“I know how to write a big, bombastic score — I’ve done a few!” says composer Hans Zimmer. “But for Batman Begins I wanted it murky. I wanted the music to seep out of the cinematography.” Avoiding an obvious anthem, which he believed had been done pretty definitively by Danny Elfman for the Tim Burton films, the motif Zimmer (who worked alongside James Newton Howard and “ambient music designer” Mel Wesson) employed for Batman is essentially just two notes. “It’s only the beginning of a theme,” he explains. “It’s never completed, because Bruce Wayne never gets past the point of his parents’ murder. If you listen carefully, there’s a choirboy at one point, and through electronic trickery — and too much time spent in the studio! — his note freezes and goes on for four minutes. We literally froze him in time.”