Marvel’s Captain America franchise pivots sharply from its WWII origins to mirror more troubling contemporary history in Winter Soldier, with English composer (and Hans Zimmer protégé) Henry Jackman deftly echoing the shift in his music. “The most important aspect of this score is that it doesn’t follow the lineage of most superheroes,” Jackman explains. “When a heroic beat in a story is unfolding, I don’t hold back. There’s no moral ambiguity to defend freedom and [individual] rights. The music should be absolute. This translates to a theme that has to encapsulate aspirations and heroism, so it couldn’t be a traditional symphonic score.” Henry gives the villain Winter Soldier “extremely radical, non-orchestral electronic music,” part of a creative gambit that’s “50 percent production and all the tricks I’ve learnt from spending years in the record industry. But also the kind of symphonic/thematic/heroic music that all kind of merges into one musical, and hopefully coherent, piece.”