Joni Wiljami

Quite enjoyed the movie, that, all in all, is a heartfelt final chapter, and I came much more satisfied than with Kingdom of Crystal Skull, which left me very empty.
KOCS had : an annoying sidekick, didn't play the age angle, had a boring McGuffin, an atrocious photography, forced humor (a shocker), some frankly hard to swallow WTF moments, and some ugly fake FXs that made you feel you were not there..
DOD has : a great sidekick (Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the obvious MVP), makes the age of the caracter center stage, has a McGuffin thematically connected, is well lit (save some ugly green screens, more on that later). However, it does not have the playfulness of classic Spielberg (the one he actually still showed in "Tintin" but as said, was largely absent from Indy IV), a few more than exaggerated moments to be sure, and a few less than stellar FX/too much green screen as well (I fully understand this will put completely off some people, you're warned). 

I thought the introduction worked like gangbusters (save for the de-aging, we are not quite there yet).
As for the rest, everything is not perfect for sure - there are some good character bits and some overlooked ones - some bits are really not that credible - I am not talking about the inevitable fantastical elements from an Indy finale, more some "stunts" that are not stunts - a lot of the action feels unreal - again a little like in the previous movie - when Vic Amstrong was performing incredible stuff in the 80s, it felt so "real" and raised so much the stakes - well I guess we still have Tom Cruise (that, yes, is obviously not 80 years old).
The last half hour will be divisive, but i thought it was risky and welcome move and absolutely successful with a handful of great moments (despite some ugly green screen work) 
But , all in all, a movie with a lot of rhythm, care and love. Considering all the ways the movie could have gone south after Spielberg exit, my congrats to Mangold for making a Indy film that feels part of a whole and is not an indecent extra chapter. 

And the score certainly helped in that regard.
I managed to stay away from Helena's theme for over a year, it is a winner - the versions in the movie are much more dynamic than in the wonderful concert version in the End credits. There are obvious motives for the bad guys and the Dial as well, dynamic scoring that propels the movie and yes - a few  "quotes" (all of them of the album, which I found rather surprising, actually). 
I was relieved that the Raiders march wasn't overused (it is notably absent from some map cues), to be there just at the right time and favor new material - a forte of the Indy films. In the movie, the score is very much present, front and center, incredibly dynamic and propelling, carrying all the scenes and mixed pretty high! 
Let's never forget we are so lucky to have 91 year old Williams having scored this, hard to imagine it any other way.
 
My memory is that there was some good introductory stuff from the themes early in the movie (in NY) that may be missing from the album, but nothing major I would say.

It's probably for the early scene of 
 

The score is in parts better than I expected, in parts as I expected, and in parts dissapointing;
but the album assembly is borderline intolerable. Subtracting TWO arrangements of Helena's theme and two minutes lackluster Raiders March at the end, the score is presented with barely 57 minutes. Then you get carbon copies of Tintin and Last Crusade (?), and you are at 55 minutes of score.
This isn't the Fablemans, and it's not 1989 anymore, give this last JW score a proper f'n soundtrack!

I don't get a sense of closure from this album at all. 
It starts impossibly strong, gathers a whole lot of steam, then has a few storytelling tracks, tries to find a climax that never comes - then a few random cues, and Raiders March out of literally nowhere.

I understand that. But I see this from a different perspective. The casual Star Wars soundtrack listener will not seek any FYC promos or recording sessions that are listened to in closed backdoors.
 
And I see this from the perspective of John Williams, who puts the best material, in his mind, on his album.
And if he thinks that is the best music, I disagree.

Why not?
The only thing that we know for sure about the scoring process, that James Mangold said several times now, is that Williams originally didn't want to do it all, but contribute themes. And then he "kept writing". Probably out of duty to his second biggest franchise.
The shooting and cutting of this film was messy as hell, and he's fricking 91 years old.
Remember what he said about the Star Wars prequels (Episode III I think), "I initially thought my god, how am I going to write this much?"
And that was nearly 20 years ago, at the spry age of 70.
 
If he originally wanted to do themes because he deemed the entire movie too taxing, then did it anyway, and then the madness of cutting several Versions of the film, it would not at all be surprising if temp was recorded nearly verbatim.
Or if there was no more time and money to rescore, and Williams took the temp, like the Tintin piece, and slightly Indy-fied it.
 
The other possibility is that Williams recorded temp for the hell of it. And we know that this wouldn't happen in a regular John Williams scoring process. Especially not for Indiana Jones.

Just saw the film. Wonderful score. If this was Johnny's last one, thank you for all the music Sir. Love you. 

Just saw the film. Wonderful score. If this was Johnny's last one, thank you for all the music Sir. Love you. 

Just saw the film. Wonderful score. If this was Johnny's last one, thank you for all the music Sir. Love you. 

His "farewell" is omitting all the wonderful music you want from his OST, specifically because he knows it annoys you.

Just saw the film. Wonderful score. If this was Johnny's last one, thank you for all the music Sir. Love you. 

Just saw the film. Wonderful score. If this was Johnny's last one, thank you for all the music Sir. Love you. 

Just saw the film. Wonderful score. If this was Johnny's last one, thank you for all the music Sir. Love you. 

Just saw the film. Wonderful score. If this was Johnny's last one, thank you for all the music Sir. Love you. 

Just saw the film. Wonderful score. If this was Johnny's last one, thank you for all the music Sir. Love you. 

I just found this uploaded to the Disney Music Licensing website. It's not the fragment of the Raiders March we heard a few weeks back, this is an actual film cue.
 
Sadly we can only access 44 seconds via this website, and it sounds achingly sad. The release date is listed at 25/6, so this should come online imminently.
 
https://www.disneymusiclicensing.com/track/NzkyMDI2MzEtM2MxYWUx
 

 

If only there were a podcast out there that would be a perfect vehicle for this kind of discussion… like one that helps to preserve Williams’ legacy…
 
@TownerFan

From 4:09 onwards is a question about Williams. Mangold gives a wonderfully exapansive answer. I really can't wait to see and of course hear that opening sequence.
 
 
 

A representation of how ST scores were put together:
 

Taking the opening battle of TLJ as an example, it is composed of numerous short cues (more than 10, including the revisions and inserts, IIRC) that in the final cut of the movie get shuffled around like a child playing with Legos. Of course JW could never write something like the Battle of Hoth for it, from the scoring to the final cut too much stuff changed, so JW probably thought (or was told to) that it was better to write shorter cues that it would be easier to edit into the changing cuts.
 
On the other hand, the Battle of Crait from the same movie is probably the most coherent tour-de-force JW has written since, what, the jungle chase from KOTCS? The opening battle of ROTS? It's a much more cohesive group of action cues than anything in the ST.

I agree with Thor. The sequel trilogy is mostly made up of music that just mirrors events as they happen on screen. It's all very "Mickey Mousey."  The original trilogy and movies like The Last Crusade in particular have music that's a lot more coherent, focused and "concert-y" for lack of a better word. I think Thor's spot on when he says TLC sounds a little more pre-meditated or "written in advance" and I think he's also right that the difference between these approaches mostly comes down to the way that modern films are being edited and re-edited these days, sometimes right up to the last minute.
 
I will never understand how anyone can call the opening sequence of The Last Jedi "classic Williams" or a "musical tour-de-force." In my view it isn't either of those things at all. But I never expected it to be either of those things. John's changed too much and just as importantly, so has the industry.

Falcon Flight is rad and all but We Go Together was the one I couldn't stop listening to when the FYC first leaked out 

Hearing We Go Together in the theaters for the first time with no prior knowledge of the score was one of my best JW experiences.  A surprisingly sentimental piece for Star Wars 

Thor, by comparing this score to The Last Crusade, I meant the fact that there is one dominant new main theme and lots of action music. It's just a very "busy" score with a lot going on. And that's what I meant.
 
You wrote about TLC: 'It's like a string of different concert pieces, both on album and in the film. Dial, on the other hand, is far more in line with Crystal Skull, or the new Star Wars scores — i.e. ‘contemporary’ JW, with lots of small cells alternating and stacked on top of each other, like a puzzle. A short brass outburst there, a cymbal crash there, frenetic strings jumping around the scale. It's very busy, schizophrenic and - to be honest - very close to what I had expected".
 
Well, I just have this feeling with Star Wars Sequel Trilogy scores - most of the pieces at least - that there are a lot of different concert pieces that have a proper beginning, proper middle part and proper end. Of course, old themes return more often in Sequel Trilogy than The Raider's March in TLC, but this is due to the nature of the film.
 
I agree, however, that the mix of music and visuals is not perfect in Dial of Destiny, especially in the numerous action and chase sequences, so it's hard for me to say anything more detailed today about the accompanying music (other than that I really liked what I heard). And yes, I didn't hear another Anderton Great Escape or another Visitor In San Diego here. But like you, with DOD I got what I expected. And this is very good news for me and, I think, for many people who appreciate Williams' music from the last decade much more than you do.

I think TROS is pretty good, and the track Rise of Skywalker is one of the best concert version of a theme he ever did.
 
And were missing Lando Arrives, probably the best statement of the main Star Wars theme in the 9 movies