Filmtracks: Captain America: Brave New World (Laura Karpman)

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Written 3/2/25

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Buy it... if you appreciate the challenging and intelligent designs that Laura Karpman explored in The Marvels, the same smart but often elusive strategy dominating this score.

Avoid it... if you expect to hear a satisfying superhero narrative, Karpman struggling to enunciate the simple pleasures of the genre while pursuing intellectual heights.

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.

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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. *** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

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