Interview With Composers Son Lux (Thunderbolts)

How Son Lux created a wholly unique sound for the MCU with Thunderbolts.

Fresh off the huge success of Everything Everywhere All at Once and it’s Oscar nominated score, Son Lux could have gone in any direction they chose. The trio’s next move was to score the 36^th entry in the MCU, Thunderbolts. As with their previous work, it is wholly unique and takes huge risks for a franchise score.

We sat down with the trio to discuss shaping the score, leaning into their previous work with A24, recording at Abbey Road Studios with the London Contemporary Orchestra and how the film has surprising similarities to EEAAO.

Chris: The film’s director (Jake Schreier) has spoken about how early on in the process you’d started working on the score, well before shooting. Can you talk us through that?

Ryan Lott: Actually, it’s similar to what we did originally for our first film as a band, which was Everything Everywhere All at Once. It was one of the things that we insisted, when we got involved in Thunderbolts that we attack it early on. We were super excited to do it, but we also wanted to get out ahead of it. That’s what we did with Everything Everywhere, and we had such a good time. It was really rewarding to have a truly formative influence on the way a film comes to life.

Usually, a score for a major motion picture is exclusively part of the post-production process. You’ve done all the prep, then you’ve done the production, and now it’s time to figure out the music and to be involved instead, on the pre-production side, is a privilege. It’s a lot more work in some ways, but for us it was well worth it. It’s awesome to be able to design the emotional sound of this film. I think before it was even shot, Jake was our true north in that process. Because if we didn’t have a picture to look at, we just had concept art. We just had to really rely on Jake to steer with our eyes closed, we had our eyes closed, and I think he did a great job. Ultimately, everything that he knew in his heart was going to land, did

Chris: This is obviously a much more introspective story than some of the other Marvel films. you must have really enjoyed diving into the psyche of these characters?

Ian Chang: Absolutely. A big focal point for this film is what’s happening internally for these characters, as well as what’s happening sort of between them, and it’s, you know, for better or for worse? I’ll say for better, the three of us, when we make music together, it comes out quite melancholy a lot of the time. It seems to be a natural inclination. Scoring a story like this, and to picture some of these themes unfolding and the journey that these characters are on, of, you know, coming from regret to redemption. It’s something that feels like a really full meal for us. It’s just something that we can dig our teeth into. It certainly meant we felt at home in that way, for sure, throughout the process.

Chris: This film it pulls from so many different parts of the MCU, from Black Widow to Ant Man. Did you find that was a challenge with these characters coming from different directions?

Rafiq Bhatia: I think in a lot of ways, were liberated from kind of like shouldering the weight or burden of any sort of challenge in that regard, by being able to place complete faith and trust in our director, Jake Schreier, who was just instrumental in stewarding us into this very, very complicated and rich and collective mythology that is the MCU. There is a degree to which when we got asked to do this, we were just a little bit confused, almost we were like, Whoa, cool. But us really, like, you want us to do this? A big part of what I think the thrust was. “Well, we want you guys to do this, and we’re looking for something a little bit different here, and a different approach, and something that feels new”. So, there are so many clear connections to all of these other parts of the MCU. 

I think people who are Marvel fans will feel very much, welcomed into and excited to see this little kind of planet inside of that universe that we managed to create here. I think it is a bit of its own world in certain ways. I hope that also means that for folks who maybe haven’t been out to see a Marvel film in some time maybe this a cool way in because it certainly was for us.

Chris: The action’s a lot grittier than some of the other films, I understand Heat was a big reference point?

Ryan: Yeah, Heat was a fun one. If we really want to make a movie that just feels like its own thing, but it’s also inextricably connected to such a broad spectrum of existing material, what do you do?  So we did have to spend that first stage of scoring just discovering our palette and discovering what it is that we’re going to draw on, not exclusively, but primarily, because the goal here was to make a movie. I think Rafiq hinted at this, which doesn’t require you to know anything about the MCU. I think that was a unique challenge. You don’t need to know anything about it, and yet, it honours the MCU. So, it’s kind of a Herculean task. For us musically, the same could be said. We both have to create a score that feels like it belongs in the MCU, and yet, if you were disconnected entirely from it feels great and totally right for the story.

Bringing it back to Heat, there were a couple of scenes in Heat where Jake pulled out his laptop, and he’s like, listen to this. Listen to how this works, the heist scene where they do a hijack, and the bank robbery. He’d be like “why does this work the way it does?”

Rafiq Bhatia: It’s that minimal insistence and relentless feeling to it.

Ryan: That was one of our touchpoints. Every once in a while, we’d be in spotting, and he would say. It’s like in heat, when blah happens.

Ryan: When it needed to play into the comedy, where he would say it needs to be like dumb Heat.

Chris: The marketing has leaned heavily into everyone’s A24 backgrounds. Did you feel the process was similar?

Ryan: Both films share what the demand for the music had to be. There was a huge, hugely wide spectrum, from full-on action to heartbreaking, tender emotion and comedy. So, in some ways, making the two movies could not have been more different. Ultimately, they did share that in common that they called upon many different versions of ourselves in order to get the job done the way it deserved.

Chris: Were there any particular highlights you had scoring this film, versus the work you’ve done previously?

Ian Chang: A huge one for us was the privilege of getting to work with a full orchestra, which is something we’ve never been able to do before, and not only any orchestra, but we got to work with the London Contemporary, who we are fans of. I have to say that after that process, it was just even more so, I, can’t sing their praises enough for being such an excellent but also open minded and adventurous ensemble led by Hugh Brunt, in this case. We recorded with them at Abbey Road, which was also another bucket list thing for us to do.

One thing that Marvel allowed us to do and took a risk with us on was that we had this idea when we signed on that we communicated to them that we were excited about trying to record the orchestra.

Typically, in the process of making a score, you record the orchestra at the end, after everything’s written and you’re basically finishing it by recording it. With this we wanted to do that but in addition to that, to record earlier on in the process, in a way that was more about getting raw ideas. Getting just the themes and things like that, and getting raw textures recorded. A big part of the way we work as a band is taking audio and bits of recordings and manipulating them as part of our compositional process. So, we were interested in engaging the orchestra in that way, rather than just being like recording it all at the end. That was really fun, because we got to do some crazy stuff with the orchestra and then added to the craziness on top of that by manipulating that audio and then going back to record them again while they’re hearing back their manipulative versions of themselves. That was a really fun and exciting process and experience for us that we’ll surely be doing again.

Ryan: When do you get to do that? That was so cool.

Chris: Was there anything else on Thunderbolts’ score that you wanted to cover?

Rafiq Bhatia: We’re just grateful to have had the chance to do it and deepen our process and experiment in new ways and grow. We feel like it’s another step forward for us, and we hope people enjoy it.

The Thunderbolts score composed by Son Lux is now available to stream, with a vinyl version available to pre-order soon