Ignorant Fools Who Think That Williams Sucks Now

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Agreed!!!! Sometimes people need to shut the *beep* up. Hes the greatest of all time, give him respect. Granted not all of his scores are a good as Star Wars, but his stuff is still amazing.

I'm not 100% sure he's the "greatest", since that depends on what yardstick you are using to measure greatness. For instance, should film music be judged by it's effectiveness within a film, it's effectiveness in a symphony orchestra concert setting, in terms of sheer "tunefulness", or some complex calculation of all of the above? Surely, though, he is in the elite Top 5 or 6 greatest composers who wrote almost exclusively for film. I think a strong case can be made for Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith and maybe Erich Wolfgang Korngold (who did not write exclusively for film). We'll see what the judgement of history has to say about that in the next 20 or 30 years, won't we? Anyway, Williams is owed nothing less than great honor and respect for his achievements in film music. Cinema would have been immeasurably poorer without Williams and some of the other artists I mentioned lending their talents to the movies.

Agreed with all of the above posts.

This might be old news to some, but anyway:

At least the Spielberg-Williams collaboration was (continues?) made of 100% trust. I read in the booklet to the Jurassic Park CD that, at this point in time Spielberg simply handed over the edited movie and let him do his work - and Spielberg most likely communicated with Williams during pre-production and shooting.
I'm pretty sure that era is over (I didn't read anything about it though). Something very similar happend to the wonderful Hitchcock-Herrmann collaboration. Herrmann insisted to be given total artistic freedom, and got it (thankfully) up until "Torn Curtain". You all probably know the rest.

The rule is: as a film composer everyone is breathing down your neck, even when you are a household name. Some of the most infamous stories are: How Kubrick scrapped the original Alex North score (a complex, richly textured early 20th Century - style operatic sore) in favor of the temp track (which consists of 19th century music). No matter if the latter was the better choice - it was very poorly handled by Kubrick.
Director Ridley Scott ditched Jerry Golsmith's opening score for "Alien" in favor of silence. I'd love to hear the missing score. I have heard (I think it was on the Alien DVD extras) that Goldsmith was very upset about it.
I know there are rules of the game. But I will never agree with the fact that a highly talented composer (and in case of Herrmann, Williams and a few others also the orchestrator!) can be told exactly what they are supposed to do. That's throwing tons of talent and potential out of the window. How can a film director know more about music in detail than people with a profound musical education and understanding what works where on an emotional level? I am sure many times the following happened (I don't think it happens these days of micro-management as mentioned in a post above): the composer hands blank notation paper and pencil to the director and says: "If you know exactly what you want, would you mind writing it down for me!" - Not the right move to keep the job - but I smile when I think about it that perhaps someone had the balls to do it.

I didn't do any film music to speak of, but I know a few people who do - and I do music for tv commercials, so I know the drill......

You're absolutely right OP. The thing is, his fourth Indiana Jones score (which a lot of people criticize) was actually decent! Keep in mind, the material he was given for that score wasn't incredibly solid (then again, I enjoyed the film). AND he has only scored for one feature film (IJ4) in the last five-six years or so! Of course, this year he has two more scores coming out.... Can't wait!!!

Lets See, The Phantom Menace, Angela's Ashes, The Patriot, Harry Potter Series, Revenge of the Sith, War of the Worlds, Geisha, Munich, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull........ All Good Scores, even Attack of the Clones

Well well well...

You obviously know absolutely nothing about composers. They do not go through "primes" they get better with time. unlike "artists". I'm assuming you mean pop, soul, or other types of "musical" artistry.
I'm assuming you consider yourself knowledgable in this topic. Have you heard of Elliot Carter? probably not since he's the most famous composer of our time. Well, he's well over 100 years old and his greatest pieces have been produced all within the last decade. Just as Mahler's, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Mozart(his last piece is considered his best work), and Williams most advanced, beautiful, serious, and elaborate score (memoirs of a geisha) came later in life.

Darker toned movies, as you said, didn't exist as much back in the 70's-80's, if they did, Williams would have scored them the same way then that he scored them in the recent decade. If star wars wasn't made in the year 1977 but in the year 2011, He would have scored it the same way. Therefore Williams has not "lost his Touch". That is simply my point.

Interesting post. I don't think he's lost his touch, but I do think Hollywood has. They simply don't make wonderful all-ages-friendly epic movies any more. Everything has to be R rated with oozes of swearing and violence, and that sort of movie isn't particularly bad, but gone are the days of Jurassic Park and Titanic where the whole family could go and get their money's worth at the movies. Movie music wise, the less-musically-gifted directors we have these days much prefer the tastes of electro-synth down-beat scores, or drums, and think that Michael Giacchinno is a living God. Williams is nowadays only hired for very depressing movies, and what the heck can he do with those? Give us very nice, depressing/beautiful music like he's been doing for the past (nearly) 20 years. And as much as I LOVE his Schindler's List score, I think it was his downfall because once he got the tremendous praise for that, people wanted that every time, or something similar to it. There are no movies made these days that would warrant the music he made for E.T., or Jurassic Park, or Hook. They would be somewhat out-of-place. What can we do? Who knows. Same thing for James Horner, although his problem is that he steals from others and himself, over and over. Whatever. A bit of honest to God sheer emotional and original talent is what we need from a newer generation, but not to replace Williams. Just to give him a run for his money, or to work alongside him so that movie makers can go on making great films for all ages and that would supply him with a decent amount of imaginative licence in his musical work. (I'm hoping Tintin allows this)

CDEGFEDCC. (Shhh!)