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I think you confuse world-building with set design and matte paintings. The way the term is used here is mainly for the complete depiction of an ecosystem whose every tree, plant, bush flower and blade of grass is rendered in every weather condition – rain, sun, mist and so on. Which like in computer games has been created exclusively for this world. It is debatable if that is a good excuse for a fig leaf of a story, but it's still miles beyond Star Wars (1977) or Wizard of Oz. LOTR comes closer, but it's still mainly computer-enhanced location photography.

Old problem, eh? There is either a complete Lynch or von Trier brainfuck or Transformers Part 6. It's god's law there's no space in between!

Thank god, that spares people the nuisance of wasting precious mental efforts to make up their own mind.

I think that's just your usual backwards engineering: by that logic Cameron could film 'Mein Kampf' and you'd still be a happy camper. But we both know that once you set your (very basic) premise, every further discussion is moot, so let's leave it at that. On a more pragmatic note: doesn't Cameron have kids that tell him 'Dad, your old shit isn't cutting it anymore'?

Instead of going full hyperbole how it isn't 'revolutionary' why not instead just acknowledge it is really pretty awful on a storytelling basis (and Cameron takes his sweet time setting it all up). It's awfully lame and given what kind of time and money was put into it, it's a kind of sad achievement that it is as bad as it is. It's basically a 1-to-1 remake of the first film. The humans are greedy and ruthless, the Na'vi a delicate creatures in harmony with nature, the great conflict of fate: reduced again to the battle between mercenary assholes and a new John Dunbar (i grant Cameron the desperate but understandable move to bring Weaver back from the dead) But even more unpleasant is Cameron's backwards ideology, ca. Reagan era: the wholesome american family ideal, the enchanted view of Native Americans - in 2009, well ok, but again, not even trying to update elements of it is really something to behold, even stuff like 'Black Panther' is better at indigenous cultures. Avatar 2 is old postcards from the colonial goods store: the tatooed reef Na'vi stick their tongues out at you in a warlike uproar - nothing more than flat Maori impressions. All the kids stuff, the tussle between them and the local youth is pitched at the level of 50's rebellious youth flicks. Since the movie spends considerable time for these non-spectacle scenes plus human interaction, i find the excuse that the spectacle completely makes up for it more than dubious. On the other hand, it's a small wonder Cameron could convince me i had a pretty good time watching this. Which, in essence, means he's still the old Cameron. He just needs someone less old and crusty writing his screenplays.

I know my tastes have long diverged from younger fans in terms of what they expect of a good, even great film score, but especially movies this big have a lame, often even shitty score, so i don't know why this is so important? Is Horner's Avatar suddenly considered great art? It wasn't.

I would never put it this way (it's a movie for dummies, the 'dialogue' takes the cake). But even with all the dumb spectacle in front of you, i give it to him that, like De Mille, when Cameron parts the Red Sea, it's something to behold and i enjoyed the last hour very much. It's not something i think anyone should spend years and billions of $ for, but given the competition it still comes out tops.

That's the problem, good intentions do not do not replace talent. He doesn't deliver, probably also was not actively asked to (remember, the Horner score was generic, too, just with enough of his fingerprints to make it stand out).

Yes, embargoed of course. And eat my tongue, it gets to a rousing finish, meaning it's exactly the kind of empty spectacle you'd expect, but damn it if Cameron still doesn't deliver the goods in the end. Relatively speaking.

It's called 'anecdotal evidence'. I also like Succession, but a swallow does not make a summer.

The score is nothing. It's just a reworking of a few Horner cues and largely faceless atmospheric/non-descript underscore for the rest. 10 years before i'd have rolled my eyes at another danger motif appearance, the few times it pops up here it sounds like breath of life. Times have changed.

Squid Games? The Boys? Are you kidding me? The Golden Age referred to a time when there was a high percentage of grown-up tv made by grown-up intelligent people who conceived stuff like Deadwood, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men etc. And there was not a lot of junk on these channels. Now there is a lot of junk and occasionally something good like Midnight Mass, Bosch or some sci-fi series on Prime (not The Boys), but it's amidst a sea of dross. And i tried a lot over the years and it's depressing.

Perfect Storm The woodwind work is very nice, but the problem with Williams musically embalming the majority of Hopkins waxwork performance is that it feels like you visit a 5-story National Museum of American History exhibition and there's a neverending loop of that contemplative americana stuff. it's pleasant but nothing stands really out and after a while, you just don't notice it anymore. There is a whole lot of more interesting material now, the score ain't no masterpiece or anything of that sort, but it afforded Williams a rare opportunity to explore a meeting of different musical cultures and since he had to create so much music for it, there's just a lot to choose from.

Horner and the Shakuhachi. Horner and the Braveheart pipe of irish origin. So much Twitter outrage!

Which is his good right - but his alternative is half-assed 2020 pop and hip hop impressions. And since the movie obviously is set in that older era, it's kinda hard to connect the dots here - except you're in love with that shallow Baz-Luhrmann-let's just do something hip and trendy and hoping that no one cares anyway-vibe.

It's exactly what happened on a german Facebook soundtrack group recently: Goldsmith's Ghost and The Darkness was labeled 'racist' by a guy and lo and behold, the whole cultural appropriation thing was burning. It was a hoot, but i think it's exactly right that a composer in the 2020's will be held to another standard and that's also why so many scores for movies and tv shows sound like undigested source music. See above, in 1997 that was exactly what you did: skilfully (more or less, depending on the guy who wrote it) weaving ethnic colours in when appropriate (also note how Williams used the low male chorus from 'Amistad' for a completely different locale in 'Seven Years in Tibet'). But it wasn't found to be necessary that a dramatic score would have to function as authentic testament to a local region. So that's why the original poster's question if the main theme was 'real' african music would have to be answered 'no', from a musicologists's pov, certainly not. But if i had to choose between today's approach of limiting the narrative push in favour of authentic source music and the old way of the film composer making the idiom his own and integrating it in his very own narrative there's no contest: the old way, please.

It's a lot of very short cues and Barry is not exactly a composer where more is necessarily better. Even the old album was rather repetitive.

I prefer Nyman for the simple reason that many of his scores feel much more romantic and/or passionate. Can't get enough of stuff like 'The Claim'.

The Mancini idea for the main title (a Bach-like D-minor piece, very somber and foreboding) is sound, but Hitchcock changed his mind - probably because he felt he should offset the borderline sick vibe the movie gets into with the first long strangling scene.

This idea i consider a learning theme, it sounds like Cinque's mind adapting and assimilating the new culture he's forced into with some interest. It has that nice tranquility to it. Are you familiar with african music? (that's of course a much bigger canvas, but Sierra Leone would be something like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Sierra_Leone)

It did, and 'Escape to India' is a phenomenal final cue that is a little journey in itself.

He was talking about original african music, not music using ethnic instruments sounding vaguely exotic. Zimmer's Power of One would be a good example of real african music being used front and center.

Also, 'Falling Down' has an edge (the electronic stuff is blended most expertly) that his tries at traditional orchestral scoring didn't have back then. Only when he blended both his scores became really unique (and didn't sound like that kind of polished but faceless orchestrator stuff anymore that was so typical of the early-to-mid 90's).

It's just Williams writing a celebratory anthem and then embellishing it with indigenous colours. 'Prisoner's Song' is the only cue that sounds like african music.

This sounds as if Hurwitz never really understood the musical eras he was dabbling in. Deliberate maybe, but unsuccessful anyway.