As the love theme from Attack of the Clones starts playing on my iTunes player, I'm suddenly and tragically reminded of what a godawful movie Attack of the Clones was. It doesn't change the fact that it had some pretty good music, in much the same way that, say, the fact that Battlestar Galactica was generally awesome doesn't change the fact that it had a somewhat/very/extremely (delete according to personal taste) disappointing ending.
There, I've done it. I've alluded to Star Wars, Battlestar, and music in my opening paragraph. On a roll.
Speaking of great 80s things that Lucas recently revisited and turned to crap, I was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark last week, and something stuck out at me. And I know that what I'm about to say is blasphemous to some film-music fans, but I'm going to say it anyway:
John Williams was not exactly on the top of his game when he scored that film.
Now, credit where credit's due. The "Raiders' March" (also known as the Indiana Jones theme to you non-film-music geeks) is probably one of the best motifs Williams has ever written. It's up there with the "Imperial March" from Empire (Darth Vader's theme) and the theme to Jurassic Park. It's that good. So it's not surprising to me that Williams chose to blast that theme every chance he got.
And it wasn't as though his other themes weren't up to spec; the Ark theme gave me the same chills I got when I saw the film for the first time exteen years ago. Themes are not his problem. He's a theme-centric composer.
The problem that stuck out at me as I re-watched Raiders was the score during the truck chase. It was distracting. It was over-the-top.
It's entirely possible that I only felt this way because I've been weaned on a constant diet of Bear McCreary for a while now, and this is his idea of a battle theme. (Okay, that's actually a suite that got broken up into a collection of cues across three different episodes, so it's technically cheating. This is more accurate.)
Notice that it's generic battle music, and I don't mean that in a bad way. Perhaps as a television composer he was working so close to a deadline that he didn't have the time to track the score to individual cues. McCreary generally works with one- or two-measure motifs as opposed to proper themes (you can hear Starbuck's fairly early on in both pieces linked above).
I should point out that the film/television divide isn't the only big difference between Williams and McCreary; Williams had his heyday in the 70s and 80s. And I don't mean to say that McCreary's the better composer. That's entirely subjective, and people should make up their own minds.
I'm sure there are some people who think that McCreary's repetitive scores sound like something out of a video game. Considering that this is what video game scores sound like these days, that's something of a complement.
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