When Tony Scott’s 1993 cult classic True Romance was released, Margot Robbie was barely three years old, and little did she know that she’d walk down the aisle to its score. A refined choice of music, the score was composed by Hans Zimmer, one of cinema’s greatest ever. He weaves it in tension and tenderness to mirror the volatile love that is at the center of the film’s narrative. Its theme track, “You’re So Cool,” has a particularly whimsical feel built on a loop of mallet percussion and a minimalist xylophone riff that gives it an almost nursery rhyme-like quality that reflects the purity of the romance between the film’s protagonists, Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette). Theirs is a love story that blossoms between a lonely comic sales nerd and a prostitute in a dangerous world. A love that is as defiant as it is idealistic, much like the sonic paradox of the beautiful “You’re So Cool” that accompanies its most memorable moments.
Hans Zimmer’s Score Lights Up the Darkness of ‘True Romance’
From a screenplay written by Quentin Tarantino, True Romance is a star-studded, neon-soaked tornado of sex, drugs, and bloodshed. This contrasts with its dreamy score that floats through it. Margot Robbie’s choice to incorporate the magic of the score into her walk to recite happily-ever-after vows speaks not just of her fine appreciation of music but also symbolically to the film’s theme of love not being despite chaos. That, in fact, it’s the chaos that gives us a reason to wade through love. Tonal octaves apart from the grander works Hans Zimmer did with Gladiator’s thunderous horns and Dune’s primal chants, in the peculiar world of True Romance, he creates a soundscape that is solemnly playful in a violent world. While in the opening “Main Title” track, he pairs a brooding bassline with twinkling keys against imagery of the neon-lit bloody world inhabited by Clarence and Alabama, in the thematic “You’re So Cool,” which Robbie most likely walked the aisle to, he molds a moody, feel-good tune of defiance that becomes the lovebirds’ anthem. The film’s script quintessentially revels in Tarantino-isms—snappy dialogue, sudden violence, and a suitcase of stolen cocaine—but the track strips it down to its fairytale core. It offers True Romance a perfect tonal juxtaposition.
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Zimmer introduces the audience to the nostalgia-inducing romantic anthem in the opening credits as it accompanies the legendary names of the film’s collaborators: Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, and James Gandolfini, among others. It then fades to get tucked under Alabama’s introductory narration about the miracle of finding love in unexpected places. “That’s the way it goes”—she acknowledges such a romance’s rarity. But drawing from her own example, she concedes, “It goes the other way too.” She chanced upon true romance in the unlikely Motor City of Detroit, far from the “highways and byways” of her home in Tallahassee, Florida. This narrow path that she lucks out on is paved with danger, though, including bad people, like the cruel pimp Drexl (Gary Oldman in his nastiest portrayal), that she and Clarence must overcome.
Zimmer’s genius is in his poetic repetition; he uses “You’re So Cool” as a cyclical motif that mirrors the couple’s romantic journey—the good, the bad, and the ugly (violence and narrow escapes). For instance, the track plays when Clarence and Alabama first confess their love for each other and, in the unforgettable bloody escape scene. In between, the track accompanies the lovebirds’ key moments, like when Clarence arrives at Drexl’s just before their life-changing confrontation. Through these scenes, “You’re So Cool” lights up the dark world the film is set in. Just like the words in Alabama’s closing narration—”Three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: ‘You’re so cool, you’re so cool.'” The track’s ostinato is on a loop in your mind by the time the credits roll. Its unspoken lyrics read, “Love blooms in the unlikeliest soil.”
Margot Robbie’s Aisle Choice Reflects Her Bold Filmography
While Margot Robbie wedded filmmaker Tom Ackerley in 2016, long before she played the titular Barbie and her other recent roles, her aisle choice is an ode to her onscreen persona, which has the tendency to gravitate toward stories that weaponize chaos as a catalyst for transformation. Just like Alabama, who thrives in her stormy world, Barbie subverts the iconic doll’s plastic perfection and captures the zeitgeist of the need for more authentic representation of women and challenges societal expectations. Harley Quinn weaponizes anarchy. In Babylon, Robbie’s starlet claws through Hollywood’s Golden Age excess. In The Wolf of Wall Street, Naomi Lapaglia rides the wave of her husband’s criminality.
While Tarantino’s script wallows in bloodshed and betrayal, Zimmer’s xylophone loops and mallet percussion caution that love isn’t a sanctuary from chaos but a rebellion against it. Zimmer’s score in Robbie’s wedding dares us to find beauty in the storm, insisting that the coolest love stories aren’t the ones that escape chaos—they’re the ones that dance in its flames.
