Sharkissimo

Yeah, I wondered about that. I was listening to Black Sunday the other day (a personal favourite) and for the fun of it, decided to pop up a few clips of Rogue One, mute the sound and sync them with cues from BS. With the exception of the groovy Fender bass/hi-hat stuff, it worked perfectly. 
 
 
Now THAT is what Death Troopers should've sounded like.
 
Not Spaceballs 2: Electric Boogalo.

0:10 and 0:42
 
 One of Johnny's coolest moments. It's in 9/8, but it doesn't feel like it. That's largely thanks to the infectious two measure ostinato in the strings and low brass, which subdivides meter across two measures into a ratio of 5:4 and 4:5. A palindromic rhythm.
 

Oh can you remember those dreaded Zimmer chords in the Tintin pirate battle sequence? Or the wailing women in MR and ROTS? Oh the horror!

 
Karol

Of the current heavyweights I'd probably pick Chris Young. If you want exotic, grimy and grotesque, he's your man.   
 
I still haven't quite warmed to Beltrami, even after Gods of Egypt, but given his resume he'd be an obvious choice.

Yeah, I wondered about that. I was listening to Black Sunday the other day (a personal favourite) and for the fun of it, decided to pop up a few clips of Rogue One, mute the sound and sync them with cues from BS. With the exception of the groovy Fender bass/hi-hat stuff, it worked perfectly. 
 
 
Now THAT is what Death Troopers should've sounded like.
 
Not Spaceballs 2: Electric Boogalo.

More like "How to Train Emilia Clarke to Act".

It may be true that for someone with little to no real musical talent it is, at the extreme surface level, easier to fake the Zimmer sound than it is Williams', but from a perspective of real musicianship, both can be faked pretty easily.  And in both cases, the fake will never possess the real soul or expression of who it is imitating.  So I wouldn't say that Zimmer is easily copied, bearing that in mind.  Zimmer's music moves me quite deeply and the imitations don't, however similar they may be in a superficial sense.  Hence the many shitty knockoffs of Zimmer's music...and yes, of Williams' too.  You don't see anyone running around successfully mimicking either of those styles, not with any real substance.  As always, composers should want, and be allowed, to write what they are naturally inclined to.

I think most of it is organic, just prelaid rather than recorded live with the orchestra.
 

His Clones Are Very Impressive. He Must Be Very Proud: A Star Wars Story

Horner didn't patent the usage of the Bulgarian Women's Choir and neither did Williams with overtone singing. All of these much more prevalent in contemporary film scoring than you seem to believe.

Yes. That's exactly what "reactionary" means. Bravo!

Yes. That's exactly what "reactionary" means. Bravo!

Use your musical instincts, Loert. Let the NOTES flow through you.

I found this two Powell's cues to be similar; the themes' structure, the arrangement, the layering, the percussion loop (albeit slower in Solo)
I think this might be another Paul Mounsey arrangement
 
^ 1:25 onward
 
^ 2:15 onward
 

What a wonderful score. Well done Mr. Powell. 
 
 
No sense arguing with fools, @TGP.

Exactly. ROTS with its thudding daikos sounded more "RCP" (an epithet that's becoming more meaningless and this thread wears on) than this.
 
This is a lighter, airier prelayed percussion sound common to Powell, Arnold, HGW and their 90s contemporaries. The fact that it's elicited such a visceral reaction here is... predictable, yet somewhat amusing.

You seem unable to see the wood from the trees, and are obsessively fixated on the "synth sound percussion."
 
That ominous brass choir is Williams refracted through Powell's prism, the arcing string arpeggios (recalling A.I.'s Abandoned in the Woods) in that transitional passage are Williams but transformed by Powell into his own progression, the snappy trumpet punctuations are Powell channeling Williams... What more do you want?
 
It sounds great to my ears. I can hear the influences of Arnold, Howard and Silvestri, but that to me is part of a broad post-Goldsmith vernacular that can't be trace to one particular composer.   
 
I agree with Jack that the Train Heist cue is somewhat Arnoldian in the drum programming and syncopations, but the orchestration is so much more transparent. While I'm not an Arnoldphobe (any more), he does tend to bog down his action music in unnecessary filigree, and fussy cadenza-like passages over dominant pedals. This is refreshingly free of that.

I know, right?
 
 
"What are those awful RCP drums doing in a period score?!! Has Williams lost his mind?"
 
Fucking reactionary idiots.

Exactly. ROTS with its thudding daikos sounded more "RCP" (an epithet that's becoming more meaningless and this thread wears on) than this.
 
This is a lighter, airier prelayed percussion sound common to Powell, Arnold, HGW and their 90s contemporaries. The fact that it's elicited such a visceral reaction here is... predictable, yet somewhat amusing.

I leave for a few hours and find everyone quoting me and telling me what I think. 
 
If it hasn't been clear enough yet, I'll say it again -
 
I was expecting a score that was majority Powell. Of course with Williams doing the main theme, Powell was immediately going to be limited in his own material, unlike Giacchino who had 95% of his own music, and the chance to write his own main theme if you will. 
 
But even with Powell's material, I found myself rolling my eyes quite a bit at Williams theme being referenced countless times, because of it being in basically every track. I think it is overused. I know that Powell had no choice but to use it a lot as it's Han's themes, but I am disappointed overall that I find Williams A phrase to be underwhelming and it's overuse therefore isn't welcome to me. And my overall desire to have a Composer do the film themselves and not inherit the key aspects of a score from another. Whether it's the master or not. 
 
Others enjoy his RCP percussion, but to me it sounds like a Zimmer-obsessed teenager who wanted to "epic" up Williams original themes. I really really cringed when I heard 'Reminiscient Therapy.' I can't help my dislike for it, it was an immediate reaction of dislike at how Powell handled the many callbacks.
 
However, I really like Powell's love theme and I literally said "wow" outloud when listening to 'Lando's Closet.' I also like the aggressive villainous theme. Not sure what it's for because I wont be seeing the film, but it's slightly 'out there' for Star Wars and I dig it. There are positives for me, but overall I am disappointed.
 
But I guess people will now call me an idiot, which they have already done above, and tell me how trashy Giacchino's score is etc, even though I find his Rogue One score vastly superior to Powell's Solo. But to each their own.

I agree. It's also more "classical" a progression than Williams usually writes, one that, after the first chord, follows a typical pathway for harmonizing a lament bass (stepwise down from the tonic to dominant note). Haven't seen the film yet, but makes me think there's some kind of imminent threat (represented by the lament bass) Han maneuvers out of (represented by the triumphant entry of his hero theme.

It's the Chris Clemmensen Cult of the Melody. Film music fans who place an unreasonably high premium on hummable thematic material (and by extension its author/s) at the expense of other considerations, like texture/orchestration, harmony, diegetic role, rhythm, form,  development of said thematic material.
 
Talking about variations development, I love this little motive that Powell derives from Williams's Searching Theme. He takes its characteristic semitonal trill figure, and then sets its standard A minor harmony through David Lewin's SLIDE operation, arriving on an uncanny Ab major. In a SLIDE, the fifth (A-E) literally 'slides' down a semitone to Ab-Eb, while the third (C) is sustained. It's a distinctly un-Williams device (I associate it more with composers like Horner, JNH, Goldenthal and Zimmer) but it's a welcome (and perhaps overdue) addition to Star Wars' harmonic landscape. 
 
Another occurrence slightly later in the same cue:
 
 
Am - F/A - F#m

I know, right?
 
 
"What are those awful RCP drums doing in a period score?!! Has Williams lost his mind?"
 
Fucking reactionary idiots.

It sounds fine to me, and the voiceleading checks out.
 
In Am:
                 6   V6/iv    iv6      It6           Vsus (implied)      V (implied)      ->  6       iv      VII6      i
                 F   A/C#   Dm/F  F7(no5)   Esus (implied)     E (octaves)     ->  F      Dm   G/B     Am
                    [Secondary Dominant]     [Italian Sixth]                                                                   [Deceptive Half-Cadence]     [Subtonic Cadence]                                                                                                                                                          
 
You've got a deceptive half-cadence that resolves to the submediant (or an elided deceptive cadence), and an octave unison on the dominant (although the string figuration and harp glissando sort of 'fill in' the missing harmony). Beyond that, there's nothing particularly radical here in its phrasal structure or harmonic syntax, and you can find considerably more daring in many of Williams' cadences (see Frank Lehman's genus of chromatically modulating cadential resolutions).

I knew this was going to be a problem around here and I myself was worried the Williams stuff was not going to gel, but now that I've listened to it I'm kinda baffled that people have any issues with that side of it. It's funny that people are saying "He doesn't go 5 seconds without the theme!" because I found surprisingly long stretches without it, or just a very brief reference. Powell indulges in his own material plenty. The Williams theme is not given any unique treatment other than there's just more of it, all the new themes get their big versions and token nods alike.
 
It's really just used like any main theme of any score. A track like "Mine Mission" is fairly emblematic of my listening experience where you get 2 straight minutes of the new militaristic material, and then a sweeping version of Chewbacca's theme for 30 seconds, and then Han's theme shows up for 5 bloody seconds to function as a transition back into the military material and somehow the thinking is that John Williams is interrupting a perfectly nice track and Powell is insecure...