The music of The Marvels aims to evoke the silence of space — a seeming paradox that composer Laura Karpman approached with creativity and with the help of a deaf percussionist, Evelyn Glennie.
In an interview with Collider, Karpman discussed the making of the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film’s score. “Here’s the thing about Evelyn, she’s profoundly deaf,” she said. “When she plays, she actually doesn’t wear shoes. She feels the sound through her body, which is exactly how you feel it in space.”
The ‘sonic life’ and ‘space junk’ in The Marvels’ music
“It’s so crazy,” Karpman continued. “So we started creating sounds together that were not like anything that you have ever heard before. And because of the way that she listens, and it’s a very physical thing for her, I think that that permeates every aspect of the sonic life of this project.”
An additional trick used to get an extraterrestrial sound from the music was using objects in it that weren’t instruments at all. “…We went to a prop house in Burbank, and we rented space junk, literally stuff that fell out of the sky,” said Karpman. “We went there with a bow and various beaters and stuff like that, and anything that you could make a sound out of we rented and then used in the film.”
The Marvels rockets into theaters this week
In The Marvels, Brie Larson‘s Carol Danvers leads a new team which will come to be known as The Marvels, including Iman Vellani‘s Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel and Teyonah Parris‘ Monica Rambeau/Photon. The movie serves as a sequel not only to Captain Marvel, but also to Ms. Marvel, the 2022 miniseries starring Vellani. The character of Monica, meanwhile, was introduced as a child in 2019’s Captain Marvel. Parris took up the mantle as an older Monica in the 2021 miniseries WandaVision.
Nia DaCosta directs The Marvels from a script she co-wrote with Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik. In addition to the main trio, the film’s cast includes many new and returning MCU stars — such as Zawe Ashton as Dar-Benn, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Park Seo-joon, Lashana Lynch, Randall Park, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, and Saagar Shaikh.
The Marvels hits United States theaters on November 10, 2023. Tickets are available now.
