‘Thunderbolts*’ Composers Son Lux On the “Leap of Faith” Marvel Took On The Film’s Experimental Score

Some of the most striking textures on the Thunderbolts* score came from an unconventional source: The wood planks of a discarded shipping pallet. An unusual stylistic choice for some composers, this is not unusual for the score’s Academy Award and BAFTA-nominated composers Son Lux whom the film’s director Jake Schreier tapped to craft a distinctive, experimental sound that would match the film’s antiheroic spirit. 

Son Lux’s Ian Chang was on his way to toss the wood planks when he knocked on them and realized that when struck, they  sounded “dope.” He brought the planks to the studio where they became the foundation for some of the score’s driving rhythms—an ideal response to a question Schreier had posed early in the process: “What does it sound like to be propulsive and yet small?”

“Discarded treasures,” Son Lux’s Ryan Lott says of the wood planks, “which is like the Thunderbolts*, on their way to being discarded.”

For Son Lux, Thunderbolts* is the group’s first film score since their work for the music in Everything Everwhere All At Once, which was nominated for an Oscar for best original score. The film’s script landed in Lott’s inbox on May 1, 2023 — two years and one day before Thunderbolts* hit theaters Friday. Lott, who previously worked with Schreier on 2015’s Paper Towns, was joined by bandmates Chang and Rafiq Bhatia for weekly meetings with the director to pitch ideas leading up to principal photography.

“We were lucky to be involved before anything was shot,” says Lott. “It felt like having a sound for this film was critical to [Schreier’s] process of discovering what it was.”

Schreier offered three key musical references: the emotionally resonant orchestration of The Hudsucker Proxy, the tense bank robbery scene from Heat, and Dumbledore’s death scene in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

“Jake mentioned early on that this film was grounded in reality,” says Chang. “From the music perspective, he was very against defaulting to bombast and huge heroic energy — even though that does happen in the film. He was pushing us to make things feel more minimal or intimate.”

Son Lux are among the more recent in a line of recording artists who’ve also established careers as composers, joining the likes of Trent Reznor and Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh. The trio’s experimental approach contrasts Marvel’s grand orchestral compositions from heavy hitters like Alan Silvestri and Michael Giacchino, who’ve scored some of the franchise’s biggest films like The Avengers and Spider-Man films.

Son Lux focused on four recurring melodic themes and a set of modular sonic ingredients, which they manipulated to suit different scenes throughout Thunderbolts*. But the trio deliberately avoided crafting character-specific motifs.

“By not focusing on character, it allowed us to focus the energy on points of development in the story, which, arguably, are more important than what’s happening on a person-to-person basis,” says Bhatia.

As with Everything Everywhere All at Once, the film features an almost continuous score — 72 cues adding up to 99 minutes of the 124-minute runtime, including the credits, which feature bespoke music from Son Lux. 

“We could swing in different directions because the film does,” Lott says. “Emotionally, action-wise, it demanded such a variety of color and attitude. That’s what we can’t help doing every time we make a [Son Lux] record. We’re always like, ‘This, but also the opposite of this.’ That was the [Thunderbolts*] score for sure. Everything Everywhere All at Once was also very satisfying in that way. We hope to be prismatic musicians. To be offered an opportunity to be just that on a big stage, like a Marvel film, was really cool.”

Thunderbolts* afforded Son Lux the opportunity to record their music at Abbey Road Studios with the full London Contemporary Orchestra, a first for the trio. “They’re literally the sound we hear in our heads when we imagine an orchestra,” Bhatia says.

Still, their process remained rooted in the same experimental techniques they use when making records: Capturing fragments from musicians, refining them through improvisation, and developing them into complete arrangements. Working with the orchestra in real time, Son Lux guided players through prompts to extract textures that became the foundation of the score.

“It’s a tall order and a very experimental approach, and it really paid off,” Bhatia says. “We worked with the players to find ways to say ‘play what’s on the page like it’s a whisper, so we can only hear the clicks of your keys. Now play it like you’re getting drunk, and it’s getting worse and worse sounding. Now play it like the conductor’s going to point his baton at you, and when it gets to you, you freeze on whatever note you’re on until everyone’s frozen like a giant cloud. And when he comes back to you, start playing your part again.’”

Marvel supported their unorthodox, try-and-see method, which the trio calls “a big leap of faith.” 

“It allows us to start from the particular and build outward to the general,” says Bhatia. “When you do that, there are results you cannot imagine arriving at if you worked the other way around.”