As promised, director Matt Reeves has debuted composer Michael Giacchino's Riddler theme from the upcoming superhero film The Batman. Featuring haunting vocals and almost no brass or percussion to speak of in the first two minutes, the five-minute track crescendos with bold orchestration in the middle, before bringing it back down toward the end, as if Giacchino has given the theme a three-act structure.
Foreboding and majestic in equal measure, the theme is music befitting a worthy adversary for the Batman. Paul Dano plays the serial-killing villain in the upcoming film, while Robert Pattinson stars as The Dark Knight. Reeves had previously debuted a whole suite of themes from the movie, and revealed that Giacchino began working on the music before a single shot had been filmed.
The Batman suite featured the already-iconic new theme, but also included what sounded like a love theme, and another more nostalgic one. Sharing the music, the filmmaker had written in a tweet that he and his producing partner Dylan Clark listened to the main theme on their way to Pattinson’s screen test. “We both had chills,” he added.
Reeves and Giacchino go back a long way. They previously collaborated on Cloverfield, Let Me In, and Reeves’ two Planet of the Apes sequels—Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes. Giacchino won an Oscar for Best Original Score for 2010’s Up, and these days, he works frequently on Pixar and Marvel projects. This is his first time working as acomposer for a Batman project.
Reeves has cited many musical influences for both the film and its characters. He told Empire that musically, he was inspired by Nirvana’s "Something’s in The Way,” a song that has been featured prominently in the film’s trailers. Reeves also revealed that he modeled Pattinson’s Batman on the Kurt Cobain-like figure at the center of Gus Van Sant’s Last Days. Dano’s Riddler, the filmmaker has often said, is inspired by the real-life Zodiac killer, who terrorized San Francisco in the ‘60s.
The Batman also stars Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Jeffrey Wright as polic commissioner James Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth.
The Batman premieres in theaters on March 4, followed by a streaming release on HBO Max forty-five days later. Check out the new theme below: