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Why are you all defending Johannson? Please explain your credentials for liking his work. Prisoners is great, The Beast from Sicario is an Oscar nominated SOUND-EFFECT event. Why do you champion a man you would have castigated in the past? Zimmer is cancer nowadays, but if he gets interested, there is some real innovation done. A bit like Vangelis.

Why do we not appreciate Folk more - he literally is the master of epic action scoring, yo: https://open.spotify.com/track/2PpydhiRW3QDjmfT2UGpEC

Is Ramin Djawadi the worst action composer of all time? Probably considering the hamfisted casio wank he has done for GOT. Yes, he pulls himself out of the stupor for a couple of choral cues a season but the battle source music - fuck. A computer game designer in darkest Siberia would reject that crap. How is he allowed to get away with this.

Yes, but if it means a bunch of stingers of Kevin/Dennis looking moody, does it matter that much? The tracklisting is okay but there really is very little new music.

Kramer is a seriously talented composer with proper orchestrational flare. Don't take him down, he is a fan and a seriously good guy. Support all he does - Comdrad Detektiv is great but it means that Joe is working Channing Tatum and Joe Gordon Levitt. He is a good guy and he needs a break outside of Christopher McQuarrie and Mad Tom. And he is a motherfucker of a composer. Just listen to Solomon Lane.

Has anyone got this release? Sure, it is balls-out awesome as a score but is there a need for a 2DC release?

Wow, that is actually a very bad poster. What is this - 2002 with Harry Gregson Williams providing a spastic score to Tony Scott's frantic editing? Or Villeneuve being challenged by the studio. Well, Johannson will do fine, as will Wallfisch - both are capable composers and as long as Balfe, Kaczynski etc. or any of the RCP, are banned this will be great.

Thanks Jay for being so courteous about my contribution to analysing this awesome score. I am afraid I don't have much to say about the themes outside. In the film, they follow a very typical structure - Valerian does something heroic, or sulks in a heroic manner, his theme etc. The film is great by the way. Proper scifi with worldbuilding that works. Besson could have rethought his choice to cast DeHaan as the lead as, while he is a fine actor, he does not have the levity required for this role. He still tries and it works at times. Delvevigne is much, much better. I am more concerned with Desplat the composer who seems to get a lot of flak for being too arty or not exciting enough. Well, it does not get any more blockbusterish-colourful and thematic than this. Once you see the film, the themes are obvious though labelling one of the final tracks as The City of a Thousand Planets is misleading. Yes, this is very clearly not the rejected score to Rogue One. While Giacchino does a fine job, clearly Desplat is much superior in the fun stakes (bizarrely, considering his reputation) and providing action highlights that are dynamic and thematic. Valerian sounds much more like a Jerry Goldsmith score from the late 80s, early 90s (without sounding anything like one!) than anything Giacchino's done. It sounds cool and fun.

If you don't enjoy any of the scores I mentioned, maybe it's time for you to have a listen. So Disco Stu and Jay lack a proper understanding of 90s scores - wow - I am sad for you.

This is such a fantastic score - exciting, exuberant, bombastic, thematic. Why are you lot not celebrating this masterpiece? This is literally the only good score this year! The themes are awesome but how about the sly references to all our favourite composers? Take Showtime for example from 1:53 onwards - if that is not a Demolition Man homage, well..... Spaceship Chase - 1990s Trevor Jones brass work in Last of the Mohicans and especially Freejack 1:55-3:03. Pearls World - Beastmaster 2, Robert Folk 4:40 - 5:20 This guy knows how awesome film scoring was in the 1990s and he is an Oscar winner and a geek.

How much more new music is there in Waterworld? The old album, even at a 60 minute running time, was comprehensive.

My battles with MG are prolonged. I still cannot understand the recording processes he uses - yes, a 70s child will press for a nostalgic sound. But how does this fit with the MG team when Wachowskis demand a proper score or Kathleen Kennedy stops the recording manwanking that MG implements - surely someone out there will say - 'Hey Mike, why does this sound like shit?'. Regardless, I have spent the last week listening to MG scores. And this stuff works. Jupiter Ascending will be known as Krull for orchestral mayhem in years to come. Speed Racer is awesome, and the score for the latest Planet is just astonoshing.

Seriously, is this where orchestral music is nowadays? Random Stalling intervals and bad discordant moves dictated by misguided obligations to a sound and a recording style long since past. And why does it have to sound so frigging cheap? These are multimillion investments and the score sounds like a Don Peake band for ABC in 1981.

Well, let's hope that the right winging Debney never gets to touch this. Not sure why Favreau sticks around with this militant republican. Mancina will do great re-arrangements of the work, or they can go back to Zimmer.

Giacchino is okay as the composer for this - he can do good, flexible fun as in Speed Racer. Themes are also great now that Marvel has decided to pay attention to this angle. But two things make him one of the worst composers out there: 1. The silly recording quality on album. Yes, he grew up in the early 70s when everything was mono and closemiked. Does it mean he has to keep victimising the huge orchestras he commands with the same limitations nowadays - not in the films, on cd? Seriously, his work sounds like utter shite because of the recording quality. Check out the piece he did for Cloverfield that was not constrained by the mania of his usual sound enforcer - great sounding stuff 2. Action music. He does well on this front and I used to love a lot of his VG work. Nowadays, it gets into that repetitive, dry groove that Brian Tyler does endlessly, and Harry Gregson-Williams used to do. It just sounds like dry stale bread, and it actually hurts my teeth, like chewing metal. It would be great if MG would let Chad Seiter write some of this stuff - give him a cocomposing credit. He is so much better at it as can be seen with his Recore score which kicks all MG out of the water outside of the very early Medal of Honor stuff. Giacchino does well but he seems to be a bit lost amidst his success. He has folks like Tilton and Seiter by him. Let these guys get some of the credit. And I am not one of these guys!