The Dark Knight - Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard

WOW...126 New posts this morning.

And what? I'm reading it and they are again discussions of Elfman/goldenthal Batman vs Zimmer's batman and they are about Zimmer working methods again.

Erik, Did you not say you was bored of this kind of things? Because even me find this theme a little bit Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... (without being offensive with all the people has wrotte, always is great people writting a lot in a thread )

Edit

The clips from Warner Bros page...Sounds interesting. More of the same (and you know I consider Batman begins one of the worst scores by Zimmer) but a little bit more coherent and "complex".
Perhaps it can be an improvement over the first one.

"agressive expansion" it's cool, and "why so serious" enough ugly to be scary

Erik, your re-scored clip is good, but the problem is that Elfman's BATMAN scores carry a lot of baggage. You love them (as do I) and so you automatically appreciate the pairing of the images with the music. But if you heard this music for the very first time - without having ever heard or seen Burton's BATMAN, I doubt you'd think it was as effective.

And sure it works for that scene, but if the whole film were scored that way, I doubt it would hold up. It's just a completely different tone for the film than what Nolan envisioned. Anyone can slap some action music on an action scene and say "see, I improved it!" You could probably take that same Elfman action music and put it on an action sequence from WANTED and make it just as exciting. (That's what a temp score does.) But would it work to effectively support the style and emotion of the film as a whole? I highly doubt it.

Elfman's BATMAN score worked great for the Tim Burton BATMAN films. But they wouldn't be appropriate for Nolan's vision, regardless of how slick your editing might be.

Agree.

WOW!!! Thanks for doing this, Erik, because for me it actually proves why I prefer the Zimmer/JNH score so much. It gives the movie a sense of realism which is exactly what a movie about a man who uses technology to fight crime needs. The very first moment the Elfman theme appeared in your selected scene, all I could think about was cheese. The whole thing became ridiculous almost immediately. This is a perfect example why Nolan actually was right about his choice in the first place. A score like Elfman´s would have been the movie´s downfall.

Thanks for doing it, Erik, and I really, really mean it. In the end it just proves that this is about taste, which is why I find this endless discussion so ultimately boring.

Righto!

OK, I agree with Nautilus about the samples on Warner Bros Records, it seems a more complex version of Batman Begins indeed.

I'm just curious what the point would have been of maintaining some kind of musical continuity with the Burton films. There's pretty much no other point of overlap in the two series of films. Why would the music be the only one? Unlike SUPERMAN RETURNS, BATMAN BEGINS was not a proxy remake or burdened down in homage to an original. As someone who tends to recognise music in films when I hear it, I personally would have been confused had I heard the Elfman theme in the new universe, and it would have encouraged me to be conscious of other points of continuity and discontinuity with the Burton films.

I like Elfman's music for the series, and I really like Goldenthal's, but it's pretty clear to me why they didn't carry anything from the original Burton film over.

But then I thought SUPERMAN RETURNS shouldn't have used any Williams themes, so what do I know?

Again, I point you towards Casino Royale. James Bond isn't James Bond without the theme. Batman Begins would have worked with Elfman's theme.... I don't care who the director is. Superman isn't Superman without the theme.

Anyway, I'm just looking for something a bit more traditional than Zimmer's effort. Something along the lines of Elfman's score. Doesn't have to be the same theme per se but I would almost take anything over the crud in the first movie.

-Erik-

Well they're only these things until examples prove otherwise. Superman once was Superman with a very different theme (in George Reeve days), has since been (in Shirley Walker days), and the same has been true for Batman even before Nolan and co. showed up. (And I'm sure someone out there cried foul when Elliot Goldenthal wrote a brilliant score for ALIEN 3 that had nothing to do with the previous two scores, which had some subtle overlaps.) But that aside, do you at least agree that if your brief was to start everything from scratch, and you wanted to no holdovers to tie you to a previous universe, you might be sending confusing signals to your audience if you start including some of the finer details of a previous adaptation? Better to not have them ask questions and wipe the slate clean altogether. I don't agree with the result, but I agree with the idea.

Bond is a not as strong a comparison for a few reasons. Firstly, the Broccoli-Wilson producing team are far more prescriptive on particular details of production than Warner Brothers tends to be. (Remember, Warner Brothers let Nicholas Hooper onto the Harry Potter series.) Also, I don't think that CASINO ROYALE was doing quite the same thing as BB. I think it was simply saying: 'The kind of films we're now making has changed, we'll take a bit of Bourne on board, we'll junk the Madonna cameos, we'll get rid of ridiculous hovercraft and boat chases -- and what we're saying isn't "This is a new James Bond". What we're saying is: "This is what James Bond was all along. He's still a misogynist, he still drinks the martinis, he still has attitude towards his superiors, and he still has that same damned tune you all like so much." '

The other thing to keep in mind is that as famous as Danny Elfman's BATMAN music is, you'd be mad to deny that the James Bond theme wasn't at a whole other level of popularity. One could be hummed by most of Generation X, the other could be hummed by all of X and most of the Baby Boomers too.

I see what you're saying about a more traditional approach, and I don't necessarily disagree with it. Nolan's film is not as gritty as many made it out to be - it's less Gothic (and therefore calls for less Prokofiev-inspired music perhaps) for sure, but everything is still mythic. Having said that, it makes sense.

Did the provided clip not work for you?

-Erik-

I don't think he has Quicktime? Or perhaps he wanted to share that clip with other peeps?

Heh.

Actually, Lorne Balfe was the only person credited with Additional Music. Mel Wesson was credited with Ambient Music Design (or something to that effect).



But, there-in lies the issue. You're seeing BATMAN from the perspective of Burton's films being "canon", and therefore anything that follows MUST be born of the Burton BATMAN films. Goldenthal didn't use Elfman's themes; did that make it any less a BATMAN film? As Michael said, BB wasn't just a reboot like CASINO ROYALE; BB was a complete reimagining of the franchise and the character.

Excellent point

Here are the full music credits from the end title scroll:

Music Editors: ALEX GIBSON, DANIEL PINDER
Assistant Music Editor: RYAN RUBIN
Additional Music by: LORNE BALFE
Ambient Music Design: MEL WESSON
Technical Score Engineers: CHRIS BACON, THOMAS BRODERICK, JACOB SHEA, PETER OSO SNELL, STUART MICHAEL THOMAS
Digital Instrument Design: MARK WHERRY
Synth Programming: HANS ZIMMER, HENRY JACKMAN, HOWARD SCARR
Orchestrators: BRUCE FOWLER, JEFF ATMAJIAN, BRAD DECHTER, ELIZABETH FINCH, KEVIN KASKA, RANDY KERBER, SUZETTE MORIARTY, WALTER FOWLER
Orchestra Conducted by: MATT DUNKLEY, BRUCE FOWLER, GAVIN GREENAWAY
Supervising Score Coordinator: STEVEN KOFSKY
Score Coordinator: BECKY BENTHAM
Score Recorded by: GEOFF FOSTER
Score Mixed by: ALAN MEYERSON