2019...I am...forgotten

Real question: is the art of the film score dying out? I don't think there's a musical theme from the past decade that the general public can recognize besides the Avengers theme.

Here we are, Director Lucas! "Star Wars"!

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-Hm, yes. You know John, this first piece is quite similar to the opening movement of Holst's "Planets".
-D'HO-HO-HO, NO, patented Williams-opuses! Old family modalities! Signature Williams leitmotif, MM-MM, it's GOOD!

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I can't recognize the Avengers theme, whatever it may be. And I aims to keep it that way.

You're a fucking dope. We are in a great age of film composition compared to the overall dire 90's and 2000's. Atmosphere just takes precedent over melody in contemporary scoring.

It's only fitting since Lucas stole all his ideas.

The problem may be bigger than the scores themselves. There just aren't epic films being made anymore that are worthy of a grand memorable theme. I can't think of an original film in the last few years that is truly iconic enough to warrant a memoral theme. Film itself is in trouble creatively. The best scores we get are sadly from superhero films where we revisit classic themes and scores again and again. That's why I tend to like Zimmer. Especially when he teams with Nolan we get something special like Inception or Interstellar.

Cool it, hothead. And give me five good scores from the past decade to show me what you enjoy.

This shortcoming is largely the result of the reboot/sequel age. When the studios just churn out material from established IP's, themes in music are arguably the most interchangeable/reusable aspect.

Yes it's dying, and Williams is more or less the last vestige of the classic Hollywood sound. Ignorants like think that it's just "changing" but are unaware that scores are being regularly thrown out and rewritten in a matter of weeks; longform writing is harder and harder to do as composers are expected to write many versions of cues instead of working to fine-tune one final idea (IF they know how to write longform in the first place); fewer and fewer directors/producers have any knowledge of music and will rely doggedly on the temp of popular movie music; mock-ups are picked to pieces by producers so that the composer can never write anything in confidence; the timetables for writing music are getting shorter; orchestration knowledge is getting worse and worse among younger composers, so they have to record sections of the orchestra separately because they don't know how to balance them compositionally.
It's not just a matter of what the music itself is (melody vs. atmosphere), it's a matter of the business being more restrictive about what's allowed, how much time you have to do it, how distrustful the producers are of you (because unless your name is Zimmer they're going to assume you'll destroy the movie), and generally how competent up-and-coming composers are.
Not to mention the lack of opportunities for composers to popularly shine. Most movies right out of the gate are guaranteed to go to some of Zimmer's worker bees, and they're all going to have the cheap knock off sound. The other movies will funnel to Elfman, Beltrami, Tyler, Giacchino, Beck, and a few others, and they're all competing. I think you're at a huge disadvantage already in getting big jobs if you aren't a part of Zimmer's company.
A lot of the "atmospheric" stuff anyway is just a plain dislike of music. Actual musical solutions to problems in a film seem frightening or mawkish to younger directors, so it's easier to put a one-note drone in instead.

>John Williams
>forgotten
Are you fucking kidding me? When they make an anthology for the best film composers of all time, John will be on the fucking cover smoking a cigar and flipping you, and I mean you specifically, off. It's hard to find a composer that is more absolutely BELOVED than John Williams. He is at least half the reason the biggest franchise in the world is the biggest franchise in the world.

Yes he's old and he will die soon, that doesn't mean he won't go down as a legend.

It's sad but he just turned to shit. I watched every Star Wars film in cinemas and TFA had the most forgettable soundtrack of them all. I had to google who was the composer because I could not believe just how bad it was.

It's gone downhill ever since.

The sequels haven't been very "orchestral" in the sense of what's going on on-screen working well with the music they put over it. Maybe it's the way the directors write instead of how they film, or maybe they don't do with JW what George did. You really get the impression that John Williams admired Lucas, because he pulled out all the stops for the prequels to arguably make the score even better than the originals.

The sequel tracks by contrast seem muddled and restrained, almost generic even. He gets decently memorable leitmotifs for the "new shit", (see 1:56, 3:02 in that vid), but I don't recall any big moments in the sequels where the soundtrack "made" the scene.
The themes don't really get developed beyond a few bars, whereas for both OT and prequels lots of people can hum entire pieces off by heart.

Be nice to John, he's almost 90. Writing music at the level he does is very demanding and stressful work, mentally. He doesn't take shortcuts either, he orchestrates it all himself and sends it directly to the copyist.
Also, never underestimate the power of inspiration. Spielberg and Lucas both are people with competent awareness of classical awareness and can always provide a nudge in a useful direction. JJ Abrams on the other hand had Williams rewriting certain cues three or four times, and Rian Johnson temped his movie almost exclusively with Star Wars music. He speaks very kindly about Daisy Ridley and she has the most developed theme; maybe it's coincidence or maybe he's inspired by her performance. Maybe that's something he isn't really getting from anything else in the movie, or from the directors.