Warning: SPOILERS for Daredevil: Born Again season 1.At long last,Daredevil: Born Againhas successfully thrust Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock into the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s limelight. After much-publicized production shake-ups and a supposed late-game decision to (thankfully) make the show a continuation of Netflix’sDaredevilseries,Daredevil: Born Againexplores the effectof trauma on Murdock’s desire to suit up as the titular masked vigilante. Part legal drama, part superhero epic,Daredevil: Born Againmanages to tell a tense, gripping story that weaves verbal sparring in the courtroom with literal fistfights in back alleys and on rooftops.
To successfully rope audiences into every section of the story, the filmmakers enlisted composers who are no strangers to revitalizing old Marvel projects.X-Men ‘97composers the Newton Brothers, composed of Taylor Newton Stewart and Andy Grush, bring their signature flair to the new series while still honoring the original run’s music. The composers wrote very intentional music to reflectDaredevil: Born Again’s characters, from incorporating a choir to harken back to Murdock’s Catholic roots to creating constantly-moving string parts to emphasize Wilson Fisk’s scheming and inner monologue.
Screen Rantinterviewed the Newton Brothers aboutDaredevil: Born Again, although there’s never really enough time to interview the Newton Brothers. You can just as easily spend an hour talking about their choices of musical elements like sampled slams of a car door as you can their philosophies on how tension in musical composition reflects the science of how sound is made in the first place. In this conversation, the composers touched on all of that as well as scoring the finale reunion of Matt Murdock, Frank Castle, and Karen Page praised byScreenRant’sDaredevil: Born Againepisode 9 review.
Daredevil: Born Again’s Opening Credits Theme Sets The Stage By Blending Old & New
It Was About “Finding Out What The Show Wants To Be”
Daredevil’s journey into the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a fascinating one. First, Charlie Cox was re-cast as the character despite the fact that the Netflix series in which he starred was once considered not canon to the MCU. Then, Daredevil appeared inShe-Hulk: Attorney at Law,which suggested that the character may be presented with an entirely different tone than the Netflix series. Finally,Daredevil: Born Againhas presented a version of Matt Murdock and Daredevil very close to what fans of the Netflix series initially fell in love with.
The Newton Brothers had to take all that into consideration when they wrote theDaredevil: Born Againopening credits music, which incorporates John Paesano’s theme for the Netflix series alongside their own original ideas.“I think it’s finding out what the show wants to be,”Taylor Newton Stewart said about how the composers first approached the theme,“Is this a continuation and expansion, or is this a reboot?”
“Once we talked about that with the execs [and] the creatives,”Stewart continued,‘it made it easier to dissect what we wanted to do.”As for what that was, the composer shared that“We knew we wanted a Matt theme, so we actually started with that, and then we went into becoming Daredevil. So, it was [about] dissection elements and figuring out what we wanted to expand upon with bringing in organ and choir and all that stuff.”
The Newton Brothers Explain The Duality Of Daredevil: Born Again
“For Each Character, It Was Like Scoring Both Of Their Personalities”
Daredevil: Born Againis full of dualities within dualities. Not only does the series emphasize the differences between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk (an always-menacing Vincent D’Onofrio), but it also explores the internal struggles of both characters.“For each character, it was like scoring both of their personalities,”Andy Grush said.“Matt and Daredevil. Fisk and Kingpin. Poindexter and Bullseye. Everyone’s got their dual personalities … even the city. The city is a character, but then the city has an alter ego of what the people make up the city to be.”
“That’s fun to play with,”Grush continued,“the idea of tension. There was a documentary that Ryuichi Sakamoto was in [where] he talked about buying a piano that had been destroyed by a tsunami. People asked him, ‘Why did you buy this piano? It’s broken,” and he was like, ‘This piano is now closer to its original state before humans got involved and forced tension on it.’ That’s what’s so interesting about music: you have to have tension to create [it]. The science of sine waves has to be created by some sort of tension.”
That tension is explored through music differently for Fisk and Murdock. For Fisk and his darker side, Kingpin, Stewart explained,“over a period of time, it becomes this character. There’s an actual melody for Kingpin that plays, but we play it very little. You can hear it when he’s going to grab the white suit–the cello line brings it up–but for the most part, it’s not played that often.”Instead of relying solely on a melody for the character, Stewart said,“there are these rhythmic things that we’re doing–this constant tapping on strings–to give this sense of overwhelming tension.”
“Andy had this really cool idea to come up with these hits that felt very much like a lid hitting,”Stewart continued,“which is what he did–used a car [hood] or something. He sampled something crazy for it.”
While Fisk’s music was essentially a slow build into his final form as Kingpin, Matt Murdock’s was more of a navigation of grief that informed his series-long road to acceptance of his other half. Murdock, in Stewart’s words, was“very much soft and quiet, because Daredevil is bigger than life.”Andy Grush weighed in as well, saying,“he’s broken, but he has this rage in him because he’s broken … if you weren’t broken, maybe you wouldn’t get to this rage-filled place, and maybe if you didn’t get to that rage-filled place, you weren’t broken.”
The Newton Brothers Wrote Two Hymns For The Show
Image via Disney+
In Netflix’sDaredevil, audiences follow Matt Murdock into a church on more than one occasion. The character’s Catholic background is a big part of that show and, although it is less emphasized on screen inDaredevil: Born Again, the Newton Brothers drew from it for their music.“We really wanted to tap into that because that’s his backstory,”Andy Grush said.“We all have a place we came from, and that was where he was raised, and how he found his way in early adulthood, too.”
It’s fitting, then, that a choir is key to the sound of Matt Murdock’s music in the series.“Those voices, to him, are echoing his past and present, and we wanted to be very intentional with that,”Grush shared, before revealing the depth of their musical expression:“We wrote two hymns that actually play in the season, there’s choir everywhere, and then there’s organ. We even did, when we were working out how we were going to do the main title, a full John Paesano version of the OG theme on the organ.”
“It’s not actually in the show,”Grush said of the organ rendition of Paesano’sDaredeviltheme,“but it was a good barometer reading as to where we were going too far into the organ vibe and what’s just the right amount.”
The church may not feature heavily inDaredevil: Born Again,but salvation is still very much on Murdock’s mind.“The courtroom being his church was something we discussed quite a bit,”Grush shared. Stewart weighed in as well:“In the courtroom, a lot of times we would try to play that a little bit more like the church–[like] redemption. This is salvation in some ways. He’s doing the right thing. He’s doing things that Daredevil can’t do.”
The Newton Brothers Reflect On Foggy’s Death & Episode 1’s Marathon Opening Fight
Fans of Netflix’sDaredevilhave had quite a ride withDaredevil: Born Again.Whatever giddiness grew out of learning that the new series was essentiallyDaredevilseason 4 was seriously tempered for many by the death of Foggy Nelson in the first episode’s opening minutes.“I was like, ‘I don’t know how people are going to react to this’,”Stewart shared,“but the good thing is that it really [sets] the drive and tone [of the show] … it doesn’t feel very artificial. It feels very real, and I think that is awesome.”
Although fans online seemingly recovered from Foggy’s death faster than Matt Murdock did, they certainly hadn’t accepted it by the time the opening credits, and the Newton Brothers’ opening theme, played for the first time.“We got some hate for that,”Stewart shared, continuing,“[fans] were like, ‘God, they killed Foggy, and the music just pisses me off because it reminds me of his death.’”
Grush then shared an anecdote about what not to do when you meet the actor behind a recently killed-off character:“At the premiere, we got to meet [Foggy and Bullseye] at the same time, in the same corner. We were talking to them, and Taylor was like, ‘Is this awkward when you guys see each other here? You killed him.’”
“Yeah,”Stewart admitted,“That joke didn’t land as much as I would’ve hoped.”
Daredevil: Born Again’s Episode 9 Frank & Karen Reunion Was A Melancholy Affair
One of the most impactful scenes inDaredevil: Born Againis one in the finale that finally reunites NetflixDaredevilalums Matt Murdock, Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), and Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal). It’s an emotional, but not exactly triumphant, return.“We talk about a Matt Murdock that’s been broken,”Stewart said,“This is sort of a broken Frank, and as much as we’re wanting to see The Punisher, it’s really just the sadness of it all, and where these characters are now in their lives.”
“We wrote more of a melancholy piece for him that we like to call ‘Sad Frank music’,”Stewart continued,“and that plays throughout [his scenes]. In the scene you’re talking about, it’s focused more on a solo soprano. I think it was [meant] to bring back the vulnerability of Frank, the interaction with Karen, and what was happening at that time.”
“It does have a different vibe to it,”Grush said about the scene’s score.“We’ve been through so much when we get there that it’s a moment where it’s the end-of-the-day sort of vibe. If all the episodes have been a day, it’s like eight o’clock and you’re stopping by the bar or the coffee shop to have a tequila or tea with your colleague to talk about where the day went and what the future holds.”In Grush’s words, it’s about“taking the for off of the gas of the stakes for a minute, but knowing that they’re lingering.”
