By Cassandra Pinkney
Composer Laura Karpman takes great pleasure in creating musical scores for the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she says, because of Marvel Studios’ “massive love of music.” “The thing about the MCU is that it’s all of life. It’s every single emotion,” Karpman tells D23. “So, as a composer, working in the MCU gives you an opportunity to totally stretch out and do what we love to do.”
Perceptive fans also bring Karpman a distinct enjoyment while working on her MCU projects, which now include the feature films Captain America: Brave New World (2025) and The Marvels (2023) as well as the Disney+ series What If…? (2021–2024) and Ms. Marvel (2022). “A great thing about the Marvel fan base is that they pay attention,” says Karpman, an Oscar® nominee and five-time Emmy® Award winner. “They pay attention to what’s going on in the movie; they pay attention to themes. They’re engaged, and it’s so fun to engage with them and see how people react.”
For The Marvels, for example, Karpman engaged fans with music that incorporated sounds generated using “space junk” in order to create an authentic musical soundscape for a movie set in outer space. The score to Captain America: Brave New World has its own version of “space junk,” Karpman reveals, although from more down-to-earth objects. “There are actual wind-up toys in the score,” she explains. “There are these really crunchy sounds that create the sound of a ticking clock.” When combined with the other musical elements of the film, the buildup of these sounds makes for a high-strung listening experience, Karpman adds. “It’s this very, very tense music that keeps building and building and building.”
The same might be said of the story told by this newest entry into the MCU. In the first feature-length outing by Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) since taking up the mantle of Captain America, he finds himself racing to uncover the mastermind at the center of an international crisis—before temperamental President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) complicates matters any further.
That ever-building tension is a crucial part of the score and one of the reasons Karpman wanted to return to the MCU for this film. She classifies Captain America: Brave New World as a “political thriller,” a genre she had yet to score in the MCU before taking on this project. The film is reminiscent of classic political thrillers from the mid-20th century, she notes, and implicit references to those movies influenced the themes of many of the film’s characters. “You’ve got the conspiracy theme. You’ve got the Brave New World theme, which is the hero theme for this particular movie. You’ve got the [Dr. Samuel] Sterns [Tim Blake Nelson] theme, which is super creepy and taunting. And then you’ve got the President Ross theme, which starts out in this buttoned-up, sad world.”
In addition to the “taut, tight, and tense” nature of the film, the music also reflects what it means for Sam Wilson to take on the role of Captain America at this point, Karpman says. “The score is very contemporary. It uses a lot of synthesizers. It uses beats. It uses all the stuff that matches a contemporary Captain America. But it also has a classicism to it.”
Karpman has a fondness for Sam Wilson as Captain America and wanted to pay homage to this character’s roots in his first film appearance under this new mantle, the composer says. “Sam is from New Orleans and that’s the DNA of his musical story.” The heavy percussion heard throughout the film is a New Orleans drumline, a driving beat that moves the score forward and reminds audiences of the character’s history.
It’s a history that plays into an ever-evolving and often-surprising MCU. “The relationship between Sam and Joaquín [Danny Ramirez] is great and feels super fresh,” Karpman says. “You have great action and great characters doing great things. It’s certainly a wild ride!”
Captain America: Brave New World is in theaters now.