Marvel’s Wolverine is as violent and bloody as you’d expect a video game about the least family-friendly superhero to be. Thanks to his mutant healing ability and virtually indestructible adamantium claws, the brutish killing machine does not hesitate to eviscerate anyone standing in his way. And the majority of the game is spent hacking and slashing your way through an increasingly robust array of bulky henchmen, deadly robotic Sentinels and cybernetically enhanced soldiers.
The single-player action-adventure also delights in showing off Logan’s softer side. Horror-infused side quests let him sift through past traumas and unlock previously-forgotten memories. There’s also an instant connection to fellow troubled mutant Jean Grey that grows more romantic as they team up to stop billionaire Bolivar Trask from hunting down others like them. Bet you weren’t expecting Wolverine to be making goo-goo eyes across a campfire after cleaning literal human flesh from his claws, were you?
“I love the feral nature of Wolverine as much as everyone but I also understand that his rage comes from his pain. There’s this conflict between his brutal animalistic side and something much more human and vulnerable,” composer David Fleming tells NME. And it’s his stunning score, streaming on all major platforms now, that marries these two contrasting sides so well.
The score has been a lifetime in the making
Fleming has an impressive CV. He’s behind the music of spooky mystery-comedy Widow’s Bay. He helped soundtrack HBO’s The Last Of Us adaptation alongside game composer Gustavo Santaolalla. And he’s worked on James Gunn’s Superman reboot, Donald Glover’s Prime Video series Mr & Mrs Smith as well as Blue Planet 2 with Hans Zimmer. Marvel’s Wolverine is his first full gaming soundtrack.
“It was a dream project,” says Fleming, who’s a big comic book fan and fell in love with the character of Wolverine at just eight years old. “I had known him as this grumpy foil to the X-Men thanks to Saturday morning cartoons, but the comic was so much stranger.” It started a love affair that’s still going strong today.
“The interesting thing about Wolverine is that he’s not a typical superhero. He doesn’t hide behind an alter ego, but there is this conflict between this lone wolf character and somebody who feels compelled to help people,” says Fleming. “I felt like I really understood the character and getting the opportunity to help define [him for the game] was really exciting.” Luckily, game developers Insomniac had the same vision: “They wanted to capture the full scope of his character, rather than just ‘Wolverine The Badass’.”
It’s a whiskey-soaked soundtrack that started life in the desert
As soon as Fleming got off the phone to Insomniac about working on Marvel’s Wolverine, he picked up an eight-string tenor mandolin. The very first riff he played laid the foundations for the recurring ‘Logan’s Theme’, which can be heard throughout the finished game. “I’ve lived with this character for so long, I didn’t need to read a script,” he says.
From there, he recruited some friends, packed up an acoustic guitar and a few bottles of whiskey and headed to a cabin in the Joshua Tree desert in southern California. “I wanted to capture this, sort of, dark folk sound,” says Fleming, who took inspiration from the music of Johnny Cash and Clint Eastwood films. “To me, Wolverine is more in line with a gunslinger or a wandering samurai than a superhero. He travels through towns, has a code of honour and is compelled to help people in need. The music needed this Western quality to it – and to create that, I needed to be in a room with real people. I needed the grit of a guitar.”
Throughout Marvel’s Wolverine’s two-year development, Fleming kept coming back to those early recordings. “Of course, we get big and orchestral with the soundtrack. We do go full superhero, but it always has this core of Logan-in-his-cabin. There can be a bombast to the size of Wolverine’s story, but his character is not bombastic.”
There’s more to Marvel’s Wolverine than the clawed bruiser
The game might be named after its fuelled protagonist, but Jean Grey is a hugely important part of the tale too. The forceful mutant has telekinetic abilities, which means she can fly, create protective bubbles around her allies and throw baddies into the path of Wolverine’s razor-sharp blades. In the game, she and Logan bond over shared loss and the feeling of being an outsider. “There’s a lot of loneliness to Jean, but there’s also a lot of power too,” says Fleming, who designed her music while thinking about the constant background noise buzzing around her brain.
That haunting electronic murmuring that can be heard throughout the key section ‘Red’ was created by harpist Lara Somogyi, whose husband produced her playing in real time during those early Joshua Tree sessions while the searing guitar licks come courtesy of guitarist Yvette Young. “The sound just came from thinking about what her character’s experience must be like every day,” says Fleming.
In fact, Jean is ultimately the catalyst for exploring Wolverine’s softer side, with songs such as ‘Twin Flame’ bringing the “dark folk” and frantic electronics together. “They’re both reluctant superheroes. They’ve gone through so much loss, they’ve both learned to push people away. There’s this sense of melancholy to them both,” Fleming explains, which is reflected in the music.
An important conversation with The Last Of Us’ Gustavo Santaolalla shaped the whole project
He didn’t speak to Gustavo Santaolalla about the intricacies of scoring a video game – but one conversation with the composer did stick with him throughout the process of Marvel’s Wolverine. “We were talking about The Motorcycle Diaries and Brokeback Mountain. He said how interesting it was that even though he’s done those Oscar-winning film scores, The Last Of Us is the one that most people know and are touched by. That was a real eye opener for me,” says Fleming, who treated his score for Marvel’s Wolverine “with the exact same seriousness as a dramatic film.”
Between Widow’s Bay and Marvel’s Wolverine, Fleming let his freak flag fly
The same day that Marvel’s Wolverine was released, Fleming won an Emmy for his work on Apple TV’s creepy horror series, Widow’s Bay. He was done with Marvel’s Wolverine before he started on the soundtrack for what’s become one of the most-talked about TV shows of the year, but he does see similarities between the two projects. “I don’t know if it’s just the timing of things but it does seem that people want something that’s a little different [at the moment]. People want to hear ‘a take’.
“I’m not really interested in genre, I’m more interested in creators having an interesting slant,” he continues, with Widow’s Bay delivering scares alongside the occasional smirk and Marvel’s Wolverine weaving a tale of cutesy romance in between brutal action gameplay.
“I love that both Wolverine and Widow’s Bay feel as if they’re creating this complex world. I feel very fortunate to work with people who don’t want to create a one-dimensional thing and I’m happy that the weirdness plays to more of my strengths,” he adds. “I think if I’d given Wolverine a straight-up superhero theme, it would have been a disservice to the character I grew up with.”
‘Marvel’s Wolverine’ is out now and the soundtrack is available to stream here
