Hans Zimmer Clarifies His Retirement from Superhero Films + Why He Prefers Christian Bale’s Batman over Ben Affleck

Last year, composer Hans Zimmer said that he was “retiring” from the superhero movie genre. Zimmer has scored several major comic book films, including The Dark Knight Trilogy, Man of Steel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and last year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. That is one hell of a run for any composer, so it would make sense to quit sooner or later. In a new interview, Zimmer sheds light on this decision, as well as whether it really is the end.

Speaking with Inverse, Zimmer explains exactly why he entered superhero retirement in the first place, saying that he can no longer create something new and groundbreaking for the genre. “I keep thinking about new styles of music and new ways of using technology, new ways of figuring out how to make everything that we do an experience for other people. And I just couldn’t do it anymore with the superhero movies, it’s as simple as that. If you take the three Chris Nolan Batmans, that’s three movies to you, but to you and Chris, it was 12 years of our lives. So sometimes you just have to say, ‘I don’t know where I’m heading, but I’m going to jump off this cliff.'”

However, Zimmer is not 100% opposed to returning to the genre at some point. The catch? The movie has to have an “amazing” script. “Ron Howard actually said something very smart to me. He said, ‘Don’t say you will never do a superhero movie again. Wait for somebody to turn up with an amazing script for a superhero movie.’ And I suppose that’s what I’m saying: Can I please have the amazing script?”

Zimmer goes on to discuss working on scoring two cinematic versions of Batman: Christian Bale’s from The Dark Knight Trilogy and Ben Affleck’s from Batman v Superman. Zimmer worked with Junkie XL to score the latter film. While Junkie was expected to take over the Batman portions of the score, he and Zimmer wound up creating them together.

Finally, Zimmer explains why he prefers Bale’s Batman over Affleck’s, saying that the former’s pain made him a more captivating character. “The Batman that I know and the one I learned is the one that Christian did, and Ben plays it differently. And I can’t quite shake that off. For me, the Christian Bale character was always completely unresolved. It was always about that moment at the beginning of the first movie, where he sees his parents getting killed. It was basically arrested development. The Ben character is more middle-aged; he seems to be grumpy as hell, but I didn’t feel the pain that I felt in Christian’s performance. And it was that pain that made me interested.”

For Zimmer’s full interview with Inverse, where he comments on the future of film composing and more, click HERE.

Do you hope to see Zimmer return to the superhero genre someday?