Chen G.

Meh. I didn't have any issue with the photorealism of the CGI Dinosaurs in the previous entries, and no amount of animatronics in the world are going to help a bad story.

Unfortunately, the test of the score is and must be the actual underscore in the film, and that film is... yeah...

The thing I like in The Rise of Skywalker is more the treatment of material from previous entries: although I hate it as a story development, the way Williams turns the theme associated with Kylo into a heroic theme is rathe extraordinary, and what happens to the theme associated with Rey in the final scene is astounding.

https://deadline.com/2022/04/fantastic-beasts-the-secrets-of-dumbledore-china-international-box-office-preview-1234995958/

Yes, Ironfoot is a great piece, of course!

No. It’s a setup. George Lucas only sold Star Wars to secure capitol for the purposes of cloning Sir Alec Guinness to appear in the sequel-sequel trilogy. Obviously the cloned Guinness will be revealed in the series!

Convenient...

This.

I guess that sort of material has an unfair advantage in that it comes on the heels of the musical buildup of not just one score but at least 2.5. I like the material associated with Thorin's death: part of the magic of the leitmotif technique is that the motives are constantly being recontextualized by sheer virtue of being heard next to other motives. So that we hear the theme associated with Thorin and then the theme associated with "Death and Parting" and then the material affiliated with Tauriel and Kili, not only connects al three but also shows us that both the latter and the former had been carrying the seeds of their own demise all along. Just because we don't come out of the movie singing it doesn't mean that emotionally it didn't do its thing!

Yeah, we don't really get to hear that theme, as such, before the duel begins...

Well, its a surprise because, technically, its not material we've heard before; whereas the material associated with Smaug we've heard a lot: we haven't heard it treated like that, but its still material we've heard.

Closer to what the OP is going for is probably the introduction of the material associated with Dain or, perhaps more significantly, the figure associated with the body-count at the end of the story.

Maybe the choral work in Lohengrin?

Meh. Carima Burana is a flashier piece, but its got nothing on the prelude of Tristan. Interestingly, Boorman claimed he got the idea for the music when he attended the Jahrhundertring, which I'm willing to buy except that I'm skeptical as to how he would have gotten tickets: Bayreuth sells out years in advance, and this was the goddamn centenary Ring!

Well, Boorman generally has an eye for composition and good visuals... Also, having the Irish countryside at your disposal, not to mention the music of Tristan and Parsifal playing in the background, certainly helps...

Some shots definitely do. But as a blanket solution for the whole movie, the soft focus was WRONG.

Really? I love Gambon as Dumbeldore. That's not a slate against Richard Harris: if his Dumbeldore does nothing for me, its probably just because its such a small part in the first couple of entries.

Meh. I've never liked Boorman's effinity for gauzy visuals in genre films. "Because its not real, you see..."

So... I'm starting to grow worried, too. Not to spoil Fellowship of Fans' reveal for him, but anyone ever wanted some Rienzi in their Numenore storyline?

There are lots of different shades of funny. He doesn't make you guffaw, but he gets a few well-earned chuckles from the audience in Die Hard. Its not the most grounded of performances (in what's surely not the most grounded of movies) but its damn good fun!

I watched a few minute of it, realized what I was in for, and saved it for a day where I'm drunk out of my arse with the lads: then it'll at least make for a good lark.

That's the sort of thing I'm wondering: as this series progresses towards its resolution, will the timetables be massaged in such a way that we would see a young Voldemort "pick-up" Grindelwald's mantle? That'd make Fantastic Beasts much more of a direct prequel rather than the spinoff it currently is.

Its wonderfully un-Bruce Willis like!

Or maybe just accept that the entire chronology of the series shifted wildly as the different entries were made and the backstory reimagined?

There are interviews of Lucas from the time of the classic trilogy where he's talking about the prequel trilogy, saying that at the end of it, Luke would be a four-year-old.