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I can completely agree with you that interstellar was really his worst work. It was zimmer trying to be zimmer. But dark knight and dark knight rises, especially rises, have so much more to their soundtracks. Even little things like catwoman's piano clink are well designed. You look at 1 main theme and it was massively popular and so many tried to copy it, but it also really symbolizes the feelings of the nolan trilogy. Pirates has so much more depth to it than the basic main theme; singapore, the kraken, and up is down ('sea shanty' sure but it's at least different).

The Dark Knight soundtrack is neither kissy nor cutey, it's trash.

No, really, it's really bad.

Rhythmic clatter and banging, not unlike satan's music in "the devil went down to georgia"

And yes, I've listened to the whole thing outside of the movie

Why would it ever try to be kissey or cutey?

And what exactly makes it bad? You can't just say it inspired a bunch of copycats so it's obviously bad. Or that you just dislike it so it's bad.

It's made to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Constant rhythmic blur to create tension, rising hum to create the illusion of importance.

It's the opposite of what good multimedia music should be: see for example, melodic emphasis and strong leitmotifs of the work of John Williams, or the operas and philosophies of Wagner

To put it another way, there was a turning point around the late 90s-2000s where the sound clarity in movies became so great that movie sound became much more about sound effects than actual good music. This is why a man like Hans Zimmer, who is a glorified foley, has become popular.

Hans Zimmer takes foley work, shoves it into simple songs that I can make, and sells it at a high price. That is why his method is popular. It is very easy.

If you seriously think that Dark Knight or Pirates are good Hans Zimmer, you should listen to his work on The Lion King and Blood+. The man can make actual music. He chooses not to. He's a hack.

I don't see how you can bemoan zimmer for using a repetitive style that doesn't change but praise williams as some kind of genius. Both have a different style that is repeated in every film they do. But why shouldn't sound effects be valued? Both a soundtrack and the sound _design_ help in the same way. Just because sound effects got closer integrated into the soundtrack doesn't mean all film scoring just got bad. What about the "sci-fi bloop noises" at the opening of the martian? That was a pretty repeated musical element throughout the whole film.

Listening (and playing) some of the stuff from star wars....it's repetitive. The melodies are constant and go on and on. Doesn't progress as the song goes along. I would call that not his greatest work as compared to ET or Jurassic Park.

If you think you can make his stuff, then make it. Prove what he's doing is massively basic.

You can't deny that every score he does fits the exact feel the film is going for anyway. Interstellar is grim and overbearing, pirates is quick and random, dark knight is loud and huge like inception but positive rather than grim because it's being composed for a superhero movie. And The Lion King score fits its movie too. I just don't get why you would say that the scores of his films aren't "actual music"

"Repeating" a THEME throughout a movie is not the same thing as every video game above a certain budget having the exact same song in it.

I bring up Williams because for a decade or two he had brought back the Wagner style of scoring. He was as influential in the 70s-80s as Zimmer is now. But scoring involves sitting down with a finished, or at least fully conceptualized movie, understanding the characters and themes, and tailoring music to it. It's inherit overachieving, but it creates memorable effects that can't denied through the eyes of film history. Whereas people already hate Zimmer.

Hans Zimmer doesn't write scores, he creates music before he's seen seen a movie or knows anything about the characters. This is called an original soundtrack, not a score. And I say creates, because he generally has other people writing his generic shit for him after he hums a tune. Which is why I can literally say that I can do the same thing he does.

Sound effects are important, but sound effects and music have their important places and treating music like a big sound effect means that there isn't a place for real music in the film.

Again, because he doesn't "score" films at all.

Aside from the Lion King, and the MAIN theme to Pirates, I cannot distinguish those soundtracks AT ALL. If you tried to test me, I would fail.

It's like, 11 at night. Can I make a Hans Zimmer hack track tomorrow or something? You might not want to put money on this bet, or at least really think about how little you're asking for. It's like, 2-3 instruments. Get a five-second rhythm with strings and drums, repeat it forever. Add a string hum with a random chord that rises in intensity over a minute. The longest part of this process would be pirating music making software.

I once made "Maniac" in mario paint, that's way harder than anything Hans Zimmer has ever done

You seem really stuck on the video game thing. But Hans Zimmer only composed stuff for two games? How is that his fault?

How do you know that zimmer composes the entire score before the movie is even finished? Is there proof of that or something? I don't see how that would happen, especially with the nolan pieces as the two have a very close relationship.

To me it seems like your style of film score is just opposite to zimmer and aligned with williams. You can't say that williams doesn't repeat to the same level that zimmer does. Just listen to the full 6 minutes of the star wars main theme....the main melody has other interludes in it, but the main melody just comes back again and again. It's almost like it goes on for too long. I don't see the song progressing; it just keeps going back to the same thing.

sure, go for it man. Compare what you can whip up to dream is collapsing or up is down. It's late for me too.