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Interesting topic. In my humble opinion, we could extend this very same reasoning to most, if not all, film music composed for Hollywood movies from the early days until today. Studios, producers and even directors seem to never want film music to be something deeply innovative or experimental. Well, in a sense, early Hollywood film music in 1930s (Steiner, Korngold) could be considered experimental just for the very complicated nature of synchronizing an elaborate piece of symphonic music to a picture with sound. Those pioneers really invented the technical side of this art form almost out of nowhere. Also, they experimented in finding a common aesthetic language that could be applied to every kind of film genre and most of them found a thread in the lexicon of late Romantic symphonic music, i.e. music already "old" by at least 30-40 years. I always think of early film composers like Korngold, Steiner, Newman, Rozsa, Tiomkin, Roy Webb, Hugo Friedhofer as artists who put their craftsmanship at the service of something quite strange and complex. It was a sort of act of blind poetry, if you know what I mean. Back to Williams, I think he's not an innovator in the strict sense of the word in musical terms. But it's the role of the film composer itself (especially within the Hollywood industry) that is not one of pure innovation. Film music as intended by Hollywood works mostly as an emotional trigger for the audience. It's a guideline that accompanies the narrative and gives support to the film's emotions, themes and ideas at the core. Most of the times it works on a pure "epidermic" level (i.e. to enhance basic emotions already on-screen) while on other occasions it goes much deeper, adding new dimensions and giving more significance to what we're seeing. Williams always operated in the sign of a tradition that has never been very much in good relationship with the world of avant-garde. He continued on a path which the people before him already went on by, because that's what a composer who writes music for Hollywood movies has to do most of the times. In many ways, film music can be considered "commercial art", hence it's something that's almost at the opposite side of innovation/experimentation. I guess Williams always felt comfortable with it, as this has always been his job and because he probably never had delusions of being a concert-hall composer full time. In 50+ years of career however he was given many occasions to explore a lot of different musical areas and he had the possibility to flex many of his muscles in a variety of genres and approaches. But what he mastered above anything else is the application of the symphonic lexicon to the film narrative. He didn't invent anything that wasn't already done before, but imho he pushed the art of orchestral music applied to film to a whole new level like only a few others did. I think this is quite an accomplishment.

Six years later, and Rick Grimes still hasn't found Sophia. Or a barbershop.

Yeah I can barely sit down. Karol