Top 10 movie scores composed by Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer has written some of the most iconic and memorable movie scores of all time. He’s both prolific and award-winning, with two Oscars and four Grammys on his shelf. Here are his 10 best scores (plus a few extras we couldn’t leave out).

Oscar winners

The Lion King (1994): Sure, you know “Circle of Life” and “Hakuna Matata.” But Zimmer’s score for this animated juggernaut incorporated those Elton John/Tim Rice earworms into an immersive aural landscape that won him his first Oscar. He’s also responsible for recruiting South African musician Lebo M, who voices the spine-tingling Zulu chant that opens the movie (below). Zimmer said later that he almost turned the gig down (“I did everything not to get the job,” he says) but took it to impress his then-6-year-old daughter.

Oscar-worthy bonus: The Lion King was the award-winner, but don’t overlook Zimmer’s other animated standout, The Prince of Egypt (1998), in which his Oscar-nominated score supported songs by Stephen Schwartz. He expressed anxiety about adapting the religious story; “The Burning Bush” was particularly troublesome, but he said later, “I think I pulled it off.” See if you agree.

Dune: Part One (2021): For Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi classic, Zimmer avoided watching David Lynch’s 1984 version so as not to be influenced by its Toto/Brian Eno soundtrack. He instead spent time in the desert, the better to incorporate its sounds into his score. He used female voices, percussion, and acoustic and wind instruments — including hybrid instruments that were produced to create otherworldly sounds. This innovation, which did as much for the film’s world-building as cinematographer Greig Fraser’s visuals, helped win Zimmer his second Oscar. Here’s the hypnotic “Paul’s Dream.”

Zimmer followed up with the score to Dune: Part Two in 2024; he composed about 90 minutes of music before the script was even written to help inspire Villeneuve.

Action movies

Gladiator (2000): The soundtrack to Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning epic, which Zimmer wrote with Australian singer/composer Lisa Gerrard, borrowed from Richard Wagner and Gustav Holst. (Indeed, he settled with the Holst estate on claims that he borrowed too liberally.) It is a masterful showcase of Zimmer’s powerhouse style, exemplified by “The Battle,” written in a frenetic waltz time. Are you not entertained?

Black Hawk Down (2001): Zimmer, teaming up again with Scott, said he avoided more traditional composition in favor of an experimental approach. “I wanted to do it like the way the movie was,” he said. To that end, he sent an assistant to scout instruments and sounds native to the African desert to help inform the score. He also incorporated vocals from Senegal’s Baaba Maal and France’s Denez Prigent, plus his Gladiator collaborator Gerrard. Feast on “Hunger,” featuring Maal’s haunting voice.

Pirates of the Caribbean series (2003-2011): Zimmer wrote or collaborated on the scores for the first four of the five-film franchise; after delegating the lion’s share of the first installment (The Curse of the Black Pearl) to Klaus Badelt, he put his stamp on the series in the second, Dead Man’s Chest. For “The Kraken,” the theme for Jack Sparrow’s nemesis, Davy Jones, he fed organ music through a guitar amp to create music he calls “very Lemmy from Motörhead.”

Swashbuckling bonus: This wasn’t Zimmer’s first voyage on the high seas. A decade earlier, he crafted the unforgettable music for Muppet Treasure Island (1996), building an adventurous score around songs by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

The Last Samurai (2003): This story of a Civil War soldier embroiled in a clash between Japan’s Imperial army and its samurai culture gave Zimmer an opportunity to fuse Western orchestral elements with traditional Japanese instruments, including the taiko drum for action sequences and the bamboo flute and the zither-like koto for pastoral passages. Hear examples of each in this soundtrack sampler.

The Dark Knight trilogy (2005-2012): Zimmer began a fruitful collaboration with Christopher Nolan in this three-film series that was launched with Batman Begins, continuing through The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The composer, who worked with James Newton-Howard on the first two scores, says he saw an “endless heroic theme” in the superhero origin story. Through talking with Nolan about the duality of the Batman/Bruce Wayne character, he developed the signature two-note motif that’s carried through the trilogy. Listen for the hint of flapping bat wings that open “Vespertilio” from Batman Begins before that distinctive theme enters.

Sci-fi standouts

Inception (2010): Zimmer said of his score for Nolan’s mindbender, “I’m nearly resentful of the way people are describing this music as being smart and intellectual. What I was writing was nostalgia and sadness. This character [Dom Cobb] carries this sadness all the time that he cannot express.” He upped the nostalgia by working snippets of Edith Piaf’s poignant “Non, Je ne Regrette Rien” into the score to serve as cues for the dream sequences. Zimmer also enlisted former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr to contribute to the score, vowing there would be no guitar unless Marr agreed. Here’s the result of that alliance.

Interstellar (2014): Nolan provided no script for his dystopian drama to Zimmer, giving him only a brief description of a father leaving his child because of an important job. In one night, Zimmer wrote a four-minute piano-and-organ piece that in his mind represented fatherhood. He protested that his piece was too “tiny and fragile” once he realized the scope of the story, but Nolan reassured him that it provided the heart of the film. The two also decided that the 1926 four-keyboard organ of London’s Temple Church would become the score’s signature instrument. Listen to the majesty it supplies to “First Step.”

Quiet dramas

Driving Miss Daisy (1989): The race-relations story is dated but Zimmer’s Southern-inflected, gently jazzy music holds up, contrasting nicely with his more bombastic scores to come. He performed the music entirely by himself electronically, using samplers and synthesizers; there are no live instruments to be heard. Here’s the main theme, “Driving.” You might swear you hear a clarinet, but it’s all Zimmer.

Debut bonus: Another in the quieter vein is Zimmer’s first major score, for Rain Man (1988). He used synthesizers and steel drums to conjure what he called the “jangly” feel of a road movie, nabbing an Oscar nomination and announcing that he was a musical force to be reckoned with. Here’s the main theme.