Composer Jon Ekstrand Interview: Morbius | Screen Rant
After years of delays, Sony Pictures' Morbius is finally hitting the big screen. While it remains to be seen how much connection the film will have with Sony's other properties such as Venom, Morbius does look like it will be an exciting addition to the villain-verse. Helmed by Swedish film director Daniel Espinosa, who previously directed the sci-fi thriller Life, this origin story for The Living Vampire also marks the first major foray by Espinosa into the "superhero" genre.
The at-times eerie and often exciting score for Morbius was composed by Jon Ekstrand, who is a longtime collaborator of Espinosa's. Morbius' score is notable for its synthesizer-heavy composition, as well as its traditional horror influences. Ekstrand himself spoke with Screen Rant about his composition process, working with Espinosa, and what it's like writing music for an anti-hero.
Screen Rant: Morbius was originally supposed to be released in 2020, and then a few things happened. So, when was the last time you worked on the music, and did you make any tweaks thanks to all the extra time that you had?
Jon Ekstrand: I mean, it’s always like... Unfortunately, you never really have time to tweak stuff, even if they put it into a hibernation kind of thing – the movie. I was here in Los Angeles in November 2021 and that was when we recorded. So we haven’t done much since then, because that was the recording. It’s been kind of strange to have a movie that you’ve done so long ago. Usually, you’re working up to the premiere, but this time it’s just been held out for so long, and now finally the world gets to see it, so it’s pretty exciting. It’s been a little bit too long if you ask me. The thing is, what can you do when you have a pandemic? Just accept it as it is.
You’ve also worked with the director, Daniel Espinosa, a number of times now. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship and your collaboration? Are there any special benefits to working with a director so many times in a row?
Jon Ekstrand: To start with the benefits, I think there are definitely benefits if you work with somebody for so long. You start to have a language, and then it’s almost – like now, we don’t even have that language anymore because now we know each other so well, he doesn’t even need to say some things to me. I don’t need to say some things to him also, because he knows what we’d usually get from a talk. It’s the best way to work because you feel so much more free in your work, in a way. And Daniel’s always wanted us to explore new things for every movie that we do. And I think that’s one of the really great things about working with Daniel, that he’s always pushing me maybe a little bit out of my comfort zone for every movie that he does. And he does that to f*** with me a little bit also, because we’ve known each other for twenty-five years and we are really good friends. And of course, it’s hard to work with your best friend sometimes. We fight, of course, but we solve everything because we know we want to continue working with each other. But it is - sometimes it is a little bit of that.
Are you involved, then, maybe earlier in the process than another composer would be? Or is he more involved with the music side of it than another [director] would be, just because you know each other so well?
Jon Ekstrand: No, but we start talking quite early when he signs on to a project. We kind of meet for a coffee – he lives two blocks away from my studio in Stockholm, also, so –
Oh, wow.
Jon Ekstrand: Yeah. He’s mainly based in Stockholm, so he usually comes over, knocks on the door, and goes “Yeah, I’ve got this new project, do you want to work?” And then we just go out for a walk and have a coffee and talk about it. And it’s worth it, you know, to brainstorm, and think “What can we do with this?” and “What do we want to do with this?”
And when you’re composing, what’s your process like? Is there a specific instrument that you like to write on, or was there something you did to get into the mindset for Morbius?
Jon Ekstrand: No, but the mindset for Morbius, we knew quite early that we really wanted to do a synth-heavy score. And I’m a synth lover, I’ve been collecting synths for more than 20 years, so I have a pretty decent collection. I think the main thing for this one that we really wanted to do was have that kind of electronic foundation of the whole score. Of course, we recorded the orchestra, but I think we really wanted the electronics to be front and center on this one. But usually, I always start writing from the piano. I’m not a good piano player - I usually say I suck at it - but I manage to get it to work in the end, somehow! But I usually write from the piano.
For the music nerds out there, were there any specific synths that you really liked, that you went to for this project?
Jon Ekstrand: There was a lot of – it was a lot of different synths. There is an alarm sound that is coming back a lot, that is almost like a homage to the old techno hoovers in the ‘90s. That was the EMS Synthi, which is like a briefcase synthesizer that is handmade in England. Pink Floyd used it on their Dark Side of the Moon album. It’s like a really quirky old synthesizer. My wife questioned me when I bought that synthesizer. I got it maybe ten years ago or something like that, and she questioned it, like, “You’re buying a synthesizer that costs as much as a car, and it can only do space farts?” But those space farts it does are just amazing. The best space farts of all synthesizers. But now it’s finally paid off! We used it really much in the score.
You got your money’s worth!
Jon Ekstrand: Exactly, so now she can’t say anything.
With Morbius specifically, his character is obviously more of an antihero. So when you’re writing his theme, or the music surrounding him, how does that differ from characters you’ve written for in the past, or maybe a more traditional hero like Spider-Man?
Jon Ekstrand: I think we wanted to approach this in a way that – we didn’t want to do a classical superhero score. That was the first thing that Daniel and I talked about. We didn’t want to do that. And also, he is an antihero as you said. He is The Living Vampire. And he experiments with bats, which is kind of questionable these days, everything in the lab. We wanted to make him scary and almost portray him as a horror character, in a way. And I think that was really, really fun to do, having that approach, because I think it gave so much to make him darker. There is this thing in the music all along where it’s like “Everything is not okay.” We’re in the darkness all the time, and I think that was really like a red line throughout the score and throughout the project that we kept.
In listening to the score, there are one or two moments that are also – they’re darker, but there are some tender parts in there as well. Was that something that you felt like you needed to do to lighten up after all the horror?
Jon Ekstrand: Yeah. I mean, I’m from Sweden, and daytime isn’t something that we have a lot of during the winter, so I’ve noticed that I have a real tendency to go dark. So it’s good to have somebody that says, like, “Yeah, maybe we should try to lighten things up a little bit, so people don’t want to kill themselves after they listen to it.” I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to give anything up, but we tried to find a softer tone at least between two characters in the movie. And it’s important, because you can’t be dark all the time, because that’s going to tire the audience too. There has to be some kind of euphoric feeling, and there has to be some emotional substance. I think it’s important for a great working score.
And you started out as a sound designer, is that correct?
Jon Ekstrand: Yeah. Yeah.
So how do you think that influenced your composing style? If it did.
Jon Ekstrand: I think that in finding new sound sources and not maybe going for the most traditional… I don’t use softsynths because I think you’re just sitting -- I want the physical thing. And I really appreciate recording stuff in audio and then manipulating it, and I think that really comes from my sound designer days. And also, working as a sound designer, I think you learn drama in movies. How to build those drops and everything, what is needed, and so on. Because you get to work with a lot of directors in the sense that they’re not talking to you like an artist or something, as a composer, you see more “This needs to work in a movie” and “This needs to work.” I learned a lot about what’s working to picture and what is not. I think that is maybe my forte from having that in my background, really like “This is what the scene needs, this is what the movie needs.”
And you said you don’t like to use softsynths. Because you’re combining the synths and the orchestral music, how does that work? Are you doing the synth stuff first and then bringing in the orchestra later? Are you coming up with that first and then building on it?
Jon Ekstrand: For this one, a lot of the orchestra stuff, we wrote with samples – of course, that’s softsynths, but that I see as something like a necessity you can’t be without. Playing like strings from a soft sampler. So, all the mockups we did with strings and then I just started recording all the synths over it. And didn’t do that much MIDI programming. I tried to do everything, record everything, because there is something… when you record it, it’s like “Now I’m stuck with it," and I kind of like that. I kind of like it, I kind of hate it, but I think it gives something because you’re not sitting and nitpicking everything. It is the direct thing, and I really like that – I do really like, “Okay, now I’m doing this to picture. I’m turning this knob to the picture and recording it.” Doing that, it’s always this music by accident. You turn a knob and it’s like “Oh, my god!” but then you listen back to it and it’s like “Okay, this was pretty cool,” and then you save that. So I think there are a lot of things that come out that give it a little extra. And I think it's important when you work with synthesizers to have that because otherwise, it gets so sterile and dead. You want it to be a little bit alive and that brings that to it, I think.
Is that something you’ve done on a lot of your other films as well? Is that kind of a trademark for you at this point in your work?
Jon Ekstrand: Yeah, well, I mean, the thing is that I’m… this is probably the most… I did a TV series called Top Dog in Sweden, which is not about dogs. It’s a crime, kind of dark crime thing. That was also, everything was synthesizers, but I recorded everything live. So, I did multitrack recording in my studio, connecting all the synths and doing external sequencers, and so on. So I think it’s a thing that I’ve always been doing in a way, but not all the scores allow you to do synth-heavy scores. Because I’m not niched in that kind of thing, at least not now, that I only get to do synth scores. Which I’m really, really happy about. So, I really do, like so many different kinds of scores. Right now, I’m doing Lasse Hallström’s movie Hilma, which is like a small chamber orchestra, so it’s something completely different. I love having those different challenges and putting yourself very much out of your comfort zone, and I think you learn very much from that.
So, Morbius is in the same universe as Venom, and obviously people are speculating if Spider-Man’s ever going to show up - if that’s going to be a thing. So, when you were writing the music, I know you didn’t want it to sound like traditional superhero, but were you trying to be conscious of the music for all those other films to keep it in the universe?
Jon Ekstrand: No. No. I didn’t do that, because – we talked about it. We didn’t really think about it, we talked about it and said “No. Let’s do something different," because this character is also so different compared to the other Marvel [characters], and especially in the Spider-Man universe. This is a pretty dark character. And I’m really happy that we did that because then you don’t have to – I don’t know. For me, it was easier in a way, because then you don’t have to be scared of what they’re thinking, of what you’re doing with their characters, and so on. It’s like “No, Morbius is ours.” Now we do our universe. And it was so much fun also building that kind of universe for him, and not being affected by the others. I mean, I’m not saying that the others don’t show up, but we’re in the Morbius universe in this movie. So I think it’s good. If they come in, they come into Morbius’ universe.
You’ve done thrillers, documentaries, now also a superhero movie. Is there some other genre of film or project that you hope to do a little more work in down the line?
Jon Ekstrand: Yeah, I would love to do a classical horror movie. That, I think, is one of the things that I haven’t really done yet, and I really like those kinds of films and how you can be really experimental in the score world. So I would say yeah, horror movies. That would be fun.
And finally, you talked a little bit about it, but what’s next for you?
Jon Ekstrand: After this I’m going to do, well, I’m working on it now… I’m going back on Wednesday to my studio to work on Lasse Hallström’s film biopic about the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint. Which is something completely different from Morbius. And I really like that, to do different genres. And then, after that, Daniel Espinosa who’s doing this is doing a European film called Madame Luna. They’re going to start shooting during the summer, so I’m probably going to start up in August or something like that. And then I have a couple of other, two other Danish projects, because I work quite a lot in Denmark also, which I really like, because I think they’re… don’t tell the Swedes, but I think they’re a little bit better than the Swedes at making movies.