MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

The Marvels is the 33rd superhero film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the second to feature Brie Larson as Carol Danvers in the primary role, following on from 2019’s Captain Marvel. It draws together plot strands not only from the first film but also the Marvel TV shows Wandavision, Ms. Marvel, and Secret Invasion, and sees Carol teaming up with Captain Monica Rambeau, the daughter of her old friend Maria, as well as Pakistani-American teenager Kamala Khan, who grew up idolizing Captain Marvel; Monica obtained superhero powers during the events of Wandavision, just as Kamala did during the events of Ms. Marvel. The plot involves the emergence of a new super-villain named Dar-Benn, whose home world was massively damaged during the events of Captain Marvel, and who is now seeking to repair her own planet, while simultaneously exacting revenge on Carol, who she blames for her planet’s devastation. Dar-Benn has a ‘magical bangle’ identical to the one that Kamala also owns, the existence of which keeps making Carol, Monica, and Kamala switch places with each other every time they try to use their powers. The film stars Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani as the other members of the Marvels alongside Larson, with Zawe Ashton and Samuel L. Jackson in major supporting roles, and it was directed by Nia Da Costa.

The score for the first Captain Marvel movie broke new ground for women composers due to the fact that it was scored by Pinar Toprak, who in doing so became the first woman in history to score a film that grossed more than $1 billion at the global box office. Since then, composer Laura Karpman has similarly emerged as one of the leading musical voices in the Marvel Universe, initially scoring the TV series What If… and Ms. Marvel, before making the jump from small screen to large after being asked to score The Marvels. Karpman has been working solidly in Hollywood since the late 1990s, although most of her most acclaimed work has been for television; she scored Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi series Taken in 2002, won an Emmy for the documentary series Why We Hate in 2019, and received another Emmy nomination in 2021 for her score for the fantasy series Lovecraft Country. Karpman is also heavily invested in composer politics; she co-founded the Alliance for Women Film Composers in 2014, and was the first woman elected to the music branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors in 2016.

Karpman is a terrific composer – you don’t study with Nadia Boulanger, William Bolcom, and Milton Babbitt without immense amounts of talent – and it’s wonderful to see her finally leveraging all this talent and experience into films and TV shows with commercial potential. Karpman is also very interesting in how she is often asked to incorporate numerous different ethnic and world music styles into her scores – on Lovecraft Country, for example, she combined her large-scale fantasy orchestra with elements drawn from jazz, blues, and even some contemporary R&B and hip-hop, while on Ms. Marvel she brought in elements of Bollywood and traditional South Asian classical music to represent Kamala’s cultural heritage. For The Marvels, however, Karpman found herself firmly entrenched in traditional symphonic super-hero music, but that’s not to say that she completely abandoned her more experimental side, because there is plenty of that going on too.

The score is built mostly around a brand new theme for The Marvels, which actually debuted as an easter egg in the final scene of the Ms. Marvel show (and can be heard on that soundtrack in the cue “Who Is That?”), but is heard in its concert suite form here in the opening cue “Higher Further Faster Together.” The theme builds out of its initially intimate sound – a solo viola – to encompass enormous orchestral and choral forces, including a set of lively dance-like string rhythms, before eventually adopting the big, brassy sound that is familiar in the genre. What’s interesting about the cue is its use of choir; director Da Costa specifically wanted choral sounds to be prominent in the score, but Karpman went a step further and recorded three of them: a bass male voice choir to give it depth, but then also Indian Carnatic singers and African singers, which Karpman said was an deliberate choice intended to recognize the musical traditions of the film’s diverse cast. Towards the end of the cue the choir starts singing ‘higher, further, faster, together’ in Latin, but then elsewhere in the score the choir sings new lyrics in a language created for the theme by Karpman’s niece, Kai-Lilly Karpman, who is a poet.

The theme for the film’s primary antagonist “Dar-Benn” is a different animal, and is based more in the jazz sound that has been a hallmark of Karpman’s writing throughout her career. In an interview for Variety, Karpman explains: “When it came to scoring Dar-Benn’s theme, there’s something slithery and jazzy about her, so I wanted to play with that.” While in the studio, Karpman was listening to a Herbie Hancock song that featured a flute solo, and this inspired her to use flutes as Dar-Benn’s main sound. She ended up using seven flutes in the woodwind section, ranging from a contrabass flute to a piccolo, and combined this with a ‘breathing’ sound created by the choir – possibly a dramatically relevant choice considering that a lack of breathable air on her home planet is one of the drivers of Dar-Benn actions. It certainly gives Dar-Benn’s theme a unique, slightly alien, aggressive quality, especially when the flutes are combined with clattering percussion textures and slightly dissonant string harmonies.

The theme for Kamala, as first heard in the score for Ms. Marvel, is an ascending repeated three-note motif, and while it does appear in the score, it’s unfortunately not as prominent here as it was in Kamala’s TV series. Kamala’s theme gets a couple of very minor workouts, embedded deep within the frantic action of “Free Fall,” and then later at the 1:43 mark of “Greater Purpose,” but the lack of a major ‘hero moment’ for Kamala and her theme is one of the score’s biggest missed opportunities. Interestingly, Karpman doesn’t appear to have created an especially prominent theme for Monica either – at least, nothing stood out to me as a recurring unique identity – and she doesn’t appear to use Pinar Toprak’s theme for Captain Marvel from the first film at all either, which is a little disappointing, but also perhaps more understandable.

Instead, the themes for the Marvels and Dar-Benn dominate the score, and they appear frequently throughout in numerous guises. The main theme underpins the abstract textures of “Tear in Spacetime” as a lonely viola solo. “Stop Spinning” uses Dar-Benn’s breathing textures and some really peculiar, broken-sounding chattering synth sounds within the orchestra to create a really fascinating sense of disorientation. Dar-Benn’s theme comes back at the beginning of “Evacuation,” aggressive and domineering, and then throughout the rest of the cue it plays contrapuntally against the Marvels theme as the two parties battle over the fate of the Tarnax Skrulls. Then in “Arrival on Aladna” the main Marvels theme is prominent and majestic, and makes excellent use of some notably bold and creative writing for the brass section in conjunction with the choir.

There are several additional cues worth noting. “Arrival on Tarnax” uses heraldic horn fanfares and chanted vocals to accompany the heroes as they arrive at a Skrull sanctuary planet to try to save its inhabitants from Dar-Benn’s imminent attack. “Entangled” is a weird festival of metallic percussion ideas performed in a variety of off-kilter rhythms. “Reunion” has some outstanding fading, pulsating brass textures that remind me of Don Davis and The Matrix. The aforementioned “Free Fall” is a panicked, chaotic, brilliant explosion of orchestral mayhem. The final moments of the aforementioned “Evacuation” have an ethereal quality, one part angelic, one part tragic, and feature some gorgeous lamenting vocal textures, and then much of “Hala” is underpinned with fascinating, jazz-like, but also alien-sounding percussion patterns, an evocative depiction of an alien culture on the brink.

Perhaps the most unusual sequence in the film is the one where Carol, Monica, and Kamala visit the planet Aladna, where at some point in the past Carol agreed to marry their prince, Yan (played by Korean movie superstar Seo-Joon Park), as part of some diplomatic arrangement. However, what’s interesting about Aladna’s society is that their communication is based entirely on song, and as such the cue that accompanies the scene there, “Voices of Aladna,” features the Aladnan townsfolk singing in a style that is sort of half pseudo-Broadway, half tribal world music, all heralding the heroes as they traverse the city. It’s totally out-of-left field for a Marvel soundtrack, but it adds to this project’s uniqueness.

And then there’s the action, which really kicks into high gear during the second half of the score, and never lets up until the finale. Something that I really want to point out here is that in these action cues especially, and throughout the score as a whole, the orchestrations are absolutely fantastic. Karpman and her lead orchestrator Jeff Kryka really put the musicians through their paces, coming up with a multitude of fascinating instrumental combinations, and endless clever moments of interplay between unexpected sections. The whole thing just sounds rich and deep, with each element having something to say, and never being drowned out by the whole. It’s also really commendable how eager Karpman is to… well… show off a bit with her occasional forays into atonality, harsh dissonance, and more experimental orchestral textures. Honestly, I’d much rather hear the envelope-pushing stuff Karpman is doing here than the same trite cello ostinatos, and long may it continue.

I also want to mention the percussion writing, which is fascinating. For this Karpman worked with the acclaimed deaf Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, whose specific remit was to convey the “sounds of space” in ways other than those the ear can detect. Karpman explains that, because of how Glennie ‘feels’ the sound through her body, it gave the music a different dimension from how a hearing person would experience it. And then, to go even one step further in the authenticity stakes, Karpman and Glennie went searching for literal ‘space junk’ in warehouse and storage facilities to use as percussion items; many of the more metallic sounds in the score were created by banging titanium disks that had at some point fallen off a satellite and dropped out of the sky, before being gathered as debris.

Several earlier cues – notably “Evacuation” – are intense and action packed, but the score really takes off in the quartet comprising “War Preparations, “Forces Arrive,” the sensational “Power,” and the uplifting, triumphant, insanely difficult “O Captain! My Captain,” which underscores the intense Battle of Aladna. Brutal performances of Dar-Benn’s theme – both the orchestral parts and the vocal/breathing parts – are woven through each of the cues, and then in response the Marvels theme fights back, often erupting into a huge, heroic refrain. Each of the cues is a masterclass of dense orchestral and choral writing, packed to the brim with content – the Latin vocals in the final minute of “Forces Arrive,” for example, are notably outstanding.

“On Fire” has a hilarious hat-tip to the James Horner four-note danger motif embedded in its frantic, rambunctious string runs. “Final Fight” and “Dar-Benn’s Destiny” are a mass of dark choral textures, rattling percussion rhythms, harsh and throaty and deeply challenging orchestrations, and contrapuntal performances of the Marvels theme and Dar-Benn’s theme, the back-and-forth between which captures the force of their confrontation. I love the transition from Kamala’s theme to the Marvels theme in the inspiring “Greater Purpose,” and how that later combines with the darker Dar-Benn music – listen to those brass triplets during the conclusion!

There’s a sense of honor and nobility running through both “Restoration” and “Captain Rambeau,” with warmer orchestral and choral harmonies backing the statements of the Marvels theme, as well as some more tremendous writing for solo viola. “Home” is wholesome and welcoming, and includes a gorgeous solo piano version of the Marvels theme, and then “The Marvels” underscores the first part of the end credits crawl with a large-scale and expansive statement of the main theme that ends the album on a terrific high.

I really can’t praise the score for The Marvels enough. There has been some blowback online already, accusing the score of being ‘predictable’ and ‘more super-hero rubbish,’ and saying that the main theme is ‘generic’ and ‘unmemorable,’ but I couldn’t disagree with those opinions more vociferously, and I can only assume that those opinions have been formed before people actually listened to the score properly. While memorability is entirely subjective, I can’t believe that anyone could listen to the depth and quality and range and sophistication of Karpman’s writing here – especially in terms of the variety of the orchestration, the aggressive and uncompromising dissonance, and the intricate thematic variations – and come to the conclusion that this is in any way predictable or generic. For me, The Marvels is a triumph of a superhero score, one of the best of its type this year, and should put the final nail in the coffin of the notion that women composers can’t write large-scale, exciting, super-hero action music – Karpman blows that tired opinion completely into space. Just remember… do not run, let the Flerkens eat you!

Buy the Marvels soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• Higher. Further. Faster. Together. (3:51)
• Dar-Benn (3:01)
• Tear in Spacetime (1:32)
• Surge (2:19)
• Stop Spinning (1:21)
• Arrival on Tarnax (1:32)
• Peace Negotiations (2:42)
• Entangled (1:48)
• Reunion (1:40)
• Free Fall (1:45)
• Evacuation (7:31)
• Connected (2:09)
• Hala (2:06)
• Arrival on Aladna (1:30)
• Voices of Aladna (6:37)
• War Preparations (1:13)
• Forces Arrive (3:48)
• Power (3:05)
• O Captain! My Captain! (2:33)
• Chosen Family (1:51)
• On Fire (2:50)
• Final Fight (1:06)
• Dar-Benn’s Destiny (2:47)
• Greater Purpose (5:29)
• Restoration (2:20)
• Captain Rambeau (2:08)
• Home (2:20)
• The Marvels (2:47)

Running Time: 75 minutes 00 seconds

Hollywood Records/Marvel Music (2023)

Music composed by Laura Karpman. Conducted by Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum. Orchestrations by Jeff Kryka and Norvin Tu-Wang. Featured musical soloists Evelyn Glennie, Nadia Sirota and Elena Pinderhughes. Recorded and mixed by Peter Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley. Edited by Alex Levy. Album produced by Laura Karpman.