Interview With Film Composer Brian Tyler
Now You See Me 2 hits Theaters June 10th, and we sat down with the composer, Brian Tyler, to hear how the score came to be
You might not expect Now You See Me 2 to pop up on our comic book site here, but did you know that the composer for their film score has had his hand in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
Bam Smack Pow spoke with Brian Tyler this week to discuss his newly scored movie, Now You See Me 2, and how it compares to scoring movies in the MCU along with some chatting about James Bond and Marvel versus DC.
BSP: You composed for the first “Now You See Me;” was it any different doing it for the second one?
Brian Tyler: It’s somewhat of a reunion–some of the people who made the first one, everyone from the filmmakers to the orchestra to the actors. We had a new director, Jon Chu, he had his own direction for it. He’s amazing, he’s really kind of a musical guy, he really has an ear for it. That was kind of an additional fun thing to do with the film, in that I was able to work on music for the film, but at the same time, you know, really push myself to do something that was more epic and kind of more grand, more of a fantasy angle to this score. But at the same time you want to connect to the original score.
It’s really a collision of styles where you have big band and kind of 1970s groove kind of colliding with big fantasy music, styled like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. So these are two opposite ends merging into one kind of tone; it’s really been cool to work on both films and expand that world.
BSP: My husband and I actually watched the first “Now You See Me” over the weekend since we saw the second one last night. And he was like, “You’re interviewing the composer?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “This really has a James Bond sound to it.” I really noticed it last night, especially since this one is more over the top than the first one, and it totally fits.
BT: Yeah, you’re right, there’s a James Bond vibe. It’s almost like they’re all individual James Bonds that have different ways of doing things. The fact that they used magic as their weapon to pull off these feats… it’s a really cool angle, and I love magic, personally. There’s the swagger thing that Bond has, it’s that sort of…big band, kind of big brassy sound.
This one, a lot of the players–I conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra of London for this, which they’ve played so many of the Bond films, and a lot of the players played on the Harry Potter films. this is a very unique kind of genre, in that there’s kind of only two movies in this genre.
BSP: Is there a big difference in working on a movie like “Now You See Me” versus working on something like “Iron Man 3” or anything in the superhero realm?
BT: There’s a difference. There’s a tonal vibe to the Marvel movies that is somehow does play to the larger than life superhero kind of feel, where these both have variations on fantasy movies, things that we would fantasize we were. Like, “Wow, what if I could be Thor? Or Scarlet Witch? Black Widow?” And Now You See Me is grounded in the fact that these people actually cannot do the supernatural, and I think that’s a distinguishing factor. It’s a mirage, it’s an illusion.
You kind of do get the feel of people that are pulling off a heist. They’re right on the edge of getting caught, and they can’t rely on their superpowers, and somehow that translates musically. All these subtle differences in tone, in the story translate into… you have kind of a built-in limitation to the edge of what you can take, which, in turn, breeds a lot more creativity.
We really needed to humanize the Now You See Me characters and make them feel irreverent and also really play at the suspense as well. There’s influences for me, score-wise, with one of the main NYSM themes from things like the Hitchcock films, like North By Northwest, for instance. It has this kind of jagged, Calypso tango thing going on. To me, that character, which was kind of a hapless person thrust into a suspenseful situation where he needed to pull off all sorts of things, is similar to what the team in NYSM is encountering.
BSP: Any particular scene where the score worked better than you thought it was going to?
BT: There’s a number of scenes where the score really had to become a character. One is the heist of the chip in Macau. They’re having to all work together and use all of their particular skills to pull off this impossible task. That was a pretty crazy one, and so when I finally watched it back… it was really just a cool moment. I just saw it in the theater in New York at the premiere, and I just felt very proud at how everything kind of worked together and the music was such a big role in that scene.
BSP: So will we hear your work again anywhere in the MCU or is that a question you’re not allowed to answer?
BT: It’s pretty much one I’m not allowed to answer, as things go. But… I love that world. So hopefully, you know, people will be hearing something not too long in the future.
BSP: Just a couple of fun questions to end the interview. Do you believe in magic?
BT: [laughs] I believe in practical magic, in that illusions can fool the mind. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but the mystery is the best part of illusion. I actually used to dabble in magic a little bit. And when everyone would ask me, “That’s impossible, how do you do it?!” And I’d say, “You know, if I told you how I did it, it wouldn’t be any fun anymore. I’m telling you, you do not want to know!” The idea of illusion is something we build up in our minds and it’s so much more fun that way.
BSP: Marvel or DC?
BT: Both! It’s impossible. I collected comics and in terms of my comics, I was both DC and Marvel and I couldn’t take sides. I had too many characters that I loved on both sides. Just like, I’m a massive Trekker and a huge Star Wars fan, and I find that people often do take sides. There’s aspects of all of those things on both sides that are really cool. It’s way too special to my heart, it’s too hard to choose.
BSP: Team Cap or Team Iron Man?
BT: HAH! Well… you know, the first movie I did with Marvel was Iron Man 3, so I have to hold to my roots, so I have to go with Tony. Tony picked me, so, you know, I have to stick with the team.
Now You See Me 2 Official Synopsis: The Four Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Lizzy Caplan) return for a second mind-bending adventure in Now You See Me 2, elevating the limits of stage illusion to new heights and taking them around the globe. One year after outwitting the FBI and winning the public’s adulation with their Robin Hood-style magic spectacles, the illusionists resurface for a comeback performance in hopes of exposing the unethical practices of a tech magnate. The man behind their vanishing act is none other than Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe), a tech prodigy who threatens the Horsemen into pulling off their most impossible heist yet. Their only hope is to perform one last unprecedented stunt to clear their names and reveal the mastermind behind it all.
BRIAN TYLER is a composer and conductor of over 70 films and was named Film Composer of the Year at the 2014 Cue Awards. Tyler composed blockbuster hits “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Furious 7,” “Iron Man 3,” starring Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Kingsley, as well as “Thor: The Dark World,” starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, and Anthony Hopkins. He conducted the London Philharmonic, the Philharmonia of London, and the Hollywood Studio Symphony for those films. He also scored “Eagle Eye” for producer Steven Spielberg, and the box office hits “Fast Five” and “Fast & Furious” for director Justin Lin. He was nominated for a 2014 BAFTA Games Award and was inducted into the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2010. His films have grossed $9.5 billion worldwide.
Tyler began scoring features shortly after he received his master’s degree from Harvard University, as well as a bachelor’s degree from UCLA. He is a multi-instrumentalist and plays piano, guitar, drums, bass, cello, world percussion, synth programming, guitarviol, charango, and bouzouki, amongst others. He showcased many of those instruments for the 2013 retro heist film “Now You See Me,” about a team of illusionists, starring Morgan Freeman, Jesse Eisenberg, Michael Caine, Woody Harrelson and Mark Ruffalo. Tyler also scored “Now You See Me 2” to be released in the U.S. on June 10th, 2016.
Tyler arranged and conducted the new film logo music for Universal Pictures and composed a theme for the 100 year anniversary of the studio, as well as composing the music for the Marvel Studios logo which now plays before of all of their films. He also scored “The Expendables” films, and “Rambo,” directed by Sylvester Stallone; “Law Abiding Citizen,” starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler; the Keanu Reeves thriller “Constantine,” and the science-fiction film “Battle Los Angeles.” Tyler’s score for Bill Paxton’s “Frailty” won him a World Soundtrack Award in 2002, as well as The World Soundtrack Award as Best New Film Composer of the Year. He has received three Emmy Award nominations, ten BMI Music Awards, five ASCAP Music Awards, and recently won 12 Goldspirit Awards, including Composer of the Year.
After composing the score for “The Hunted” for Academy Award-winning director William Friedkin, Tyler composed the score for the turn-of-the-century drama “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” starring Shia LaBeouf. His soundtrack for “Children of Dune” reached #4 on the Amazon.com album charts while “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Furious 7,” “Thor: The Dark World,” “Iron Man 3,” and “Fast Five” all hit #1 on the iTunes soundtrack charts.
In 2014, Tyler scored the Michael Bay-produced “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and also wrote the theme song “Shell Shocked” which he wrote and produced under his electronic music alter ego Madsonik. The song featured Wiz Khalifa and Kill the Noise and is a certified gold record. Tyler also scored the action-packed disaster thriller “Into the Storm,” and the epic adventure “The Expendables 3.”
Tyler created the new theme music for ESPN’s NFL studio shows, representing the first updated original score for ESPN’s NFL shows since 1997. In 2015, Tyler created a new groundbreaking musical theme for the 115th U.S. Open Championship on FOX broadcast network and FOX Sports 1.
Most recently, Tyler wrote the score for the feature film “Truth,” which opened in theaters in October 2015 and stars Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes and Robert Redford as Dan Rather. For television, he scores the series “Scorpion,” “Hawaii Five-0,” and “Sleepy Hollow,” for which he received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music in 2014. He also received an Emmy nomination for “Last Call” and a Daytime Emmy nomination for “Transformers: Prime.”
In addition to the upcoming “Now You See Me 2” which is being released this June, Tyler scored the action thriller “Criminal” which opened on April 15, 2016 and co-wrote the theme song “Drift And Fall Again,” which he performs under his Madsonik moniker with Lola Marsh. On May 7th, 2016, Tyler made his debut headlining concert conducting his film music with the Philharmonia Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall in London. Tyler also scored the music to the gun control documentary “Under the Gun” executive produced and narrated by Katie Couric which premiered in May 2016.