The Big Picture

Collider speaks with composer Tom Holkenborg, known as Junkie XL, for his work on George Miller’s
Furiousa: A Mad Max Sag
a.
Junkie XL has worked on scores and soundtracks for popular Hollywood movies like
Deadpool
and
Mad Max: Fury Road
.
Holkenborg discusses his collaborations with filmmakers like Miller, James Cameron, and Zack Snyder, teases upcoming projects like
Sonic the Hedgehog 3
, and working with fellow composers like Hans Zimmer.

Tom Holkenborg, also known by his stage name Junkie XL, has what is easily one of the most exciting resumes of any composer in Hollywood. After working as Hans Zimmer’s assistant on movies such as Man of Steel, he made the leap into composing the scores for popular movies such as Deadpool, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and Sonic the Hedgehog. However, perhaps his greatest and most popular work is his score for George Miller’s Oscar-winning action masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road.

The composer returned to the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Australia to create the soundtrack for this summer’s prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which starred Anya Taylor-Joy as a Young Furiosa, seeking revenge against the insane warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), for killing her mother.

Collider was lucky enough to sit down and have a lengthy conversation with Holkenborg to talk about his work on Furiosa and reuniting with Miller for the exciting prequel. He also discussed his friendship with Zimmer, creating a new score for Zack Snyder’s Director’s Cuts of Rebel Moon, and teased his work on Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

You can check out the full interview below.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga The origin story of renegade warrior Furiosa before her encounter and team-up with Mad Max.Release Date May 24, 2024 Director George Miller Runtime 148 minutes Writers George Miller , Nick Lathouris Studio(s) Village Roadshow Pictures , Kennedy Miller Mitchell Distributor(s) Warner Bros. Sequel(s) Mad Max: Fury Road Franchise(s) Mad Max Expand

COLLIDER: How were you first introduced to the Mad Max franchise? Did you watch it as a kid?

TOM HOLKENBORG: Yeah. I did miss the very first one. For the longest time, I thought that Road Warrior was actually the first Mad Max and Beyond Thunderdome was the second. It was not until probably the late ‘90s I discovered there was actually a first one. They’ve really been part of movies I cannot get enough of, watching them over and over again. Weirdly enough, also part of that is the very first Dune done by David Lynch. I know he hates the movie, I know the critics hated the movie, but for me, it’s a very special movie. Things like Blade Runner, Once Upon a Time in America — just movies when you grow up as a teenager and early 20s. It was really great to get ingrained with that DNA. So, when I was invited to Sydney in 2013 to meet George [Miller] to talk about Fury Road, I was more than ecstatic. It was such a great start to more than a 12-year working relationship and friendship.

Tom Holkenborg Reflects on His Work on ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

I know Fury Road was stuck in development hell for so long, so when were you brought in? When did he first come to you?

HOLKENBORG: Somewhere halfway through 2013; I’d just finished 300: Rise of an Empire. The movie that I saw in Sydney had no beginning, had no ending. Basically, the movie would start with the crazy guitar player on the back of the truck with the drummers, and the movie pretty much would stop halfway through the action on the way back. So, that all still needed to be done.

Now I have to ask because you brought up the guitar player — did you come up with the music he also plays in the movie?

HOLKENBORG: George already recorded the guitar. There is a talented Australian metal guitar player, and he’s playing on this nonexistent real guitar instrument that was designed. He was playing whatever he was playing, sitting in front of that truck, and then George said to me, “Tom, when you’re gonna work on the guitar, you have to make sure that whatever you play matches what his fingers do.” [Laughs] I said, “Well, George, normally, that’s the other way around.” So it took me quite some time to figure it out, but since I’m a guitar player and I used to play in an industrial metal band myself, I produced a lot of heavy guitar bands, I knew how to get the sounds and I knew the riffs that I wanted to be playing. Then, when the movie was done, and you see the guy playing, and you hear the guitars, it’s almost like, “Whoa, the guy is playing what I’m hearing!”

You’ve worked with a lot of talented directors — Zack Snyder, James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez. George Miller’s movies feel so singular. Is working with him a lot different than working with, say, Adam Wingard or Zack Snyder?

HOLKENBORG: Any director is obviously different. What’s really unique about him is he has this really lovely, calm demeanor. He’s very, very intelligent and very articulate about what he’s looking for. He’s not talking in musical terms, he’s talking in what the music should convey when he’s listening to a scene with the music and what feeling he should get from the music. His sense of detail is just mind-boggling. It really is mind-boggling.

On Fury Road, for instance, we would play the movie in one go during the final mix, and he would then sit in his chair and address all of us in the room about what needed to be changed. But he wouldn’t even go through the movie to remind himself of what he was talking about. He would basically have a monologue of, like, four or five hours in detail describing, “Oh, there’s a sound in the left speaker. I would like that to be quieter. And then there’s this happening.” He would also address the sound effects like that, the mix, the music. He would even make notes that have to be addressed by the visual effects department — all out of his head and completely in order, and also completely in order of importance. He would really articulate how important this is or that. I remember when I had that meeting with him, I was like, “Okay, this guy is next-level when it comes to filmmaking and his view on this.”

That’s the second thing: he actually sees and hears in his head what the final results would be. While I was working on it with everybody on the movie, we’re all guessing what the end result would be, but he just knows. That’s another thing that makes him very special. Plus, he’s the nicest guy on the planet. He treats the 16 year old coffee boy who is an intern with the same, “Thank you. Oh, would you mind, please?” He does the same thing with executives of Warner Bros. It’s his way of being a human being, and it’s super, super impressive to see that.

Tom Holkenborg Worked on the Sound Mixing for ‘Furiosa’ up to Two Weeks Before Its Premiere
Image via Warner Bros. 

You’re talking about the sound mixing, and I read that Furiosa was the first time a composer really worked on the final sound mix for a film. Was that ever something that really interested you beforehand? How did that happen?

HOLKENBORG: My first career was being an engineer by choice. As a teenager, I started working in the studio being a proper assistant engineer, you know, rolling cables — well, first is making coffee [laughs] and then just getting lunch and then rolling cables and then putting up the microphones, and eventually just engineering yourself. Then I started producing bands. Later on in life, I produced so many pop bands and pop artists, from Madonna to Coldplay to so many different acts. When I made my own artist albums in the ‘80s, the ‘90s, and the 2000s, I would always engineer them myself, record them myself, mix them myself, and master them myself.

The same thing happens in film scoring. So, when I started that, I would record the orchestra myself, I would mix it myself — the whole thing. At a certain point, I said to George after Fury Road, “It would really be a thrill if you would consider me as one of the rerecording mixers on this film because I have a vision of what I would like to do with the music and the spacing, how it interacts with sound design, and back and forth.” We had an incredible time period. Rob Mackenzie is a very seasoned sound designer and mixer, as well, and I was the composer and the mixer. So, the two of us just really collaborated. Because he was dealing with his sound effects, I was dealing with my music, so at no point in time was I like, “You know what? Let’s just throw this music out,” or, “Let’s cut it in half,” or, “Let’s get rid of these layers and these layers,” because it’s my music. If there were a different composer for this film, I would get into a fistfight with that composer for doing such a thing. So, it was really liberating, and at the same time, an incredible experience.

It’s one of the things I’ve been explaining, also, to friends and colleagues, that from the very first inception of sounds in 2013, what the Wasteland world would be all the way up to the end of Furiosa, literally two and a half weeks before the premiere went on, I was still tweaking the very last bits of audio to make sure it was exactly as it was intended. To be in charge of that whole process from beginning to end is incredible. I call myself a full-contact composer, which means not only do I love to play instruments — I love to be physical with my hands and physical with my body when I make music, whether it’s drums, bass guitar, or synthesizers or the audio equipment, or whatnot — but it also says that you want to be in control of every step of the way, how the music is gonna be, how the music will sound, and also how it will be perceived.

Tom Holkenborg on His Friendship With Hans Zimmer

You mentioned being in control and working with other composers. On some of your movies, you’ve worked with other composers before like Hans Zimmer on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and you worked with Pharrell [Williams] and Hans Zimmer on The Amazing Spider-Man 2. It always fascinates me whenever I see the credit and it’s multiple composers. Are you guys always working together? Do you only bring your own piece of the pie to it? How does that work?

HOLKENBORG: Not always. With Hans, it was really funny because Batman v Superman was a co-credit, but before that, I was, for a few years, his right-hand assistant. We really liked each other from the moment that we met, and also really admired each other’s strength in music — this would be more my forte, and that would be more Hans’ forte. Me and Hans, we would just love to be in one room, and Hans would play the piano, and I would be like, “Hans just scoot over. Let me sit here.” He would be like, “Oh, Tom, get out of here! Go to the couch.” It was constantly back and forth.

Sometimes, you actually do not compose the whole time together because that doesn’t work. It’s about the inception of ideas, the inception of concepts. Once we had something, I would go to my room, he would go to his room, and work on detailing. You smooth it out and then you come together and you compare it again, and then it starts again. “Oh, can I sit here?” You know what I mean? The process starts again. It was really great.

How were you first introduced to Hans Zimmer? I read that you worked with him on some of the Christopher Nolan movies, as well, like The Dark Knight Rises.

HOLKENBORG: Oh, it’s very funny. He called me somewhere in 2006, and he said, “Is this Tom?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Hey, this is Hans Zimmer. Everybody tells me I should talk to you, but I have no fucking clue who you are.” [Laughs] And that afternoon, we had our first meeting, and we really clicked right away. We kept meeting every so often just to talk about things and aesthetics and music. We’re both synthesizer lovers and we love to discuss things like that in person.

At a certain point when he was working on Inception with Nolan, he called me and he said, “Hey, now I have something we can potentially work on together.” So, I did a little bit on Inception — not in the movie itself, but sort of like a marketing track that was used for CinemaCon, and I think, also, for Comic-Con and later online. Then, with The Dark Knight Rises, I was part of his team to work on the film. I really loved meeting all these different directors and also the studio. I really saw the way that Hans was interacting with the directors and interacting with the studio. That was the most important part that I needed to learn to become a film composer myself. It wasn’t as much the music side of things, it was more like, how does this industry even work in practice? I’m still thankful today that we worked together. We also became good friends in the process of it. We still talk regularly, usually about synthesizers. [Laughs]

Do you guys go to each other, even if you aren’t working on the same project? With his score for The Creator, I could tell that he was using the sympathizers there. Do you guys ever come to each other with questions?

HOLKENBORG: We would inspire each other with ideas. I remember even when he was working on Interstellar, which I had nothing to do with on any level, he would just call me in, and he would play me music, and he would ask me, “What do you think? What do you feel?” And I would do the same thing. I would be working on a movie, and then I said, “I’m working on this theme. I’m not quite sure. What do you think?” Then I would play something to him. That’s really nice when you have relationships like that with various composers. I still have that with assistants who used to work with me. They’re curious to know, “Tom, what do you think? I wrote this theme for this or that. Do you think it’s good enough? What is your feeling?” And I think it’s really nice.

Maybe to the outside world, the top 10 composers seem like really competitive persons, but behind the scenes, everybody’s really supporting each other. We all know it can be rough at times and it can be stressful at times, and it can be so beautiful at the same time, as well. So, it’s always great to share experiences and talk about how this went and that went.

George Miller Told Tom Holkenborg Not to Listen the Scores for the Previous ‘Mad Max’ Movies
Custom Image by Zanda Rice

Going back to Mad Max, I know that the first two had Brian May, and then Tina Turner helped on the third one. Did you ever look back on their work before going into Fury Road?

HOLKENBORG: No, because George told me not to. He said, “That was then. I don’t want anything remotely close to what we did then. That was then, now we need to do something completely new, completely fresh. You should go in it with a completely blank slate.” There was no conversation. It was so clear to him. He was like, “I do not want to use any old music in this one. No themes, no melodies, no sounds. Nothing. We should really build this from the ground up.”

That makes a lot of sense because the scores in that movie just add a lot to making them feel so singular and immersive, especially in IMAX.

Tom Holkenborg Teases ‘Rebel Moon’ Directors Cuts and ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 3’

With Zack Snyder, you did the score for the Rebel Moon movies, and we have those director’s cuts coming. Did you work on other music pieces that we haven’t heard yet?

HOLKENBORG: Yes. There was a lot of additional music that needed to be added to the R-rated versions of the film because the R-rated versions of the film are not necessarily at all the same versions you’ve seen, but just longer. It’s different. There’s a lot of footage in both of the movies nobody has seen. There’s, like, background stories about people that we were not encountering in the two-hour versions of the movie, so there’s a lot of really new material in it. It’s also acted differently. He would shoot scenes that were meant for the two-hour version, and then he would shoot the scene again that was meant for the R-rated version. He really put a lot of effort and thinking into it.

How did you first meet? Did Hans Zimmer introduce you to Zack Snyder then?

HOLKENBORG: I was working with Hans as his right-hand assistant on Man of Steel and that’s how I got introduced to Zack. So, Zack and I were constantly talking about the film and directions of the Man of Steel film together with Hans. There were lots of meetings with just the three of us. At a certain point, Zack was not directing 300: Rise of an Empire, but there were issues on 300: Rise of an Empire, and he called me and said, “Tom, are you able to replace the score within four or five weeks?” And I said, “Yes, no problem.” And that’s what I did. Zack was very happy with that.

Then Zack and I started collaborating more and more and more. When Hans didn’t want to be involved, after Batman v Superman, with Justice League, I basically took it over on my own. Enough has been written about what happened during the first Justice League, so I’m not gonna repeat all that again, but it really felt like a redemption in 2020 when I got the phone call from Zack, and he’s like, “Guess what? We can finish the movie the way that we want.” It was incredible. In a year that looked so grim for many around me because of COVID, and then out of the blue, we were able to finish Justice League, for me personally, it turned into a very exciting and very creative year. It was definitely colored by COVID because I was doing everything in a super small bedroom in the attic of my house, but it was an incredible process. Then after that, we did Army of the Dead, and now we did a few Rebel Moon movies. It feels like four Rebel Moon movies. You know what I mean? Not two, but actually four.

He also has that animated show coming out, Twilight of the Gods. Did you help at all with that?

HOLKENBORG: No, I did not.

I know that you’re working on Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Are you still in the process of doing that right now?

HOLKENBORG: Actually, I saw the film for the very first time yesterday. I know what the film is all about. I’ve been in contact with the director, [Jeff Fowler], which I’ve also known for a really long time. He used to work with Tim Miller at Blur Studios. With Tim and Jeff, at the time, I did Deadpool, and after that [Terminator: Dark Fate], and then after that, it was the first Sonic and then the second Sonic, and now it’s the third Sonic. It’s just such an exciting movie. It’s just really interesting. I have two young boys, and it’s really great for a composer that you can watch a movie that you actually worked on and they’re very excited about it. They’ve seen the first and the second one maybe 20, 30, 40 times. That’s how our young kids wanna do it, you know? They wanna watch it again and again and again. So, I’m very excited for them to see this one by the end of the year.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is now available to purchase and rent on VOD.

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