A Dark Symphony for ‘The Batman’

Michael Giacchino has put music to some of the biggest franchises of our time, including four films for Marvel (three “Spider-mans” and “Dr. Strange”), three “Star Trek” films, two “Jurassic World” pics (with a third to come), seven Pixar movies (including his Oscarwinning “Up”) and even one in the “Star Wars” universe (“Rogue One”).

But it’s safe to say that none of his scores has generated as much advance interest as his music for “The Batman.” When Warner’s Watertower label released a track in late January, it racked up an astounding –.— million views on Youtube — the highest global streaming engagement the label had ever seen for a prerelease that’s part of a score album.

Now that “The Batman” is in theaters, Giacchino’s entire soundtrack for the Robert Pattinson-starring revisionist take on Gotham City’s Dark Knight can be heard. At – hours, šš minutes, it is by far the longest film Giacchino has scored. The album alone runs › hour, šœ minutes, and that’s not even all the music he wrote for Matt Reeves’ epic.

This is their fifth film together (including two “Planet of the Apes” movies, “Let Me In” and “Cloverfield”). “So when I got ‘The Batman,’” says Reeves, “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: record before I ever shot a frame. … 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.”

“The Batman” is among the composer’s most ambitious scores to date. It is the symphonic equivalent of Reeves’ film: dark, brooding and melancholy, suggesting the haunted figure behind the mask amid the grim maelstrom of Gotham crime.

Giacchino also conveys a sense of innocence in his Riddler theme, with a boys’ choir hinting at the mad villain’s troubled past, and he plays intriguingly jazzy figures for Catwoman, who is such a mysterious figure in the story. He worked on the score for more than two years, recording with a £š-member London orchestra over ›– days at Abbey Road in October –¤–›.

Robert Pattinson gets instructions from director Matt Reeves on the set of “The Batman.” Michael Giacchino’s score for the film is his fifth collaboration with Reeves.