The Batman’s trailers have given us plenty of chances to hear those swelling horns and the sinister beat of the film’s main theme. But it turns out the full piece for Robert Pattinson’s dark knight isn’t all ominous gloom—it’s surprisingly stirring.
Warner Bros. has released the first official snippet from Michael Giacchino’s score for the movie, and much like The Batman itself, it’s surprisingly long. The title piece clocks in at just shy of seven minutes, which gives it plenty of room to hide its most compelling movements between those ominous tones we’ve heard crescendo-ing across the most recent trailer. Those beats do indeed open and close the title theme, but the strings in between are surprising.
The thing that is most striking when the string movement begins—not even a minute in—is how light it all feels. There’s an almost serene, melancholic air to it, which of course is all very Batman. But it does not feel maudlin because of that, if anything the opposite. It’s at times triumphant, evoking a surprisingly warm and uplifting tone. It’s quite hopeful, which is perhaps not the immediate direction you’d expect from a Batman theme. But that’s of course the contrast when those low piano beats come back in, building back up to the blaring horns we’ve heard in the trailers to conclude the piece, layering in that familiar, ominous edge, which is also all very Batman.
It’s nice to have a main theme that plays to all those aspects of the character, the duality of (bat)man, that theatrically grand light and dark, but it’ll be even nicer to hear just how it all plays in context in the final movie.
The Batman hits theaters from March 4.
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