Datameister

I'm not sure I agree. I think it really straddles the boundary between them stylistically overall.

In their complete(ish) forms, TFA blows KOTCS out of the water for me. The new thematic material is so much richer, and it doesn't spend as much time indulging in the action music tropes that Williams so fully explored in the 90s to early 2000s. And then in terms of OST representation, the difference is even more stark. TFA got a pretty fantastic OST, especially considering the vast amount of music there was to choose from. KOTCS is a shorter score yet the cue choices for the album were much worse, IMO.

Probably temp. I never really picked up on that particular similarity either, but it's totally there. In any case, this is definitely a very Star Wars thing, more so than a general Williams thing, though it certainly fits within his overall style. The TPM and AOTC examples are especially prototypical.

I didn't even make it through all the samples before deciding to buy. Looking forward to taking in these three vintage Williams scores for the first time!

This'll definitely be a "listen to the samples to decide" sort of release for me. I haven't seen any of these films,I don't think, but I do love some good Western music. Might be worth the purchase for me.

I own none of these three in any form, so this'll probably be an easy buy for me. I'll take a listen to the samples first to be sure.

That would indeed be cool, but I do like the more subtle differences in arrangement, performance, recording, and mixing that we've gotten over the years. I do wish the prequel and sequel trilogies had unique recordings for each film, like the OT, but that's mostly just because I find it interesting. The films themselves are served just fine by one recording per trilogy. That being said, I certainly won't complain if somehow we get a (final) new recording for TROS!

I caught this on TV. Very cute!

It looks to me as though the entire thing is written in Bill's hand, not John's.

Something interesting I just noticed...it seems Bill Ross did some actual writing for TFA. Take a look at this glimpse of a cue from one of the behind-the-scenes videos. This seems to be the slightly different version of Kylo Ren's arrival on Takodana heard in the film. I hadn't looked too closely at this until now and I'm realizing the handwriting perfectly matches this bit of a COS sketch that was evidently in Bill's hand.

This is where his big franchise-y scores tend to shine the best. TOD and the Potter scores are way high up there for me. The TPM UE gets a lot of flack, and rightfully so, but it does present a wealth of incredible writing not present on the OST. When we eventually get expanded releases for all the Star Wars prequels and sequels, there's going to be a lot of great stuff to discover. Frankly, I can't think of a Williams expansion I've regretted purchasing. Some of them benefit more from expansion than the others, but as someone who's more into film scores than soundtrack albums per se, I really appreciate getting to hear the full scope of the composer's work on a project - or at least, closer to it than you get with a typical OST.

Yeah, not so sure about some of the choices for this list, but I'm digging the respect for those fellas!

I love that little logo cue...yet the film is better off without it!

Back to the Future, precisely because of the intentional lack of music. Perfectly sets up the impact of the guitar gag, after which we get "The Power of Love" - not score, but a perfect first song for this film - and then the score doesn't even sneak in till Marty's world gets turned upside-down by the entrance of the time machine. For that film, it's the perfect approach. I'll go classic family films for a couple of my more conventional responses: Mary Poppins and The Wizard of Oz.

Unless I somehow missed it, I believe the snippet in the second video here is new to us.