The Flash Soundtrack Debuts Two Tracks, With Music 'On The Edge Of Being Impossible To Perform'
Andy Muschietti's "The Flash" is due out in theaters next month and promises to be a crossover event along the lines of "Spider-Man: No Way Home." It seems that the Flash (Ezra Miller) can run so unbelievably fast that he can rip through the very fabric of reality and enter parallel universes. The film's trailers show the Flash fighting alongside a parallel version of himself, as well as scenes where he can witness his own childhood. In a fit of fan service, not only will the Flash interact with Batman (Ben Affleck) as he appeared in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" and "Justice League," but also with Batman (Michael Keaton) as he appeared in 1989's "Batman" and its sequel, "Batman Returns."
The music for "The Flash" was composed by Benjamin Wallfisch, the British composer behind Muschietti's "It" movies, "The Invisible Man," "Blade Runner 2049," and "Shazam!" Wallfisch's soundtrack record will be made available for download on June 16, 2023.
Two of the tracks from the film's score have officially been released to the public, and you can listen to them below. In a press release, Wallfisch talked a little bit about what went into making the score for "The Flash" and why his tracks entitled "Worlds Collide" and "Run" are of particular significance to the film.
Worlds Collide
As mentioned, "The Flash" will take place throughout several parallel dimensions, with superheroes from each uniting to fight villains that were presumed dead (Michael Shannon will be reprising his role as General Zod, first seen in the 2013 film "Man of Steel"). As such, Benjamin Wallfisch wanted a score that felt like several orchestras colliding. The sound was meant to be big, overwhelming, and with multiple musical themes interacting with one another. "Worlds Collide" is a track, Wallfisch said, that will appear during the climax of "The Flash," when all the characters will be on screen at once. The composer explained:
"'Worlds Collide' was a cue that Andy (Muschietti) and I iterated on — probably over 50 times — to get just right, even as the orchestra was recording it. Andy's incredibly creative ideas meant adjusting the music and musicians in real time. The track is built on a chord progression where the outer voices of the chords move towards each other, almost pulled together by a powerful gravitational force, whilst always building in intensity. At the apex, there's about 17 layers of orchestra playing together — probably over 1,000 musicians!"
Worlds collide, indeed.
A canny ear might also be able to hear notes reminiscent of Danny Elfman's famous score from Tim Burton's "Batman," a fitting musical callback, seeing as Michael Keaton is returning. It could also be meant to evoke another Elfman piece: the theme song to the 1990 "The Flash" live-action TV series (itself a little reminiscent of "Batman"). Either way, the reference works.
Run
Because the Flash is a runner, Benjamin Wallfisch wisely incorporated a lot of "Flight of the Bumblebee"-like violin arpeggios, clearly meant to evoke the rapid footfalls of a sprinting superhero. The footfalls eventually come so rapidly that vocals crash into the score, operatically evoking the passing through some sort of Speed Force membrane. It seems that Wallfisch composed "Run" several years before production on "The Flash" was to begin in earnest. Wallfisch remembered meeting with Andy Muschietti and his original concepts for "Run":
"Andy invited me to come on board for the movie in the summer of 2020. Although the script was still being developed, I was inspired by the film concepts we discussed. 'Run' was basically the first music I envisioned: a restless, searching piano figure, representing Barry's crisis after losing his mother, played against insistent staccato strings that are on the edge of being impossible to perform because of their sheer speed."
Wallfisch recalled that Muschietti, about two years after Wallfisch boarded "The Flash," was still using some of his simple piano noodling as a guide for certain scenes during the filming process. It seems that Wallfisch's score was, throughout, being used to inform the film's creatives what a few particular scenes ought to look and feel like:
"[T]wo years later, as Andy was putting together his first cut, he surprised me by putting this little piano sketch up against picture in one of the key moments in the movie, and it stayed there through to the final, almost unchanged. Andy and I have worked together closely for the last six years, and this was a moment I was especially grateful for our relationship."
"The Flash" is the third film on which Muschietti and Wallfisch have worked together. It opens in theaters on June 16, 2023.