Interview
Interview – WAMG Talks To CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER Composer Henry Jackman
Marvel’s CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER has had a second stellar weekend at the box office.
That makes it two worldwide weekends in a row at over $100 million and nearly half a billion to date as it continues to draw audiences internationally and in North America. With the success of directors Joe and Anthony Russo’s sequel , Marvel/Disney have officially announced CAPTAIN AMERICA 3 will open on May 6, 2016.
About two years have passed since the alien invasion of New York was repulsed by Nick Fury’s special team – The Avengers. The world is now well aware that extra-terrestrials, godlike beings and monsters may be lurking in the cosmos and that Super Heroes walk among us. The demand for protection of the world’s citizenry has reached a zenith. In response to the world’s justifiable fears, S.H.I.E.L.D. has expanded its presence to enhance the security of Earth.
WAMG recently spoke with British composer Henry Jackman.
Jackman, born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, UK, began composing his first symphony at age six, and was an accomplished composer by age nine. He went on to study classical music at St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir School, Eton College and Oxford University. As a teenager, Jackman became heavily influenced by the underground rave scene, and he began producing chart-topping dance remixes, electronica and club music soon afterwards.
Over the next few years, Jackman built a successful career in the recording industry, not only releasing three solo albums, but also co-writing, mixing, producing and programming with a host of outstanding artists. Jackman wrote, mixed and produced albums and songs for Seal and Art of Noise. He co-wrote songs for the films “The Family Man” and “Anastasia.” He produced songs with Gary Barlow from Take That (which reached no. 3 in the UK Charts) and Justin. He programmed for artists Mike Oldfield, Marc Almond, Coolio and Kirsty McColl. He even collaborated with Andy Gardner (of Plump DJ’s fame) to produce a series of dance remixes that topped the dance charts and were selected for Pete Tong’s Essential selection.
In 2006, Jackman’s accomplishments garnered the attention of Hans Zimmer and John Powell, who soon hired Jackman to compose additional music on such films as THE DARK KNIGHT, THE DA VINCI CODE, KUNG FU PANDA and the PIRATE OF THE CARIBBEAN films.
Well-versed in superhero epics, including X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, KICK-ASS and G.I. JOE RETALIATION, Mr. Jackman received a BAFTA nomination for CAPTAIN PHILLIPS. The composer’s scores also include WRECK-IT RALPH, THIS IS THE END and PUSS IN BOOTS. He will also be composing the score for WRECK-IT RALPH 2.
His latest score brings audiences into the world of S.H.I.E.L.D. It is bigger and more powerful than ever and loaded with new weapons, vehicles, devices and gadgets that will excite and intrigue fans around the world and keep audiences on the edge of their seats in the not-to-be-missed thrill ride that is Marvel’s CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER.
Listen to the score on Spotify.
In our conversation, Mr. Jackman and I discussed his collaboration with Joe and Anthony Russo, composing music for the big screen, and one of the best scores in film history, Alan Silvestri’s PREDATOR.
WAMG: CAPTAIN AMERICA had such a huge opening at the Box Office. People have really embraced it. Congratulations on such a great score.
HENRY JACKMAN: I’m really happy to be part of Joe and Anthony Russo’s film. They nailed the film and people love it.
You can write whatever music you want, but if it’s not attached to a film that’s made by people who know what they’re doing, then it’s not going to go anywhere.
WAMG: This film is what Marvel fans were really hoping for. Cap doesn’t fly; he doesn’t shoot lightning bolts. He punches and kicks.
This movie has a rougher feel as opposed to most Super Hero films and what we saw in the last film. He’s a fish out of water – going from WWII to modern day, isn’t he?
HENRY JACKMAN: There isn’t much fantasy in the film. The directors celebrated that and in a really good way. He does have super powers in as much that he’s stronger than everyone else, but there’s something fantastical about Captain America.
And the fact that it’s a modern story set in 2014. It’s very visceral. Everything feels real, right down to the fight sequences. It doesn’t feel pantomime. This has an impact on the music. There’s a version of a Captain America film that we have in our heads that’s sort of a nostalgic, traditional superhero that’s dispatching the Nazis and the Communists – a period piece.
It is still Captain America, but Joe and Anthony Russo have taken it to a new level. He still has those values and he still has musical thematic material to support the heroism and the patriotism. It’s a much more of a contemporary take on that superhero.
It has an impact meaning the music and the action cues have a lot of electronic sounds going on which is counter-intuitive potentially for a Captain America / Winter Soldier faceoff. There are banging and screaming sounds as well as distorted metal and twisted time-stretched vocals – all these musical techniques that owe their background to electronic music rather than symphonic music.
It has an impact on the score as well – along with the visceral, electronic elements.
WAMG: It’s very gritty and not a symphonic-type score.
HENRY JACKMAN: I love that. By the way, at the point where I found out I was going to get involved with CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, I, like anyone else, thought, “Oh Captain America, great! It’ll be one of those rousing, traditional symphonic scores.” I love doing those! I get to do those a lot in animation. You don’t often get to do those in live-action.
Then I read the script and then I thought, oh, hold on. This might be another animal.
WAMG: It’s like a political thriller.
HENRY JACKMAN: Exactly! It’s much darker. Upon reading the script I thought, “Oh, that idea I was having about a traditional symphonic Captain America score is not relevant.”
Then I met the directors. Then I saw the film and knew this was a completely different thing.
Joe and Anthony Russo
WAMG: What kind of liberty did the Russo Brothers give you with the score?
HENRY JACKMAN: They were brilliant! They trusted me, even though I had never worked with them before. They have a lot of creative authority, but not directorial.
What you really look for when you’re working with good directors is that dialogue that comes from two things. One is you have the freedom to try and experiment, but at the same time, you have respect for and a trust in that you’re part of a team where the director has an overall vision.
And two, anytime you’re having a conversation about the music, it’s with this creative security of knowing that the people at the top and in charge have a coherent sense of what their film is supposed to do. And it’s a magical combination.
When I saw the film, I went ahead and wrote my Captain America theme. The Winter Soldier music (Track 6 – “The Winter Soldier”) is super radical. (Laughs). You may hate it as it doesn’t sound like an arch villain theme should sound. It’s really a brutal, mechanized kind of thing.
To see if they were into it, I played the Winter Soldier music for the Russo Brothers and they said, “That’s exactly what we are looking for.”
WAMG: There’s a beautiful piano solo towards the end of the film. (Track 17 – “End of the Line”) It is a lovely transition from the frantic sounds. What made you add that in the score?
HENRY JACKMAN: Oh definitely. That’s one of those things I’m always looking for. If you know a film is going to have a lot of electronic elements, and there’s going to be an element of brutality or visceral aspect to the music, once you know that’s the case, I’m always on the lookout for where there can be relief from that.
There are several scenes towards the end that have unexpectedly strong, emotional beats, especially with Bucky Barnes and Nick Fury – so when you do get those, you should grab them with both hands and go the other way. Really commit to the emotional beats.
And you need that break, no matter how wonderful the action is. The choreography of the action is particularly interesting. It’s sort of an odd combination of being poetic and brutal. Some of the action sequences have a Ninja sensibility, but they’re not so stylized that you don’t believe them. They are very immediate and brutal, but at the same time they’re not clumsy.
There’s something poetic about a lot of the fighting sequences.
WAMG: It was nice hearing some of Alan Silvestri’s CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER theme.
HENRY JACKMAN: There’s a section at the front that reminds everyone where we left off. This character is about to get hurled into a completely different environment, so it’s a nice way to tie the two films together.
WAMG: There’s quite a bit of percussion across the board. It’s a very sophisticated score.
HENRY JACKMAN: We spent a lot of time coming up with the percussion sounds for the visceral elements. It’s a different animal. The action sequences needed to be motivated by more than just virtuosic orchestrations. It needed pulses and percussion sounds so that it feels immediate.
WAMG: After seeing the first pass of the film, as well as the action scenes beforehand, is that what inspired you for the main theme?
HENRY JACKMAN: Definitely. I was lucky – the first time I saw the film was pretty much all of it. Not quite the same as what’s released in cinemas, but these guys were so on top of it that the first version I saw was in really good shape. It wasn’t in fragments, which helps. When you’re trying to come up with the overall themes and the architecture of the score, it helps to know the journey that the music has to take and where it’s leading to. I was lucky in that respect.
Plus I read the script. The thing about scripts is you get with different directors, you get completely different films. It really is gold dust to see as early as possible the presentable version of the film, so I was lucky in the end to be able to do that.
WAMG: Among such a wide variety, you’ve composed the score for the animated film WRECK-IT RALPH and then last year’s intense CAPTAIN PHILLIPS. What is it like to go between the genres?
HENRY JACKMAN: It’s like being married three times a year and every year. Meaning, you take on a project and just as you get to the end of that project, you reach the point where you really know what you’re doing. You know what the themes are as well as the vocabulary. You know the textures, the palettes, the sounds. You feel like if anyone threw any extra footage at you, you’d be able to score it in a heartbeat.
Just as you get to that point, it’s the end of the film, and bang, you’re onto something else where you have to start all over again. You’re completely committed to it and completely in that world, along with the aesthetics of that project. And then something else comes along, you just wipe the slate clean and you start work again with a completely different approach – different themes, instrumentation – and you commit yourself to that.
You go mad by the time you’re 60. Or it’s a refreshingly flexible kind of a job… that I’m very grateful for.
WAMG: Speaking of different films, you’re collaborating once again with director of the hilarious THIS IS THE END, Evan Goldberg, and actors Seth Rogen and James Franco on the movie THE INTERVIEW.
Synopsis – Dave Skylark (James Franco) is king of the celebrity interview and host of the hit night time talk show “Skylark Tonight.” The brain behind Dave’s empire is his producer and best friend, Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen). Unfulfilled, Aaron yearns to do meaningful work. He scores the chance of a lifetime when he secures an interview for Dave with Kim Jong-Un, the mysterious and ruthless dictator of a nuclear-armed North Korea. As Dave and Aaron prepare to leave for North Korea, they are approached by the CIA and asked to assassinate Kim. They accept the mission, becoming two of the least qualified men ever to assassinate – or interview – the most dangerous man on earth.
HENRY JACKMAN: I can’t say too much because I’m just getting started on that, but I can say that anyone who saw THIS IS THE END, which was hilarious, to expect more of the same in a completely different kind of film.
WAMG: THIS IS THE END is an absolute scream.
HENRY JACKMAN: One of the reasons I love Seth and Evan is you’ll often get goofy or silly things happening, but you’ll often get funny, silly stuff made by really clever people. They are super smart. There is something about their films that are actually smart. There’s something knowing about their filmmaking where they’re entertaining you and it’s not hugely pretentious or having airs and graces. You’re being manipulated by two clever people.
WAMG: I just watched it again, and yes it’s raunchy, but it’s also a smart kind of humor at the same time.
HENRY JACKMAN: Exactly. There’s such a difference between dumb stuff happening, made by dumb people and cleverly dumb things happening by cleverly smart people.
WAMG: Is there any type of genre you wouldn’t compose for?
HENRY JACKMAN: No, not really and that’s the problem. I’ll probably be schizophrenic by the time I’m 60.
No, if it’s good, I’m in!
WAMG: What are some of your favorite film scores?
HENRY JACKMAN: Just to throw some in that are wildly different. I would say, the original ALIEN and THE LAST EMPEROR. Funnily enough – PREDATOR, the most highbrow movie in history. Alan Silvestri’s score is great. He’s brilliant.
I think he’s the first person, as a kid, where I was, “stop the press. I need to find out who this is when the credits roll.” His score is just brilliant.
I used to ignore music in a film, because I had a classical upbringing where I was at music school, studying Brahms and piano sonatas. I’m watching PREDATOR where you expect it to be kind of dumb – Arnie sticking a knife into someone, going, (in a mock Schwarzenegger accent) “stick around.”
Meanwhile I’m thinking, wow, this is slightly better than the Brahms rhapsody that I’ve learned this week and why aren’t we doing this at school. I’m still thinking this is a concert composer and I see the credits roll up and the name Alan Silvestri. I’m thinking, I’m going to remember that.
WAMG: I love PREDATOR too. I named one of my dogs Dutch after Arnold’s character in the movie.
HENRY JACKMAN: See? And I’m really not knocking PREDATOR. I’ve seen it like 50 times. It’s just that Silvestri’s score elevates it.
We could all argue that it’s not in the same category as THE LAST EMPEROR or THE THIRD MAN, but what Alan did musically was so classy. To think you’ve got these big, bulky guys getting picked off one by one – there’s an element of muscle movie about it, as well as all the tension, because they’re not the most sophisticated guys in the world who are being tangled up.
It would be tempting to think you might need to do something a little more heavy-handed and clumsy because you’re representing big ole soldiers. What I really learned from that film is that he did a score that was exquisite in tension – really classy and harmonically quite sophisticated. You don’t have to be literal just because you have a guy covered in war paint, with massive, bulging muscles, who speaks monosyllabic. It doesn’t mean you have to do the music equivalent.
WAMG: Some scores almost become a character.
HENRY JACKMAN: You could say Silvestri’s WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT – that’s good one!
WAMG: Any advice for kids who think they may want to score a film one day.
HENRY JACKMAN: If you want to have any sleep in your life, don’t be a film composer. (Laughs) I would say however good you think you are at music, the most important thing about music for movies is the story. Whatever musical skills you have, whether you’re the most awesome guitarist, the best drummer or you’re an incredibly virtuosic orchestral person, whatever it is you’re good at, the whole idea is to take what you’re good at and use it in service of telling the story.
There are so many different kinds of scores – you could be good at any one of those things and it will be useful in someone’s film.
WAMG: Thanks to Henry Jackman for taking the time to talk to us!
Download the soundtrack from iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/captain-america-winter-soldier/id838575494
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER is in theaters now.
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