I've been reading this review and have noticed there are some strange declarations in it.
1) John Powell "bleeds creativity in relative obscurity"--then what about his Academy Nomination for How to Train Your Dragon, as well as his fairly busy career?
2) "Zimmer's mouth is his worst enemy for anyone interested in actually examining the merits of his structures and instrumentation." Well, sorry to be the intellectual party-pooper, but I don't listen to film scores for intellectual stimulation. If you want to actually work your brain, try analyzing Anton Webern's Symphonie, which uses docecophony, Pierre Boulez's Le marteau sans maître, or any other modern classical composers. These composers actually create musical forms in which their music has no image or dramatic backdrop to prop themselves upon. The fact is, while Bach composed fugues, while Beethoven broke Classical forms, while Chopin and Debussy loosened the meaning of tonality, and while Schoenberg did away with tonality altogether, Mr. Zimmer merely has to make a scene dramatic or sad.
3) "The "bull[bleep!] meter" is pegging on that explanation, with the dreaded phrase "creative differences" a more likely reason for Howard's wish to divest himself from the equation." What makes Mr. Clemmensen so sure that Mr. Howard has Clemmensen's exact opinion? Do they have a personal relationship? And also, I frankly don't care whether Mr. Howard scored or didn't score the movie anyways, as I do not like Mr. Howard's compositions.
4) "The composer needs to shut his yap, dump the ghostwriters, shift to F major, conjure a fluid theme, and drop a wicked oboe solo on us." Is the reviewer a composer too? Because he should know that F MAJOR HAS THE SAME KEY SIGNATURE AS D MINOR! And what's so important about themes? It may sound weird, but many great composers did not create themes in the proper sense. Beethoven's utterance in his 5th symphony is only 4 notes long. Mr. Elfman's contribution to the Batman universe was 5 notes long. But, just because Elfman's theme is one note longer does not make it better than Beethoven's idea. The only requirement of music is that it must have an idea, whether 100 measures or just one note. And also, oboe solos are a painful cliche in scoring poignant scenes. Why not have a viola solo? Violas actually have a darker and more mysterious tone than violins.