78. Danny Elfman’s “The Batman Theme”

Some music screams. Some sighs. Danny Elfman’s theme for director Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman does both.

Elfman had worked with Burton on his two prior movies—Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice—both of which featured rambunctious compositions by the Oingo Boingo frontman turned film composer. Of Warner Brothers’ interest in those scores, Elfman says, “No one cared. With Batman, a lot of people cared.”

When executive producer Jon Peters expressed reservations about Elfman, Burton had the musician play “The Batman Theme” for Peters, resulting not only in Elfman scoring the film, but in his score getting its own release, separate from that of Prince’s Batman album (which compiled the artist’s soundtrack songs).

Recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, Elfman composed that rarest of movie themes—one that not only comments on the story’s action, but appears to drive it. It starts slow, like the turning pages of a fairy tale, like rainwater running down the spires of a cathedral. But it builds quickly, culminating in a thundering climax of organ and gong. Then it’s a march of fire, as singled-minded in its determination as Bruce Wayne. It finds room for reflection, even for a trace of humor, before settling on a note of stone-cold resolution.

Cheers erupted in theaters across the globe when audiences first heard “The Batman Theme” over the film’s opening titles. Before production designer Anton Furst’s Gotham City appeared, before Burton’s imagery arrived, one could see the Dark Knight swooping, dodging, and lunging as it played.

“The Batman Theme” proved so popular it was used as the original opening theme for 1992’s Batman: The Animated Series, in the LEGO Batman video games, and at Six Flags theme parks, where thrill-seekers would hear it as they waited to climb aboard the Batman rides.

As much as any illustration of the Dark Knight, or any actor, Elfman’s theme is Batman.