The Dark Knight Movie Reviews, Pictures

Batman Begins composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard returned to score the sequel. 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. Zimmer and Howard both realized that creating a heroic theme that a viewer could hum would ignore the complexity and darkness of the character. That the heroic theme is audible only twice, early on in the film, creates what Zimmer described as a “red herring”, a kind of musical foreshadowing.

Composition began before shooting, and during filming Nolan received an iPod with ten hours of recordings, which Zimmer claimed Nolan fully memorized. Their nine-minute suite for the Joker is based around two notes, D and C (an interesting coincidence to DC Comics). Zimmer compared its style to the band Kraftwerk, who come from his native Germany, as well as his work with bands like The Damned. When Ledger died, Zimmer felt like scrapping and composing a new theme, but decided that he could not be sentimental and compromise the “evil [performance] projects”. Howard composed Dent’s “elegant and beautiful” themes, which are brass-focused.