The Psycho Pianist

I'm not going to argue that Zimmer's major scores in the last few years have all been very similar, and on occasion quite disappointingly similar (ie. TDK:R); however that doesn't mean that they can't be appreciated on their own merit whatsoever. Inception, to me, was a fantastic score, and was a fine development of the synth work built up in Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and The Dark Knight. I also cannot think of a more suitable soundtrack for the film itself - something the Filmtracks reviewer completely fails to take into account. These are film scores, written specifically for the film - and they should be reviewed as such rather than solely on their standalone worth.

I'm just awaiting the inevitable savaging it'll get on Filmtracks. I can't work out why all the Zimmer reviews for the past decade on there have been written by people who clearly despise him and his style of music.

His duty as a reviewer is also to try and understand the timbre and style that the composer has gone for, rather than to dismiss it because it might sound texturally similar to some of his previous scores. John Williams scores are always orchestral, in the same way that MoS, TDK, TDK:R, Inception etc have all been heavily synth based and influenced. I don't feel that the reviewers ever empathise with that, nor even attempt to appreciate the emotion and mood conveyed by that particular style.

His duty as a reviewer is also to try and understand the timbre and style that the composer has gone for, rather than to dismiss it because it might sound texturally similar to some of his previous scores. John Williams scores are always orchestral, in the same way that MoS, TDK, TDK:R, Inception etc have all been heavily synth based and influenced. I don't feel that the reviewers ever empathise with that, nor even attempt to appreciate the emotion and mood conveyed by that particular style.

It depends by your definition of music composition.
Composers like Goldsmith, Williams, Herrmann, Rosza, etc etc are clasically trained, true "orchestral" composers.
Traditionally and for hundreds of years is is normal to compose music on your own.
Zimmer is NOT a classically trained composer, he has a pop music back ground.
In pop music, Rock & Roll, Jazz, Disco, R& B etc etc is is far more common to compose as part of a team.
The lead singer of a band if far from always the person who writes all the music and all the lyrics, does the arrangements etc...
Zimmer merely sticks to the method of working that he obtained from his background in pop.
Other composers with a similar background, like Elfman have moved more towards a traditional approach. Zimmer has not. And it has worked very well for him.

The fact that he's also a tremendously good jazz pianist (he was the best in Hollywood when he first came on the scene in the '50s) helps a whole lot. So his skills are surely a combination of an exceptional compositional mind and the kind of quick-witted improvisation a jazz pianist is expected to do. In the British interview for Empire Strikes Back, you can hear him playing away on the piano, trying out this and that. I imagine that his fingers can come up with ideas just as fast as his mind alone can.

The others are correct when they say that it's all Williams. When working on a film score, he indeed writes an average of 1 or 2 minutes a day, sitting at the piano with a pencil and a sheet of eight-staff sheet music sketch paper. The sketches include or imply 99% of the information found in the final score, including every note of the flourishes you're talking about. Now, in order to be able to write at a sufficient speed, he does use some shorthand and so forth. For instance, those flourishes and scales and runs usually end up using nearly the entire woodwind section, with octave doublings and voicings that are pretty straightforward. Williams will typically write out just a single octave with the direction WIND above it, allowing the orchestrator for that cue to divide it all up appropriately. It's not that Williams isn't capable of doing this on his own - on the contrary, he does his own orchestration when time permits. It's just that there's a fair amount of nitty-gritty stuff like that to do in a short period of time, stuff that's more about technical expertise than creativity. In other words, no matter which of Williams' orchestrators takes care of a given cue, it's still gonna end up sounding the same, because all the information is there (in some form) in the sketch.
Now, there are occasional exceptions. But it's usually pretty hard to know whether the changes were made by the orchestrator or by Williams making a suggestion after the sketch was finished. And those changes are typically pretty minor.
Long story short, it's all Williams!

All Williams.

No offense taken. Sure, I agree, I love variety in every film genre as well. That doesn't mean you can't have variety without being out of place. That little Newmanism doesn't feel right in its own surrounding bubble of a sample let alone anything greater.
Prometheus,
I am entertained by your cognitive dissonance. You negatively point out the "pointless synth shimmers, delayed pulses, beeps, taps, wails and what-not" in Night at the Opera.
And in the same post, not more than a centimeter below that same line, say "Loving the Newman cue, BTW."
I agree. It's just a little bit more on the friendly side. You're even more right when you realize the second sample in the video is straight out of Camille's Story in Quantum of Solace. Straight up temp-track rip.
You're absolutely right. The last actiony sample sounds like music you would find in a game. Actually, I think I can place it:

Dude, I like your screen name