Who is the most overrated film composer in recent history?

[Schilkeman 964]

I’m doubling down on Danny Elfman. I already have Shore and Goldsmith fans calling be out. Let’s see who else I can rankle.

[Faleel 5,360]

4 minutes ago, Schilkeman said:

I’m doubling down on Danny Elfman.

Agreed.

[Edmilson 7,473]

4 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Highlights, please!

 

Well, this is the main theme, which is typically Desplat, so people who already dislike him may be turned off:

 

But that's not the best the album has to offer. Instead, the score is a deep exploration of emotions and the psychological state of the character. It has cues that explore dark and complex emotions like resentment, grief and unhealed wounds from the past. The cue below is a great example: it takes Tom's theme and puts it in a dark and sad place, just like the character. It's emotionally devastating:

 

 

This one has that Zimmer thing where he takes a simple melody and repeats it over and over, with each repetition becoming more and more emotional. But it's much more dark and profoundly sad, a great representation of the devastating choice the main character is making, which will have dire consequences for everyone:

 

 

The two cues below might be my favorites from the movie: tragic, dark and moving, but not in an exaggeratedly melodramatic way a la Horner or Barry (which, for the record, I also love):

 

 

 

This one is less somber, more positive and minimalistic, but it worked well with the finale of the movie:

 

 

Anyway, these are just some highlights, the whole album is worth listening! I just love more, for the lack of a better word, psychologically complex scores, like this and North's A Streetcar Named Desire.

[Courtney Sees Ghosts 269]

Damn, didn't know so many people hated Giacchino's work. Pity. I love all the composers mentioned by name here so I have to come up with my own answer.

While I like their work on The Social Network and Soul, I don't think Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross are all that in the grand scheme of things. Empire of Light specifically is a film score that flat out put my ass to sleep. Not sure why Thomas Newman wasn't asked to score that film, but he was missed.

Their score for the new Ninja Turtles movie was really disappointing and probably the worst part of an otherwise great movie. Not saying they're bad composers, can't think of a bad film composer at the top of my head. But man, I wish they knocked it out of the park more often.

Sidenote: John Powell should've won the Oscar for How To Train Your Dragon. Was mad at 12, mad now.

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]

7 hours ago, Edmilson said:

Anyway, these are just some highlights, the whole album is worth listening! I just love more, for the lack of a better word, psychologically complex scores, like this and North's A Streetcar Named Desire.

 

Thanks for the highlights. I'll put it on an evening and see if it grabs my attention.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

What does "overrated" mean?

It's a qualitative statement which translates as "I don't like what a lot of other people like".

It is not fact-based, and it is not evidence-based. On the other hand, it is arrogant, and blinkered.

It's an interesting parlour game, but that's about all.

 

[GerateWohl 4,373]

8 hours ago, Edmilson said:

Well, this is the main theme, which is typically Desplat, so people who already dislike him may be turned off:

But that's not the best the album has to offer.

I don't like this typical piano-strings-and-woodwinds unisono in his themes like this. But I liked his main theme for Midnight Sky a lot, the score overall not so much. 

 

[Schilkeman 964]

25 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

It's an interesting parlour game, but that's about all.

If you don't like the game, why do you keep showing up to play?

[Steffromuk 387]

7 hours ago, Courtney Sees Ghosts said:

Damn, didn't know so many people hated Giacchino's work. Pity.

 

Thinking a composer is overrated doesn't mean I hate him (her).

 

I like Giacchino. I think he's a fine composer, but over the years I came to re-evaluate his work.
And in my opinion, he's not as interesting as I used to think.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

43 minutes ago, Schilkeman said:

If you don't like the game, why do you keep showing up to play?

 

The answer is simple, dear boy. I enjoy it 

 

I also enjoy being around people who share my passion for film music.

[Schilkeman 964]

11 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

 

The answer is simple, dear boy. I enjoy it 

 

I also enjoy being around people who share my passion for film music.

Sure, but there are a lot of threads to hang out in. There are plenty of them I don’t participate in because I have no interest in the topic. I think it’s unhelpful to the conversation to come in and say “actually this topic is stupid, fyi.”

[GerateWohl 4,373]

55 minutes ago, Steffromuk said:

 

Thinking a composer is overrated doesn't mean I hate him (her).

 

I like Giacchino. I think he's a fine composer, but over the years I came to re-evaluate his work.
And in my opinion, he's not as interesting as I used to think.

I think, it would apply to all composers, If a composer writes between five to ten or eleven scores per year, like Giacchino does, you can not expect, that each one is a sophisticated masterpiece.

Still I think, this comparison, he is the JJ Abrams of film music isn't far from the truth. But I wouldn't call him overrated. I think, he is rated quite accurately.

[HyenaBoy 29]

16 hours ago, Thor said:

But I could now add someone like Ludwig Göransson

How dare you:

 

[GerateWohl 4,373]

7 minutes ago, HyenaBoy said:

How dare you:

Is that in any way supposed to be an argument against Thor's point?

[HyenaBoy 29]

5 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

Is that in any way supposed to be an argument against Thor's point?

In a joking "just having a bit of fun" sort of way. 

[Edmilson 7,473]

I think Giacchino is a decent composer, but I also think his best days were from the 2000s up until the early 2010s: Lost, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, Star Trek 09, John Carter, the ROAR cue from Cloverfield, Super 8... Jupiter Ascending, Inside Out and Tomorrowland were great as well, but since he became a superstar, his music was less and less appealing to me, with a few exceptions (like Spiderman).

[Tom Guernsey 2,287]

6 hours ago, Steffromuk said:

 

Thinking a composer is overrated doesn't mean I hate him (her).

 

I like Giacchino. I think he's a fine composer, but over the years I came to re-evaluate his work.
And in my opinion, he's not as interesting as I used to think.

 

3 hours ago, Edmilson said:

I think Giacchino is a decent composer, but I also think his best days were from the 2000s up until the early 2010s: Lost, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, Star Trek 09, John Carter, the ROAR cue from Cloverfield, Super 8... Jupiter Ascending, Inside Out and Tomorrowland were great as well, but since he became a superstar, his music was less and less appealing to me, with a few exceptions (like Spiderman).

This and this! I used to love his stuff and his early video game and movie scores were terrific and few people had any especially negative words about him, but I kinda feel he got slightly burned out with so many franchises (his Star Trek and Jurassic World scores are somewhere between underwhelming and overwrought, and felt like significant steps down from their antecedents). To some extent, I think he suffered from the need to cut through the sound field of modern movies so he went for increasingly blocky, thumping orchestration to compensate. Therefore, rather than growing (from a strong start) he kinda started to go backwards. Not to say all of his scores since are bad, but they never feel as good as his original potential suggested might be possible. I don't want to entirely blame the system, but... I kinda do. A bit. But it doesn't feel like we'll get anything as delightful as Ratatouille (Dinner Rush is utterly wonderful) or Up or his best Joel McNeely does John Williams impression withe Medal of Hono(u)r scores.

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]

What about Saint-Saens?

[1977 1,743]

Giacchino to me is a bit like bubble gum film music. I can enjoy most of it and revisit it often, but it will never be anywhere near the level of even a lesser Goldsmith, Horner or Williams score. Some of his stuff is really catchy and fun, for example his Thor Love and Thunder theme or his Doctor Strange end title. It's just that it feels like I need a palate cleanser afterwards.

 

Desplat on the other hand just leaves me cold. His technical proficiency just does not translate, for me at least, into anything that moves me on an emotional level. There's a few bits and pieces I enjoy but I'd probably be able to compile a 40 minute playlist of the stuff of his I enjoy and that would be sufficient. I do really like Obliviate though, probably the best thing he did for HP.

 

Anyway I voted for Zimmer. I just can't stand the hyperbole around him anymore. His 90s stuff was great and The Prince of Egypt was revelatory but everything since the 00s is just hype and bluster, or bland nothingness to me.

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]

I vote for changing the thread title to The Hans Zimmer thread.

[TolkienSS 407]

On 14/09/2023 at 11:08 AM, Naïve Old Fart said:

What does "overrated" mean?

It's a qualitative statement which translates as "I don't like what a lot of other people like".

It is not fact-based, and it is not evidence-based. On the other hand, it is arrogant, and blinkered.

It's an interesting parlour game, but that's about all.

 

 

I don't think so. In order to evaluate if someone is overrated or not, you have to look at the people who actually rate composers, and not at private people simply saying who they like. Award nominations, coverage by press and media, amount of work they get, what tiers of films they get - these are some objectifiable markers. And there is a lot of room for being actually overrated in that, because those things are driven much by things other than quality of someone's output.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

I agree, but quality is relative. There is no formula, no mathematical equation, for "overrated". It's still a qualitative, and not a quantitative judgement, that people make. It's empirical.

You could tell me that some comer called John Williams has 5 Oscars, in his downstairs loo, quite a few BAFTAs, a shitload of Grammys, and is the most Oscar-nomintated person on the face of the planet, but if I don't like his music, then he's "overrated". It doesn't matter how much joy he's brought to countless film music fans, and how many CDs he's sold, it means sod all, if I can't bear to hear it.

Who gets to judge if a film composer is overrated? Film composers? Musicologists? Music teachers? Music critics? Fans? The general public?

I may appreciate that some film composer or other has redefined how film music is composed and I might be able to see, and understand, the timeline, but I don't actually like to listen to the music, so it means nothing, to me.

Who dares say that The Beatles are overrated? Well, quite a few people, actually. It only means that they don't like to listen to The Beatles.

As Anij said: "Nothing more complicated than perception".

[1977 1,743]

The "Your most disliked composer in recent history" thread?

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

2 hours ago, JTWfan77 said:

The "Your most disliked composer in recent history" thread?

 

This might be a more accurate thread title, but it's an even more of a qualitative statement.

[TolkienSS 407]

13 hours ago, JTWfan77 said:

The "Your most disliked composer in recent history" thread?

 

No because there is skill required for writing music. There are people less skilled and there are people more skilled = difference in quality. 

This feels way too much like "your team didn't lose Timmy, you're just the second winner".

 

Speaking of which, what is your definition of "technical proficiency" you mentioned with Desplat? Is it a knack for choosing the exact right amount of orchestration? Because I never understood that term.

[Mephariel 451]

1 hour ago, TolkienSS said:

 

No because there is skill required for writing music. There are people less skilled and there are people more skilled = difference in quality. 

This feels way too much like "your team didn't lose Timmy, you're just the second winner".

 

Speaking of which, what is your definition of "technical proficiency" you mentioned with Desplat? Is it a knack for choosing the exact right amount of orchestration? Because I never understood that term.

 

Skilled = difference in quality is not true because you have to define quality. What is quality to you is not the same to someone else. I doubt for example, you would agree with the film critics on their selection of best composers or best scores.

 

Also, you can be really skilled and be overrated. You can be less skilled and be underrated. It is like anything else. You can be a really skilled chef and knows every technique in the book but I can still find your food to be overrated. On the other end, a guy running a food truck can be underrated. Shaquille O'Neal had very few fundamental basketball skills, but he was so unstoppable you can make an argument he was underrated. That is because skills are just one component to success, and it is arguably not as important as talent. There are a lot of composers who have years of education and can orchestrate and conduct their own scores and I still think they can't write a melody to save their lives. There are things you just can't teach or honed, and there are other trainable skills like perseverance, you need besides skills to succeed.

[1977 1,743]

9 hours ago, TolkienSS said:

Speaking of which, what is your definition of "technical proficiency" you mentioned with Desplat? Is it a knack for choosing the exact right amount of orchestration? Because I never understood that term.

 

What I meant by that was, in layman's terms, he knows his way around the orchestra, but the end result just leaves me cold. His music is complex in it's constructs but it does not connect with me on an emotional level.

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]

Not even Pearl Earring or The Imitation Game?

[GerateWohl 4,373]

1 hour ago, JTWfan77 said:

layman's terms, he knows his way around the orchestra, 

Desplat's music sounds to me always like chamber music played by an orchestra, somehow a little bit overkill just for the sound color.   Comparable to Korzeniowski, but I somehow prefer the latter one.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Not even Pearl Earring or The Imitation Game?

 

I like both of these, but, imo, his best is GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL.

[1977 1,743]

3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Not even Pearl Earring or The Imitation Game?

 

I haven't heard those but I'll check them out.

[GerateWohl 4,373]

I repeat it probably too often: Pearl Earring main theme sounds to me just like adapted 7 Years in Tibet main theme. That is why I don't like it that much. But the movie is not bad. 

[TolkienSS 407]

6 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Desplat's music sounds to me always like chamber music played by an orchestra,

 

That's a great way of putting it 

[Richard Penna 3,695]

14 hours ago, Mephariel said:

There are a lot of composers who have years of education and can orchestrate and conduct their own scores and I still think they can't write a melody to save their lives.

 

This is a key aspect for me. Someone posted an unreleased JNH cue yesterday and several people raved about how beautiful it was. For me it came across as just sort of standard JNH underscore for two people talking. One person's amazing, memorable melody does nothing for another.

 

[Trope 527]

9 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Desplat's music sounds to me always like chamber music played by an orchestra, somehow a little bit overkill just for the sound color.

 

I totally get your point about his lower-key scores having a chamber music vibe, and even an apparent quaintness. Indeed, that’s why I love his music so much - It’s refreshing compared to the prominent wall-of-sound and sound-design approaches. But I’ve tried to link a few examples that demonstrate more complex and dense orchestral colours and textures.

[TolkienSS 407]

Oh yeah, James Newton Howard is a strong contender for most overrated of the last 20 years.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

No way, dude!

[Richard Penna 3,695]

Well, quite a lot of his scores are a bit rubbish (all the thriller stuff) but he just has to take the right sort of project.

 

24 minutes ago, TolkienSS said:

Oh yeah, James Newton Howard is a strong contender for most overrated of the last 20 years.

 

Is that because you find him a bit boring, or because his technical skills are below the Ivy League level you require before someone is allowed to go near composing music professionally?

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]

His scores are just mostly boring nowadays and for the past decades.

[Richard Penna 3,695]

I've liked everything he's done in the 2020s whereas the 2010s were a very mixed bag.

 

The problem is that (as he's said himself in interviews) he's developed a reputation for dependably writing scores in whatever shitty modern thriller style the director wants, really quickly, meaning everyone hires him. Unfortunately it means some of his stuff is really good and some of it is crap.

 

Of course, this is emotionally. I couldn't give less of a shit how technically proficient his music is.

[Edmilson 7,473]

3 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

His scores are great nowadays and for the past decades.

Fixed.

 

2 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

Someone posted an unreleased JNH cue yesterday and several people raved about how beautiful it was. For me it came across as just sort of standard JNH underscore for two people talking.

I posted that cue, because some of my favorite JNH cues are just that: intimate, emotional music for conversations that are made more significative because of his music. The "epic" stuff is good, but the smaller moments in those scores is what made me a JNH fan.

[Richard Penna 3,695]

Well, my favourite of those moments is this - the only cue from Winter's War that I have.

 

But it's interesting that two people can enjoy a composer's quieter style, but not the same bits  

 

 

[Edmilson 7,473]

Indeed.

 

It's cues like this that made me love his music. Many people will say it's boring or dull, but for me it's some of his finest moments.

 

 

[enderdrag64 624]

This might be controversial but of all the ones I know, and based solely on the scores of his that Ive listened to, the most overrated composer in my opinion is probably Thomas Newman. I find his work to be ambient and athematic and unmemorable. I think Wall E is probably my favorite score of his that I've heard, if only because I actually can remember a cue or two from it.

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]

Don't forget anemic.

[Edmilson 7,473]

Well, some of my favorite Newman cues are just that: ambient atmospheric music. 90% of film music/classical fans will find it extra dull, but I just love the melancholic atmosphere they create:

 

 

 

 

[Richard Penna 3,695]

3 hours ago, enderdrag64 said:

This might be controversial but of all the ones I know, and based solely on the scores of his that Ive listened to, the most overrated composer in my opinion is probably Thomas Newman. I find his work to be ambient and athematic and unmemorable. I think Wall E is probably my favorite score of his that I've heard, if only because I actually can remember a cue or two from it.

 

No one could blame you for that based on his recent output, and I say that as a massive fan of his previously. I love his work for 1917 but other than that very little from the last decade has interested me except some bits of Skyfall, Spectre and Passengers. I'm a bit more forgiving of his Bond work than many others, although a lot of Spectre just goes down the generic electronic route for a lot of the action.

 

The problem is that he was put on the map by his atmospheric, experimental scores of the 00s and he's moved away from that style now. His last one, Elemental did absolutely nothing for me on a skim.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

Thomas Newman naysayers should listen to THE PLAYER.

[Mephariel 451]

5 hours ago, Trope said:

 

I totally get your point about his lower-key scores having a chamber music vibe, and even an apparent quaintness. Indeed, that’s why I love his music so much - It’s refreshing compared to the prominent wall-of-sound and sound-design approaches. But I’ve tried to link a few examples that demonstrate more complex and dense orchestral colours and textures.

 

Desplat's dense and complex orchestral colors and textures is the problem for me. I listened to his score for Valerian and honestly, there are a lot of notes. Like  A LOT of notes. But it goes in one ear and out the other. Because there is no clear narrative or cohesion to me. 

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

Enough of this meshugas!

We all know that the most overrated film composer ever, is 

 

Spoiler

John Williams