‘Captain America: Brave New World’ Composer Scored Movie With Wind-Up Toys

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Laura Karpman has worked on a number of recent Marvel projects, including “Captain America: Brave New World.” The Oscar-nominated composer recently talked about how scoring the blockbuster gave her the chance to get a little unconventional; specifically, she created a theme using, among other things, wind-up toys.

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Karpman said she used the toys specifically in the theme for Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Sterns, aka The Leader: “His thing was using sound to trigger the reactions he wanted out of people, so I was just playing with a lot of different sounds and trying to bring them together with the traditional large Marvel orchestra.”

Karpman also used fuzzy radio static in Sterns’ theme, using her mother’s ’70s analog radio to create the sound.

It’s fitting considering what Sterns does in “Captain America: Brave New World.” Sterns has mentally programmed victims – including Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) – to act as his assassins. The killers are activated by the sound of the 1958 hit “Mr. Blue” by The Fleetwoods. The song is a callback to 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk,” when Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) and Sterns communicate with one another using the codenames Mr. Green and Mr. Blue.

Overall, Karpman says the score for “Captain America: Brave New World” was inspired by thrillers from all over the 20th century. She specifically singled out 1962’s “The Manchurian Candidate” and 1959’s “North by Northwest.”

“And the ‘Brave New World’ theme, which is the hero theme for Cap, Joaquin, and Isaiah, does have a ‘Mission: Impossible’ feel to it,” Karpman said. “That was something [director Julius Onah] asked for.”

For the titular hero, Karpman turned to the Southern roots of Sam Wilson and Anthony Mackie, both of whom grew up in Louisiana. She started listening to “New Orleans-style drumline percussion,” which also ironically wound up leading her to the Sterns theme.

“I thought, ‘Oh, it’ll be great for the Cap theme,'” Karpman said. “It’ll give it that edge that’s great for Sam and for what’s going on in the film. But it actually brought me to the conspiracy music, which was a surprise. That kind of tight drumming brought me that tight, wound-up feeling.”

“Captain America: Brave New World” isn’t Karpman’s first Marvel rodeo. She also scored episodes of “What If…?,” “Ms. Marvel,” and 2023’s “The Marvels.”

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