Warner Bros. recently released the full soundtrack for The Batman to thunderous praise and commendation from the fandom, but it seems that Michael Giacchino’s score has done more than just elevate the motion picture through its sorrowful and epic crescendo. It also helped the actors as well!
In a press release from Warner Bros as part of the OST reveal, director Matt Reeves talked about why Giacchino is the perfect composer for his highly anticipated superhero flick, noting:
“I love working with Michael Giacchino, he’s one of my favorite people. So, when I got The Batman, I went to him knowing he has the same kind of love and connection to Batman that I do. He told me he wanted to do what we’d never been able to — to record before I ever shot a frame. He said, ‘I want us to record a suite, as if it was the unknown Beethoven Sonata of Batman that was found, and we use that to score the entire movie.’ I was excited about it, so he started writing while I was still writing, and he would send me little sample recordings of pieces he was doing on the piano.”
This approach is something that is taken by a lot of composers in Hollywood with a range of interesting results. An example of such a score is what Hans Zimmer did for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, a masterpiece of composition that was written without Zimmer knowing anything about the plot.
Reeves further discussed what it was like to hear the suite on the set and how it even helped Robert Pattinson get into character.
“Michael sent me this incredible suite which contained the Batman theme — he had put it together with an orchestra — and I was blown away! It was so emotional. I drove to the set, and [The Batman producer] Dylan Clark was there, and I said to him, ‘You have to get in the car.’ He sat in the passenger seat, and I turned up the music. The two of us literally cried. He, too, felt it was amazing.
I just felt like this was a very special, fated day, because Robert was about to be in one of the classic Batsuits, we were going to shoot some scenes, and there we were listening to this perfect music. Suddenly you felt you were about to be part of film history that meant so much to you and meant so much to everyone. That music helped Robert Pattinson to become Batman, and we listened to that music all the time.”
The music, and more specifically the main suite, is exactly what many of us expected from a Dark Knight theme. It highlights heroism through sacrifice, while also underlining Bruce Wayne’s more humane aspect. It then rises to a contentious rhythm, teasing the epic and brutal journey that’s yet to come.
Frankly, The Batman couldn’t arrive in theaters any sooner than March 4, when we’ll finally be able to watch the flick and listen to Giacchino’s score in the context of the story.