R.I.P. to one of the best to ever do it, who elevated every film he worked on, who turned out masterpiece after masterpiece, and who ended up proving the Razzies' utter irrelevance by getting nominated.
The more legends that die, the more the business seems like a hollow, faceless, talentless corporate machine.
The MCU really does sum it up.
If I asked who wrote the music to Batman (1989) or Superman: The Movie... you'd know it was John Williams and Danny Elfman.
But who wrote the music for Spider-Man Homecoming?
Thor?
I have absolutely no idea.
I couldn't even tell you who directed Homecoming.
I could name Mark Mothersbaugh (
Thor: Ragnarok) or Ludwig Goransson (
Black Panther) off the top of my head - it probably helps that the former was in Devo, though. Wouldn't argue that the music they composed doesn't really stand out on its own merits, but I don't think that's endemic to the MCU (think they've definitely demonstrated a preference for licensed tracks anyway). Even skimming the Oscar nominees for Best Score from the last ten years doesn't yield much in the way of memorable (let alone positively so) themes. After all, making a good theme is vital to making a good overall score because of how it can end up forming the backbone of the whole thing - recurring leitmotifs, variations, reprisals, all that kind of thing. Morricone's brilliance lay in how well he could come up with multiple strong themes for a single film (
Once Upon a Time in the West arguably being the best example of this by coming up with extremely distinctive themes for each of the lead characters), which is also true of the likes of Williams or Elfman. But maybe it's also a change in how film score composition is approached and how hard it is to truly innovate or capture lightning within the long-established orchestral arena - it's not like Williams has made anything on par with
The Hateful Eight in his later years, and it might also explain why
The Social Network's dark electronics proved one of the best scores of the 2010s.