Twenty-three years separate the music from Batman (Tim Burton, 1989) and The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) with the respective compositions of Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer. If both composers remain faithful to a signifying design of the themes, Zimmer proposes a higher number of thematic materials, with the presence of an “identifying ostinato” for each of the three main characters, in addition to their own themes. Developed by a real team, “sound narration” is also a major characteristic of Nolan and Zimmer’s aesthetics with the elaboration, throughout the film, of a continuum of sound effects and music, in which what we’ve called “effects underscoring” constitutes one of the most innovative strategies. “Effects underscoring” is a compositional technique by which music is intended to create an emotional setting no longer to the voices, but to the noises, during sequences where sounds concentrate the dramaturgical meaning of a section through their intrinsic properties (rhythmic organization, timbral characteristics) The meticulous work on noises, adding to a better definition of sound effects thanks to digital technology, really “frees” music in its relationship to the image; we observe the concrete effects of this by comparing the synchronisms and the handling of the ostinatos (length, harmonic pedals, harmonic rhythm) in action scenes from the two films. While Elfman’s work is characterized by a vivid and detailed writing which emphasizes both the characters’ actions and the editing, Zimmer distances himselfs from visual events by privileging a greater musical continuity which mostly depends on what we have called “stem scoring”, a multi-layered musical composition that the composer or mixer can trigger or remove, depending on the image.