Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard: "Why So Serious?"

Three years ago, Christian Bale hang-glided into the camera with an ominous playing card in his bat-pouch, flooding screens with a bleak pulp that was guaranteed to resonate for years past its fanboy prime. Thus: early box office feedback has crowned The Dark Knight as the biggest film of the year, so it’s little surprise to find that the two heavyweights pulled in to score the Caped Crusader have truly wiped the dojo with this one, swapping the Latin and acronyms of their first collaboration with the Kronos Quartet cues from the Heat OST (Nolan Major cites Michael Mann’s robbery opera as having mentored The Dark Knight‘s design). It’s by no means straightforward piracy, though, and rather than let Zimmer again toy with the Black Rain/”Charlie Loses His Head” suite as he did for the meat of Batman Begins, the action this time is kept deliberately unstable, spreading in directions like rampant bacteria and more thorny on the ears than Christ’s tiara. Strings howl like bereaved Martians while an industrial seizure writhes in the background, jagged in places—dunes of debris—and more elusive than the Loch Ness Monster. It’s a bold departure from the powerful, synthesised chatter they supplied for the first film and it shows just how many dimensions the makers of Part II are determined to add to the Joker character. If the late Mr. Ledger has created a foil intended as the Nurse Ratched to Nicholson’s Clown Prince of Crime, then this new analogue is every bit as sheered off and twisted as the Chelsea Smiling hellraiser we’ve all imbibed by now, the one with pockets full of lint and knives who can upturn a big-rig like a pancake. As they say on Wikipedia, the Dance of the Red Hood redirects here. Go see (and listen).