The Dark Knight Rises soundtrack was a enjoyable surprise to listen to. What I figured would be a soundtrack that featured some well played songs but because there’s no visuals to improve upon the sound I would find the songs a little boring. Not the case when listening to this soundtrack composed by Hans Zimmer. Though there is still that sense of missing out a little on the full impact of the song because there’s no visuals there’s also a new element of getting to hear the full song played out. While a song can become instantly liked after hearing only a few seconds being played during a movie, having one that can last 2 to 4 minutes while keeping that same emotional response without a visual is a hard feat to do. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t get the soundtracks that are composed over ones that feature lyrical based songs.
In this instance, The Dark Knight Rises soundtrack has taken the need of visuals from the film to be enjoyed and replaced it with having the songs be even more emotional. From the start I was able to instantly tell that this was the soundtrack to Christopher Nolan’s Batman movie. When listening to this I could hear the a sound of sadness, one of despair, a story that’s a tragedy instead of the typical sound of making the songs sound upbeat or high energy. The Dark Knight Rises is a dark movie and this soundtrack taken on that darkness to the point where it was washing over me.
One track in particular, the last one in fact, “Rise” was the song I think that describes the nature of the whole soundtrack. This track starts off with drums being played in this intense, hard beat that has a quick pacing that lasts a little over a minute into the song. After that the song slows down to a snails pace, it’s low, at times the music goes to near silence, there’s some harmonizing vocals, and it takes on this sad, bleak tone. But as this 7 minute long plays out it slowly builds back up to where it was at the start taking me along with this ride where I’m feeling uplifted as I listen. That’s what this whole soundtrack is like, going on a roller coaster ride of intense songs being played. Overall though, I was most impressed with one simple fact, when the tracks changed there is no pause, no skip, or any break in the songs. It’s almost as if this soundtrack is one song but a song that has so many different tempos and beats throughout it that it never gets boring.