It’s been a long time since a superhero movie score felt this epic. The last truly great one may have been Ludwig Göransson’s soundtrack to “Black Panther” in 2018. It’s been even longer since a Batman score felt capable of carrying the gravity and emotional range of its movie like this one does, though the Caped Crusader has a long history of gorgeous musical accompaniment.

Giacchino’s score seems to pay homage to Batmen past, with swelling crescendos that call to mind Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s “The Dark Knight” score and inquisitive, ghostly vocals that invoke Danny Elfman’s eerie, dramatic work on “Batman Returns.” This is a Giacchino joint to its core, though: it’s smooth and somber, shot through with strong emotion.

Without its score, “The Batman” would be a pretty movie about a guy in a hulking suit wandering around crime scenes. With it, it transforms into a film about the weight of legacy, about fear and love and the messy act of living in a world where bad things happen. Robert Pattinson’s Batman is a man of few words, and the Riddler stays muted and masked for much of the movie’s run-time, so the soundtrack speaks for them. The “Catwoman” theme is jazzy and elegant, but sadder than it first seems. “The Riddler” track stays quiet like its subject, before breaking into a string-heavy, frenetic orchestration that conveys dangerous instability. The album’s final track, “Sonata in Darkness,” could have easily gotten away with being a generic end credits accompaniment, but instead it’s a piece of music so sweet and complex, it gives me chills.

It only takes one great soundtrack to make it abundantly clear how long we’ve been coasting on just-okay music. For every “The Batman,” there are a dozen blockbusters whose scores sound piped-in and nearly identical. It’s only just arrived, but “The Batman” already seems poised to remain in the public imagination for a long time. That’s surely thanks in no small part to Giacchino’s stunner of a score.