The ideas that Zimmer and Howard composed for the film's two major secondary characters are far more intriguing. The composers very explicitly split these duties, with Howard jokingly stating that he is too traditional to come up with the kind of radical sound that Zimmer eventually conjured for the Joker. Instead, Howard tackled Harvey Dent and his eventual villainous side, Two-Face. While the Joker's material is Zimmer's alone, the Harvey Dent contributions by Howard are arranged, performed, and mixed into a style that fits Zimmer's larger mould for the surrounding score. The two composers have commented frequently on the fact that their material has been heavily integrated, though Howard's music for Dent does stand apart from Zimmer's writing in its brighter romanticism. Indeed, the two did boil the score down to action (Zimmer) and elegance (Howard), as had been the case in Batman Begins. The Harvey Dent theme is defined by Howard's usual solo piano and varied string tones. Its compelling progression is the most memorable tune of The Dark Knight if only because it exists in the treble region as well as Zimmer's more comfortable, deeper turmoil. For the Dent side of the character, Howard uses the primary, repeating six-note figure on delicate piano and poignant strings. For the evolution of Two-Face, the theme becomes a bold brass piece of surprisingly forceful harmony. The last minute of "Harvey Two-Face" offers a gorgeous performance of theme with all the robust orchestral majesty of the best parts of The Water Horse and I Am Legend. The lighter portions of the theme convey the same character intimacy as the ending to The Interpreter. The theme's subsequent usage can be masked by Zimmer's heavy bass applications, which disappointingly strip the idea of its caring appeal (with the exception of "Blood on My Hands"). In fact, outside of "Harvey Two-Face," "Blood on My Hands," and parts of "Agent of Chaos," it's difficult to point to specific moments within the score and identify them as purely Howard contributions. To this end, Zimmer indeed was quite successful at his editing tasks. It's a bit surprising that Zimmer didn't alter the six minutes of "Harvey Two-Face" to fit better stylistically with the remainder of the score, though its effectiveness would likely have been diminished if he had done so.

Zimmer toiled for three months with the theme for the Joker and, in the end, he took a two-note motif and condensed it down to one note. Debate amongst the fans ensued about whether one note can qualify as a theme. It all comes down to the texture of the performance, and this is where Zimmer defines the idea. This representation isn't even as much a note as it is a sound effect, a rising tone of a siren that's been altered into a harsh, digital calling card that is extraordinarily distinct. With such a blatantly awkward construct, this rising tone is very effective at representing the character. In "Why So Serious?," Zimmer drives the point home with a series of equally abrasive, looped rhythms and pounding ensemble hits. A substantial amount of dissonant ambient design went into this performance, as well as several others accompanying the Joker and his rising tone. While Zimmer's idea works, it also proves that any sound effect can be altered to convey a character or idea with a single note. Perhaps the most famous use of a unique sound in such a way was with the "Blaster Beam" effect employed by Jerry Goldsmith in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. One rip of that monster pipe and everyone knew that Goldsmith was referring to the mysterious cloud approaching the Earth. In theory, any noise could function for a crazed individual, so long as it was presented in an abnormal way. A hair dryer, a garbage can lid, a squealing baby, the sigh of an orgasm. The problem with using one sound, one note for the Joker is that it betrays the complexity of the character. Once again, as with the Batman character, Zimmer has tried so hard, labored for so long, that he has over-thought the situation. Praise may be poured on the idea because it's intellectually different, but that doesn't mean that it's the best representation for the character. The attempt to simplify the musical idea for the purposes of being radically different says more about the composer than it does about the character on screen. That doesn't mean that the music box and waltz approach of Elfman for the same character was any better, but at least it was three-dimensional. On album, Zimmer's "theme" for the Joker is unlistenable, as is the entire "Why So Serious?" cue. Those nine minutes, among others in the score, are, as one famous film score reviewer said, minutes of your life that you'll never get back.

Zimmer integrates his themes well into the mass of the underscore, with Batman's two-note motif and the Joker's rising tone easy to identify in several places. The action and suspense material is perhaps the biggest disappointment of the score, either pointless in its aimless development or boring in its references to previous Zimmer works. You have to get a chuckle out of a reprise of Backdraft percussion and progressions when the fires in The Dark Knight become a factor. More annoying is the use of the "mutiny" theme from Crimson Tide, a motif used by Zimmer when the submarine crew is in the active state of an armed takeover, in parts of Batman's extended identity. You'll hear these similarities especially in the midsections of "A Dark Knight." Some of the library samples that Zimmer employs are also reminiscent of Crimson Tide, including the drum pad and metallic percussion sounds (among other ambient elements) first heard late in "Aggressive Expansion." A swooshing sound effect to mimic Batman's cape is decently incorporated into several cues, but doesn't have much of an impact. Extended moments of dissonance, as in "A Little Push," are weakly aided by more uninteresting sound effects. This distraught tension extends to "I Am the Batman," which may effectively represent torment of the soul, but offers nothing to please on album. The penultimate track on the first album, "Watch the World Burn," presents cellos and basses in snooze mode. In cues like this, you can't tell if they're recorded live or sampled. There are singular, momentary highlights in the action music between "And I Thought My Jokes Were Bad" and "Introduce a Little Anarchy," but these will often remind of previous Zimmer ventures of the 2000's. The familiar ostinato from Batman Begins is translated into even more menacing bass string performances at times, almost overwhelming two cues. The very lengthy "A Dark Knight" is the most consistently enjoyable album track, even with the violins translating the Joker's theme in ear-shattering fashion at the eleven-minute mark. Its bombastic brass conclusion of theme at about 14:20 is somewhat overwrought, however, forcefully melodramatic to a fault. A slow dissolving of the franchise ostinato (which is seemingly a bit more electronic in its rendering here) and reprise of the two-note Batman theme is an appropriate way to finish off the original product.

Six months after the first regular and limited, special edition albums debuted, Warner stuck it to consumers with another special edition product, this time containing two CDs. It advertised itself as containing the complete score, but fans quickly realized that this advertising was blatantly and unacceptably false. Despite containing over 120 minutes of score material, the December 2008 set is not only missing some music but also very badly presented. Its first CD matches the previously released one and the second one offers 50 additional minutes in a manner that makes the set useless for those wishing for a chronological ordering. Some of Zimmer's cues for the first CD were edited so that such a presentation wasn't possible anyway. At any rate, four remixes of cues are tacked on (three of them completely insufferable) and a 40 page booklet rounds out a set that commanded an initial retail price over $57. As for the score tracks on the second CD, "Bank Robbery/Prologue" is essentially the same as "Why So Serious?" but without the Joker theme at the forefront. "Buyer Beware" is generic action ambience that leads to several full statements of Zimmer's complete Batman theme. Some of Howard's melancholy piano work at minimal volumes is reprised in "Halfway to Hong Kong" and "Decent Men in an Indecent Time," the latter cue degenerating into Zimmer's atmospheric effects. The Joker's grating material returns in "You're Gonna Love Me," but in a less developed format. Distant string meandering for conversational settings in "Chance," led by solo cello, will recall the character interactions from K2. Absolutely nothing of note happens in "You Complete Me" until its final minute, at which point another canned performance of the main theme is conveyed over the ostinatos. The word "sparse" describes the entirety of the tiresome and immensely boring "The Ferries," with only a couple hints of the minor-third progression of the main theme to wake you up during its ten minutes. That atmosphere continues into "We Are Tonight's Entertainment" until the Joker's whining pitch on violins leads to a couple of melodramatic chords and tumultuous ostinatos. Slight references to Howard's theme for Dent in this cue cannot save it. Some life is finally heard in "A Watchful Guardian," which is a competent suite of all the ideas from the score. It includes a tender piano rendition of the Dent theme, a reprise of the thematic lift from The Da Vinci Code on the first CD's "The Dark Knight," and one final reminder that the Joker's theme is truly obnoxious.

Although the 2-CD set for The Dark Knight does make more music available, that material is far less interesting than what was already released. If you want to spend over $50 on a truly complete, faithful presentation of a score, seek instead the infinitely superior sets for Howard Shore's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Musically speaking, The Dark Knight is once again a score carried by the quality of the film. It receives top grades for effort, but is suspect in terms of actual quality and consistency. Zimmer has attempted to address the darker ambience of these Nolan films by simplifying the style of his themes and lowering the tone of the soundscape to more primordial levels, treble clef be damned. Whether or not that philosophy actually works is as interesting a debate as whether or not Zimmer was artistically capable of providing any other sound for the concept. Regardless of the fact that Danny Elfman's far more famous Batman theme would not be a comfortable fit in Nolan's films, Elfman still displayed something in his music for the franchise that his friend Zimmer has not: intuition. Undoubtedly, a talented composer (including Elfman himself) could have taken the brilliant duality of the original Burton films' scores and adapted the sound for the Nolan alternatives. Hearing a Batman theme without a sense of duality is insulting to Bruce Wayne. And on the subject of creativity: a one-note "theme" for the Joker or the reliance on low strings for a dark ambience isn't creative. If Zimmer had been able to provide the same effect with high strings and (God forbid!) woodwinds, then there would be reason to be impressed. As it is, too much of this music falls into Zimmer's comfort zone. The score sounds, as usual, as though a heavy hand was used in the mixing and editing of all the individual performances. Although the recording used over 100 orchestral players and is, technically, more organic in that foundation, Zimmer once again gives the score an overbearing bass mix and a harsh edge that only betrays the complexity and sophistication of the concept. Howard, who provided beautiful ideas for both the love theme in the first film and Harvey Dent here, needs to be excused; if anything, there should be lamentation that Howard didn't handle these entire scores by himself. In the end, even the biggest detractors of the score for The Dark Knight should recognize that it functions in its basic duties, but Zimmer can't be let off the hook for his tiring self-references and over-thought attempts at innovation. Gotham and its hero, despite all their gloom and despair, still have a heart, and Zimmer has yet to find its pulse.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download