memories (another "whether you like it or not"
reality) and forced the music in a new direction. But, in reality, all
he did was create an inferior version of what Elfman and Goldenthal had
already done. Some have said that
Batman Begins didn't need the
gothic, heroic approach of scoring. Zimmer claims that wasn't his goal,
either. But the film demanded it by the end, and Zimmer's inability to
write to those needs (and refusal to study the success of those who came
before) ultimately makes
Batman Begins a intellectually devoid
and only minimally emotionally effective disappointment.
There is no doubt that the quality of
Batman
Begins as a film ends up floating its own music. The largely
atmospheric score is played safely and conservatively, and while it is
mixed generously in volume throughout in context, the film gains little
from the accompaniment. Ironically, portions of the Zimmer/Howard score
play better on album than in the picture, for its simplistic rhythms and
progressions are pleasantly masculine at the very least. But "pleasant"
and "simplistic" music is not what Bruce Wayne needs. "I wasn't really
writing about a big, oversized, heroic character," Zimmer argues. "I was
trying to write about a slightly psychologically damaged character. And
I'm always better with those." Unfortunately for Zimmer, he fails on two
levels in that statement; first, Batman indeed forces himself into
becoming a heroic character. He's a superhero. A twisted one, of course,
but he certainly demands more than a two-note motif to represent him and
much more than recycled music from
The Rock to accompany him into
battle. There is nothing in this score to indicate any heroic actions
whatsoever; it could very well have been music to a host of other topics
across several genres. Additionally, the recycled string personality
from
The Thin Red Line ("Lasiurus" borrows not only from this
earlier Zimmer work, but it foreshadows
The Da Vinci Code) is
nice for the melodramatic aspect of the story, but it lacks the ability
to truly define the trauma in Wayne's life. Not everyone's struggles can
be defined by an adagio. Zimmer is proud of the cue in which a choir boy
is suddenly frozen mid-theme during a flashback ("I did this crazy thing
with this choir boy..."), and yet this usage is as cliche a technique as
ever, definitely not crazy by any means. The sound effects are likewise
tired in their inability to truly enhance the music rather than simply
serve as a portion of the movie's greater sound design. More
importantly, there is no adequate thematic development for the
pseudo-noble League of Shadows, nor the delightfully horrifying
Scarecrow character. Gotham's glistening beauty at the start of the film
receives no prominent major key variation of anything that comes after
its societal downfall and Batman's arrival. Narrative flow is
practically nonexistent, especially on the inadequately assembled
commercial album. Simply put, Zimmer claims that doing his research
would make for a "boring" score. Instead, this attitude not only stinks
of laziness, but also of arrogance. When another composer has hit the
nail on the head before you, even in slightly different circumstances,
there's no excuse for completely ignoring that benchmark. You have to
know that the audiences won't ignore it.
For Zimmer,
Batman Begins represents a terribly
frustrating failure to perform up to expectations. His music services
the film with only a lightly painted canvas, and luckily the movie is
strong enough to overcome the deficiencies in its music. And what of
Howard? His typically sophisticated style of writing doesn't seem to
encroach upon the simplicity of Zimmer's overarching vision for the
score. If you want to be cynical, you could argue that Zimmer traded in
his hoard of lesser-known ghostwriters for one top-notch ghostwriter,
and even this didn't save the score. Fans would be justified to wonder
what
Batman Begins could have sounded like under the sole care of
Howard, who likely could have much better musically interpreted the
subtleties of Wayne's duality (his isolated material for Dent in
The
Dark Knight teases this theory). Ardent enthusiasts of Zimmer's
vintage works were already questioning some of the composer's output of
the 2000's, and
Batman Begins only added to the head-scratching
mystery of where the composer's methodology went wrong. Instead of
adapting himself to Batman, Zimmer tried to force Batman to adapt to his
musical comfort zone. In so doing, he began treading dangerously close
to outliving his usefulness in the action and fantasy genres. Some of
the fault does fall on Nolan, who could (and should) have known that
there are brilliant young composers working in this generation who don't
have hang-ups about large orchestras, who don't attract a chaotic
scoring environment, who don't rely on the talents of other composers,
and who have already proven themselves to be masters of handling
major/minor key creativity and complex variations of theme. Who else
would have been fascinated to hear what the likes of Brian Tyler or John
Ottman could have done with this fantastic film? The hour of music
presented on the commercial
Batman Begins album is more than
enough, though die-hard fans have long lamented that the missing music
does solve some of the narrative flow issues that otherwise plague that
pressed CD. After the product went out of print within a few years,
Warner re-issued it as an Amazon.com "CDr on Demand" offering, diving up
the cost of new copies of the prior issue. The Latin track titles are
cute but irritating in that they don't indicate for casual fans what
parts of the film they are derived from. Overall,
Batman Begins
remains an enormously wasted opportunity for both Zimmer and Howard, as
well as for fans of the franchise. While
The Dark Knight has
better highlights (courtesy of Howard), it also suffers from a greater
quantity of intolerable passages. It is truly unfortunate that this
quality franchise didn't receive the services of a primary composer who
serves Batman rather than serving himself.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.94
(in 96 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.97
(in 275,254 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.4
(in 62 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.26
(in 71,522 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or
film. As in many of Amazon.com's "CDr on demand" products, the
packaging of the 2010 re-issue smells incredibly foul when new.
