Dark Knight Batman Theme
Micol Cohn
The Dark Knight: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack album to the 2008 film of the same name, which is a sequel to Christopher Nolan's 2005 film Batman Begins. The soundtrack was released on July 15, 2008, in three editions: CD, limited edition CD digipak, and digital download. The 2-CD Special Edition was released on December 9, along with the DVD. A limited edition 180-gram vinyl LP was released on August 12.[1] The soundtrack was composed by Batman Begins collaborators Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard and recorded in April.
Just like Batman Begins and later The Dark Knight Rises, the main motif always consists in just two notes, played by horns and accompanied by strings, representing Batman's pain and guilt.[2]
The score won the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media,[5] "Best Music" at the Saturn Awards[6] and "Best Soundtrack" at the Brit Awards,[7] while it was nominated in the category "Best Film Music" at the BAFTA Awards.[8]
Zimmer originally said the main Batman theme was purposely introduced at the end of Batman Begins, and would be fleshed out in the sequel as the character develops.[9] Zimmer and Howard both believed that creating a heroic theme that a viewer could hum would ignore the complexity and darkness of the character. The Batman theme (audible twice early in the film, once towards the end and a final time at the beginning of the end credits) creates what Zimmer described as a "red herring", a kind of musical foreshadowing,[10] which was played by a cello.
The nine-minute suite for the Joker ("Why So Serious") was based around two notes played by electric cello, solo violin, guitars and a string section. Zimmer compared its style to the band Kraftwerk, who come from his native Germany, as well as his work with bands like The Damned.[10] Throughout the piece, Zimmer used razor blades on string instruments to achieve the tortured, twisted sound to accompany the character on the screen. When Ledger died, Zimmer stated that he felt like scrapping his original material and composing a new theme, but decided that to do so would compromise the "evil [performance] projects".[11] James Newton Howard composed the "elegant and beautiful" themes for Harvey Dent/Two-Face, to work as an aural contrast.[10] The suite contains ten thousand musical bars.[12][13][14][15]
The heroic brass theme which plays when Batman leaves Ra's al Ghul to die in Batman Begins makes a reappearance when Batman hurls the Joker off the building in the film's climax. It also makes its third and final appearance in The Dark Knight Rises when Batman fires a missile at Miranda Tate, while her truck driver was killed, sending her and the truck to a crashing halt. The cue was released on the two-disc special edition, and can be found on the track, "We Are Tonight's Entertainment". The second disc can also be found for digital download under the album name The Dark Knight (Bonus Digital Release) with artwork featuring the Joker instead of Batman.[16][17]
The soundtrack debuted on the Billboard 200 list at No. 20, with 25,000 copies sold in the first week.[18]During its second week in release, the track fell to No. 23, with an estimated 20,000 copies sold. It dropped out of top 100 on its third week, but held the position of No. 192 selling 2,100. On its fourth week it fell out of the Top 200.
A 2-CD Special Edition of The Dark Knight soundtrack was released on December 9, 2008. In addition to the 14 tracks on the regular release, an additional 10 tracks of score were added to the second disc, along with four remixes by The Crystal Method, Paul van Dyk, Mel Wesson, and Ryeland Allison, packaged as a digibook in a semi-artificial leather slipcase with the Bat-Signal cut out. The Digibook features several movie scenes, production details and a few words from Christopher Nolan on the collaboration with Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. The first disc is exactly the same as the original release, with additional tracks and remixes on the latter disc. Between the two of them, the two discs of the special edition form most of the film's score, though the tracks are arranged in an order different from the scenes in the film.
The score received favorable responses. Websites like tracksounds.com and Soundtrack.net have released mostly positive reviews, commending the score's blend of electronic and orchestral elements as well as its continued departure from the tone of Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns set by Danny Elfman.[20][21][22] Other sites, like Movie Music UK and especially Filmtracks.com found the score to be bland and uncreative, with many elements borrowed from the previous scores of both composers, especially previous scores by Zimmer. Filmtracks.com reviewer Christian Clemmensen found the track "Why so Serious" unlistenable and referred to it as "nine minutes of your life that you'll never get back", but praised the cue "Harvey Two-Face" which was composed by James Newton Howard. Other complaints were about Batman's new heroic theme, featured most heavily in Like a Dog Chasing Cars, which Clemmensen considered "a murky blend of The Last Samurai, The Thin Red Line, The Da Vinci Code, and Crimson Tide".[23][24]
The soundtrack was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media in February 2009.[25] Later in May, the soundtrack won a Classical BRIT Award for Best Soundtrack. It was disqualified for consideration for that year's Oscars, as the Academy ruled there were more names listed as composers than they permit.[26] The score won other several awards, including "Best Music" at the Saturn Awards.[27]
I hauled my ass out of bed at 7:30 AM ton Saturday morning and saw The Dark Knight at 9 AM in a packed IMAX theater, and boy was it was worth it. From the opening establishing shot, which was incredibly vivid and breathtaking, I knew that this film would be something different. It's been said dozens of times already, but Nolan truly uses the entire screen (six-stories tall as it is) as a canvas to paint a rich and dramatic tale. My podcast review will have to wait for Monday night, but I felt the overwhelming desire to write something about the subject.
Please note: The following is not a review. I will not be discussing Heath Ledger's tremendous performance, nor Nolan's directorial choices, nor my problems with the film (yes, I did have some). It's an attempt at coming to grips with some of the themes in the movie, a cathartic but not exhaustive brain dump. So here we go...
The final monologue that Commissioner Gordon brings the themes from Batman Begins to their logical conclusion: Namely, that as a man, Bruce Wayne's powers to evil crime are rather limited. As a man, he can be corrupted, he can be killed, and ultimately, he can be defeated. As a symbol he can become far more, and at the end of The Dark Knight, he becomes, to society, an uncontainable force in very much the same way the Joker was. He becomes hunted, making people believe that he cannot be controlled, that he has lost all respect for societal norms and the rule of law. As Gordon realizes he needs to blame the murders on Batman, he acknowledges not only the need for society to push their fears onto something, but their hopes as well (which he allows them to do by preserving Dent's good name).
In order to keep from tearing itself to shreds, society needs to believe in the incorruptibility of good and the relative remoteness of evil. The Dark Knight points us to ways in which we cope with this need.
Simultaneously, it's also made clear that, in fact, Batman never succumbs to his own dark, inner urges. In the movie, Bruce Wayne says the line, "I've seen what I have to become to fight men like him," and he rejects the path he has to take to stop Joker, a man who has no rules whatsoever. In one of the more memorable scenes from the film, the two have a showdown in Gotham's city streets, the Joker manically screaming "Hit me!" as Batman is propelled towards him in the bat pod. As much as Batman wants to annihilate the Joker, he knows he can't violate his own moral code, and almost sacrifices himself to prevent this from happening (albeit as part of a broader ruse to capture him). Still, Batman doesn't seek to kill evildoers, but to bring them to justice. The dichotomy that the film sets up between Joker and Batman is one of chaos vs. order. The dichotomy between Joker and Dent is one of good vs. evil...
These words, spoken by Harvey Dent in the film and its trailers, portend the inevitable corruptibility of heroes in the Batman universe. At the beginning of the film, Dent represents absolute good, a goodness that's so pure, that has so much potential to change Gotham, that even Batman is thinking of hanging up his spurs.
Dent is referred to frequently as Gotham's "White Knight," a term used throughout the course of the film. I was speaking with a friend about this movie today and he pointed out that when he went to see the movie he did not anticipate "The Dark Knight" could actually also refer to Dent, a clever yet profound subtext to the film (and that's not even mentioning the night/knight pun, which I will choose never mention again after this sentence). Indeed, Dent's journey from light to darkness is handled plausibly and adeptly in the film, which makes his story arc monstrously tragic.
Many people have remarked on how depressing the film is and I would say that I mostly agree: The Joker's ability to destroy that which Dent loves and turn him to the evil that he becomes is sad in a way that can only be experienced by seeing the film. But the apparent relative ease with which Joker does this is what makes the Dent storyline strike so close to home: The film makes us realize that we, as humans are limited, and that our capacity to be good is subject to the vagaries of fate and whatever the hell else decides to destroy what we love. Dent is not just a proxy for hope, he's a proxy for us as well, reminding us of the duality that lies within each of us.
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