Music Composed by Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard
Rating: ***

Do you remember when Batman film scores were really very good? Danny Elfman’s Batman and Batman Returns are classics of the superhero genre. Hell, even Elliot Goldenthal’s over-the-top Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are justice leagues better than the dreadful films for which they were written. But the colourful waltz for The Joker, the criminally insane circus puffery for The Penguin’s Red Triangle Gang and those rhumbas, fox-trots and “Two-Face Three-Step” from Batman Forever are a distant memory, replaced now by the grey-toned ambience of Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard’s super-friends dynamic duo collaboration, Batman Begins. Perhaps perfectly capturing the dark edges of Christopher Nolan’s Batman vision, Zimmer and Howard’s super-serious score can’t be considered anything other than a missed opportunity on album, where it plays soft and stoic, only bursting into full-blown action-anthem mode precious few times.

Hans Zimmer

I have no qualms about these two hugely popular, successful, and talented gentlemen scoring Batman Begins with incredible restraint, but to fill up a disc with sixty-minutes of low-rumbling string dirges straight out of Zimmer’s The Fan and Hannibal makes for a long, and tedious listening experience. You won’t be able to fire up your Batmobile - or Toyota Tercel - until halfway into the third track, “Myotis”, where Zimmer first lays down his main action motif, which is a pared down rythmic idea first shown light of day in the composer’s Black Rain and Gladiator. It’s this mini-explosion of excitement that was used in one of the film’s handful of theatrical trailers. Unfortunately Zimmer and Howard retire the action ideas to the Batcave for an long stretch of the album, as the dust settles, and so does the blood, calmed by solid JNH string work and boy solo voice in “Barbastella” (in case you don’t know your winged rat breeds, each track is named after a type of bat — how cute is that), which evolves nicely in it’s final third, slowly pushing forward on the strings and then ending with a meaty brass note; but it’s not nearly enough to have you tramping down the gas pedal. And let’s be honest — we like our summer scores loud, because you won’t be able to hear it over your sad-shit Tercel’s A/C whine.

James Newton Howard

Zimmer and Howard go the old SFX route with “Verpertilio” and “Artibeus”. Swoops, clangs, booms and synth orch hits (like, er, giant bat wings) over pounding drums may work wonders to convey the high-tech gadgetry of “the Batman”, but on disc it only causes a mad scramble for the skip button. If you hold your load for a minute or two there’s a nice emotional bit near the end of “Artibeus” courtesy of JNH, but the effect is minimal when the SFX kick in once again in the next track, “Tadarida”. At least in this instance they form a swaggering rythm as the strings build overtop, but no matter what videogames and MTV have done to cinema, a good-old-fashioned chew-bubblegum-and-kick-ass and it’s all-out-of-bubblegum theme will always make or break a superhero score. Ask Danny Elfman, who wrote a legit theme for Spider-Man and still caught flack from the unwashed masses.

That’s not to say that Batman Begins is without a theme. It’s just that this album squanders the opportunity to run it through plenty of brisk variations. Before you get to hear it in full, you’re going to have to wait patiently through the gorgeous and tender JNH string-writing in “Macrotus”, where he finally gives us something to chew on thematically (in this case, the “love theme”), before seguing into Zimmer’s musty timbres to close out the track. Zimmer then teases with his main action motif in “Antrozus”, a fast, marching string section with oscillating synth percussion and synth string sweetening. The effect is thrilling, despite the fact that it is no stretch for the composer, who has seemingly spun these kinds of action tunes out since Crimson Tide.

The composers build a little mystery and momentum in “Nycteris” before dropping into the all-out highlight of the disc, the memorable “Molossus”, which provides the obviously Zimmer penned theme it’s opportunity to open it’s stride in all it’s inherently cheesy, proto-Media Ventures goodness. The track opens with a rolling synth percussion bit that sounds suspiciously James Newton Howardian (think Falling Down), before switching entirely into a 100% Zimmer-proof wall-of-sound combo of towering brass, synth and real strings and sixty-or-seventy layers of plickiting percussion. Before the album wraps up, Howard takes his nice love theme out for a quick run in “Corynorhinus”, taking it to almost bombastic proportions. Which, in this case, is nice — because it’s so bloody rare. Things conclude with the long, and alternatingly interesting and somewhat flat “Lasiurus”.

Album production is good, if a little weak on extras. There are almost one hundred people thanked in the credits, including “everyone at Steinberg”. Sound quality is very good — this may be the first James Newton Howard album in memory that isn’t mixed too quietly with the occasional moment of surprise dissonance tossed in to send you into shock. At sixty minutes this is a long album, so you can’t complain about it’s length — if only there was sixty minutes of really blood-pumping score on here instead.

Zimmer truly proves he is the Phil Spector (minus the gunplay and white-man afro) of film music. Zim’s “Molossus” is slick and macho — perfectly suited to our disconnected, vidgame culture. It’s hard to figure out where James Newton Howard fits into all of this, however. His contributions lean to the introspective side, which dominates the album — but the material is significantly Zimmer’s. The expectations of a team-up like this may have been set too high, but I can’t help but feel like either this album is missing most of a set of fiery third-act cues, or Zimmer and Howard took the anonymous route of scoring we’ve come to expect from Chris Nolan’s two previous films, Memento and Insomnia. It’s a little difficult to grasp this new Batman musically. This is no longer the gargoyle-gothic Batman, waiting in the shadows, ready to strike fear in the hearts of mindless thugs and thwart mad-man master plans. He is now the ultimate warrior, singular in purpose, capable of clouding mens minds, and captain of kung-fu. Perhaps we are in an age when we are so impossibly hip, even the Batman of 1989, the film that opened the doors to film music for so many geeks (myself included), is considered old hat and is easily disposed. Frankly, that worries me. We can’t do that to our heroes.

Music Composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard; Additional Music by Ramin Djawadi and Mel Wesson; Conducted by Gavin Greenaway; Orchestrated by Brad Dechter and Bruce Fowler; Score Recorded by Geoff Foster / Mixed by Al Clay; Produced by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard; Availability: In print; Label (Catalogue): Warner Sunset Records, (71324); Release Date: June 14, 2005

01. Vespertilio (2′52)
02. Eptesicus (4′20)
03. Myotis (5′46)
04. Barbastella (4′45)
05. Artibeus (4′19)
06. Tadarida (5′05)
07. Macrotus (7′35)
08. Antrozous (3′59)
09. Nycteris (4′25)
10. Molossus (4′49)
11. Corynorhinus (5′04)
12. Lasiurus (7′27)

Total Playing Time: 60′26