Composer Junkie XL opened up about creating the "extra intense" score for Zack Snyder's Justice League, sharing how his outlook on the project changed the second time around.
"I started with a lot of positive energy in 2016, on the original version," Junkie XL (real name Tom Holkenborg) told Discussing Film. "That version was way shorter in that time period, it was only two hours."
The composer added that when Snyder decided to leave the film due to the death of his daughter, he never got to "fully realize" his vision for the film's score.
When Holkenborg learned that Snyder was going to release his 4-hour cut of Justice League, he got back to work. However, he soon realized that the stuff he recorded for Justice League in 2016 felt "negative." He added, "So I wanted to start over. And on top of that, when I started on Justice League, my film scoring career was pretty young. It was only three years old and in the last four years, I've learned so much from great directors that I worked with -- Peter Jackson, Robert Rodriguez, James Cameron, Tim Miller, George Miller."
Holkenborg continued, "I wanted to make sure that if I worked on this one, that it was the best that I had in me and represents me as well as possible. So that was another really good reason to start over. That is pretty much where my personal 'Mount Everest' began."
The composer noted that creating the score for Snyder's cut was "by far the biggest project" he's ever completed in his life, noting that it was "very special because it was done in complete isolation during the full-on year of COVID. "It made it extra intense, to work on it without distraction," Holkenborg added. "But also, the amount of music that needs to be created. I did that on my own and it was a really great feeling to do it. It made me realize how I potentially want to do things differently in the future."
Holkenborg also detailed the actual process of creating the music while in lockdown, describing himself as a "full context" composer. "A big part of that [full context] is playing instruments, turning knobs, and making noise," he concluded. "[Zack Snyder’s Justice League] was done in my house in a small room, it's almost like full contact and screen, with one guitar, one bass, a few hardware boxes, and my computer system, and I just really dived in to get the maximum results out of those instruments."
Zack Snyder's Justice League stars Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Henry Cavill as Superman, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ezra Miller as The Flash, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Ray Porter as Darkseid, Ciarán Hinds as Steppenwolf, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon. The film is streaming on HBO Max.
Source: Discussing Film