well. there's a quick article about that interview Elfman did. and for fun, they did swap the themes on movies, meaning they used Elfman's theme on Batman Begin and then Zimmer's theme on Tim Burton's Batman. One fits better in both visual style than the other in my opinion. And I hope that Elfman adapted his Batman theme in a more serious/dark / less fantasy style to fit the mood of DCU. but we'll see in a few days when the movie comes out. I still don't agree to mix themes from different worlds like that, but it is what it is.
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1720160/what-danny-elfman-thinks-about-hans-zimmers-batman-theme
Score-swapping like in that example isn’t really a fair way to judge the effectiveness of a score, though. Danny Elfman would have never written that many notes over a dialogue scene, for example, to say nothing of mood, tone, or dramatic-filmic intent. Of course the Zimmer music works better in that clip, but it doesn’t prove or disprove anything about who they are as film composers or which style is “better”; it just proves that whoever made that video made a more appropriate selection with the Zimmer/Burton mashup.
What is helpful, and fair, is seeing how the composer himself uses, or doesn’t use, a theme or motive in a scene or a movie. For example, in DKR Zimmer directly quotes Elfman’s theme a couple times in the basses:
It's not a particularly spectacular moment in the film, nor is it a foregrounded moment for the music, but it does show Hans Zimmer, intentionally or not, equating an on-screen Batman with scale degrees 1-2-♭3-♭6-5, with the first three notes equal in length and short and latter two notes longer: the Elfman Batman theme.
But notice! Zimmer also simultaneously uses his own two-note Batman motif in the horns above - which obviously means "on-screen Batman" - so is he really using the Elfman theme as a Batman signifier, too?
Only he can answer.
But whatever that answer is, the quotes of the Elfman theme in DKR don't sound anything like those same notes sound in the Burton movies. And that's okay - these were very different movies! But this moment in the film wasn't cheapened by 1-2-♭3-♭6-5, because Zimmer made it appropriate in "tone" for the moment and for the movie.
So...
Until the movie comes out on the 17th (or you're lucky and get to go to a screening), it's sort of pointless to talk about how good the score is, since without the context of the picture, you're only looking a
shadow cast on a cave wall.
...Or a
Bat-
Signal in the
Gotham clouds...
(and just to clarify:
@Grizzlymv this is a response to the link you shared, not an attack on you!)
(But to be fair, Tina can make a cello sound like a guitar any day of the week)
