Batman Begins Soundtrack

A couple of weeks ago I saw Batman Begins and recently I listened to the soundtrack. It doesn't happen very often that I get this excited about a film score, but this one is a real pearl!

The music is composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. The work of Hans Zimmer I know fairly well as I have several of his soundtracks in my collection. And it is easy to hear his contribution to this soundtrack with his characteristic adrenalin raising yet melodic beat. It has taken many action movies to a new level. As for James Newton Howard I haven't listen to much of his music directly before even though I've seen many of the movies he made the music for. In the Batman Begins score there is a kind of theme which I can only describe as a kind of dark Vangelis-like music. I can only assume that this is Howards contribution.

As for the film itself, Batman Begins, I enjoyed the movie. It is an above average action movie which takes its time to develop the characters and how Batman came to be. The cast is full of very good actors, perhaps surprising since one would expect the movie to be aimed at the action audience which perhaps isn't so picky about the performance. But it shows that the producers have had a very ambitious goal with the film. A goal which I think ultimately fails. And I didn't really understand this until after I heard the soundtrack.

The film centers much around fear. Under his training Bruce Wayne is taught to face his fears and become one with them. He needs to be feared by his enemies. His nemesis in Gotham is the Scarecrow which uses fear as his weapon. And so on. But I think that this point is somewhat lost. Nowhere in the movie does it get really scary. Some scenes which have a tremendous potential of being scary or at least very intense simply fall flat. I tend to blame the director for this. One thing is for sure, we don't need to blame the score. At times it is just totally magnificent. Unfortunately it is not the kind of soundtrack that one can just sit and listen to. At least I cannot due to it being rather dark and scaring the crap out of me. But that doesn't change the fact that it is one of the most exciting scores I've ever heard. This soundtrack deserves a better movies.