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Blade Runner: Out of the touch with modern audiences. Blade Runner 2: Right on, man!

There were a few other problems I had with those seasons, but these are the three major ones. I can understand your first point to a certain degree, but completely disagree with your other two.

John William's current styles are utterly incredible. I love listening to War Horse, Tintin, Munich, Memoirs of a Geisha. Some chunks of Crystal Skull also contain that great Williams, and I've fallen in love with the snippet in the Lincoln trailer. No composer connects with me in the way JW has done and keeps doing. While I think some of his greater works lie in the past, his current work is the natural, progressive development of it and from that perspective I find it fascinating. I don't see any particular point in time where his music is suddenly radically different.

Little Children

Well, if he knows music, he certainly knows how to hide it well! (except for a very few exceptions)

Neither would I. I'm personally fine with his dense action writing. Do I prefer his classic stuff? Yes. But the new style doesn't bother me as much as it bothers others around here.

well, i understood it like: self-taught= person who just learned to play and compose by experience but he doesn't really know what he's playing/composing and can't read/write music and ok, that "5 year old", i took it as a way of speech.. Did Williams start from 5 years old? edit: ok, I found it. He started from 7.

Well, yeah, I like a ton of other composers whose scores are fun to listen to. I just don't think they come close to Williams musically

John Williams style has changed, not necessarily for the worse even though many may think so, over the years quite a lot, whether by some inner change and feeling that he wants to explore other avenues or by demands of the assignments and climate of the modern film making. He has answered the modern post 2000 films with increasingly busy music for what must be many reasons. Emulating needed ambience and drive of temp tracks and times and styles and perhaps over compensating and in his own way of thinking providing propulsion, which has become paramount. As Brian Tyler mentioned in one interview when talking about the trends and changing of times, not even Williams has escaped the tropes of today's scoring, the big drums and need for speed etc. This translates in Williams' writing to layers and busy feeling, although it never becomes sheer thick soup of sound like of many modern composers. The music pushes you literally forward, the woodwinds, brass and strings in effect saying "go, go, go, go, go, faster, faster, faster!" It works better in some instances than others. Williams has also become prone, he was this before a bit, sonically painting orchestral sound effects to the movies he is scoring. The opening space battle of Episode III is a good example of this. He starts relatively clean lined and then the music becomes for long periods about either propulsion, busy, busy, busy or it catches small droids, explosions, fighters and gestures in a way that feels very nervous and twitchy. You could also say that the images are infused with same restless quality, which bleeds naturally to Williams' music as he probably has had his spotting discussions on the nature of the score and what he has to achieve. But mostly it seems to be pure drive the film makers are after, which translates into highly propulsive and insistent music, Williams' answer for these demands, building ostinati cells that can be easily manipulated and as a consequence has often left thematic development in the side lines in these longer action set pieces. Yes we are. Everything he does is a-okay. Man, I just read your signature, what amazing words.. where did you get the quotes from? From two recent Williams interviews.

Pray tell, what would be "boring underscore" in a score like Octopussy? Or Die Another Day? Jesus, Die Another Day is probably the most un-boring score I can imagine.

Yes... You know what they say: the longer the waiting, the bigger the disappointement...

Damn, why do these things always come out when I'm at work and can't listen?

The Star Wars trilogy epitomises Williams at the peak of his powers and provides the listener with significantly more than mere "franchise representation". Each score is a wealth of musical riches and endless reminders of the Master's aptitude and authority in the realm of scoring craft. I don't even think of Star Wars anymore when I hear much of it, I just hear the LSO sounding absolutely badass under the baton of Mr Williams.