“I think the thing that he really taught me was, you gotta have a tune. If you don’t have a tune, you have nothing. You’re just grazing like cows in the field. … Dark Knight [the Joker’s Theme] is one note, and then the Batman thing is really two notes. So a tune doesn’t have to be a lot of notes, but it has to have purpose. … It has to be somehow intellectually defensible for it to resonate emotionally.”

As I have attempted to show through these posts, the Dark Knight soundtracks are indeed full of memorable themes when we listen to them closely. In this final post, my film music analysis will introduce one more theme that Zimmer uses in The Dark Knight Rises before giving a musical breakdown of the themes heard in the film’s explosive finale.

“Succeeding” Theme 4

In the second post of this series, I discussed three more or less interchangeable themes that are associated with Bruce or Batman being in the process of overcoming some sort of difficulty. This is why I called them “succeeding” themes and not simply “success” themes, as though victory has already been claimed.

There is a fourth succeeding theme that is actually introduced in the second film, The Dark Knight, when Batman kidnaps Lau, an accountant for the mafia, from Hong Kong in order to return him to the jurisdiction of the U.S. and bring him to justice. We hear the theme just after Batman and Lau are carried off on Batman’s “skyhook”, a gadget that connects him to his plane flying overhead via suspension cable. Here’s the theme itself:

And here’s the “skyhook” scene – the theme appears at 3:25:

As with the other succeeding themes, Batman is in the process of accomplishing a goal. He only reaches that goal in the following scene, when we see Lau tied up outside the Gotham police station, having been delivered by Batman. Appropriately, the succeeding theme ends at this point. This is a different situation from, say, the scene in which Bruce climbs out of the prison pit. There, reaching the top is actually success, so instead of a succeeding theme, we hear Batman’s “heroic” theme. This particular succeeding theme (#4) becomes an important of the film’s finale.

The Finale

Zimmer’s adherence to thematic writing in film scores is particularly evident in the (literally) explosive final thirty minutes of The Dark Knight Rises since several of the themes from this and the previous two films reappear throughout. I give a breakdown of four excerpts from this lengthy sequence below.

Batman Saves Blake

Detective John Blake is captured by the villain Bane’s men, one of whom raises a gun to Blake’s head. Just as Blake is on this verge of meeting his demise, Batman leaps down and single-handedly beats up each of the men to rescue Blake. The music we hear is Succeeding Theme 4 since Batman is in the process of overcoming an obstacle here. Appropriately, the theme ends when he has knocked out all of the men.

When Batman then frees the city’s police force from the sewer tunnels with rockets from his Batwing, we hear the “Batman Troubled” theme. Why? As Batman says, he needs Blake to get people across the bridge and out of the city “in case we fail”. Clearly, he’s not entirely confident he’ll be able to stop Bane’s plan to destroy Gotham, so we hear his “troubled” theme.

Watch the scene here from 2:25:

Truck Chase

The intense chase scene during the finale involves Batman and Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) chasing after the military truck containing a powerful bomb that is minutes away from detonating and destroying the entire city.

The clip below begins with Commissioner Gordon looking worriedly at the bomb and follows with the other villain Talia (Marion Cotillard) getting into the truck carrying the bomb. Later in the scene, Blake tries in vain to convince his fellow cops to open the bridge and let him and a busload of children through to safety, then Talia’s envoy of tumblers are seen racing through the streets alongside the bomb-carrying truck. Through all this, we hear the “Batman Troubled” theme and accompaniment, which may seem puzzling since we don’t actually see Batman onscreen here. But the overall situation is one that poses significant obstacles to Batman if he is to save Gotham from destruction. Hence we hear his “troubled” music. We do, however, hear this music once accompanying Batman in trouble when he is attempting to elude some heat-seeking missiles following the Batwing.

Zimmer also returns to a couple of other themes in this scene. Selina’s “action” theme enters when Batman is asking Selina for her help from the ground when he takes to the air, and again later when Selina destroys one of Talia’s tumblers. In both cases, the music helps us to focus on Selina rather than Batman and on her contributions to the success of the “good guys”.

At the end of this clip, Batman in his Batwing is finally in an advantageous position over the truck. Thus, after all the “troubled” music we have heard with the scene, the emergence of the more heroic sounding Succeeding Theme 2 comes as welcome sigh of relief and signals that Batman is about to take control of the situation.

Here are the entrances of the above themes in the clip below:

• 0:00-0:31 – Batman Troubled Theme and Accompaniment
• 0:34-0:40 – Selina Action Theme
• 0:40-1:00 – Batman Troubled Theme and Accompaniment
• 2:09-2:20 – Selina Action Theme
• 3:22-3:25 – Batman Troubled Theme
• 4:01-4:13 – Succeding Theme 2

Batman Saves the City

In the last two minutes of the bomb’s countdown to detonation, we hear three of Zimmer’s previous themes make a return. First, appropriately enough, we hear Batman’s “troubled” theme as he struggles to take the Batwing, which now suspends the bomb below it, high enough to clear a building under construction. Batman instead decides to carve a path through the building with rockets.

When Blake sees the explosion, he believes the bomb has been detonated and frantically shouts for the children to keep their heads down. Watching from the bus, one of the children then proclaims, “No, that’s Batman!” Here, the music makes an abrupt shift to a slower, more confident sounding beat that usually accompanies one of Batman’s succeeding themes. And sure enough, we hear Succeeding Theme 4 as Batman carries the bomb to the bay outside the city.

The focus of the scene then changes to Blake, who watches on as the Batwing recedes into the distance. At this point, the percussive beats fall away and we hear the “Thoughts of Death” theme, which has not appeared in these films since Batman Begins. The poignant emotional quality of this theme fools us into thinking that Batman has actually perished in the explosion.

Here are the entrances of the themes in the clip below:

• 1:20-1:31 – Batman Troubled theme
• 1:48-2:04 – Succeeding Theme 4
• 2:04-2:33- Thoughts of Death

Farewell to Batman

The final five minutes of The Dark Knight Rises are devoted to tying up loose ends and bidding farewell to Batman as we have known him. Despite Batman’s apparent death, he has managed to achieve success in a number of ways. First, there is the statue of him that is unveiled and applauded. Thus, Batman has regained the admiration of Gotham’s citizens since the end of the last film, when he was deemed an outcast and murderer. Second, through his will, Bruce passes his wealth on to Alfred and designates that the Wayne house and grounds become an orphanage for Gotham. Third, there is the reveal that Blake’s full name includes “Robin” (how this is a success of Batman’s is explained below). And finally, we learn that the Batwing’s auto-pilot had been fixed months before by Bruce Wayne, implying that it flew to its destruction without Bruce’s piloting and in turn that Bruce is still alive. Through all of this, we therefore hear several statements of Succeeding Theme 4 in a more somber setting without its driving percussion.

The next section of this final sequence implies that Batman’s legacy will continue to live on through two individuals who were particularly inspired by him: Blake and Gordon. Blake travels to the Batcave, finds his way inside and begins to explore it, the implication being that he will become the next Batman (as Bruce Wayne himself says before carrying the bomb away, “a hero can be anyone”). Meanwhile, Gordon is seen admiring the Batsignal on a rooftop while looking up at the skies, as though hoping that Batman will return someday. For these scenes, the Bat-accompaniment is heard as a sign that Batman, at least as a masked hero who “can be anyone” has not actually died, but that he will continue to appear when Gotham needs him.

The big reveal, however, comes when we see Alfred nod to someone in a Florentine café. The reverse shot then shows Bruce with Selina at another table. Upon seeing Alfred just before his nod, heavier percussion kicks in and we soon hear Batman’s two-note “signifying” theme, driving home the surprise that Bruce is alive and well after all.

The final scene of the film shows Blake still in the Batcave, now suddenly raised up on a platform. The music here is Batman’s “heroic” theme, which, together with the image, suggests the rise of a new Dark Knight and brings the film and the entire trilogy to a satisfying close.

Here are the timings of the entrances of these themes in the clip below:

• 4:23-4:36 – heavier percussion on Bat-accompaniment, then Batman signifying theme
• 4:37-4:49 – Batman heroic theme

Hans Zimmer worked alone for the trilogy’s final installment instead of collaborating with James Newton Howard, who claimed that, although he had contributed much to the music of these films, Zimmer was really “the mastermind behind the Batman scores.”

Like the second film, The Dark Knight Rises has three main characters who are all given their own theme. A striking contrast is set up, however, between the themes for Batman and Bane, the film’s villain. After laying out the themes for the film’s two new characters, Bane and Selina Kyle, I will demonstrate how Zimmer takes advantage of the opposition between the Bane and Batman themes in Bruce Wayne’s three attempts at climbing out of the pit prison.

Bane

Unlike traditional Hollywood film scores, which tend to focus their attention on melody, harmonic progressions, and varied repetitions of musical motives, Zimmer’s film scores tend to rely more on timbre, texture, and rhythm. In fact, it is rhythm alone that defines the theme for Bane as Zimmer employs a four-note rhythm in an unusual 5/4 time:

Usually, though, the rhythm is filled out with eighth notes like this:

This 5/4 rhythm is quite similar to another famous theme in the same meter: the title music from Mission: Impossible. Although there the meter is associated with the “good guys”, both themes are used in the context of thrilling action narratives. Compare the two rhythms here:

Bane’s rhythm also has much in common with the Joker’s accompaniment from the previous film in that groups of three beats are juxtaposed with groups of two beats. Compare these two below:

The main difference here is that, unlike the Joker’s theme, Bane’s theme does not fit into a regular 4/4 time. But like the Joker’s theme in The Dark Knight, Zimmer sounds Bane’s theme not simply to signify that character’s presence in the scene, but more importantly to indicate that Bane is the one in control of the situation onscreen. A good example is the film’s opening scene, in which a number of captives with hoods over their heads (whom we soon realize are Bane and a few of his men) are threatened with being shot and pushed out of a high-flying plane unless they provide the captors with information. Although in the visuals and dialogue, it appears that the captives have no hope of escape, the music suggests otherwise. In the following film clip, notice how Bane’s 5/4 rhythm is heard as soon as we see the plane in flight at the very start of the clip, and how it becomes much more prominent once Bane and his men take over the plane at 2:13:

The uneven quality of Bane’s 5/4 rhythm suggests an instability that stands in marked contrast to the stability of Batman’s themes, which are all in an even 4/4 time. In this way, the themes for Bane and Batman establish a clear musical opposition not just between the two characters but, on a broader level, between good and evil. A clear example of this opposition occurs in the scene where Batman makes his first appearance after eight years of absence. At the start of this scene, Bane has just escaped from the stock exchange after bankrupting Bruce Wayne. Since it is Bane in control here, we hear his 5/4 rhythm during the escape. Hear it in the film clip below from 3:48:

Once Batman returns for the first time, the music shifts into a regular 4/4 time and sounds a familiar four-beat accompaniment pattern associated with Batman. Naturally, it is also in D minor, Batman’s key. Although Batman does not manage to stop his bankruptcy, he does alert the city to his presence again and demonstrates his ability to slip through the fingers of the police even when his arrest seems, to them, inevitable. Batman can therefore be said to be in control of at least his own personal situation (if not Bane’s), and for that reason, we hear Batman’s reassuring 4/4 music. Hear the appearance of this music at 0:30 in the following clip with Batman’s return:

Selina Kyle

Signifying Theme

There are two themes associated with the cat burglar, Selina Kyle. The first is rarely heard in the film and is a graceful signifying theme that indicates her presence in the scene:

Generally, most character themes in films at some point sound the first note, or tonic, of the scale. If the tonic occurs near the start, it gives the theme a solid base from which a distinctive melody can take shape. If it occurs near the end, it gives the theme a goal that it can head toward. Selina’s theme does neither. Instead, it hovers on the fifth note (A), or dominant, of the scale, making us wonder whether the theme will move up or down to produce some kind of melodic arc, as is typical of themes. This stasis on the dominant note appropriately expresses Selina’s ambivalent moral attitude. On the one hand, she is a jewel thief who willingly turns Batman over to Bane, yet on the other hand, she desperately wants to eliminate her criminal record and live a crime-free life.

The theme also has quick motions around this dominant note by semitones (the shortest distance between two notes). Along with the soft scoring in the piano, these motions suggest not only Selina’s mysterious nature, but also her skills of stealth that led to her being labeled a cat burglar. This suggestion of stealth through semitones is also a prominent part of the famous theme for The Pink Panther, which Henry Mancini composed to represent the film’s jewel thief known as “the phantom”.

You can hear Selina’s signifying theme in her first meeting with Bruce Wayne in this clip from 1:51:

Action Theme

Selina has a second more frequent theme that is heard when she is engaged in some sort of dangerous action. This theme consists of a rising scale played in repeated, or tremolo, notes, giving it an agitated sound:

Notice that as the theme rises up, each note returns two beats later. In this way, the theme hovers around each note in a way similar to Selina’s signifying theme, closely linking the two themes. And because this theme is usually repeated several times when it is heard, it creates a sense of stasis similar to Selina’s signifying theme despite the actions theme’s rising contour. The action theme also retains part of the mysterious quality of the signifying theme by being scored in a soft, subdued manner for the violins.

Hear this theme in the clip above as Selina makes her escape from Bruce Wayne’s mansion with the necklace she stole from him (from around 1:10):

The Climbing Scenes

Through these scenes, Bruce Wayne makes three attempts to climb out of a pit prison in which Bane has incarcerated him, the last of which is successful. With each attempt, the music differs and in fact subtly predicts each outcome.

First Attempt

In Bruce’s first attempt, we hear a repeated figure, or ostinato, of four notes in the bass:

While this ostinato has a rising contour, and therefore implies climbing, it always skips back down after only three rising notes. In much the same way, Bruce, secured with a rope, only manages to climb up to the first ledge in the pit before failing to make the jump to the next ledge and plunging back down to the bottom (the rope catching him before he hits the ground). At the same time, the other inmates chant “deshi basara” (meaning “he rises”) to Bane’s 5/4 rhythm. Thus, the music suggests that Bruce will not be able to rise enough to escape from Bane’s prison.

Now watch and listen to the scene here:

Second Attempt

After failing his first attempt and seeing some of Bane’s destruction of Gotham on a television, Bruce becomes angry and makes a second attempt to climb the pit. This time, the ostinato is absent and is replaced with continual instrumental statements of Bane’s rhythm. When Bruce is about to climb, the inmates begin their chant again, and as he scales the wall, the instruments and the inmates’ chant suddenly align in their rhythm and state Bane’s rhythm together. With nothing but Bane’s theme sounding, the music clearly implies that anger is only going to keep Bruce within Bane’s control (recall that Bane’s rhythm tends to indicate that he is in control of the situation onscreen). Accordingly, Bruce’s hand slips on a loose rock and again he falls to the bottom secured by the rope.

Watch and hear this short scene here:

Third Attempt

After failing his second climb, one of the inmates tells Bruce that if he wants to escape, he needs to have a fear of death, for, as he says, “how can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible, without the most powerful impulse of the spirit: the fear of death?” Consequently, he advises Bruce to climb without using the rope; then, he says “fear will find you.” As the inmate tells Bruce this, we begin to hear the ostinato from the first attempt again. As before, the ostinato skips downward after rising through three notes and continues to do so as Bruce climbs up to the ledge.

Once he reaches the ledge, however, the ostinato does something it didn’t do before—it continues rising up the D minor scale, going from D all the way up to the D an octave higher. As we hear this, a flurry of bats streams over Bruce’s head from a hole in the wall in much the same way as when he fell down the well as a child and developed a fear of bats in Batman Begins. The symbolism here is clear: Bruce’s fear has indeed returned, and the music follows suit by repeating the rising scale, now with a fuller and more active orchestration. While the inmates once again chant in Bane’s rhythm, the rising ostinato gradually overpowers it, indicating that this time Bruce will make the leap. Just before Bruce jumps, the ostinato dramatically halts before its final note. Musically (and perhaps literally) we are holding our breath while Bruce is in the air.

When he successfully grasps the other ledge, making the jump, we at last hear the ostinato’s final note, D, which merges with a statement of Batman’s “signifying” theme (see Part 1 of these posts). Having conquered the pit, the music suggests that Bruce has turned his mind towards Batman once more. After throwing down the rope for the other prisoners, Bruce then crosses the terrain atop the pit, a free man on his way back to Gotham. At this point we hear a climactic statement of the Batman “heroic” theme (again see Part 1 of these posts) to close off the scene in a way that is both appropriate and enormously satisfying.

Watch and hear this scene here:

Although the score for The Dark Knight was a collaboration between Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, the composers divided up the music for the two main villains of the film, Zimmer writing the music for the Joker, Howard that of Harvey Dent / Two-Face. Accordingly, the style of these two characters’ music is entirely different. Below is my film music analysis of these themes.

The Joker – Accompaniment

Like Batman, the Joker has an accompaniment figure that plays behind several scenes, notably the bank robbery at the film’s opening. The figure often sounds the dissonant interval of a major second in the violins, but more consistent is its rhythm, which is an irregular series of 3s and 2s within a bar of 4/4 time:

Sometimes the figure is slightly varied by elongating the third group to 4 pulses:

In either of its forms, the irregularity and dissonance in the figure suggest the kind of unsettling feeling the Joker’s schemes evoke in us. For this reason, this accompaniment appears precisely when one of his psychotic schemes is underway. Hear each variation in this clip at 1:14 and 2:15:

The Joker – Theme

In writing the main music for the Joker, Zimmer recorded, distorted, and combined many unusual sounds. The resulting “theme” is really more of a tone colour that fuses metallic buzzing and scratching sounds with a distant, airy sustained note. Eventually, out of the sustained note a second note emerges that gradually slides upward, giving the theme an appropriately eerie and haunting flavour:

The sustained note we hear in this theme is the note D, which is also the first note of Batman’s two-note theme. Furthermore, the upward-sliding note of the Joker’s theme is analogous to the rise up to F in Batman’s theme, and a similar crescendo is also present. The two themes therefore suggest a duality in that Batman and the Joker are in fact two sides of the same coin – both characters are “freaks” that flout society’s laws for their own ends, one for the sake of good, one for evil. Harvey Dent carries this idea of duality further since, once he becomes Two-Face, he is literally split between good and evil, as is his lucky coin, which is now tarnished on one of its two formerly identical faces.

The Joker’s theme is more than a simple musical reminder that the Joker is onscreen or being discussed. It signifies that the Joker is in control of the situation being depicted. And when you think about it, he is nearly always in control when we see him or are about to see him. For example:

• The bank robbery at the opening
• His speech to the mob bosses
• His “Why so serious?” speech to the mob boss Gambol
• When the armoured car is escorting Harvey away and is forced by the Joker to take the tunnels
• When he tells Batman where Rachel and Harvey are being held

In each of these situations, we hear the buzzy timbre of the Joker’s theme, reminding us who is in charge here. Here’s a sample of the theme for the cue, “Why so serious?”:

Harvey Dent / Two-Face – Theme

Howard was given the task of writing the music for Harvey Dent / Two-Face. It differs greatly from the Joker’s music in that it contains a melodic six-note theme for the character, usually scored for piano and/or strings:

Once Dent has transformed into Two-Face, his theme retains the same melody but is scored for the more menacing low brass. Like Batman’s theme, Dent’s theme outlines the interval of a third, but here the third falls rather than rises, and does so twice, perhaps suggesting that, unlike Batman, Dent will not be successful in his endeavours. A stepwise falling third also begins the prominent melody from the love theme I mentioned in my second post on these films. This similarity between the Dent and love themes no doubt signifies Dent’s romantic relationship with Rachel since the love theme signified Rachel and Bruce’s relationship in Batman Begins. Incidentally, you can hear the opening of the love theme in Howard’s suite for Harvey Dent below (see given timings).

Notice also that the theme is in a minor rather than a major key, a surprising detail given that Dent is such an optimistic and morally upright character at the start of the film. Perhaps Howard is insinuating that Dent’s ideals are flawed from the outset and doomed to fail.

Hear the theme in the clip below at these timings:

• 1:23 – low strings
• 2:12 – mid strings + horn
• 2:43 – mid brass
• 3:20 – mid piano
• 4:12 – low strings
• 5:14 – opening of love theme (from Batman Begins)

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Like Batman Begins, the music of The Dark Knight was composed by both Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Of course many themes from the first movie reappear in this second instalment, but it also has several new themes of its own, especially in connection with Batman. What follows is my film music analysis of these themes.

“Batman Troubled” – Accompaniment

In Batman Begins, we hear lots of the repeated D-F motive in the strings as accompaniment for Batman’s themes. While this is still present in The Dark Knight, a new figure is more pervasive:

Hear this figure at the start of the following clip:

otice that the D-F motive is still present here but hidden amongst a flurry of other notes. A couple of scenes make use of this figure:

• When Gordon is on a roof with the Bat-signal at the start of the film, hoping that Batman will arrive
• Throughout the finale with the “boat-game” crisis

Why should Batman get a new accompaniment in this movie? Probably because the situations he now faces force him to question the validity of Batman as a crime-fighting symbol. For example, should he give in to the Joker’s demand to reveal his identity? Should he give Batman up for the sake of being with Rachel? And after Rachel dies, Bruce asks whether Batman is causing more harm than good. These questions leave Bruce/Batman troubled throughout the film and so it is appropriate that the music should reflect this new-found sense of self-doubt.

“Batman Troubled” – Theme

This self-doubt even spills over into Batman’s brassy two-note theme of D-F. Although there are plenty of statements of the “signifying” and “heroic” versions of the theme (see Part 1 of these posts), the F is sometimes sounded together with a C#, creating an awkward-sounding diminished fourth! This interval doesn’t imply any chord in the theme’s D minor key, and so leaves us as unsettled—or troubled—as Batman himself.

Hear this theme in the following YouTube clip from 1:07:

The “troubled” theme occurs in these scenes:

• When the Joker is driving the trailer truck and Batman is motorcycling to meet him
• Many times during the boat crisis finale

The “Threat” Theme

On a couple of occasions, we hear a theme that wavers from D to C# and back to D again:

Hear this theme in the following YouTube clip from 0:48:

Because this C# is never a part of the sounding chord, it acts as a dissonant note in need of resolution. And when it was present in the themes above, it gave the music a “troubled” sound. So you might say that the C# has the same unsettling effects on us as the Joker’s psychotic schemes. In other words, just as the situations in The Dark Knight are a constant threat to the people of Gotham City, the C# is a constant threat to the chord being sounded.

This motive is most clearly heard in two scenes:

• When Fox sees Batman’s use of the citizen’s cell phones to find the Joker
• When the convicts and citizens are boarding each of their large boats

In my last post, I discussed the variations on the most prominent theme in Batman Begins: a two-note motive of D-F for Batman. But there are three other themes that appear in the film at prominent moments. These are described below in a film music analysis.

The “Thoughts of Death” Theme

This theme appears twice in the film, the first time after the young Bruce Wayne’s parents are shot dead and there is a cut from the crime scene to the police station where Bruce is being cared for. The music features a wordless boy soprano singing three phrases:

Because this theme isn’t heard until after Bruce’s parents have been killed, it does not represent the sorrow of the scene in general, as is typically done, but rather Bruce’s sorrow in having witnessed the death of his parents. Hear it in this clip:

This theme also appears when Bruce returns to Gotham as a young adult for the court hearing for the early release of Chill, the man who killed his parents. As Bruce unpacks in his room at Wayne Manor, he reveals a handgun he had packed in his suitcase. At this moment the theme returns, indicating that Bruce is not only contemplating the death of his parents but, as the handgun implies, killing Chill as well. For this reason, I call it the “Thoughts of Death” theme.

The “Succeeding” Themes

These themes appear in a few key scenes:

• When the adult Bruce lowers himself into the well and starts to create the Batcave
• When Batman brings in his “backup”—a flurry of bats—to distract police while he saves Rachel

Succeeding Theme 1

Succeeding Theme 2

Succeeding Theme 3

These themes are used interchangeably and are heard when Bruce or Batman is in the process of overcoming some obstacle. This process is why I say it is a “succeeding” theme and not simply a “success” theme. Notice that they are all in the same D minor key as the main Batman motives, further associating the themes with Bruce/Batman. Hear the clip below from 0:38 for Theme 1, which then leads into Theme 3 at 0:55 (beginning in slightly varied form).

And Theme 2 can be heard below from 0:39:

The Love Theme

This theme is quite long but this is its most prominent portion:

This portion of the theme occurs at two important spots:

• When young Bruce is on the elevated train listening to his father talk about how he helps the city
• When Bruce and Rachel kiss in the burnt out rubble of Wayne Manor

Here’s an audio clip of theme starting from 1:57:

Interestingly, this theme is not limited just to romantic love, as these themes typically are, but it also expresses the familial love Bruce feels for his parents.

Coming soon—Musical Themes, Part 3: The Dark Knight.

Watching the movies of the Dark Knight trilogy, it can be easy to come away feeling that the score, by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, is composed of atmospheric music rather than catchy themes. But the motive for Batman is hard to miss as it consists of only two notes—D and F. Over the course of the film, these notes are used in three main ways: as an accompaniment figure, as a “signifying” form of the Bat-theme, and as a “heroic” form of the same theme. My film music analysis of these themes is below.

The Bat-Motive as Accompaniment

The first time we hear the D-F motive, it’s not actually a melodic “theme” but an accompaniment, a repeating figure (or “ostinato”) in the lower strings:

Although this accompaniment figure usually occurs with some form of the Bat-theme, it often fills out entire scenes with its dark agitated sound, as in the first scene in the film, which leads to the young Bruce Wayne falling down into a cave. You can hear this in the following excerpt from about 0:42.

In this light, the figure suggests that what we are shown onscreen is directly related to Batman’s origins or, at other times, that he is not far offscreen.

The Bat-Motive as “Signifying” Theme

When used as a theme, the D and F appear as single notes in a long crescendo, usually in the trombone and with the ostinato accompaniment:

The following clip has this theme at 0:52, 1:22 and 1:36.

If you’ve seen Batman Begins, this theme will sound familiar—we hear it more than any other theme in the film. While it is flexible in meaning, it seems to suggest that Batman is either being thought about by the character onscreen, or that there is great uncertainty in what Batman is trying to do. Depending on the context, then, the theme can be either positive or negative in connotation—it has no “default” meaning other than to simply signify Batman.

The Bat-Motive as “Heroic” Theme

This form of the theme is the most prominent in the film as it is sounded when Bruce or Batman performs a heroic feat. It has the same long crescendo and accompaniment as the “signifying” theme, but ends with a loud major chord scored for more brass than just the trombone:

The following clip has this theme starting from 2:23.

Throughout the film, the most prominent statements of the Bat-motives are always in the same key of D minor. But in this “heroic” form, the theme ends with a major chord (VI) in the minor key, giving the theme a positive feeling within a negative surrounding. This musical relationship mirrors that of Gotham City: Batman is the one glimmer of hope in a city filled with crime and corruption.

Putting it All Together

What is most interesting about all these forms of the Bat-motive is the way they progress towards heroic moments. In the first scene, when the young Bruce develops a fear of bats, we hear mainly the accompaniment figure. There are a couple of statements of the Bat-theme, but they are soft and in the strings, a hint of things yet to come. Then, events that push Bruce closer to the idea of becoming Batman are scored with the brassy “signifying” Bat-theme. These events include:

• Bruce walking up the mountain to the League of Shadows
• Bruce seeing the poverty of Gotham while in Rachel’s car
• Bruce running away from Falcone’s hangout (after switching coats with the homeless man)
• Bruce discussing the “symbol” (i.e., Batman) that will protect his loved ones while he fights crime
• Bruce re-entering the cave for the first time as an adult

Soon after Bruce’s re-entrance to the cave, a flurry of bats pours out and this time he allows them to pass over him, unafraid. For the first time in the film, we hear the “heroic” form of the Bat-theme, and for good reason. Bruce now has control over his fear of bats, and by extension, his fears more generally, and so is psychologically prepared to take on the persona of Batman. This scene, given in the last of the clips above, actually combines all three forms of the Bat-motive starting from 2:16.