Musique Fantastique

February 5, 2024

Scoring JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (PART 1): An Interview with Composer Kevin Riepl

Composer Kevin Riepl has been scoring films since 2011, and became associated with DC animated series on TV, films, and video beginning in 2015. He’s been noted for composing such projects as CONSTANTINE: CITY OF DEMONS, BATMAN VS. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, DEATHSTROKE: KNIGHTS & DRAGONS, SUPERMAN: MAN OF TOMORROW, JUSTICE SOCIETY: WORLD WAR II, GREEN LANTERN: BEWARE MY POWER, and LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. His triple-threat score for the three CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS films are perhaps his most complicated scores, with dozens of characters to keep track of and a number of themes from various DC super-hero videos to accommodate in the three films that comprise the CRISIS saga.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS – PART ONE is an American animated superhero film based on the DC Comics superhero team the Justice League. Based on the DC Comics storyline CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (1985–1986) by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, the film is directed by Jeff Wamester from a script by Jim Krieg. It is the eighth installment in the TOMORROWVERSE, sharing continuity with the films of the franchise that began with SUPERMAN: MAN OF TOMORROW (2020) and is the first part of a trilogy of films. JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS – PART ONE was released on January 9, 2024, with two sequels scheduled to be released throughout the rest of the year.

Watch the trailer for JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS – PART ONE:

Q: You’ve been scoring DC animated superhero films since BATMAN UNLIMITED: ANIMAL INSTINCTS in 2015 – seventeen of them to date, by my count. What brought you into these series and what was your approach to scoring them?

Kevin Riepl: I had just recently signed with my agent and one of their composers, who worked on a lot of DC stuff with Warner Bros., wasn’t available to do new one that came in. So, my agent asked me if I wanted to submit, and I said yeah. Batman? Of course! I met with the producer, Butch Lukic, and I’ve been working with him ever since. We have this really great relationship now, and we work well. That’s basically how it happened – he liked my stuff, and it went from there.

Q: I’m assuming your scores for these projects are digitally/synth based, in the box – how have you adapted these synth elements into your sonic arsenal and how have you explored new instrumental elements as they have come into the marketplace?

Kevin Riepl: A lot of the DC stuff I have done has been in the box – digital scoring – except for one, which was JUSTICE SOCIETY WORLD WAR II. That was live orchestra. My goal with those films that aren’t live orchestra is to fool the ear as much as possible. You can only go so far to make it sound real, because it’s not real. I mean, yes, the samples are real players playing it and you’re recording it, but obviously it’s totally different. As a composer, you have to be a very good producer, too, with these in-the-box type scores. You have to sell it to make it sound as real as possible, and not stale – because, many times, with these samples, if you don’t know or have the experience of, either writing for a live orchestra, or working with these samples, you’re not going to know. It’s going to come out and you’re going to be able to tell. When I say ‘you’re’ I don’t know if the general public will be able to tell, but the music won’t have the same impact, I think, as either a live orchestra or an experienced person with enough tools to get it as close to a live orchestra as possible. I’m not saying I was like that from the beginning. You learn, and you work with the tools you have. That’s why when you mention the new tools that come out, it becomes easier and easier to sound like a real orchestra. But, again, you’re not; and it’s not; there’s still a lot missing, but the quality of the tools that have come out recently allows one to produce a score out of the box, and it can be as close as possible to a live score without standing too stale.

Also, with the synth elements, those are fun to work with. Companies and sample developers put out these libraries that every composer wants their hands on. You have to be careful with those, because when someone gets their hands on them, or when all of us get our hands on them, or when everybody starts using the same sounds, it’s not so cool anymore because it’s not unique! So, for that, when you get those sounds, my first go-to is, yes this is a cool sound, but how do I make it mine? How do I make it fit this score to where it doesn’t sound like I’m just hitting a key out of the box? Sometimes it’s fun to hit the key out of the box, because the stuff sounds so good, and then you work the score around it, so there’s that aspect too. The quality of the samples, the originality of some of the non-orchestral samples that are out there are a lot of fun to mess with and throw in to scores.

Q: How have you collaborated with the producers at DC in scoring their animated superhero projects?

Kevin Riepl: That’s a good question! With the DC movies and the series that I’ve done, I only worked with the producer, Butch Lukic. He’s the creative vision behind all the films, so he’s the only one I have to please on these shows. And I know if he’s pleased, Warner Bros. are happy, and DC’s happy, because he’s sort of running the ship on each of the films. So, I just had dialogue with him. Early on we would be in contact, we would have spotting sessions, and would be in contact more often, but as our relationship had matured over the years, our dialogue has become less and less, because I know what he wants. Sometimes, even though I know what he wants, I miss the mark and he’s like, “What are you doing?! This is nothing like what I wanted!” You know, all in good fun! But he knows what he wants, and I love working with him, so there’s a very short dialogue that we have. He can say no, because he doesn’t like something because of one little thing, and I’ll know exactly what it is, and I’ll need to re-do the piece because of that one little thing, either throughout the cue or, if it’s an element of the piece that is the main part of the cue, I’ll need to rework the whole thing, but it’s fine. Composers always go “fixes, fixes, I’ve got to do fixes. Revisions upon revisions!” But, as you get older in the business you understand that you can’t get insulted over these things, because you’re working toward making an ultimate goal to create the best product out there, and ego has to take a back seat.

Q: Have you shared character themes within the DC Universes?

Kevin Riepl: Not until CRISIS. Since CRISIS involves a lot of superheroes, I really don’t touch on it in the first one, except for Constantine. I touched on his theme. I don’t know if he’s revealed yet. I’m confused, because to me it’s been one film – I did three films in one year so it’s all like one thing, and I forget which appears on each thing! In these three movies I took my Wonder Woman theme from JUSTICE SOCIETY WORLD WAR II, I took my GREEN LANTERN theme, CONSTANTINE theme, and some others. But, usually all the other films I’ve done have been the sort of standalone character ones, where they introduce who these characters are. So now on this one, I was able to take the themes I wrote for those and weave them in and out of the CRISIS storyline.

Listen to Kevin Riepl’s “Opening Titles” for JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS, via YouTube:

Q: What musical elements were you drawn to, and how have you used them to achieve the kind of music needed for CRISIS?

Kevin Riepl: This one needed to be big, so obviously we went with the full orchestra. I wanted to create – and this is something Butch likes – longer melodies, and longer themes. Not so much super-hero overly melodic themes, themes that develop over time. One theme I wrote that is more of a super-hero theme, is the Crisis theme that you can hear on multiple tracks like “Power to the Towers,” “Tower Construction,” there’s a couple other ones where it appears in, but as far as the other themes in the film, for the Anti-Monitor, the Anti-Matter, Barry Allen’s theme, they’re all very slow because I wanted to create more of an engulfing world, rather than very spot-on themes. So, I was creating longer, slower themes – The Anti-Monitor, for example, if somebody’s listening to it, it’s like “Oh, this is not a theme, this is just chords moving up the scale, or whatever.” But, whether it’s that or not, it still belongs to the Anti-Monitor; it’s still that theme, still that idea.

So, to me, there were a lot of themes. I remember looking at my cue sheet, and this app that I use, you can say which cue is which theme of the film, and in the first film I had a list of like 19 themes! You might not be able to hear them, but they’re my little ideas that I used for each character. You had your Barry Allen theme, you had your Iris and Barry theme, you had your Anti-Monitor theme, you had your Flash theme – every cue, I think, had some sort of motif or thematic element to it, because there’s so much going on. I wanted to attach musical elements, because in the first film, CRISIS Part 1, it can be a little confusing because it’s pretty much going back and forth with Barry Allen’s life and everything. So, I tried to help that with musical ideas I had for each of the characters in the story.

Q: How did your music affect that wide arc of the Barry Allen character in the first film?

Kevin Riepl: I basically just kept on bringing back the Barry Allen motif, throughout. It was a story arc, but I don’t think his themes changed much. His theme ending up, coincidentally molded right into the beginning of the Crisis theme. I just posted something recently on YouTube of, it’s either Tower Construction or Power to the Towers, where I indicate on the video which ones are Flash or Barry Allen’s theme, and once it goes to the Crisis theme, the first two or three notes of the Crisis theme are the first three notes of Barry’s theme. They’re very, very similar, but Barry’s theme bounces back and forth between six notes. That might be inadvertent – I didn’t purposely do that. It starts with Barry Allen’s six-note motif, but it pedals on one note, and that eventually grows into the Crisis theme, and it blends in on that one cue. That was the development of it – but it was unintentional! I didn’t purposely come up with the Barry theme to go into the Crisis theme; it just so happened that they worked well together, and I was able to develop it into Crisis theme in that one cue. His themes at the end are so light and emotional, with him and also his relationship with Iris across the story. I just made it as thin and lonely as possible, because he was all alone in this, right at the end. I used really high harmonic strings with his melody. If I’m remembering correctly, I used that right over the part after he goes back, when Spectre tells him he has time to go back. It’s very thin, and I tried to help convey that feeling of loneliness with him.

Listen to Kevin Riepl’s “Recruiting the Team” for JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS, via YouTube:

Q: What’s been most challenging for you in managing your musical touch to these projects?

Kevin Riepl: The biggest thing is making sure you have thematic material that is enjoyable to listen to, serves its purpose on the film, and is able to be worked into the different musical ideas of the film. Other than that, there’s really wasn’t anything over challenging in this one. It was actually a lot of fun, these three films, this last year. Going through a bit of work withdrawal right now, after three consecutive films like that!

Q: Coming to the end of CRISIS 1, where everyone comes together, how did that effect the music of all these characters coming together without pandemonium?

Kevin Riepl: At the end of CRISIS 1, I let go of the thematic material of each of the characters and was scoring the event that was happening. They all end up on the satellite platform and they’re disappearing, and at that point I’m just scoring the entirety of the scope of what is happening. As we get towards the end of the film and I’m concentrating on Supergirl and what’s going on with her, I sort of lean into her theme a little bit. You might be able to pick it out, but her theme, LEGION OF SUPER HEROES, plays a big part in these CRISIS films. So, it goes to her for a little bit and then at the very end it’s just choir. I stayed away from individual themes for the ending of it, to help covey the scope of the calamity of what was going on.

Listen to the track, “Destruction of Earth 3” via YouTube:

Special thanks to Kevin Riepl for taking time out to discuss with me his music for Part One of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS!

The soundtrack album to JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS – PART ONE is available digitally from Gardener Recordings, from various streaming and digital services.