Batman Begins

The first in-depth look at the score I've seen is here:

Batman Begins, however, sounds nothing like any of the previous incarnations of The Dark Knight.

. . .

Instead of going the "Dark Superhero" comic book movie route, HZ and JNH have tapped into the psychological aspects of the story and, more importantly, the psyche of the main character himself. The score serves more to pull viewers into reality as opposed to create a sense of the fantastic (which, by design, was the same approach Chris Nolan used for the entire film).

. . .

The score is dark, emotional, scary, action packed, and to put it simply, badass.

Audio clips, too. Just click on the link above.

 

For some reason I am unable to listen to the audio clips, but from what I heard in the most recent trailer, the music sounds a little too much like Zimmer's typical synth-based, Jerry Bruckheimer movie scores to me. I'm not exactly a huge fan of that sound, either, so I'll have to wait and see (or hear) to really judge the music.

As I am a huge James Newton Howard fan, I still have some hope for the score.

 

Let's try a direct link. clip 1.

Not working for me, either. Says its playing, but there's nothing but silence. Odd.

 

I get about a second of music and then silence, followed by 'Timed Out'...

EDIT: Google truly is your friend if this is legit: the Japanese site is streaming 45 minutes of the soundtrack here. Don't know if this is old news but thought I'd post it anyway.

 

I love Molossus. Can't wait until I hear the soundtrack in its entirety.

And like that...he's gone.

 

More reviews:

Amazon has a couple customer reviews, plus a staff review:

It's rare to see two marquee-name composers credited for a score, but perhaps two people were needed to come up with something that would stand up to the memory of Danny Elfman's work on the 1989 Batman. Just as director Christopher Nolan's back-in-black approach is quite different from Tim Burton¹s phantasmagorical one, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's take doesn't bear much kinship to Elfman's. (You¹d be hard-pressed to find any recognizable theme here, for instance.) Mostly the composers remain conservatively subtle, though coming up with the expected pounding on grandiose, action-y selections such as "Myotis" and "Antrozous" (no, the poetic-sounding track names aren't lifted from old Cocteau Twins records but refer to various types of bats). Stand-out track "Tadarida" incorporates some of the distorted vocal effects associated with the Scarecrow¹s drug-induced nightmarish visions. Atmospheric to the point of evanescence sometime, the individual tracks tend to meld into each other after a while. The sense of stylistic continuity helps establish an overall mood, but sometimes it's hard to distinguish between shades of black.

And from cinemusic:

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.

 

**** from MMUK:

If you know your Zimmer and JNH history, you could say its sort of Black Rain meets The Ring meets The Thin Red Line meets Snow Falling On Cedars meets The Village. An interesting mix.

. . .

To address the negative side of the score first: Batman Begins is unremittingly downbeat. There are no rousing super-hero anthems, very few monster action cues, and little in the way of recurring themes. If you need your Batman scores to be filled with Elfman-style Gothic majesty or Goldenthalian excess, you are likely to be disappointed.

. . .

From this reviewerâ??s point of view, it gets a tentative recommendation. Howard has always been a favourite of mine, but this score also highlights just how good Zimmer can be when he relies on his own compositional experience rather than that of his underlings.

 

You'd be hard-pressed to find any recognizable theme here, for instance.

I don't like the sound of this. I like themes

 

This is a score that plays much better with the film than just
listening to it in your car.

My favorite tracks are

Barbastella
Macrotus
&
The aforementioned Molossus

 

Howard rarely has a score that you can listen to without the film, and Zimmer well...just isn't very good.

 

The soundtrack is very good. Molossus is my favorite track. Incredible.

 

I saw this movie last night and thought it was great. I really liked the score too. Do you guys know of any place to download it, like we could before the Episode III soundtrack came out?

 

iTunes.

And like that...he's gone.

 

Hans Zimmer used to be good, but then he got lazy and now usually gets others to do his work for him, though he apparently does his own stuff here, which is a surprise. I'm always wondering "who did what" in a Zimmer score. James Newton Howard's material for Batman Begins is dreary and uninteresting. Zimmer's material just didn't seem to fit in the film. It just didn't have it's own unique Batman sound. The movie was excellent but the score just made me appreciate Danny Elfman's efforts even more - he truly owns the Batman musical soundscape.

 

I thought this film was awful and a real letdown.

As for the music, it kept just repeating the same bit over and over again.

 

You thought the film was awful?! Sheesh. Some people....

 

Hey, GG, I feel ya. For Batman comic fans like myself, the movie is near-perfect. This is the first *real* Batman adaptation -- the rest were all overstylized pieces of camp! But for more general movie fans, Batman Begins can only be considered an above-average summer popcorn movie at best. Your mileage may vary.

The score was definitely below par compared to that of any of the other Bat-films (except maybe Batman & Robin, which made zero impression on me), although I kinda liked that "same bit over and over again." It's the main theme, man! I enjoy some of Zimmer's work, but this would be pretty disappointing if I were a real fan.

 

I actually like the score for the most part; very moody and psychological. I especially like the motif that deals with his father's stethoscope, and I'm glad that it has some closure with that. The music is very realistic and not over the top, as the movie is on a whole. I think it works.

 

Nothing stood out to me about this soundtrack at all. Incredible dry and boring.

 

I bought the soundtrack,It worked well in the movie,I`ll see how it plays on CD

 

Of course Bats has a more limited audience than "Star Wars", maybe I can't be objective cause I've always been a fan since a kid, while I'm a casual fan to Star Wars.

For me the music worked wonders in the film. The first two films were goth fairytales, the Schumacher ones were colorful big-budget commercials for toys, this was exactly the opposite, more down to earth and "Realistic" (by comic book film standards), with a dirty, rust-coloured Gotham City and villains that didn't wear halloween costumes (except for Scarecrow's home-made mask, but even real-life muggers wear funnymasks to cover their face sometimes). Big thematic orchestral music might clash with the visuals. The music was subtle, yet powerful in enhancing the scenes. Of course, the next (Joker) film will have more of the fantastical element...

And who can't say the early scenes with Bruce and the family when they travel by train isn't chilling music-wise? We see a happy family, and the music sounds like a funeral, foreshadowing what's going to happen.

(Actually, Batman Begins gathered better reviews than all prequel films put together. As a film, it's much better directed, acted etc. than the prequels, with the CGI's limited to the hallucination (spelling?) scenes, it's just that Star Wars is a "genre" by itself and an immensely bigger number of people are interested or obsessed about it).

 

The score is fine. It fits with the movie, and that's all a film score really needs to do. But it's not something that would turn people's heads and jerk them into listening to film scores. Elfman's Batman was one of those landmarks. I've read more than a few people stating that a big thematic approach might have clashed with the mood of this film. I don't see how that is true. A well composed big score can still fit with a film heavy on atmosphere.

For the next film, I wish JNH could get the chance to compose the music himself. The musical division between Zimmer and Howard seems fairly clear in this film. But whereas Zimmer's action music is generally more well known than JMH, Howard writes fantastic action cues himself. And of course, Howard's strength in writing underscore and emotion far supercedes Zimmer. I understand that Nolan approached Zimmer to write the score (and then Zimmer suggested the collaboration), so I don't know how much of a chance there is for my wish. But then, James Newton Howard is my second favorite film composer working right now.

 

Filmtracks.com didn't like it that much, apparently...

 

Do they like anything? I don't think they liked the Revenge of the Sith soundtrack either.

 

I've got it on heavy rotation in my car. It's really grown on me,
especially since I saw the film. Highly underrated IMHO.
Then again, I like the much criticized Spider-Man scores too.

I hope that WB and Nolan aren't too sensitive to some of the harping
about the score and stick with the themes that have been established.