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| Karpman |
Captain America: Brave New World: (Laura Karpman)
At what point will audiences step back and realize that these endless
films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have diminished so far in appeal
that it's not worth Walt Disney Studios and Marvel Studios putting
hundreds of millions of dollars into such trash? The 35th entry in the
franchise,
Captain America: Brave New World, dominated the early
2025 box office but still struggled to recoup its immense cost of
production and marketing. This was in part because the movie, like many
of its predecessors, just isn't very good, the singular character
spin-offs of the concept failing to attract the same lasting interest.
In this case, the project is a continuation of the 2021 television
series, "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," which handed the Captain
America character off to a new actor and now blends that show's
secondary characters with those dating back to 2008's
The Incredible
Hulk from the big screen. The plot suggests that a conspiracy exists
to control the President of the United States, now Thaddeus Ross, with a
dose of
The Manchurian Candidate influence so that evil-doers can
spread their usual reach of power and destruction. Stopping him is the
Captain America and his new sidekick from the show, their diversity
coming at a time of backlash over such entertainment industry inclusion
initiatives that successfully begged for "Magical Negro" comments from
reviewers and audiences. After all the usual displays of superhero
versus military assets and secret villain hideaways, you get Harrison
Ford, replacing the deceased William Hurt as Ross, transforming into the
Red Hulk for a climactic showdown that leaves taxpayers with a hefty
bill for repairs to the White House. Although the music for "The Falcon
and the Winter Soldier" was handled by franchise veteran Henry Jackman,
the filmmakers returned to the equally experienced Marvel composer Laura
Karpman for
Captain America: Brave New World. Karpman, sharing
compositional credit here with her wife, Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, had
written the music for two related television series and the 2023 movie
The Marvels in the preceding years, impressing with her
intelligent synthetic and orchestral blends. Her mastery of tackling
atonality and unpredictable tempos in her music makes her music
interesting to behold at the very least.
Her strategic approach to
Captain America: Brave New
World is similar to that of
The Marvels, with all the
benefits and drawbacks of her style predictably reprised. Her writing is
extraordinarily dense and complicated for these films, seeking to
combine elements of the Alan Silvestri and Brian Tyler superhero models
with the complexity of Elliot Goldenthal and Don Davis at their heights,
yielding a surprisingly dissonant and challenging overall sound. Like
The Marvels, the music for the 2025 movie throws distinctly
tonal, attractive highlights at you but often prefers dissonance as a
perpetual tool of suspense, even against the dramatic and
action-oriented portions of the work. The constructs in the score are
sometimes fairly simple, but those that are easiest to grasp are applied
rhythmically against the more difficult main melodies, with chords
altered and hazy counterpoint lines always factoring in the complication
of the statements. The ensemble is fully orchestral but laced with often
unpleasant synthetic and vocal accents until the closing cues of
resolution. The orchestra is brilliantly handled, the performance
techniques fantastic for their inventiveness, but their placement in
this context once again questionable. The vocal usage is typically
strained in its shouted, pitch-chaotic inflection, almost never applied
in usual fantasy methodology. The post-production manipulation and
synthesized sound effects are sometimes very intrusive, and when mixed
with the awkward tempos of "Mystery Unfolds," they can be outright
atrocious. The stereo mixing is intentionally awful for effect in a few
cues, the distorted string lines of "White House Confusion"
unlistenable, the puffing effect with the orchestra in "Samuel Sterns"
headache-inducing, the shrieking flute spread in "Camp Echo One Fight"
nauseating, and all of "All is Not Well" painful in its mix. At times,
Karpman's creativity in the synthetic realm simply ruins an otherwise
engaging symphonic cue, as in the distractingly loud electronic thumping
noises in "Confrontation" and the highly distracting infusions in
"Lure." In part because of these layers of tough activity, and in part
because of Karpman's inflated, loud and pounding rhythmic formations,
much of the action material is unlistenable. That said, when she allows
the traditional superhero genre strategies to thrive in the music, she
once again impresses, and those listeners with an ear for intellectual
constructs will greatly appreciate the smarts she brings to these
portions.
Thematically,
Captain America: Brave New World is a
mixed bag. No prior themes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe are
incorporated, a significant loss especially when considering the absent
Jackman elements. Because Karpman has a tendency to write her themes in
tandems of rhythmic devices and overlaid melodies, each major concept in
the score actually has two motifs applied together and separately. The
protagonists receive a superhero fanfare and a proper theme while the
villains often have their equivalents, in both cases the fanfares
translating into rhythmic formations that then drive the main melodies.
Ross also receives a pair of ideas that tussle appropriately as well.
For the pair of dudes flying in expensive suits, we receive the film's
main superhero fanfare, seven notes alternating at and a note below key
and almost always more rhythmic than thematic. This idea blasts away on
brass at the start of "Brave New World" and becomes the underlying
rhythm for the lead melody. It explodes at the start of "Courtyard" on
brass under vocal whooping noises, shifts to become a driving rhythmic
force under the action in "Hostages Saved," starts in "Junkyard" in full
brass action mode, and follows the character theme at the end of "No
Phones" for a quick crescendo. Barely alive in the wavering atmosphere
of "Camp Echo One," this fanfare goes full military mode early in "Birds
in the Air" with snare and ensemble hits, guiding the heroic build of
force in "One Down" and "Still Chasing," and resumes its normal rhythmic
duties at the outset of "Fleet Saved." The actual main theme for Captain
America and his allies in the movie is pleasantly noble but not really
able to make much of an impression because of its somewhat awkward chord
shifts. This character identity noodles around under the superhero theme
early in "Brave New World," sometimes in chords only, but is formally
introduced at 1:35 and culminates with its most major performance at
2:12. This theme emerges heroically in the middle of "Hostages Saved"
for an immense, satisfying rendition. Solitary on trumpet fragments late
in "White House Confusion," the main character theme overcomes the
atonal haze in "No Phones" for an impressive trumpet and horn tandem,
battles both halves of the conspiracy theme in "The Island," and
momentarily overcomes its own forceful superhero theme rhythm in "Birds
in the Air." It unleashes one of its surprisingly few excellent, easily
accessible performances on open brass at 0:49 into "Fire."
The main character theme in
Captain America: Brave
New World is rarely allowed such full-throated, tonal glory by
Karpman, and the few such performances audiences hear are diminished in
stature as the score progresses. While only minimally intact on strings
late in "Still Chasing," the theme consolidates for a major performance
in "Fleet Saved" but then dissolves badly. Reduced to dramatic
sensitivity on strings in "Aspire," the idea panics along with
everything else in the second half of "Transformation," serves as a
distraction from the dissonant action material in "Lure," and reduces to
contemplation for a moment at the start of "Prove It." The theme's
position in the final ten minutes of the score is immensely
disappointing, only slight throughout "That's Three" and "Another
Visitor" and vaguely and unsatisfying guiding the conversational close
in "Sam and Joaquin." There is no heroic sendoff in the score for either
protagonist identity, not even in a restrained, dramatic fashion.
Meanwhile, the villains' conspiracy theme in
Captain America: Brave
New World is also comprised of two parts, a combination of two,
four-note rhythmic phrases underneath and a sinewy melody on top. Bass
flutes and muted trumpets add an almost noir aspect to this material.
The underlying rhythmic motif drives the entirety of "Captain America:
Brave New World Main Title," the theme itself debuting in multiple
iterations at 1:14 and occupying most of the cue as well before the
rhythmic motif becomes more percussively robust in the last minute. That
eight-note motif thrives in fanfare mode at the start of "Hostages
Saved" and stews and meanders in the suspense at the outset of
"Aftermath" before allowing the theme to slowly develop on top of it.
That rhythmic device introduces the Ross theme in "Discovery of the
Millennium," madly explodes in its first four notes only during the
dissonantly wretched "Sidewinder," guides the disturbing tones of
"Samuel Sterns," and pounds away late in "Camp Echo One Fight." The
actual melody of the conspiracy theme is deconstructed during the
revelatory "Make the Call" with a climax that owes much to Davis'
The
Matrix. The underlying motif bursts in pieces at the start of "The
Island" against the main noble character theme, and the conspiracy
melody explicitly returns over the motif's rhythmic duties here for its
top moment in the spotlight. The lesser motif then interjects at the end
of "Fire" and brazenly slashes early in "All is Not Well" against a
terrible dissonant backdrop.
Understandably, the conspiracy theme in
Captain
America: Brave New World dissolves at the score's end, enjoying one
last rhythmic fling early in "Prove It" while its melody momentarily
haunts the beginning of "Another Visitor." Karpman consolidates a suite
in "Conspiracy Theme" for the end credits that is somewhat redundant
with "Captain America: Brave New World Main Title;" both of these
performances open with a nice, intrigue-oriented variant of the main
melody on bassoon that becomes lost in the rest of the score. The two
themes for Ross are expertly intertwined by the composer and are a
highlight of the score, the man's personal identity taunted by the
conspiracy theme's rhythmic motif early and the Red Hulk siren call
later. The personal theme is a partially inverted form of the superhero
theme, taking the idea positive before a defeated descent. It occupies
all of "President Ross" on strings and piano in vaguely warm, unfinished
tones and persists with subtlety on strings and dashes of hope on brass
in "Discovery of the Millennium." Somber on deep string tones in "Heart
Talk," mingling well with the Red Hulk motif's origins, the idea
struggles against the ambient horror late in "All is Not Well" and tries
to revisit its softer, warmer shades on piano and strings in "Betty and
Ross." The theme dramatically dies against the Red Hulk motif's alarm
call in "Transformation" and struggles to regain its composure in "Prove
It" but does so very nicely at the cue's end. It finally reforms on
piano and strings in "Another Visitor" for the cameo reunion scene. The
Red Hulk motif contains slurred, two-note phrases, rising on brass by
the actual character's arrival. Foreshadowed at 0:32 into "Heart Talk,"
the motif reminds against fragments of the Ross theme in the middle of
"Fire." In all its glory, this motif's slurring effect displaces the
Ross theme like a siren in the difficult "Transformation" (the vocal
usage by this point is overbearing and silly) and punctuates the battle
at appropriate points in "Lure." Overall, regardless of the very smart
interplay between these themes, Karpman continues to write over the
heads of most audiences in
Captain America: Brave New World.
While her narrative is generally fine, the drawn-out conversational
conclusion doesn't allow for any climax or send-off for any theme, and
the use of the conspiracy theme for the credits robs the main character
of his lasting identity. The album presentation also drags, ambient cues
like "All is Not Well" and "Confrontation" unneeded. This is incredibly
smart music, but these films don't merit or function well with such
intellect. Until Karpman can master the simplicity of a hero's anthem,
her music in this genre will continue to miss its main duty.
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