Not Mr. Big

In general I'm not really huge on Hook as a score, despite having many great individual moments.  Maybe if they kept the songs it would have made more sense but the thematic bloat and consistently sugary tone make it hard to enjoy as a complete score.  (compared to the more thematically concise Home Alone or the more tonally and stylistically varied Sorcerer's Stone)

In general I'm not really huge on Hook as a score, despite having many great individual moments.  Maybe if they kept the songs it would have made more sense but the thematic bloat and consistently sugary tone make it hard to enjoy as a complete score.  (compared to the more thematically concise Home Alone or the more tonally and stylistically varied Sorcerer's Stone)

Yeah, even the OST can be too much, but I look forward to getting the expanded edition so I can discover new favourite cues.

In general I'm not really huge on Hook as a score, despite having many great individual moments.  Maybe if they kept the songs it would have made more sense but the thematic bloat and consistently sugary tone make it hard to enjoy as a complete score.  (compared to the more thematically concise Home Alone or the more tonally and stylistically varied Sorcerer's Stone)

I don't think of the score theme as more generic, but I DO wish we'd gotten some of those song progressions in iterations of the theme for sure.
 

Looking forward to listening to this!

I find myself greatly preferring Believe to its film score counterpart, which turns it into a more generic "wonder theme".  The slight changes in accompaniment and melody make it a lot more heartfelt and with a layer of melancholy even.  
Reminds me of Remembering Emilie from War Horse or even parts of Schindler's List 
 

After the Rogue One and Solo debacles (to which Edwards still denies anything happened with the former, in spite of his "replacement" getting the Andor gig), I wouldn't be surprised if Lucasfilm applied extra pressure to maintain the facade that their productions have been smooth processes, even if it means letting blatant contradictions and people getting thrown under the bus through. Mangold can be given the okay to only say that he had a different concept in mind for the climax, but not for allowing JW's comments on the actual filming to be verified.

And yet what Mangold describes is nothing like what the rumors heavily insisted the original direction was. Hell, even the quote from Ford (who is way too far down the first article) only suggests the last scene proper being what they reworked, with not much implying that it was a considerable overhaul. So really, unless you can more definitively prove what the original shooting script had from someone who isn't fucking named DoomCock, then this will just remain a point of speculation.

OPPENHEIMER will win the Academy Award for Best Original Score, at next year's ceremony.
Trust me, on this 

The extended Battle of Syracuse really is awesome. Say what you like about James Mangold, or Rian Johnson, Alfonso Cuáron, etc but it always seems to be these auteur-ish directors that bring something a bit new or different out of JW. I don’t think I have heard that kind of Spartacus-style writing from JW before (if anyone has, kindly point me in that direction). 

Mine just arrived from the midnight mailman.  Hooray!  (or as they say in Harry Potter, Expecto Pantronum!)

The Fabel Thief

Training Montage is as far from Funk as you can get. Funk is something driving, something for moving, dancing. 
Training Montage manages to have no drive at all, it is so static, you cannot even march to it. Maybe it's a music for... building something with Lego. Don't know.

The Fabel Thief

On a script level, songs were always a part of this film.  The family was going to be at a school play where the kids in the play sing a song, the lost boys were going to have a song to chant while training Peter, and Maggie was going to sing to the enslaved children to remind of their mothers.  These were all songs sung in-universe, not the Musical thing where they are showstoppers with choreography and are for the benefit of the audience to get insight into what characters are thinking.

So Williams and Bricusse were hired to write initially just these three songs.  But Spielberg liked what they came up with so much, they kept writing and writing as he kept filming and filming, until eventually:
 
"I had nine songs," says Spielberg. "I photographed two of them and at [composer] John [William]'s request cut them out of the movie. John was the one who saw them cut together and said, 'This is not the right template for a musical.' So we abandoned nine months of work and I just told the straight story of Captain Hook." (source)
 
I believe by "template", Spielberg means that they did things backwards; to make a musical properly, you don't start with a completed movie script, then find places to stick songs into it.  You write the songs first that tell your story, and then you write the rest of the script around them.  So that's why Moira's Lullaby and Low Below were the only additional songs filmed and Childhood, Never-Song, and Stick With Me never made it past the demo stage.
 
And that's why only those original 3 songs (well, with Mothers being replaced by When You're Alone as the enslaved children subplot largely got dropped) are the ones that remain in the final cut.
 
 
I like your ideas!
 
 
 
Yes, this is a not a score where any cues were radically changed through revisions.  The biggest change is switching from Childhood to hinting at Mothers in the rewritten first half of "The Stories Are True".  Other than that, the revisions are slightly different versions of the same basic idea.  Going from a short Childhood with fun descent end-cap to full on Childhood with the full melody for the arrival in Neverland.  Delaying the start of the Lost Boys theme until they are seen after the closeups of the food for the Never-feast.  More elaborate fanfare for Peter's arrival at the final battle (and seemingly a longer take of Hook's reaction needing different music), more Lost Boys theme for their arrival.  A lot of the rest are just different ideas from different takes around the same time or shortly after (like Tink's arrival and the basketball game).
 
 
 
Me too!

I honestly cannot remember much about the movie...
I remember somewhat enjoying it but nothing about it really stuck to my mind !
The score however is delightful 
I was actually relistening to it a few days ago !
Love the Finale, that heartful opening oboe line and harp/piano part that follows is just beautiful
 

yet i still wish he had done Mad Max

We'll see IF he scores this 

We'll see IF he scores this 

I did and they were right behind me

John Williams made them as a joke to throw off JWfans.  Now every JW expansion is gonna have fake songs based on the score's themes

John Williams made them as a joke to throw off JWfans.  Now every JW expansion is gonna have fake songs based on the score's themes

John Williams made them as a joke to throw off JWfans.  Now every JW expansion is gonna have fake songs based on the score's themes

John Williams made them as a joke to throw off JWfans.  Now every JW expansion is gonna have fake songs based on the score's themes

John Williams made them as a joke to throw off JWfans.  Now every JW expansion is gonna have fake songs based on the score's themes