Warning: Some minor SPOILERS for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-VerseSpider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is now out and, as indicated by reviews, the impossibly high expectations set by the Oscar-winning first movie are being met and exceeded, earning comparisons to Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back as the rare sequel that is darker, more mature, and ultimately better than the original. The core trio — Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, Hailee Steinfeld as Spider-Gwen, and Jake Johnson as Peter Parker — return, and trailers have already promised a slew of new Spider-people to keep them company.
Also returning for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is composer Daniel Pemberton, who supplied the musical score for the first movie. Pemberton’s score for the predecessor blended styles of music to create a heroic hip-hop-influenced soundscape. For the sequel, the composer defies genres entirely and creates tracks as varied as the characters and worlds shown in the film. From overdriven punk rock to electronic loops infused with Indian instruments, the music Pemberton has created for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is gleefully unlike any other film score.
Ahead of the film's release, Daniel Pemberton spoke exclusively with Screen Rant about creating the sound of his score, exploring new worlds, and more. Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Daniel Pemberton on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Screen Rant: How would you describe the genre of your score? I can't think of comparisons to what you did with this.
Daniel Pemberton: Well, that's good. My favorite kind of music I try and write for films is one where you don't know what category to put it in. I think when you're doing that as a composer, that means you're doing something that's hopefully so new that it defies categorization. If you can't know what category to put it in, that means it's new, basically — exciting new music.
I guess it's, like — I don't know how to describe it — postmodern film music; film music that comes through a filter of the last hundred years of culture in the same way that the artwork is. If you look at traditional "film music", those traditionals are grand classical pieces. I've grown up surrounded by hip-hop, techno, rock, classical, jazz, experimental music, avant-garde music, and all those influences are in this score. In some ways, it feels like the purist demonstration of me as an artist, in terms of, like, "This is everything I've absorbed through my life, coming out in a film score."
You have a million different elements in this, from glitchy electronic sounds, to orchestral instruments, to human voices. Is there an instrument or a technique that you'd say is the glue that holds everything together and keeps it cohesive?
Daniel Pemberton: I'd say there are lots of different types of glue. There's glue, there's Sellotape, some bits of staples, and some bits are just held together very badly by gravity. I think what holds everything together are the themes. This film series has always had at its core recognizable themes or sounds that will connect you to Miles, or the universe, or Gwen, and the new film introduces a lot more themes and a lot more sounds.
For me, a theme can be anything. A theme doesn't necessarily have to be a melodic leitmotif; it can be a sort of crazy noise. In the first film, we had that with the Prowler. The Prowler noise is very recognizable, and it's a theme, but it's just a crazy noise. Whereas Miles has themes that are more traditional, musical, melodic themes. I like playing with every kind of different medium to try and make something that feels new.
With this film bringing in so many different Spider-People and going to so many places, how do you approach writing toward each unique identity?
Daniel Pemberton: It's really hard because you're trying to build something where there's a through line, and everything can connect within the universe, and everything can connect with each other. For me, that's really important, because I think one of the things that kind of got lost in comic book or superhero movies over the last couple of decades is a sense of thematic continuity between characters and story points, rather than just scoring a film.
I spent a huge amount of time sort of doing R&D, research and development, on this score, which would just be me experimenting for ages with sounds and textures, and trying to find things that would not only work to capture the spirit of a character or to capture the essence of a story, but could work with each other. Everything in this film, in theory, sort of works with everything else. You can pull Gwen's theme and play it with like Miles' "Destiny" theme, and you could put the Prowler noise underneath it, or you could put 2099's sound in. One of the big complexities of this film — which is not really immediately noticeable when you watch any of these films because they do it so seamlessly — is that there's always been a really big challenge in trying to get the different styles of animation to feel cohesive together.
There are so many different Spider-Men in this who have so many different art styles, and they all have to live within the same screen. I've got the same thing with the music, where I'll have things where we'll record it an opera singer, but he's singing over some crazy time-stretched techno that's also got some punk guitar in it, and drum machines. For me, it's about trying to find a way that all these things can work, and you find that there are some things that don't fit together so well. There's a lot of work that you don't get to see or hear because it all happens behind closed doors before you get to the stuff that appears on-screen.
I'm so glad you brought up the opera singer; I was about to reference that. Because it seems like you got to go to so many places with this score, was there anything you were really excited to try with a particular cue?
Daniel Pemberton: You probably haven't seen that sequence, but that is the first big action sequence in the Guggenheim, and that's the first time we meet a whole bunch of characters. We meet 2099 for the first time, we meet Jessica Drew for the first time, and we get introduced to a baddie called the Vulture. We have Gwen's theme in there, and we also get introduced to the idea of time portals. That is probably one of the best examples of the musical madness, where you're juggling all these things and trying to make them all feel like a coherent piece. It's trying to come up with strong ideas that are quite simple that reflect each character.
For Vulture, for instance, Vulture is from Renaissance Italy, so I did two things. One is this Italian operatic vocal, but then there's also stuff where we recorded some medieval stringed instruments and then time-stretched them so they're glitching, and very strange. They're not as noticeable; originally, I went down that road more, but then I realized the operatic vocal just made his character stand out more. Gwen's got this vague, balletic, synthesizer-y dreamy sound that, again, reflects her world, which is softer, based on watercolors. There's a movement within those, and there's a dreamlike quality as well as a poppy, rocky kind of quality.
Then, 2099's world is a lot more abrasive, a lot more muscular, and a lot more technological. He's very electronic, and his world feels very electronic. Jessica Drew's has a lot more attitude to it; she's got this vocal scream that's mixed with heavy guitars. Then, you're also trying to score everything on-screen, which is changing every three seconds anyway. It's very challenging, because you're trying to slightly rip up the rule book of how to score movies and build it from scratch again.
You're not trying to do traditional orchestral writing; you're trying to kind of create your own orchestra of all these disparate sounds that have strengths and weaknesses, and work out, "How do I get the element of weight or lightness or suspense out of these different sounds?" When you do that, you do end up creating something that hopefully feels more unique. It's so much more time-consuming and it's so exhausting, but hopefully, it's worth it.
How much do you write away from picture? Are you getting concept art and working off of that, or do you prefer to wait and see actual scenes?
Daniel Pemberton: I get involved. On this film, I got involved very early. The first meeting we had was really about them showing me the concept art and the way they were going to build each world. They broke down all the different approaches for 2099's world and how it had been based on Syd Mead concept art; it's very influenced by that kind of style. We looked at Gwen's world, Punk's world — I saw some amazing stuff that isn't even in the film. That early on, you'd see the art styles and you'd see the approach they were taking, and that would start formulating ideas in your head, like, "Okay, how can I approach that?"
It's not just about "How do I make a sound for that world?" It's how to make a sound that will work with the scenes. We go to Indian Spider-Man's world and I had one idea for it, but you realize the reality is that in the film, most of this is a giant chase sequence and battle, so the one idea to do a certain type of Indian music is not really going to work. It's got to work within the confines of the film.
So, I'm working alongside them really closely all the way through the movie. It got to the stage where I literally had to move from England to LA and work in a very unglamorous office on the Sony lot, like, two doors down from the edit, so every now and again they could stick their head around the door and be like, "Can you do this? Now." This film has probably been the most intense film I've ever worked on.
I saw on Twitter that you and your session players kept a running tally of all of the takes you did during the recording process.
Daniel Pemberton: Yeah. There are a lot of takes on this.
I love that idea very much. Who had the most takes in the end?
Daniel Pemberton: It's different. The way I'll record, especially on a project like this, is I will break everything down into very individual elements, so it takes forever. Sometimes you can have a whole orchestra and you can go, "Right. Go," and they do it. Then it's "Let's do it again," a couple of times, and that's a whole cue. But a whole cue for me probably has 15 or 20 different elements, or maybe more within that, which all have to be recorded separately. There might be a pass of strings, there might be a pass of brass, and there might be seven or eight different passes of percussion.
There might be four or five or six passes of electronics, there might be a pass or two of record-scratching, there might be a pass of guitars, and a pass a bass, and all these things I'm doing separately. It's like 3D chess when you're trying to build these pieces up, so you end up spending so much time in the recording studio because you're focusing on the detail of every single performance to a micro level that you wouldn't do if everyone was playing together.
That means you get a very deep score. A lot of that stuff you almost don't even notice or even hear in the end. Sometimes I'm like, "Why did I spend so long on a hi-hat sound which you can hardly hear?" I'm not joking. We'd do a hi-hat pass, and I'd be like, "Okay, let's re-accent this here, and do this. Let's make this bit work bigger. Let's do more of a crescendo," and then there are, like, 27 different layers of stuff on top of it. You can hardly hear it, but it does make a difference.
So even the electronic stuff is being played?
Daniel Pemberton: In the same way the art style is approached in multiple ways, I'll approach the music from lots of different techniques. There'll be some techniques where I'll be like, "Okay, let's do a jam with loads of old synthesizers and see what crazy noises we come out with," which is kind of how we ended up getting the Prowler sound in the first film. That's almost like messing about with noises, trying to find chaos and experimentation, which is where you get really interesting stuff, but it's very unpredictable and it's very hard to repeat.
Someone goes, "Oh, I really like that. Can you do that again?" and you're like, "No." I did a bunch of sessions like that on this film, and then we also do things that come very early in what I call the research and development stage. There are bits where I would write using software synthesizers, and then once we felt they were in the right place, we'd then push them out through other synths.
Then, I'd fire it off to some other people I know who have got interesting setups, and we'd then throw it into MIDI and then re-tweak and play each performance. Even a bass line, I would personally probably run through about four times with different filter cut-offs and things like that, so you're getting something that feels more organic and more interesting. There's so much information in this score.
Are there any characters that you enjoyed writing for in the first one that you're not writing for in this one that you miss?
Daniel Pemberton: In the first one, the main character is Miles, and there's the Prowler. Obviously, now it's really only Miles; Aaron's dead. The first film was so centered around Miles, and I think what's interesting about this new film is that it's such a wider landscape. There are so many new characters and so many new worlds, and each of those needs their own sound — their own theme. You might only be there for 10 minutes, but it's like coming up with a whole different palette and film score for each of those worlds.
A lot of the film is set in 2099's world; I'd say that's the biggest world in this film. I definitely really enjoyed playing in that world because I got to use loads of synthesizers and electronics I don't get to use that often. I've got the (Yamaha) CS80, which is the Blade Runner synthesizer which Vangelis did all of his stuff on, so it was great to be able to pull that out and be like, "Finally, I get to use this on a score."
I would have liked to have done more in Punk's world, but we're not there for very long. I think the thing that's exciting about this film is that there are such amazing worlds to play with, and because the film is breaking so many boundaries constantly, you can do that with the music as well.
About Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Miles Morales returns in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. With his identity still safe but "grounded" by his parents, Miles Morales is visited by his friend from another dimension, Gwen Stacy. Inviting him on a new adventure, Miles jumps at the opportunity but is seemingly accosted by an unknown assailant on his journey. Miles and Gwen will unite with new and old Spider-Heroes to face a villain of immeasurable power.
Check out our other Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse interviews with:
- Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld & Jake Johnson
- Brian Tyree Henry & Luna Laura Velez
- Cast & Crew on the Red Carpet
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse releases in theaters on June 2.