SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for “Thunderbolts*,” now playing in theaters.
When “Thunderbolts*” director Jake Schreier was called on to helm the 36th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he knew he was going to make an unconventional superhero movie.
He also knew the music would need to be distinctive, so he brought in experimental band Son Lux (Ryan Lott, Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia) to bring the film’s score together.
“Thunderbolts*” follows a team of antiheroes – Black Widow agent Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh); Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan); Yelena’s adopted dad and Russian super soldier Red Guardian (David Harbour); the disgraced Captain America wannabe John Walker (Wyatt Russell); the invisible and intangible spy Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen); and combat expert Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap set by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the castoffs embark on a mission and are forced to confront their past traumas.
Schreier brought the band on early in the process, before anything had even been shot. Speaking with Variety, Lott says, “We were invited onto the project because we would inherently bring a sort of outsider energy.”
And they did.
Schreier would meet the band at least once a week and ideas were floated around – all they had to go on was the script.
One important cue was the actual Thunderbolts* theme, which is heard in its entirety at the end of the film. The theme starts with an eight-note motif with brass and later strings as it builds to its crescendo. As it turns out, it was the first cue that Lott cracked.
Says Lott, “It has multiple components. It has a bassline that is distinct and can be used on its own. And then it has a sort of counter melody that is more of a peppery sound, and then, there’s a primary melody. It was really the combination of all those presented together that took it over the edge for Jake.” Lott adds, “Before he even heard the primary melody, just the raw components, that was the first time he said, ‘That sounds like “Thunderbolts*”
However, the very first time it can be heard is when Yelena visits her father’s home and looks at a childhood photo of her soccer team – the Thunderbolts. Says Lott, “It’s done emotionally, because we’re not thinking about the Thunderbolts soccer team. We’re thinking about her memory and her feelings of longing.” He notes that Yelena feels stuck and wants more in life. “She’s saddled with disappointment or regret.”
The theme remains deconstructed throughout the film, reflecting the characters who have an “each to their own” attitude. Bhatia points out, “There’s a degree to which the way that it ends up coming together. It is designed to make the viewer feel familiar and feel like home. So when you finally hear the full version, it feels like you’ve already heard it before.”
Another approach the band took was in how they scored the characters, and whether individual characters had individual themes. Lott explains, “That was one of the initial questions we had, even Jake. Do we have themes? How much screen time do they really have on their own, and when they’re paired? Whose theme do we hear?” He continues, “Those questions led to the obvious answer that Thunderbolts* is a team, and individualizing them was the wrong move. It was about the collective energy and the collective experience of this team coming together slowly.”
The only exception came with the film’s new nemesis – Sentry. “That theme, as terrible and as frighteningly powerful as this character might be, we also see right away that at the heart of this character is a lot of hurt and brokenness. And so this theme iterates in very different ways throughout the film.” He adds, “It’s heard once in a very tender and intimate moment in the entire film, in a broken solo piano.”
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