Hans Zimmer is responsible for a lot of the movie music you have heard in your life. His most famous movie scores include Driving Miss Daisy, Pirates of the Caribbean and Inception, but hes done everything from Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Own to The Rock, Crimson Tide and the Dark Knight trilogy.
Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan tapped Zimmer to score the new Superman movie, Man of Steel. This is actually the first Superman movie not to use the John Williams Superman theme from 1978s Superman: The Movie. Even , which featured an entirely new cast, continued using the famous score.
At a press conference for Man of Steel, Zimmer revealed he was reluctant to compose for Superman because Williams theme was so strong. We got to speak with Zimmer one on one to follow up about his reservations and learn how he develops these memorable scores. We also found out a little history about his work on Sherlock Holmes, and the aborted musical Ill Do Anything.
SuicideGirls: At the press conference you talked about how reluctant you were take on Superman when there was such a memorable John Williams theme over the years. Were you more reluctant than you were with Batman and the Danny Elfman theme?
HansZimmer: Yes, because part of it was timing. I was still so involved in The Dark Knight [Rises] at the time when Superman popped up. Chris [Nolan] saying, Hey, you can do it and me saying, You went in there with an idea. I dont have an idea. And the enormous shadow that the master cast because I think part of it is how old we are when we first hear something. I remember hearing Superman and seeing Superman and just being swept away by Johns music and everything. I think I was a little older when I saw Dannys Batman so it wasnt quite as much of my DNA, the thing that made me go, Oh wow, I want to become a film composer. John Williams was hugely part of that.
SG: Do you remember the moment when you hit on the new Superman theme?
HZ: Actually, I hit on it really early on. In my endless procrastination and me saying, No, no, no, I wont do it, I finally said to Zack, Zack, just tell me the story. I dont want to read the script. Just tell me the story so I know whats in your head. When you have somebody tell you a story, they leave out everything other than the thing that emotionally moves them. As hes speaking, I cant help it but I have to score what hes saying in my head. I sort of have the whole beginnings there, but just sheer insecurity, I wouldnt play it to him forever. I kept bumbling around with it, taking notes out, putting notes in, just to basically come back to exactly what I had heard when he was telling me the story.
SG: Did you test any other themes that you rejected?
HZ: Oh God, I always have, yeah. Im always in my own way with my theories and my ideas and everything. I fall over my own two feet. Theres a whole slew of inappropriate themes which are relegated to the rubbish bin now.
SG: Do you ever have rejected themes become the scores to a different movie?
HZ: No, because I think once you go, Ah, dont like it, thats part of my problem. I never have anything in my drawers. The first movie was easy. I had 20-odd years of life experience to draw on. Now literally you sit there and the only thing you get is the story thats coming from the screen and the characters and the style and the lighting, and youd better go and invent and youd better try to be as good as the movie is.
SG: What instruments are we hearing in your Man of Steel score?
HZ: Yes, this is an orchestral score. Its far less of an electronic score than The Dark Knight. I try to keep it really human, but I invented a few things. Theres a great man called Chas Smith. You never quite know what he is. Hes a sculptor but he happens to play these incredible pedal steel guitars. At the same time hes a welder and he welds these steel sculptures that you can play and make music out of. So quite a lot of it is Chass instruments. It really augments and sometimes replaces anything electronic, and sometimes it replaces the orchestra. Then I had the frivolous idea of figuring out, I wanted to get a kineticism into this thing and an energy, so I did this drum circle with 12 of my favorite drummers. Actually it turned out to be 15 but whos counting?
SG: Tell us more about Chas Smith.
HZ: All his stuff is built out of titanium. Hes forever going up to the Boeing and Lockheed factories and getting spare parts. They have incredible metals that he can build these huge big things out of. Then you bow them or you hit them or you do all sorts of weird, wacky and wonderful things to them.
SG: Are there any instruments you forbid in your scores?
HZ: Well, a lot of things I wanted to do just because Johns score is so based on the idea of a classical fanfare, so the one thing I didnt put into my score was the trumpets which is Johns lead instrument. I thought by eliminating some of the things, if I limit my palette by taking things out that are indicative of Johns score, Im already going to start it with a slightly more original start. I just have to free myself of that.
SG: Do you actually start work on these films before the visual effects are done?
HZ: This one was different. I usually start before they start shooting. Like right now my mind is full of ideas for Chris Nolans next movie because I know hes starting to shoot quite soon. I just want to get a foothold before he goes off to start shooting. But with Superman, because I was in the middle of Dark Knight Rises, I just said to both Zack and Chris, Please, dont even show me anything. Dont even mention it because the one thing I dont want to do is have something seep from one to the other. It inevitably will because its me and its my style, but I try to keep Superman as pure as possible and just really go and try to tackle it as a new adventure.
SG: Have you seen Christopher Nolan movies without any music? That must be interesting.
HZ: Its a bit the other way around. Since I try to write as much of the music before he starts shooting, I wonder if Chris has ever seen any of his movies without my music.
SG: So he did hire you for Interstellar?
HZ: Well, that would be telling, but there was a moment in the middle of Man of Steel where Chris very nicely asked Zack if he could borrow me for a little bit. We did a little adventure. Actually, he did it without telling me what the movie was about. He just gave me a scene. It was more about conversation, but yes, something mightve happened.
SG: Does a movie theme have to build up to something? Does that make movie music inherently different from general music?
HZ: I dont think so. I totally disagree with you. [Laughs]
SG: Good, tell me why Im wrong.
HZ: Because what I think it needs to do, it needs to get you on the first note and tell you, you cant do it in Superman, but usually the line would be youre not in Kansas anymore. Think about the opening of Lion King. You just hear that solo voice. You just know its not going to be the normal Disney animated fairy tale. You know its not Beauty and the Beast or anything like that. When you hear the first sound in The Dark Knight Rises, its just a sound. Its not even a note but you know youre not in a romantic comedy. So I try to grab you on the first note and just say okay, Im telling you this is going to be different and I beg your permission to go and do something different, and please come along for this journey. Hopefully Im going to entertain you. Im going to make it exciting, but its not what youre going to expect. If you think about The Dark Knight, everybody knew we were doing a Batman movie. We were doing our second Batman movie but nobody knew it was going to be quite like that. Nobody knew the Joker was going to be quite like this, I mean the performance, I mean the story and I mean the music as well. So its really important I think that you grab that tiny bit of real estate sometimes which is the logos, and just do something that says, Hang on, its not what you expected.
SG: That is probably the most meaningful thing I have ever heard about opening studio logos, and youre right.
HZ: I know were transgressing, but Sherlock Holmes, I was fighting for that little bit of real estate, just where it says Warner Bros., whatever those logos are, just to do a little bit of that weird noise so I prepare you for the journey. It certainly wasnt the way people expected Sherlock Holmes to start.
SG: Are those opening notes of Man of Steel kind of ominous?
HZ: Actually, the first thing you hear is this chord which really goes all the way through it. Without getting incredibly pedantic and trivial and boring, for me a lot of the movie has to do with DNA. He obviously has a different DNA than humans have. I called it my DNA chord. For me the whole thing was the question: is what we are born with stronger than what we learn? In other words, do we have free will? So to me, the score is really simple. Its about free will and its humble. I think one of the things Zack and I agreed on really early on, yes, we will do all those big set pieces and I will get incredibly noisy, but the heard of it is going to be a little piano, a little something, an upright piano standing in a farmhouse in Kansas. Not some expensive Steinway grand in New York or whatever. Find the America, find the Americana thats usually ignored and celebrate that.
SG: One of your earlier movies was Ill Do Anything. Were you involved with that when it was originally a musical?
HZ: Its very interesting you should say that because thats the one where I figured out this whole thing about the first note being really important. As a musical, it didnt work because when we would show it to people, they didnt know people were going to break into song. We never did that thing right at the beginning where you say to them, Hang on, its going to be different. I think people want different. They want new. They want something, but they at least like to be informed. I did Lion King right after I did Ill Do Anything and the African voice would never have happened had it not been for Ill Do Anything and me really thinking it through, why could we not pull the musical off. It was strictly because we didnt prepare our audience.
SG: So that worked out really well for you.
HZ: Well, it depends on how you look at it. While working on Ill Do Anything, I saw my life flash past my eyes a few times. Put it that way, it was probably one of the most grueling and impossible and heartbreaking experiences.
SG: Its amazing they never released the musical version ever on DVD.
HZ: Thats got everything to do with deals and structures. Thats entirely to do with financial structures. Remember, the songs were all by Prince. It wouldve been prohibitive, and he wrote amazing songs.
SG: Did he ever use those songs later?
HZ: I know he used a couple of them. Dont ask me which ones.
SG: Didnt your themes from The Rock end up in a lot of trailer music for a while?
HZ: I have no idea, probably did. Or a copy thereof. Take our one Inception sound which seems to have become everybodys trailer sound, or a version thereof.
SG: Well, The Dark Knight definitely did.
HZ: Dark Knight, I know. Look, its only a problem when were doing something like a trilogy like Dark Knight because you dont want people to use up our sound. I think what was great about Man of Steel is that the third trailer uses the music from the movie and its singular to that movie. I think itll be pretty hard to go and copy and put into somebody elses trailer.
SG: Pirates of the Caribbean became a quadrilogy and Im sure therell be another one. Was that a challenge to you when a series went on past three films?
HZ: Oh, it was. It completely was. Talking about the trailers, you know what I thought was really interesting? Everybody knew the Pirates music. School orchestras were playing the Pirates music but the marketing department kept never using it in their trailer. It was sort of infuriating that we could never persuade them to do that. By 4 it became impossible. That was the great thing about working with Chris Nolan on Dark Knight because we were emphatic that we were going to end on the third part. We never held back on any single one of those movies. Everybody on the team always put everything we could think of, everything we could invent goes into that movie. Then were left breathless and empty at the end of it and we go, Oh God, we can never do another one but then somehow a little idea comes up and another little idea but its very different with the Pirates movies. It became, for me personally, really impossible.
SG: When there are rumors of a Justice League movie, can you even imagine doing a score where there are that many major characters to identify musically?
HZ: No, I cannot imagine it because its like standing on a very, very tall building and somebody saying, Just jump off without a parachute and figure out how youre going to land safely. No, I cant imagine it and Im not going to imagine it and Im just going to go and embrace the moment and wait for Man of Steel to come out and hope that people will like it, and just enjoy that.
Man of Steel opens June 14. The soundtrack is now available.
Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan tapped Zimmer to score the new Superman movie, Man of Steel. This is actually the first Superman movie not to use the John Williams Superman theme from 1978s Superman: The Movie. Even , which featured an entirely new cast, continued using the famous score.
At a press conference for Man of Steel, Zimmer revealed he was reluctant to compose for Superman because Williams theme was so strong. We got to speak with Zimmer one on one to follow up about his reservations and learn how he develops these memorable scores. We also found out a little history about his work on Sherlock Holmes, and the aborted musical Ill Do Anything.
SuicideGirls: At the press conference you talked about how reluctant you were take on Superman when there was such a memorable John Williams theme over the years. Were you more reluctant than you were with Batman and the Danny Elfman theme?
HansZimmer: Yes, because part of it was timing. I was still so involved in The Dark Knight [Rises] at the time when Superman popped up. Chris [Nolan] saying, Hey, you can do it and me saying, You went in there with an idea. I dont have an idea. And the enormous shadow that the master cast because I think part of it is how old we are when we first hear something. I remember hearing Superman and seeing Superman and just being swept away by Johns music and everything. I think I was a little older when I saw Dannys Batman so it wasnt quite as much of my DNA, the thing that made me go, Oh wow, I want to become a film composer. John Williams was hugely part of that.
SG: Do you remember the moment when you hit on the new Superman theme?
HZ: Actually, I hit on it really early on. In my endless procrastination and me saying, No, no, no, I wont do it, I finally said to Zack, Zack, just tell me the story. I dont want to read the script. Just tell me the story so I know whats in your head. When you have somebody tell you a story, they leave out everything other than the thing that emotionally moves them. As hes speaking, I cant help it but I have to score what hes saying in my head. I sort of have the whole beginnings there, but just sheer insecurity, I wouldnt play it to him forever. I kept bumbling around with it, taking notes out, putting notes in, just to basically come back to exactly what I had heard when he was telling me the story.
SG: Did you test any other themes that you rejected?
HZ: Oh God, I always have, yeah. Im always in my own way with my theories and my ideas and everything. I fall over my own two feet. Theres a whole slew of inappropriate themes which are relegated to the rubbish bin now.
SG: Do you ever have rejected themes become the scores to a different movie?
HZ: No, because I think once you go, Ah, dont like it, thats part of my problem. I never have anything in my drawers. The first movie was easy. I had 20-odd years of life experience to draw on. Now literally you sit there and the only thing you get is the story thats coming from the screen and the characters and the style and the lighting, and youd better go and invent and youd better try to be as good as the movie is.
SG: What instruments are we hearing in your Man of Steel score?
HZ: Yes, this is an orchestral score. Its far less of an electronic score than The Dark Knight. I try to keep it really human, but I invented a few things. Theres a great man called Chas Smith. You never quite know what he is. Hes a sculptor but he happens to play these incredible pedal steel guitars. At the same time hes a welder and he welds these steel sculptures that you can play and make music out of. So quite a lot of it is Chass instruments. It really augments and sometimes replaces anything electronic, and sometimes it replaces the orchestra. Then I had the frivolous idea of figuring out, I wanted to get a kineticism into this thing and an energy, so I did this drum circle with 12 of my favorite drummers. Actually it turned out to be 15 but whos counting?
SG: Tell us more about Chas Smith.
HZ: All his stuff is built out of titanium. Hes forever going up to the Boeing and Lockheed factories and getting spare parts. They have incredible metals that he can build these huge big things out of. Then you bow them or you hit them or you do all sorts of weird, wacky and wonderful things to them.
SG: Are there any instruments you forbid in your scores?
HZ: Well, a lot of things I wanted to do just because Johns score is so based on the idea of a classical fanfare, so the one thing I didnt put into my score was the trumpets which is Johns lead instrument. I thought by eliminating some of the things, if I limit my palette by taking things out that are indicative of Johns score, Im already going to start it with a slightly more original start. I just have to free myself of that.
SG: Do you actually start work on these films before the visual effects are done?
HZ: This one was different. I usually start before they start shooting. Like right now my mind is full of ideas for Chris Nolans next movie because I know hes starting to shoot quite soon. I just want to get a foothold before he goes off to start shooting. But with Superman, because I was in the middle of Dark Knight Rises, I just said to both Zack and Chris, Please, dont even show me anything. Dont even mention it because the one thing I dont want to do is have something seep from one to the other. It inevitably will because its me and its my style, but I try to keep Superman as pure as possible and just really go and try to tackle it as a new adventure.
SG: Have you seen Christopher Nolan movies without any music? That must be interesting.
HZ: Its a bit the other way around. Since I try to write as much of the music before he starts shooting, I wonder if Chris has ever seen any of his movies without my music.
SG: So he did hire you for Interstellar?
HZ: Well, that would be telling, but there was a moment in the middle of Man of Steel where Chris very nicely asked Zack if he could borrow me for a little bit. We did a little adventure. Actually, he did it without telling me what the movie was about. He just gave me a scene. It was more about conversation, but yes, something mightve happened.
SG: Does a movie theme have to build up to something? Does that make movie music inherently different from general music?
HZ: I dont think so. I totally disagree with you. [Laughs]
SG: Good, tell me why Im wrong.
HZ: Because what I think it needs to do, it needs to get you on the first note and tell you, you cant do it in Superman, but usually the line would be youre not in Kansas anymore. Think about the opening of Lion King. You just hear that solo voice. You just know its not going to be the normal Disney animated fairy tale. You know its not Beauty and the Beast or anything like that. When you hear the first sound in The Dark Knight Rises, its just a sound. Its not even a note but you know youre not in a romantic comedy. So I try to grab you on the first note and just say okay, Im telling you this is going to be different and I beg your permission to go and do something different, and please come along for this journey. Hopefully Im going to entertain you. Im going to make it exciting, but its not what youre going to expect. If you think about The Dark Knight, everybody knew we were doing a Batman movie. We were doing our second Batman movie but nobody knew it was going to be quite like that. Nobody knew the Joker was going to be quite like this, I mean the performance, I mean the story and I mean the music as well. So its really important I think that you grab that tiny bit of real estate sometimes which is the logos, and just do something that says, Hang on, its not what you expected.
SG: That is probably the most meaningful thing I have ever heard about opening studio logos, and youre right.
HZ: I know were transgressing, but Sherlock Holmes, I was fighting for that little bit of real estate, just where it says Warner Bros., whatever those logos are, just to do a little bit of that weird noise so I prepare you for the journey. It certainly wasnt the way people expected Sherlock Holmes to start.
SG: Are those opening notes of Man of Steel kind of ominous?
HZ: Actually, the first thing you hear is this chord which really goes all the way through it. Without getting incredibly pedantic and trivial and boring, for me a lot of the movie has to do with DNA. He obviously has a different DNA than humans have. I called it my DNA chord. For me the whole thing was the question: is what we are born with stronger than what we learn? In other words, do we have free will? So to me, the score is really simple. Its about free will and its humble. I think one of the things Zack and I agreed on really early on, yes, we will do all those big set pieces and I will get incredibly noisy, but the heard of it is going to be a little piano, a little something, an upright piano standing in a farmhouse in Kansas. Not some expensive Steinway grand in New York or whatever. Find the America, find the Americana thats usually ignored and celebrate that.
SG: One of your earlier movies was Ill Do Anything. Were you involved with that when it was originally a musical?
HZ: Its very interesting you should say that because thats the one where I figured out this whole thing about the first note being really important. As a musical, it didnt work because when we would show it to people, they didnt know people were going to break into song. We never did that thing right at the beginning where you say to them, Hang on, its going to be different. I think people want different. They want new. They want something, but they at least like to be informed. I did Lion King right after I did Ill Do Anything and the African voice would never have happened had it not been for Ill Do Anything and me really thinking it through, why could we not pull the musical off. It was strictly because we didnt prepare our audience.
SG: So that worked out really well for you.
HZ: Well, it depends on how you look at it. While working on Ill Do Anything, I saw my life flash past my eyes a few times. Put it that way, it was probably one of the most grueling and impossible and heartbreaking experiences.
SG: Its amazing they never released the musical version ever on DVD.
HZ: Thats got everything to do with deals and structures. Thats entirely to do with financial structures. Remember, the songs were all by Prince. It wouldve been prohibitive, and he wrote amazing songs.
SG: Did he ever use those songs later?
HZ: I know he used a couple of them. Dont ask me which ones.
SG: Didnt your themes from The Rock end up in a lot of trailer music for a while?
HZ: I have no idea, probably did. Or a copy thereof. Take our one Inception sound which seems to have become everybodys trailer sound, or a version thereof.
SG: Well, The Dark Knight definitely did.
HZ: Dark Knight, I know. Look, its only a problem when were doing something like a trilogy like Dark Knight because you dont want people to use up our sound. I think what was great about Man of Steel is that the third trailer uses the music from the movie and its singular to that movie. I think itll be pretty hard to go and copy and put into somebody elses trailer.
SG: Pirates of the Caribbean became a quadrilogy and Im sure therell be another one. Was that a challenge to you when a series went on past three films?
HZ: Oh, it was. It completely was. Talking about the trailers, you know what I thought was really interesting? Everybody knew the Pirates music. School orchestras were playing the Pirates music but the marketing department kept never using it in their trailer. It was sort of infuriating that we could never persuade them to do that. By 4 it became impossible. That was the great thing about working with Chris Nolan on Dark Knight because we were emphatic that we were going to end on the third part. We never held back on any single one of those movies. Everybody on the team always put everything we could think of, everything we could invent goes into that movie. Then were left breathless and empty at the end of it and we go, Oh God, we can never do another one but then somehow a little idea comes up and another little idea but its very different with the Pirates movies. It became, for me personally, really impossible.
SG: When there are rumors of a Justice League movie, can you even imagine doing a score where there are that many major characters to identify musically?
HZ: No, I cannot imagine it because its like standing on a very, very tall building and somebody saying, Just jump off without a parachute and figure out how youre going to land safely. No, I cant imagine it and Im not going to imagine it and Im just going to go and embrace the moment and wait for Man of Steel to come out and hope that people will like it, and just enjoy that.
Man of Steel opens June 14. The soundtrack is now available.