Decline In Movie Scores Over the Last Decade

How about Hans Zimmer? The Intersellar score is fantastic. He's had a lot of other great scores.

Also Ex Machina, whoever that was. It was definitely unique.

ETA: One more from Hans in the last 10 years is Time, from Inception.

I actually agree. The overall quality has dropped because of the new synth/ambient indie movement flooding the industry. It's cheaper and easier to put out a score than ever before.

The true composers don't compose at the rate they used to anymore either, usually they work the bigger budget films.

Inception is close to 8 years old. It used to be there were 5 solid scores every year.

Hans Zimmer has always been very hit and miss. I find his scores in The Dark Knight trilogy to be very inconsistent. Some tracks are good while others are mediocre. The same thing goes for his Interstellar soundtrack. Inception was his last good, wall-to-wall soundtrack. Before that...you probably have to go back to Gladiator.

Sadly the great instrumental composers are getting older and thus the quality of their work is declining. The last great, wall-to-wall soundtrack John Williams did was Episode III.

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Didn't Zimmer do Dark Knight?

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Yeah, Hans has had some very solid work.

Batman trilogy
Interstellar
Inception
Gladiator
The Lion King
Pirates of the Carribbean
Days of Thunder
Madagascar

Many more.

He's on tap for Dunkirk as well, Nolan's next masterpiece

There's no decline, you're just remembering the good scores from the past, and giving them too much weight.

Go back and watch some Arnold Schwarzenegger movies (other than T2), or other films like that. Technopop.

We usually get 1 or 2 memorable movie theme/scores a year.

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What has happened to this industry? I can't remember one memorable theme in the Marvel films. The Dark Knight trilogy was nothing but a constant hum in the background. John Williams, Michael Giacchino, and Howard Shore are the last remaining composers that bring something to the table.

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Hans Zimmer is what happened. People in this thread want to praise him, and back in the Crimson Tide days he was quite good, but although his soundtracks add "mood" they aren't really that good. At all. Lately, he's been borderline terrible. And many, many composers followed right along. Everyone went synth, ambient noise right along with him. James Newton Howard, Jackman, etc.

Right now, the best classical composers are:
Giacchino
Desplat
Howard Shore - LOTR is clearly the best soundtrack of the past 20 years.
James Horner
Patrick Doyle - Thor and PotA are both kind of incredible


I like Beltrami, Tyler Bates and Harry Gregson-Williams, but they are still a little raw.

It was sad to see Goldsmith go. Silvestri isn't often iconic enough to carry the torch, but Goldsmith, Morricone and John Williams were the last truly great composers to work into the 2000s.

I don't like Zimmer and his acolytes they generally ruin film scoring and go for mood over character.

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I can't imagine watching Lost without that score hammering home all relevant emotions.

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Honestly Giachinnos' score is so good from that, he could put simply his score from that show alone and beat more composure's entire body of work.

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I've argued for years that an exceptional score can be almost as important as the best actor in a movie.

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Sicario was this