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Michael Giacchino's THE BATMAN (2022)


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1 minute ago, Mephariel said:

Is it one of the most famous and widely recognized "themes" in recent superhero memory? I have been browsing the comments in the trailers and it seems to me most people don't even realize that is the Batman "theme." I think a lot of people think that is just trailer music.

 

I definitely thought it was just trailer music, I'm sorry to say. I did have a quiet chortle when I heard what sounds an awful lot like the Philosopher's Stone motif ("three note motif") at 01:34.

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1 hour ago, Mephariel said:

 

Is it one of the most famous and widely recognized "themes" in recent superhero memory? I have been browsing the comments in the trailers and it seems to me most people don't even realize that is the Batman "theme." I think a lot of people think that is just trailer music.

 

If Giacchino or the marketing team wants this theme to be widely recognized, they should release a single, and not just the demo.

 

Which I imagine they will. A friend of mine who listens to score soundtracks never recognized the theme in the trailer when we went to see The Matrix.

 

I bet the theme will receive more praise from fans once the movie is out.

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3 hours ago, saulocf said:

Can't go lower than Junkie's Batman "theme" on BvS.

 

I actually have come round to that one. It is at least an attempt at melody. 

 

Zimmer's "two note" fart trombones is the lowest the character has reached. 

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4 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

 

I actually have come round to that one. It is at least an attempt at melody. 

 

Zimmer's "two note" fart trombones is the lowest the character has reached. 

 

I much prefer Zimmer's two note trombones than his BvS theme. At least there is a purpose to the two notes and there a strong build up leading up to it. His BvS theme just sounds...uninspired.

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59 minutes ago, Mephariel said:

 

I much prefer Zimmer's two note trombones than his BvS theme. At least there is a purpose to the two notes and there a strong build up leading up to it. His BvS theme just sounds...uninspired.

 

It's not super inspired but surely more than 2 notes are better than 2 notes. 2 notes is just lazy. 

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On 30/12/2021 at 9:21 PM, bruce marshall said:

You obviously have neither watched nor listened to the TRILOGY.

 

 

I unfortunately have watched the Nolan trilogy if you are referring to that. And not a note of  - let's call it "music" to be charitable - inspired me to so much as listen to any track on youtube even. Just sounded like noise to me. And fart trombones blasting over everything. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Was not expecting that choral opening.  Theme doesn’t do much for me - hoping it progresses into…something…throughout the movie.

 

I do appreciate that this sounds basically nothing like Giacchino has ever done before.  So much of his stuff, including all of his MCU stuff, is so samey.  Hopefully the album as a whole works better than the theme in isolation for me.

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So is this music directly from Giacchino's score unchanged, or used as a base but then modified by website people? 

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6 hours ago, badbu said:

 

 

I like it. I agree the theme doesn't do much for me (sounds like Horn of Doom on steroids), but it is also something unique from Giacchino. At least this is not just a version of Star Trek or something. 

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yes i thougt the same. 

Seems Giacchino found a few synthesizer :D I'm really excited about the score and the film as well. Greig Fraser is an amazing cinematographer.

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51 minutes ago, Erik Woods said:

Here's the entire track.

https://streamable.com/pyhm15

 

-Erik-

 

Appreciate the link! Unfortunately I have to say this is the worst Batman theme yet for me. Sure, stylistically it's got a lot of the Elfman sound, but none of the melody. I know the Nolan trilogy's music gets a lot of hate, but at least I can remember a lot of melodies from it besides the two note motif. The melody that is here besides the main two note beat, is so forgettable, and feels like a complete afterthought.

 

It's a shame too, because I've actually been warming up to Giacchino's most recent work for Spider-Man: No Way Home. Even though many of the new themes for that movie aren't super impressive, I at least remember them all now (partially thanks to Jay's outline of them in that thread), and the cure theme is now one of my favorite Spider-Man themes. I even warmed up to the somewhat minimal grief/responsibility theme a lot too. 

 

But this Batman theme, I don't know. Besides the Elfman allusions, it's just so... there. It's got nice harmonies and aesthetics, but that's really it. It really just makes me appreciate Nick Arundel and Ron Fish's work in the first two Batman: Arkham games, and Zimmer and Newton Howard's work on Batman Begins even more. They capture the darker Batman tone well, and have a lot of minimal parts, but the melody they do have is so much more interesting and satisfying. I don't know, maybe there'll be more in the movie than there was in this suite that will prove me wrong. I certainly hope so. 

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 It doesn't sound like "Batman" at all, maybe for the earlier music in this piece it's more for the world he inhabits. 

That brass idea sells the score short and is lame as fuck. Like we've done this already with 2-note Batman ideas. 

Had more of a 'hopeful' sound than I was expecting. Not bad. 

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The opening of that Giacchino track is very Giacchino and is also fine. It does give me some hope for the movie that it won’t be quite as harsh as the trailers and music have previously led me to believe.  The theme track is still just…there.

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At first blush, the theme track definitely sounds like two different cues glued together. The change from one to the next is quite noticeable and not very smooth. The hopeful sounding main theme is nice but not an earworm. The ostinato is exactly as we have already heard it in all the trailers. Of the major Batman themes, Gia's is less instantly memorable than Elfman's and, at least initially, less sonically impactful than Zimmer's. In some ways, the theme does sound more mature than past Gia themes. Will be interesting to listen to the OST.

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Once again, I more blame the studio in this instance, given how WB seems to have a tighter grip on their big, big tentpole releases. Odd how a lot of the other recent DC movies are able to experiment with the sound palette just a bit more, yet this and Matrix 4 are stuck having to adhere to the modern Hollywood score format with some past references sprinkled in.

 

That being said: it is interesting how Gia and even Holkenborg have paid lip service to Elfman in their work for the character. I guess post the JL debacle, DC likely wanted to merge the sounds more than outright go for a very specific take. For me, the Batman material for ZSJL ended up being a surprising highlight from that score, so I have a hard time knowing what to anticipate with the new film.

 

I quite like the general feel of the released track, yet it still is too darn reliant on that "build up that probably will be the actual theme" for me to really judge. It has made me more curious though.

 

(Still don't get the Imperial March comparisons)

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I like the first half of that track well enough. Sounds like a less elegant version of what JNH tried to do with his Bruce Wayne theme in Batman Begins. But the second half of the track doesn't do it for me. The main theme is just not that interesting or evocative for it to go on for that long. The thing is, Zimmer didn't play the 2 notes over and over again. There is a build-up leading to it, a crescendo that culminates into the two notes.   

 

However, I will say that are we judging this too quickly? The movie is 2 hours and 55 minutes long. There has to be a lot more music than this right? Maybe the main theme does build-up to something and it just hasn't been revealed yet. 

2 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

Not the whole Spiderman scores but his main theme. It is extremely basic and simple. 

 

For me, the issue is that it is not so much basic and simple as much as it is non-descriptive. The two notes from Jaws makes me think of a creature coming towards me. Giacchino's Spider-man theme can be any superhero. This is the same problem I have with Pinar Toprak's Captain Marvel theme. It is a nice theme but if you told me it was Captain America and not Captain Marvel, I would have believed you. 

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Listening to it again, the whole thing is a big swing and a miss. Echoing what others have already said, the hopeful half of the theme sounds like generic hopeful music that could be for any character or movie. Nothing about it makes me think Batman. The ostinato half is also just repetition, no variation or interesting orchestration, just a repeating figure that gets louder and louder in a very plodding fashion. I miss the old Gia who wrote music for Ratatouille and Star Trek. Those scores seemed to have distinct voices. This theme is bland in comparison.

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These complaints about Gia's themes for Bats and Spidey not being particularly character descriptive are interesting to me, because well..... would you say Elfman's Spider-Man theme really embodies the character that well? Completely isolated from the rest of the themes and the general feel (hell, just consider only the main melody), is there really anything about it that feels particularly insect like, jovial, or down to earth? That's probably just my knowledge of the character really coloring it, but I don't think it's quite as specific as Williams Superman or even his own Batman. It's almost a riff on the latter in a way.

 

In comparison, Gia's Spidey wonderfully captures the "friendly neighborhood" vibe the character is supposed to stand for initially. I guess the issue is that after Homecoming, that aspect essentially feels abandoned, given they're much more concerned with the regular theatrics that a superhero score has, since FFH and NWH are much bigger in scale. As such, it ends up making less of an impact because in effect it has turned into a standard superhero fanfare with what the subsequent scores ask of it.

 

I singled out Danny's Spider-Man in particular because I think it only ends up embodying the character once you factor in everything else from the score, since it's ultimately the whole package that informs whether it really suits the material or is used meaningfully. It's effectively a long winded way of saying "hey maybe we should properly judge once we get the whole picture."

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1 hour ago, HunterTech said:

These complaints about Gia's themes for Bats and Spidey not being particularly character descriptive are interesting to me, because well..... would you say Elfman's Spider-Man theme really embodies the character that well? Completely isolated from the rest of the themes and the general feel (hell, just consider only the main melody), is there really anything about it that feels particularly insect like, jovial, or down to earth? That's probably just my knowledge of the character really coloring it, but I don't think it's quite as specific as Williams Superman or even his own Batman. It's almost a riff on the latter in a way.

 

In comparison, Gia's Spidey wonderfully captures the "friendly neighborhood" vibe the character is supposed to stand for initially. I guess the issue is that after Homecoming, that aspect essentially feels abandoned, given they're much more concerned with the regular theatrics that a superhero score has, since FFH and NWH are much bigger in scale. As such, it ends up making less of an impact because in effect it has turned into a standard superhero fanfare with what the subsequent scores ask of it.

 

I singled out Danny's Spider-Man in particular because I think it only ends up embodying the character once you factor in everything else from the score, since it's ultimately the whole package that informs whether it really suits the material or is used meaningfully. It's effectively a long winded way of saying "hey maybe we should properly judge once we get the whole picture."

I am looking forward to Gia's full Batman score and will revisit my thoughts on the main theme once I am more familiar with the entire soundtrack. But in response to your question about Danny Elfman's Spiderman theme, I feel it musically embodies so many aspects of the Spiderman character in the ways the best character themes do. In the rhythms and vibrating strings there's a slight creepy-crawly-ness, there is a rising heroism, lots of sweeping music that almost makes me feel like I am swinging through the air, and then his profound sense of responsibility. The main title is pretty much perfect. I would never mistake his Spiderman theme for Batman or Superman or any other superhero. 

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The best Batman Score is from Goldenthal! 

I think this one will be good too but nothing special...

 

Goldenthal, Zimmer and Elfman, thats my favorites :) 

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