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Jerry Goldsmith vs James Horner


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Jerry Goldsmith vs James Horner  

57 members have voted

  1. 1. Whose music do you tend to enjoy most?

    • Jerry Goldsmith's
      47
    • James Horner's
      10


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I don't own many scores by either of the options, but I voted James Horner in the end. Nothing Horner did has matched ST: TMP, but overall Horner wins.

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Horner was one of my first discoveries as well, but I quickly realized I could do much better. As far as I'm concerned he did Star Treks II and III and Willow and that's the extent of my interest.

Would you be open to a few suggestions? IMO there are at least a few other "essential" Horner scores where the good outweighs his usual offenses.

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Goldsmith, easy for me.

Although yesterday I popped in STII:TWOK and concede that Horner definitely could write great stuff, if only he would.

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Horner was one of my first discoveries as well, but I quickly realized I could do much better. As far as I'm concerned he did Star Treks II and III and Willow and that's the extent of my interest.

Would you be open to a few suggestions? IMO there are at least a few other "essential" Horner scores where the good outweighs his usual offenses.

I absolutely love The Rocketeer. He does use a lot of his trademark ideas for the time (four-note evil theme--not to be confused with the danger motif, which does pop up in the complete score--slam-bang finish, etc.), but IMO, a lot of these are perfections of those ideas, and there's a lot of good original stuff. The main theme is one of my absolute favorites, Jenny's theme is wonderful, and hey, even Peavey's theme is good!

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Yes, The Rocketeer is definitey one of Horner's best. My other absolute favorites of his are Glory, The Land Before Time, and Krull. They all have great themes, action music, original end credit suites, and either minimal use of his trademarks, or as you said, the best executions of those ideas.

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At the risk of "overrating" the score, I'll throw in another vote for The Rocketeer. It was the one score that "brought me back" to Horner.

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Yes, The Rocketeer is definitey one of Horner's best. My other absolute favorites of his are Glory, The Land Before Time, and Krull. They all have great themes, action music, original end credit suites, and either minimal use of his trademarks, or as you said, the best executions of those ideas.

I am rather fond of An American Tail, as well.

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Horner was one of my first discoveries as well, but I quickly realized I could do much better. As far as I'm concerned he did Star Treks II and III and Willow and that's the extent of my interest.

Would you be open to a few suggestions? IMO there are at least a few other "essential" Horner scores where the good outweighs his usual offenses.

Don't worry, in time John will become a true believer...

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A lot of Horner scores mentioned in this thread, but not one of his very best:

Aliens!

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An American Tail: Feivel Goes West is my favorite Horner score. Commando is terribly hilarious. If you think Hans Zimmer will give you a headache, this score will give you an aneurism.

The Perfect Storm is another one of his I really like.

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Titanic and Wrath of Khan are my favorite Horner scores. But I also like Field of Dreams, Apollo 13, Bicentennial Man, and Casper (hey, that's my entire Horner collection).

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A lot of Horner scores mentioned in this thread, but not one of his very best:

Aliens!

It was a recent listen to that score which inspired the thread actually :)

I'll take it over Goldsmith's Alien any day of the week.

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A lot of Horner scores mentioned in this thread, but not one of his very best:

Aliens!

Hell yeah! :) One of my all-time favourite scores by any composer. Though I'm not sure I'd say it's better than Jerry's original. IMHO, they're both masterpieces and elevated their respectful movies to a whole new level of dread.

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I like ALIENS, but I like ALIEN a lot more. And not to carp on about Horner's usual tactics, but I like ALIENS a bit less now I found out one of my favourite parts of the score was half-inched.

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Maybe when you're stealing, you don't have time to pinch an inch, like the metaphoric test for fat people. You only have time to pinch a half-inch and then skedaddle.

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Yes, The Rocketeer is definitey one of Horner's best. My other absolute favorites of his are Glory, The Land Before Time, and Krull. They all have great themes, action music, original end credit suites, and either minimal use of his trademarks, or as you said, the best executions of those ideas.

The Land Before Time borrows a motif pretty blatantly from *batteries not included, but the former score is so gorgeous I tend to forgive the offense.

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Jerry Goldsmith. Is the more creative and original composer. James Horner is sometimes very effective, but leans heavily on his fantastic orchestrators. Rocketeer wouldn't be half that great without the work of John Neufeld and Conrad Pope. I don't really like that.

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