There is no carryover of musical ideas from the prior films in the franchise, and the foreshadowing of music in The Dark Knight is haphazard (a wayward motif in the latter half of "Mytois" inexplicably becomes the Harvey Dent theme in the second film, for instance). Regarding the musical history of the franchise, Zimmer states something that would seem to make sense when taken for face value. "Why would I want to do a sequel to something? That's a boring thing to do. We went for dark and brooding. I think probably one of the things is that we're a lot darker than any of the stuff that's gone before. I was working on a Chris Nolan movie and ultimately you serve the film in front of you. I don't think you need to be relevant to the history that it comes from, in a way. That's what the guys pay me for: invent!" He continues by saying: "Nobody ever mentions the Elliot Goldenthal scores. And of course I'm not mentioning any of that either, because quite honestly I didn't go and look at the old Batman movies again." The above statements are fascinating, because Zimmer exposes a critical component in his methodology that plagues his score for Batman Begins and others of the same era: laziness. Whether he likes it or not (and the same can be applied to Nolan), Batman Begins finishes in almost identical fashion to Burton's two films, with surprisingly similar treatments of scene, character, and action. Viewers even see the "rising building" shot where Batman is silhouetted atop a tall structure. The theme that Zimmer conjures shares the same basic dual-personality superhero idea of alternating between major and minor keys. And whether Zimmer realizes it or not, he didn't invent the concept of brooding in the Batman franchise; Elfman clearly did. The problem with Zimmer's lack of attentiveness to the franchise is the simple fact that he attempted to reinvent the wheel for the concept's music and did do poorly. He chose not to pay attention to the music that fans of the series already have ingrained in their memories (another "whether you like it or not" reality) and forced the music in a new direction. But, in reality, all he did was create an inferior version of what Elfman and Goldenthal had already done. Some have said that Batman Begins didn't need the gothic, heroic approach of scoring. Zimmer claims that wasn't his goal, either. But the film demanded it by the end, and Zimmer's inability to write to those needs (and refusal to study the success of those who came before) ultimately makes Batman Begins a intellectually devoid and only minimally emotionally effective disappointment.

There is no doubt that the quality of Batman Begins as a film ends up floating its own music. The largely atmospheric score is played safely and conservatively, and while it is mixed generously in volume throughout in context, the film gains little from the accompaniment. Ironically, portions of the Zimmer/Howard score play better on album than in the picture, for its simplistic rhythms and progressions are pleasantly masculine at the very least. But "pleasant" and "simplistic" music is not what Bruce Wayne needs. "I wasn't really writing about a big, oversized, heroic character," Zimmer argues. "I was trying to write about a slightly psychologically damaged character. And I'm always better with those." Unfortunately for Zimmer, he fails on two levels in that statement; first, Batman indeed forces himself into becoming a heroic character. He's a superhero. A twisted one, of course, but he certainly demands more than a two-note motif to represent him and much more than recycled music from The Rock to accompany him into battle. There is nothing in this score to indicate any heroic actions whatsoever; it could very well have been music to a host of other topics across several genres. Additionally, the recycled string personality from The Thin Red Line ("Lasiurus" borrows not only from this earlier Zimmer work, but it foreshadows The Da Vinci Code) is nice for the melodramatic aspect of the story, but it lacks the ability to truly define the trauma in Wayne's life. Not everyone's struggles can be defined by an adagio. Zimmer is proud of the cue in which a choir boy is suddenly frozen mid-theme during a flashback ("I did this crazy thing with this choir boy..."), and yet this usage is as cliche a technique as ever, definitely not crazy by any means. The sound effects are likewise tired in their inability to truly enhance the music rather than simply serve as a portion of the movie's greater sound design. More importantly, there is no adequate thematic development for the pseudo-noble League of Shadows, nor the delightfully horrifying Scarecrow character. Gotham's glistening beauty at the start of the film receives no prominent major key variation of anything that comes after its societal downfall and Batman's arrival. Narrative flow is practically nonexistent, especially on the inadequately assembled commercial album. Simply put, Zimmer claims that doing his research would make for a "boring" score. Instead, this attitude not only stinks of laziness, but also of arrogance. When another composer has hit the nail on the head before you, even in slightly different circumstances, there's no excuse for completely ignoring that benchmark. You have to know that the audiences won't ignore it.

For Zimmer, Batman Begins represents a terribly frustrating failure to perform up to expectations. His music services the film with only a lightly painted canvas, and luckily the movie is strong enough to overcome the deficiencies in its music. And what of Howard? His typically sophisticated style of writing doesn't seem to encroach upon the simplicity of Zimmer's overarching vision for the score. If you want to be cynical, you could argue that Zimmer traded in his hoard of lesser-known ghostwriters for one top-notch ghostwriter, and even this didn't save the score. Fans would be justified to wonder what Batman Begins could have sounded like under the sole care of Howard, who likely could have much better musically interpreted the subtleties of Wayne's duality (his isolated material for Dent in The Dark Knight teases this theory). Ardent enthusiasts of Zimmer's vintage works were already questioning some of the composer's output of the 2000's, and Batman Begins only added to the head-scratching mystery of where the composer's methodology went wrong. Instead of adapting himself to Batman, Zimmer tried to force Batman to adapt to his musical comfort zone. In so doing, he began treading dangerously close to outliving his usefulness in the action and fantasy genres. Some of the fault does fall on Nolan, who could (and should) have known that there are brilliant young composers working in this generation who don't have hang-ups about large orchestras, who don't attract a chaotic scoring environment, who don't rely on the talents of other composers, and who have already proven themselves to be masters of handling major/minor key creativity and complex variations of theme. Who else would have been fascinated to hear what the likes of Brian Tyler or John Ottman could have done with this fantastic film? The hour of music presented on the commercial Batman Begins album is more than enough, though die-hard fans have long lamented that the missing music does solve some of the narrative flow issues that otherwise plague that pressed CD. After the product went out of print within a few years, Warner re-issued it as an Amazon.com "CDr on Demand" offering, diving up the cost of new copies of the prior issue. The Latin track titles are cute but irritating in that they don't indicate for casual fans what parts of the film they are derived from. Overall, Batman Begins remains an enormously wasted opportunity for both Zimmer and Howard, as well as for fans of the franchise. While The Dark Knight has better highlights (courtesy of Howard), it also suffers from a greater quantity of intolerable passages. It is truly unfortunate that this quality franchise didn't receive the services of a primary composer who serves Batman rather than serving himself.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download