Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino is due to put his own spin on the Caped Crusader with March’s “The Batman,” and now we have a preview of his theme for Paul Dano’s villain The Riddler.
On the heels of the debut of Giacchino’s full theme for the film, including Robert Pattinson’s Batman himself, Water Tower Music has released the five-minute theme for The Riddler. The music starts in a chillingly quiet choral before expanding to include the full orchestra, then going quiet again. This seems to be in lockstep with Dano’s take on the iconic Batman villain. In the film, The Riddler begins killing various high-profile members of Gotham City who may or may not have a connection.
“The premise of the movie is that the Riddler is kind of molded in an almost Zodiac Killer sort of mode and is killing very prominent figures in Gotham, and they are the pillars of society,” director and co-writer Matt Reeves previously revealed. “These are supposedly legitimate figures. It begins with the mayor, and then it escalates from there. And in the wake of the murders, he reveals the ways in which these people were not everything they said they were, and you start to realize there’s some kind of association. And so just like Woodward and Bernstein, you’ve got Gordon and Batman trying to follow the clues to try and make sense of this thing in a classic kind-of-detective story way.”
The crux of the story finds Pattinson’s Batman struggling to investigate The Riddler’s crimes, putting the character in full detective mode. The film picks up in Bruce Wayne’s second year of being Batman. Reeves has said the tone was inspired by films like “Chinatown,” “The Godfather Part II” and “All the President’s Men.”
Giacchino and Reeves previously collaborated on “Let Me In,” “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” and “War for the Planet of the Apes.” Giacchino even wrote the fantastic end-credits music for Reeves’ breakout film “Cloverfield.”
Listen to The Riddler’s theme in the video above. “The Batman” opens exclusively in theaters on March 4.