> 11. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (John
> Williams) – I never disliked this score, but the album (which I’ve been
> told is missing a lot of important material) is much better than I
> remember. I wonder if I just forgot to revisit it over the years in favor
> of better Indy scores and better 2000s and 2010s Williams scores, or if
> hearing Dial of Destiny was what I really needed to appreciate Crystal
> Skull lol. Bit of both perhaps.

Dial of Destiny definitely gives this score a bit of a glow-up in retrospect. I think being the first Williams score in three years (and a fourth entry following a near-perfect trilogy) is a burden no score can reasonably be expected to live up to, but with the necessary distance I think we can agree it's very good, no more, no less.

> Journey to the Center of the Earth (Andrew Lockington)

I know it's still in the "nice" category but I'm curious what made this drop from 7th out of the top 20 altogether. I assume mostly just other stuff overtaking it rather than cooling on this one in particular.

> Meh.
> Stop-Loss (Powell)
> Jumper (Powell)
> Bolt (Powell) – Okay these are probably all too low. They’re fine.

Bro then move them up the list, why are you doing this to me

All three scores have at least one standout cue ("The Greatest Tragedy" from Stop-Loss is a lovely hidden gem in Powell's career, and "A Jump Off" just about saves Jumper from being a rare total phone-in job from him). And Bolt is just straight-up a good score, although I assume you only heard the very short album and not the promo that's nearly twice the length and a much better listening experience.

I've been having to bite my tongue in general about how down people are on Powell's scores this year. He didn't have the big hitters but he was just consistently pumping out quality work, his best hour of music from the year easily tops any single score anyone else wrote.

> So was it a good year???
> Um, sure? Still only one 5 star score, but I got a good top ten out of it,
> and a nice bench of solid scores going out to like #35. So I found stuff I
> had missed out on previously. But also… idk, it seems like a normal year?
> I get the feeling that these going back in time polls are going to show me
> that things may not swing as dramatically as our memories say they do.
> Either that or I’m lacking the nostalgia and romance that others who lived
> through exploring these scores for the first time will have. Let’s use
> 2023 as a comparison, since Christian didn’t have a 5 star score that year
> either. Is what I have here that much better than what I had two years
> ago? Not really. There’s some great, there’s a lot of very good, there’s a
> lot of fine, and there’s some terrible. I’m not sure it’s that different.
> The bad stuff is just bad in different ways from our modern bad stuff.
> Like Twilight! It’s bad in very specific, 2008 ways! No one would write a
> score like that today! Iron Man is also bad in very specifically 2008
> ways! Revolutionary Road is bad in… okay, bad example, that’s a bad Newman
> score that he could’ve written at any time lol. On average I’d take 2020s
> John Powell over 2008 Powell. So… take that nostalgia!

I semi-agree with this but find myself feeling warmer towards 2008 by comparison. I think it is definitely lacking at the top end, which is probably why so many people called it a low water mark in film music at the time, but even before doing some homework for the year I would have had a top 10 list I'm perfectly happy with and have since found several more lovely scores that have earned their way onto the list. I've now got a next 10 at least that I'm genuinely bummed I can't include, whereas in the 2020s so far there have always been a couple scores that I somewhat wish I had managed to exclude. So the starting team might be comparable to a 2020s year, but the bench feels much deeper to me.

The 2008-ness of everything is also kind of part of it. I think we might have hit Peak Bourne that year as that sound is all over a ton of the year's action music even from composers who don't usually do that. The whole metagame of film scoring just feels a bit more aligned with how I like things in a bunch of little ways - less overproduction or sampled orchestras, a cleaner delineation between the organic and the synthetic, synthetics that tend more towards tight and stylish drum loops rather than outright manipulation, a smoother flow and structure to most action music somehow, less buildups without payoffs. A whole lot of composers I really like, some of whom no longer work for one reason or another and whom I miss, had solid to good output or at least one strong score. It does feel like a normal year, but - I would maintain - a normal year from a better time. And people back then didn't know how good they had it.