Words by Amon Warmann

When you’re watching a Mortal Kombat movie there are certain things you expect to see, from iconic characters like Scorpion and Sub-Zero to brutal fatalities. But there’s also one thing you expect to hear. The Immortals’ Techno Syndrome has served as the iconic theme song of the franchise ever since the original game’s release in 1992. Its inclusion is an unwritten rule that must be followed. 

Thankfully, Benjamin Wallfisch understood the assignment. Even before the composer - whose impressive credits include films like It, Shazam!, and The Invisible Man - officially came aboard the latest Mortal Kombat film, he knew that ‘Techno Syndrome’ would be a key element of his work. The result is a score that should please fans of the franchise long before the familiar “Mor-tal Kom-baaaaat!” is bellowed. 

When we caught up with Wallfisch for a chat over Zoom, we discussed how he worked that iconic track into the score, the four distinct, yet connected themes he created, and much more. 

What was the first instrument you learned to play?

It was the piano. My grandpa Peter was a pianist, and as a young kid whenever we went to visit he would sit me at his piano and put my hands on the keyboard, and I guess that was it for me. There's always been this association with family whenever I think of music because I was very lucky that my grandparents and my parents were practicing musicians. 

When did you know you wanted to be a film composer?

It was when I heard ET. I guess I was about 5 or 6 – I was so blown away by the power of that music and of course as a kid I had no idea what was going on, but it was kind of love at first sight. I definitely annoyed all my piano teachers, because I hated practicing, but loved improvising. I would just fall in love with chords and harmonies that I didn't understand, and just explore and make a bunch of mistakes and happy accidents. I can remember as a kid being aware that whenever certain harmonies and chord progressions came about, whether in music I heard, a piece I was learning, or chords I was messing around with, it would make me feel something very distinctive emotionally. That was my experience whenever I heard the music of John Williams or Rachmaninov as a kid and I was just fascinated by that. 

I was also always drawn towards the idea of using technology to create music. For my 12th birthday, my dad generously bought me a Roland MC-50 mkII hardware sequencer – this was 1992 - and a JV-30 Synthesizer. That was my rig for a few years, with just 8 tracks of MIDI and a tiny two-row LCD screen, and I would spend hours and hours just trying to make music out of this thing. I was just always drawn toward technology, but I still pursued classical training because that was what I was surrounded with at home. In my 20s I ended up doing a lot of conducting in the classical world, and I'm really grateful for those experiences. But I was always drawn to the movies and film music. Part of the massive draw to me for cinema is how larger than life it is, and how it’s so much bigger than just the music – how collaborative it is, and also the opportunities to break rules. 

You started composing music for Mortal Kombat before you officially got the gig. What made you want to start work on it so early on?

I got a phone call asking if I would be interested in meeting on the project. I've been aware of Mortal Kombat since I was a kid. I used to play it in the arcades in the 90s. It's just always been there. I was also really aware of that classic Techno Syndrome tune, which is intrinsically linked with the whole franchise. So the very first thing that came into my head when I got that phone call was how could I use Techno Syndrome as a love letter to the fans? When you take on a movie like that, the number one thing you have to do is embrace the fan base. Also, to not just do what's already been done but reinvent it and make it fresh. So really, the piece of music I wrote as a demo before I met on the project was an experiment for myself more than anything else, just to see if it was possible to completely reinvent elements of the Techno Syndrome track in a completely new way, with a large orchestra. I just wanted to just play with it to see if it was possible because I thought if I can't do that I don't think I could do the movie. 

So I started experimenting – I found when you slow some of those riffs down to a quarter of the speed and re-harmonize them there are all these interesting things that happen. And I suddenly discovered that actually, there are three or four themes that can come from the DNA of Techno Syndrome that you would never know actually originated there. So I put those ideas into this little suite, which was very rough. And on that first meeting with the director [Simon McQuoid], I played it to him, and we just hit it off straight away. I’ve found that when you’re meeting a director if you can have music to play it’s always helpful. It's very hard to talk about music. It’s better to have music to talk about. 

Did you get to visit the set? If so, how did that inform your work on the score?

I did! It's always such a privilege to be invited to set because not can you feel what it’s like to be in the physical space, but you also get to really watch the actors’ process to see what is going into these characters on a physical and emotional level. And also you get to talk to them! I was fortunate enough to have some fascinating conversations with some of the key actors in breaks, which was very inspiring.

How much time did you have to compose the score for this film?

It was actually quite a long time – I spent the best part of a year on it. I think that was mainly because COVID hit just as we were starting the process. As a result, things had to move at a slightly slower pace for a lot of different reasons throughout the production and the post-production. 

In a previous interview, you’ve said that “it starts with hours of struggle in a darkened room to come up with stuff”. How many hours did it take to nail down your suites and themes for Mortal Kombat?

I think I might have said that before I had kids! I have to get out of my darkened room much more often now. It's funny because I think over the years you learn to trust your instincts, and often even if the actual music itself isn't necessarily the music that ends up in the movie, those initial concepts are sort of the overall driving force behind why you choose a certain chord progression or a certain melody.

It took a while to figure out all the themes. There are lots of characters in this movie and they're all big characters with very distinct roles in the story and personalities and they all need to have their own musical identity. If you only do that with melody, it can get a little bit crowded, so you have to figure out ways of creating individual character themes in different ways – sometimes with a full tune, sometimes with just a motif, sometimes with just a distinctive synth growl. 

What I ended up doing was really mapping out two types of themes in the score. There are core themes that are derived from the Techno Syndrome track, and then there are completely fresh melodies. In the first camp, there's the Lord Raiden theme. He is the great protector who guides Earthrealm’s warriors and accordingly needed a theme that was fundamental to the whole idea of Mortal Kombat, so I took those first three notes of the famous Techno Syndrome riff, slowed it down, and completely reharmonised it. In some ways, his theme is driven more by harmony than melody, which means it was easier to plant throughout the movie in key moments, even if it’s hidden sometimes. 

There's another core theme which we called the ‘Legend’ theme. It’s derived from the second iconic riff in Techno Syndrome, and again when you slow that right down and reharmonise it, you surprisingly get this kind of massive soaring melody which works well in the horns – you hear that over the titles. That was actually what drove that early suite I played for Simon when I first met him. It's amazing what happens when you put a riff in slow motion – you get to almost examine its DNA, so you can see how it might be reinvented. This second Techno Syndrome riff also finds its way into is another theme which you hear in the ‘Living Hallway’ scene, it’s a kind of bubbling ostinato that keeps modulating downwards, which I used quite a lot too.

Then we start moving away from Techno Syndrome with what we called the ‘Arcana Theme’ which you only really hear in the last 30 minutes of the movie. It's much more heroic and climbs higher and higher, whereas the Raiden, Legend, and Living Hallway themes whilst still heroic, are a little more kind of steeped in the legend of Mortal Kombat and are a little more introspective. The Arcana Theme is more about Cole’s journey and the discovery of his inner strength, which kind of drives the story.

And then there is another main theme that is unrelated to Techno Syndrome, the Scorpion theme. You hear that for the first time at the very beginning of the score, played gently on a Shakuhachi when you see Hanzo Hasashi with his family. And then it evolves into this tune heard on brass for the Scorpion V Sub-Zero battle at the end.

And then, of course, there are a bunch of other distinctive character themes which are all new: Kano, Jax, Sonya Blade, Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Shang Tsung, Goro... they all have their own motif, melody or sound, and there's an interplay between them as the movie progresses. 

Was there any particular scene you were excited to score?

I think the big showdown moment between Scorpion and Sub-Zero in the finale because it's so iconic and so exciting to watch. The choreography of the fights throughout the movie is just so extraordinary. To score something like that you have to break it down into small segments, but you also want it to feel cohesive and logical so it works on a story level.

Did you immediately recognise that moment as the perfect time to deploy the full theme in all its glory?

Not immediately, but when it came to scoring that moment, there was kind of no other way. When the Techno Syndrome material starts at the beginning of the movie, it's very disguised. We wanted it to have a presence, but in a subtle way so it could then grow and become more and more like a character in its own right. Like slowly pulling back the curtain on the tune. I kept thinking about the ending of Casino Royale – which in many ways is kind of like an origin story for James Bond. The fact that they only used the iconic guitar riff at the very end of the movie was perfect, and it made for such an effective score and effective use of something so well known. We tried to use similar logic here. Everyone's expecting you to blast that famous tune somewhere, and you just have to choose that moment. What is the climax of the story? What's the big turn in the narrative? In this movie, it was the return of Scorpion and his subsequent battle with Sub-Zero. 

Yeah, I had a very excited reaction at that moment! By contrast, the first scene in the movie is initially quite peaceful, and I loved how your music reflected that.

It was a really bold way to start a Mortal Kombat movie. Massive kudos to Simon McQuoid, Greg Russo, and the other filmmakers who came up with that idea, because it sets up the movie as something that isn't just about the action and the fights and the violence. There's plenty of that and it's incredibly intense, but we need to care about these characters before we can really fully engage in the action and appreciate what it means and what's at stake. Beginning the movie in that way also gave me this opportunity to establish melodies where you can listen to them in their simplest and quietest form and then track their journey, even if it's under the surface and you don't necessarily notice that happening. 

A key element in all of the action scenes is the drums. I imagine that there are many different types of drums you could choose from. How challenging was it to find the ones you eventually went with, and why was it the right way to go?

A lot of it was driven by this idea of Arcana. To succeed in Mortal Kombat you need to have something which pushes you beyond what is humanly possible, and I found myself taking that concept into the drum programming. Many of the fight sequences were temped at about 130-140 bpm and it just didn't work. I ended up at between 180-200 bpm for much of the action cues which is where you’re kind of in the zone of sequenced drums. I thought it's okay to actually exist in a realm where the drums are sequenced because it's kind of in tune with the idea of Arcana and pushing the extremes of what’s physically possible. Having said that there’s a ton of live percussion in the score as well – we spent about 5 days with 6 incredible percussionists to beef up the sound, but a lot of the most distinctive drum material is driven by samples. I wanted to create a very dry and direct sound using a combination of different percussion instruments so that it wasn't too region-specific. 

Bloodlines are a big part of this movie. Did you have any discussions about linking Hanzo Hasashi’s theme with Cole Young, or did you and Simon not want to give the game away?

We did talk about that, and we made the decision to really not allow that connection to be made until the very end. The idea of transformation is fundamental to the story because Cole Young as a character is searching for his identity and his ancestry. So themes that transform were really important as a concept, and the overall structure of the score is very much driven by that. 

There's this beautiful exchange between Cole and Scorpion at the end just as Scorpion is about to leave, and I knew that I’d score that moment with the Legend theme. In the final act of the movie, you've had the Arcana theme driving things mainly, so hearing the Legend Theme again after quite a long absence is meant to bring the audience back to the idea of ancestry.

The Arcana theme is also Cole’s theme in many ways because you first hear it when Cole unlocks his power. It's been such a struggle for him throughout the movie to obtain that power and to become a warrior, and that only happens after he fully understands his lineage. That, coupled with the fact that it’s only when he is forced to defend his family against Goro that he finally discovers his Arcana and becomes a Mortal Kombat warrior. So the Arcana Themehad to be heroic but it’s also steeped in the idea of family and bloodlines. In that way, there is this connection between the Cole and Scorpion themes, but their music, they are deliberately distinctive because they have such different characters. 

I actually found I needed a big whiteboard next to me when doing such a thematic score like this, to keep track of how all the various themes are related. It helped with visualising how everything could link together. And of course, you can carefully plan things out, and then when it comes to scoring a scene the plan doesn’t quite work and you just have to go with what instinctively feels right and not be too precious about it. For example, the Arcana theme was something I didn't plan. It just came out of a need to be much more heroic and hopeful in the final act of the film, and then all the other character and story factors come into play. But it was a sort of last-minute choice, which completely changed the character of the last 20-30 mins of the score.

How much were you composing in the new studio for Mortal Kombat? Is that now a space that you want to use from start to finish, given that it has mixing facilities?

Actually, we were incredibly lucky in that we finished construction on my new studio about four weeks before lockdown happened. So I was able to lock the doors and hole myself up in here for about a year to write Mortal Kombat. All the recording was done via Source Connect in Australia at a great studio in Sydney called Trackdown.

And yes the studio is designed to be a place where I can write and mix my scores, but we also have a Dolby Atmos mixing stage, The Mix Lab, which is available for people to bring their own external projects to. I think Atmos is the future for music, and I think we're only just scratching the surface of what's possible. A lot of artists and album producers are fully embracing it now, which is incredibly exciting when you hear remixes of old albums or new releases. In Atmos, it's like a whole other emotional dimension is given to the music. I think inevitably, we'll start really embracing that in film music too. I’d go so far as to say it's perhaps as big a revolution as when we went from mono to stereo in terms of the effect it had on the listening experience - it hits you emotionally in a different way. Building the space was quite a big undertaking and it was about a two-year process, but I was very lucky to find an incredible architect in Peter Grueniesen, and Dolby was a joy to collaborate with. I’m very lucky to work there every day. 

I wanted to quickly ask about your score for The Invisible Man, which I loved. In a previous interview, you said “when scoring horror, it’s all about the timing and the give and take of tension and release”. The final track on that score – ‘Denouement’ – is all about release, but so much of that film is about restraint in terms of what to show, what not to show, and when to show it. Did that apply to the score too, and how good did it feel to write that track and get a moment for it to really shine?

Interestingly enough, I inadvertently started with that cue even before I started to score the film. When I first met with the director Leigh [Whannell, we had a fantastic conversation followed by a screening of the film in his cutting room that afternoon. I was blown away and went straight to the studio to start writing. I came up with a suite which I played to Leigh a couple of days later, and he immediately placed sections of it against picture, including the final shot of the movie with Elizabeth Moss walking towards the camera, which fortunately stuck and became the ‘Denouement’ cue. It was a piano theme that came out of an experiment I found myself doing with this idea of a tune that feels quite insistent, but is asymmetrical. So whenever it repeats it hits the underlying harmonies in a different way. As I was doing that, it just naturally started to build and build and ended quite an emotional climax with strings. I give all credit to Leigh for seeing how that music might work at the end of the movie.

You know, it's like I was saying earlier about trusting your instincts. That's why writing suites away from pictures is such a useful thing to do sometimes at the beginning of a process because it's like free-forming and you’re just allowing your own instincts to flow. Oftentimes, maybe 30-40% of it survives, and sometimes more, and sometimes it all goes in the trash! But whatever the case, it’s all useful even as a thought experiment. With The Invisible Man, I had about four or five weeks to write the score, so it was one of those things where I had to just run with it. Leigh is such an incredible filmmaker, and he really understands what music can do. To the point where even on the dub stage, he would take my stems and often transform them into something quite new to really fit his overall idea. He has a very distinctive style of filmmaking, and it was absolutely fascinating to collaborate with him. 

Is there any genre you haven’t worked in yet that you’d like to? Anything else on your bucket list?

I'm just always looking ahead and just trying to improve on the last score. That’s why I find it so hard to listen to my own music-making showreels is the worst! Each time I write a score it almost feels like you're studying again. I don't want to repeat myself and each movie often demands something new, even if it is a sequel. I'm incredibly fortunate and honoured to work with filmmakers across so many different genres, so it's just about continuing that and seeing where it goes. Every time I'm trying to just push things a little bit further and not to stay in my comfort zone too long.