John Williams’ 20 greatest film scores, ranked
As he revisits "The Raiders March" one last time with Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, we reflect on our favorite works by cinema's most beloved composer
Music Lists John Williams
This Friday’s arrival of Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny serves as a reminder of the pivotal role composer John Williams has played in the cinema for more than five decades. Williams may have never starred on screen, but he helped shape the sound and sensibility behind many of the defining films of the 20th century.
The theme song Williams wrote for Raiders Of The Lost Ark—the 1981 film now retroactively called Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark—is the fulcrum of the score he composed for Dial Of Destiny, and this isn’t unusual. Whether for the Indiana Jones, Star Wars, or Harry Potter franchises, Williams returned to his main themes often, helping to turn his melodies into a permanent part of pop culture.
These themes are so ubiquitous they suggest that Williams spent his time only composing for blockbusters, or only serving as a composer on call for Steven Spielberg. While he has regularly collaborated with Spielberg since 1974, Williams has also created a lifetime’s worth of superb music with other directors. The following list is by no means comprehensive—how could it be, when Williams continues to expand his filmography well into his 90s?—but it suggests the depth and breadth of a film composer who is by every measure a titan in his field.
117 Comments
The Superman theme might be my favorite Williams piece of music ever. It never ceases to raise my spirits and make me think I could be Superman. Especially when the key changes close to the end.
Was just going to chime in to say the same thing. I can’t think of a more perfect theme for not just the Superman character, but everything he represents. A note-perfect piece of movie music.
Superman Returns may have been a dud, but using the Krypton theme in the teaser was such a deep cut shoutout to all the nerds out there to get them aboard.
Yes, I agree 100%! This really elevated the trailer in a significant way.
At the very least, it definitely belongs in the top ten (not at #13). At least bump Catch Me If you Can out of the top ten :/
I’d put it and Raiders over Jaws. I know the latter is iconic but doesn’t soar (and take the audience along with it) the way those two do.
I’ve loved “Naa naa, naa naa, naaaaa naa. Na na na naa, na, na na na nuh” ever since I first heard it as a kid, but of course, “Dun dun dun, dun da dun, dun da dun,” is basically untoppable.
I prefer the original:Then again, I was never a Star Wars fan.
Eh, Mars was clearly an influence on the Imperial March, what with blaring brass and the driving syncopated strings, but the mood in the two pieces is completely different (Mars is all about the slow burn and building crescendo, whereas March is very in-your-face from the beginning) and there have been far more egregious cases of musical theft. Otherwise Williams was mostly drawing inspiration from early adventure films like The Adventures of Robin Hood, so it would be more accurate to say that he was aping Erich Korngold (who, in turn, was influenced by Holst, among others).
It’s not the Imperial March so much. Battle of Yavin is pretty much a mashup of Mars and Jupiter. Mars is most evident at the very beginning and last minute and a half.
Cliff Eidelman’s score for Star Trek VI really borrows from Holst.
Suprised Superman isn’t higher or Harry Potter. Both a consummate ‘table setters’, like Raiders, where Star Wars is a little more generic and too indebted to Holst.
And Prisoner of Azkaban was arguably the best Harry Potter score.
Yep. Definitely the best of the Williams contributions, for sure.
too indebted to Holst.Agreed, but the lightsabre and bagelhead crowd haven’t heard any Holst so…yeah. I think Jaws should be #1, if only for its cultural and even zoological impact outside of the movie. Two bass notes became forever musical shorthand for “shark”, and it was the first blockbuster score. (“What you’ve got here, Steven, isn’t The L-Shaped Room.”)I’d argue that Williams also cemented the orchestra as the means for a scoring a film – he didn’t invent it, but I think he saved it. Throughout the sixties, the full orchestra was on the way out – remember, the (arguably) most famous movie score features one of them new-fangled electric guitars.In the sixties, you had tons of soundtracks experimenting with jazz, rock, and whatever weird-arse intsruments Ennio Morricone found at the back of the pawnshop. After Jaws, it full orchestra, all the time.Also, Spielberg owes half his career to Williams.
I would say that a key difference is that the Bond Theme plays when you see Bond, it does not mean that Bond is lurking and can see you but you cannot see him. That music was the shark (by happy confluence of events), and it worked like nothing else. Which is a long way of saying, in full agreement regarding Jaws.
Dude’s a great composer – but there’s lots of those. What makes Williams amazing is his ability to understand what a film’s about, what it truly is, like no other. It’s not Williams’ ear that’s greatest – it’s his eye. That “L-Shaped Room” quote is what he said to Spielberg, who was describing some avant-garde, new-wave, ultra-out-there score, and Williams took a look at Jaws and went “No”. And the Summer Blockbuster was born. For me, the most amazing example of that is Jurassic Park. Ask any other composer to compose for that, and I’d bet you anything they’d come up with some tense, dark, minor key action/thriller/horror rumblings, or at least some bombastic sci-fi score. No. Williams saw it was about the sense of childlike wonder that so many kids (and adults) wanted to see dinosaurs for the first time. We get that in the first, gentle call and response from the lone French horn, the gentle, rising sense of discovery as the flutes and piccolos and harp enter. It’s unbridled joy. That’s what the movie was. It wasn’t raptors tearing the only black guy to shreds off-camera, it was the holy crap I get to see real(ish) dinosaurs!!!!!And then comes the fanfare, some of the greatest announcement music in cinema – sure, it’s first used when the helicopter hits Isla Nublar for the first time. It’s evokes the huge sense of awe we all got seeing it, but it’s also used in triumph. If there’s one key theme from the movie is that life, uh, finds a way, and that’s what that fanfare is: the triumph of life, uh, finding a way. The dinosaurs will not be caged, they will not be controlled, they will not perform on cue. T-Rex doesn’t want to be fed. Tell me you don’t hear the fanfare, and think of…Could another composer have picked up on all this? Maybe. They certainly wouldn’t have picked up on it if Williams didn’t exist, in my opinion. But I wouldn’t bet on it, I wouldn’t trust another composer to look past the sci-fi action and see what the true meaning of the film was – an adventure, dark and scary in places, sure, but ultimately…wondrous and magical.
Completely different context, but if you have not, please listen to Miles Davis’s score for Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur Pour L’échafaud). As I recall, he happened to be in Paris and the director needed a score, so he threw together a quintet and improvised whatever he wanted while they played film scenes for them. My first stop if I had a time machine, just sit in back and watch that unfold. Or kill Hitler. Coin toss.
“Agreed, but the lightsabre and bagelhead crowd haven’t heard any Holst so…yeah.”Not getting enough Holst out of life: gee, what a major musical/cultural tragedy. 😀
I more or less agree with your main points. However, as a defender of a lot of synth scores, it should be pointed out that their brief period of getting some sort of respect was immediately after Jaws. Giorgio Moroder won the ‘78 score Oscar for Midnight Express and would get Globe and other nominations for American Gigolo and Cat People among others, four years later Vangelis won for Chariots of Fire, Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, etc… By the mid or at least late 80s synth scores became more associated with cheap b and direct to video/cable movies, but while I agree that Williams’ popularity and success was bringing back full orchestra scores big time, it was happening at the peak of synth scores (you also had traditional composers like Jerry Goldsmith really experimenting with synth.)
I would have chosen Prisoner of Azkaban over Sorcerer’s Stone. It’s the most evocative of all the Harry Potter film scores, with its medieval flourishes, its recorders and harpsichords.
Dare I say, Empire Strikes Back is a miracle of a soundtrack and my top pick.
It was bigger than Star Wars, so much so they re-recorded the 20th Century Fox logo fanfare to match the score. It has multiple new themes for the Empire/Darth Vader, Yoda, and that love theme for Han & Leia. The background music for the Battle of Hoth, the Asteroid Field, Cloud City.. all concert pieces in their own right, and all perfected by an army of orchestrators and recording engineers that were at the top of their game.
But most importantly, it took what was established by the Star Wars score and built upon it such that it wasn’t more of the same. It was an evolution of an already successful thing. They could have just done another Star Wars score. Instead they turned it up to 11 and gave us a score that became the benchmark that arguably is yet to be topped by pretty much any other soundtrack I can think of.
Also, shame his score for Hook isn’t listed. Just a sample here with a lovely flute part that then gets picked up by the strings and it’s just magic, pure and simple.
I came here to say exactly this. It’s some of his best work, and however anyone feels about the movie itself, John Williams’ score is undeniably a highlight.
Score is good, the film is crap.
I agree that Empire trumps A New Hope in the scoring dept. Most people assume the Imperial March is from A New Hope, but it’s not – it’s from Empire.I’d also put Return of the Jedi on this list somewhere. I get that they probably didn’t want to just front load it with Star Wars, but Luke and Leia, Battle of Endor, Emperor’s Theme, these are all timers.
RotJ also had the Ewoks theme that I loved as a kid, and the music for the final duel between Luke and Vader which still gives me chills just thinking about it.
Man, I spent the last half hour struggling in vain to load the comments only for you to beat me to the punch. Completely agree—as with pretty much every other aspect of Empire, the score is a richer and more compelling version of the original. E.g., just compare the Leia theme from New Hope to “Han and the Princess” from Empire. The former is winsome and and perfectly serviceable, but pretty cookie-cutter if you’ve heard any of Williams’s other romantic themes—Marion gets something very similar in Raiders—whereas the latter is so much more colorful and operatic.Also, Phantom Menace should probably be on this list. Dude composed the hell out of that movie—not his fault if it otherwise turned out to be a dud.
Marion gets something very similar in Raiders.The similarity is crazy. The first couple bars, it’s practically the same composition.
Dude loves his rising sixths!
He really brought it for the prequels. I remember my mind melting when there was a goddamned ELECTRIC GUITAR?! in the AOTC soundtrack. Padme’s Ruminations and Battle of the Heroes from ROTS are probably my favorites.
Wait where was the electric guitar in ep ii?!?!
IIRC there’s a brief use near the start when Anakin and Obi-wan are chasing the shapeshifter through the skies of the industrial area of Coruscant.
Agreed, although I have an all-encompassing love for Duel of the Fates from TPM.
Yep, TESB is his best collected work. Every “theme” he came up with feels unique and distinct from the other. Yoda’s Theme is whimsical, Imperial March is doom and bombast, Han and Leia is sweeping and majestic, even the menacing oboe rumble that’s Boba Fett’s theme works. Then there’s obsure stuff like “Hyperspace” or the chaos of the Asteroid theme. The “suite” played over the ending credits that goes from one theme to the next is almost overwhelming.
If you want to hear what the score for Empire could have been if they had taken the easy route and just done the same thing over again, listen to Superman II. It’s essentially a rerecording of the original with a smaller and weaker orchestra. Then it was divided up and they just dropped in whatever section of music the emotion of the scene called for. It sound cheap.
The tinny, high school marching band quality of the Superman II soundtrack was my first hint that something was “wrong” about it, leading me down the rabbithole of finding out about all the behind the scenes shenanigans.
This! really would have loved they got Williams back to come up with a new score for the Donner cut but alas Warner was so cheap
Yeah, Empire is easily the best of the starwars movies on soundtrack (i mean its the best starwars movie period).
My top five are all three Indy movies, Jurassic Park, and ET.While it’s not a personal favorite, there’s no denying how perfect his Harry Potter score is. Hearing it for the first time in the first trailer for the first movie, it felt like we already knew the music.
Temple of Doom has some spectacular stuff in it, probably the best scored of the Indy movies for my money.
That anvil sound in “Slave Children’s Crusade”. Ominous and victorious at the same time.
Would not disagree with this. The Temple score absolutely rules.
“Bug Tunnel/Death Trap” is one of those great Williams tunes that’s a 3 minute Pow! and he comes up with a theme, just tossed off, that would kill as the main theme to any number of other thrillers. A-and he never uses it again in the movie. It’s like a killer pop song. It amazes me when he does this stuff. “Battle in the Snow” and “It’s a Trap” (from Empire & Jedi) are the best two examples of really excellent “Once and Done” themes.
It’s almost Mickey Mouse music – you know, music that follows the action on-screen, outright shouting at the audience how they’re supposed to feel – and it works because Indie’s one big homage to old-school matinee films.
No mention of the score that won him “Best Original Score” at the Adult Film Awards? I call shenanigans!
Harry Potter does nothing for me, nostalgia-wise, but it’s hard to deny that’s the ideal score for that story & setting. Even when it feels like John Williams is doing a lay-up, it’s just gliding and perfect.
Where does his TV work fit in this list?
I dunno about “on this list”, but all the immortal cues he provided for “Gilligan’s Island” have fit neatly in my frontal lobes for decades.
Well, there’s my mind blown.Funny thing is I remember an 80s comedian who had a “someone wrote that!” bit about the GI cues, playing them on a keyboard. Now I know who that someone was.
I’m not crazy about the first theme, but the second? Absolutely primo.
Came here to say it!
My John Williams obsession goes way back to when I made the Michigan
state forensics finals in high school in the early ‘90s with a talk on
Williams’ scores for Spielberg movies. As this list says a few times,
some of Williams’ best work could come from otherwise mediocre films. One of Spielberg’s worst movies gave us one of the greatest pieces of film music ever composed: the March from “1941″.
I’ve been a Williams fan since I was a kid watching “Lost in
Space” when he went by Johnny Williams. I knew his name before any pop
band or musician and actually grew up on his music on television and film and used
to regularly haunt the soundtrack section of Camelot Music looking for his
records in the seventies (the disaster film era was an especially heady time).I’ve never been one for lists but I’d say “Close Encounters” is
my sentimental favorite but goddamn “The Cowboys” is a great score. Both
“Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno” are terrific and much of “A.I.”
is a quite moving “reinterpretation” of Khatchaturian’s “Gayne Ballet
Suite” which is an effective but also very curious way to acknowledge Stanley
Kubrick who favored needle drops over original film music (ask Alex North).I think some of his loveliest scores were the quieter
ones (“Sabrina” and “The Accidental Tourist”) or forgotten works (the
television adaptation of “Jane Eyre”) and are well worth a listen. Random
recommendations: “The Witches of Eastwick” and “Family Plot” are wickedly
fun, like musical equivalents of a Charles Addams cartoon and “1941″
features one of the single greatest marches ever scored for a movie (sorry
“Bridge on the River Kwai”). Coming full circle, his television scores,
particularly “Lost in Space,” are not just wonderfully exciting
and inventive but strongly foreshadow his Star Wars work.On a side note, his classical stuff is much stronger than one
might suspect. The violin and viola concertos in particular but also “On
Willows and Birches” for Harp and Orchestra.P.S. Everyone knows the “Jaws” theme but the rest of the score is a truly great Korngoldian piece of adventure film music.
Agree. Lists such as these always lean too strongly on the blockbusters. “Jane Eyre” is as great a piece of music as he’s ever written. “The Sugarland Express” is both folksy and, somehow, haunting. “Dracula” is supremely lusty and fun. “The Eiger Sanction;” jazzy and tactile. What about the simple beauty of early 70s “Cinderella Liberty” and “The Paper Chase” and “Pete ‘n’ Tillie”? And the moody melodies of “The River,” “The Book Thief,” and “Stanley and Iris?” And the muscular scores for movies such as “Black Sunday,” “Nixon,” and “Monsignor”? Beyond the blockbusters, it’s an embarrassment of riches and some of the most satisfying music he’s composed.
Yeah as a kid I got a one disc Williams highlights CD (not a great way to listen to his music but a good gateway and this recording used the actual movie soundtrack music and not concert recordings) and it actually got me interested in some of his stuff left off here–like Dracula (one of the longer excerpts in fact)
The 1941 March is such an earworm. I’m a sucker for syncopation. 🙂
1941 should be in the Top 20, whatever one thinks of the movie. It’s a gorgeous soundtrack and even Spielberg has gone on record to say that he likes the March from 1941 better than the theme/march for Raiders.
Great list—and thank you for mentioning the deep homage AI’s score owes to the Khatchaturian Gayane ballet score (which of course outside of former Soviet countries is only really known for a few orchestral excerpts by most.)
I love that A.I. score. E.T. is my favorite movie score of all time.
His scores are certainly iconic, and it’s impossible to think of my childhood growing up in the 70s and 80s without them. But I don’t think, with the possible exception of Schindler’s List, that I’ve loved any of them. Unlike many others, I’ve never put any of his on just to listen to them.I do really like that one cue from Jurassic Park, especially when it’s played quietly, like just on a piano. It does capture that feeling of childhood wonderment very well. There’s also that simple cue at the beginning of the Harry Potter that works similarly for me, though I did find this entry in Alan Rickman’s diaries pretty amusing:4 NovemberHARRY POTTER PREMIERE.6.30pm The film should only be seen on a big screen. It acquires a scale and depth that matches the hideous score by John Williams. Party afterwards at the Savoy is much more fun.
On the contrary, I can’t think of many film scores I would deliberately listen to outside of his work. There are some other notable exceptions: Vangelis (Blade Runner) and Poledouris (Conan The Barbarian) immediately come to mind.
Yes that made me chuckle as well. Classic bait and switch. He was a grumpy old sod was Rickman.
I’m watching Smiley’s People and he has a great cameo- well, not really a cameo, since it was before he was famous. But he gets a 30-second scene in it.
I probably saw that in 1982, but never since. Had no idea he was in it!
Both it and Tinker Tailor totally haven’t been uploaded in their entirety to YouTube, and definitely not under an account called “Audience Hoop”, so don’t even bother going there and looking for that channel to see if it’s up there, ok?
OK?! It’s kind of a damn shame The Honourable Schoolboy was too damn expensive for even the Beeb in the eighties to do. Sigh. Why couldn’t Le Carre have set it in, say, I dunno, Finland or somewhere? Would’ve been awesome to have a full Guinness Karla Trilogy.
I’ll bear in mind not to try – thanks for the warning.A few years ago I worked my way through a radio version of all the Smiley stories on the BBC, starring Simon Russell-Beale. Very good.
I think the BBC TV series are both the definitive adaptations, and Guiness’ best work. I did like the Gary Oldman version, but I think gets a bit too…artsy. Oldman’s a great sphinx in it, but lack the warmth and humanity that’s simmering – ever-so-gently – beneath Guinness’ portrayal of Smiley. It’s that whole portrait of British reservedness that makes it great. (I love how everyone, for example, is constantly asking about Ann as if they’re still happily together and Smiley dutifully replies she’s well – except Connie Sachs, who rightfully calls Ann a “cow”, bless her.)And I don’t think the classism was quite as evident as in the Oldman version, and that’s a core current running through Le Carré’s work. There’s a great parallel between between Le Carré and Guinness. Both were of a lower class who were “elevated”, somewhat artificially, into the upper classes. Le Carré had a dodgy, con man father (and known Kray Twins associate) and mother who ran away, but managed to get sent to public schools, which he hated. Guinness once simply described his mother, matter-of-factly, as a “whore” who was the plaything of the upper class gents, and didn’t even know who his father actually was – his mother, IIRC, just picked the name “Guinness” for him as she thought that’s who the name of the man who might’ve knocked her up at the time. Another client, who might’ve possibly been his actual father, was a banker who paid for his public schooling – from whore’s bastard to received pronunciation. And so they both encapsulate the scepticism of the upper classes that the British placed so much stock in, especially since the intelligence scene during the Cold War. After all, Le Carré’s own spy career was cut short by that upper class twit Kim Philby…whom no one accused or suspected because, well, he was a Good Chap. These were guys who were known to openly flirt with Communism…and yet no one ever questioned their loyalty: by Jove, we were at Eton together! I don’t pretend to be able to follow exactly what goes on in ‘em, but these humanity and drama Guinness (and others – like Bernard Hepton and Beryl Reid and Eileen Atkins).
Interesting read – thanks. Speaking of “good chap” Philby, have you seen A Spy Among Friends? Both the TV drama with Guy Pearce, Damian Lewis and Anna Maxwell-Martin, and the Ben McIntyre book on which it’s based, are very good.
I understand the point you’re making, but would propose that if you ended up loving the movie, then the scores did their part. Just that most people don’t often listen to just movie scores, with some rare exceptions. Movie scores are often odd to listen to, particularly if they include the filler incidental musical cues for scenes. That said, I think he co-won a grammy for Memoirs of a Geisha, so there are some tracks that people like to listen to outside of the movies they accompanied.
Just like how Steven Spielberg seized the opportunity to explore the mid-century modern milieu for his cat-and-mouse thriller Catch Me If You Can, John Williams designed his score as an homage to the splashy big-budget potboilers of that time. Catch Me If You Can is…man, it’s pretty hard to pin down the genre, but it’s definitely not a thriller. Kind of a light comedy crime drama? Anyway, really happy it made this list, because it’s a fantastic score—both a refreshing departure from what we consider to be the “Williams style” and a winning return to his roots in jazz.
Star Wars may have had the initial influence and impact, but Empire is an absolute masterpiece of lietmotif. It’s easily one of the greatest film scores of all time, not just in Williams’ filmography.
Close Encounters is doubly impressive when you consider Williams composed most of it before the final effects were finished. He was essentially writing music to “INSERT FX HERE” over and over again, and still managed to conjure a sense of otherworldly wonder that had a huge influence in how Spielberg edited the final film.
Yoda’s Theme is a Top 5 Williams piece IMO. Dare I say I like it more than the Imperial March.
We get to see Empire in a few months projected with a live orchestra playing the score, and then about a month later another orchestra a couple of hours from here is doing the same with A New Hope. We had the chance to see ET and Raiders like this a few years ago, and both were a blast. Really can’t wait.
Can’t really quibble with this list. Williams just wrote so much that ended up being iconic. Slightly disappointed that my personal favorite didn’t make the cut: the prickly/spooky/impish score to The Witches of Eastwick.
I said above that Empire Strikes Back is his best total work, but the Superman Theme has to be his best single piece of music. It’s beyond iconic. You could play it for someone who had never hears of Superman and they would still somehow say that’s Superman’s Theme.
100 percent agreed. As perfect a piece of movie music as there ever was.
Williams authored the soundtrack of three generations worth of films. There was of course the GenX heyday of Star Wars plus Spielberg’s run in the late 70s and early 80s. Then he did it again with Jurassic Park and Home Alone for millennials. Then he did it AGAIN for Harry Potter. Just a staggeringly deep career and his impact cannot be overstated.An underrated bit of work he did that would have been nice to see here is his sparse, percussive soundtrack for Munich, in a similar vein to JFK.Of course a career this long can’t be without duds. I’d like to offer The BFG, which sounds like after he got off the horn with Spielberg asking him to do it, he just rooted around in his Harry Potter castoff file and had an intern polish it up.
The stuff Williams did with Oliver Stone are some of my favs.
I realized a few years ago that Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has become my favorite Williams score. The use of period instruments, that flute solo following the bird in flight, the Knight Bus, the bombastic drums at the opening of Buckbeak’s Flight….I could go on. My favorite is the quieter A Window to the Past with it’s recorder solo before the rest of the orchestra comes in. The score has such a distinct feel to it. For a sample, listen to Mischief Managed! which has snippets of all the main themes.
For a split second I panicked thinking this meant that Williams had passed away…Imo, his run in the early 90s (with scores like Hook, Jurassic Park, and Schindler’s List) was some of the most phenomenal we’ve seen in the industry. Talk about brilliant, varied, and iconic one right after the other.Some of it’s probably bias because I love the associated films, but it’s not just Star Wars and Indiana Jones I would single out as faves, but his particular work on RotJ (like Luke and Leia’s Theme, which is just mind-blowing) and Last Crusade (like the Grail Theme) would rank the highest for me.
This creepy and inexorably building theme from Brian DePalma’s movie has always been one of my favorite “unsung” Williams pieces – was it really used in “Euphoria”? (Also a shoutout to the very funny score to “The Long Goodbye.”)
Thank you for mentioning “The Long Goodbye.” We’re all so familiar with the large-scale scores that many people don’t know how witty JW can be. Such a great, hilarious idea to write a single song…and then place it in every possible idiom: jazz, “Muzak” elevator arrangements, etc., so that the tune shows up everywhere the Eliot Gould character goes. It’s one of my all-time favorites.
And the other funny thing about it is that the entire lyric is never heard. I always wanted to learn the song but it always gets cut off at a certain point. Fortunately there’s a terrific soundtrack album and it’s fully sung a couple of times (Jack Sheldon!). (And as far as small-scale JW scores go, I’m also very fond of “Cinderella Liberty,” a movie that’s almost completely forgotten now. Oh! And “The Reivers”!)
I had the soundtrack for Raiders of the Lost Ark on vinyl back in the day. It had a note from Steven Spielberg saying that if the score from John Williams wasn’t there, Indy wouldn’t have known what to do. By listening to the score, Indy knew when to punch the bad guy or kiss the girl. Between Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, I was spoiled with soundtracks growing up. Even got to see Jerry Goldsmith live one time.
Yeah, I liked the Williams themes as a kid but maybe a bit oddly, the first (non musical–well there’s that one song) movie soundtrack I bought and played endlessly was Goldsmith’s underrated Secret of NIMH soundtrack (he says in the liner notes that animation allowed him to write it as a ballet, with longer themes than usual–and to be fair he sure seems influenced by Stravinsky’s ballets in the action cues, but it’s still pretty terrific.)
Superman has at least six (I think) distinct themes. Superman March … Planet Krypton … Leaving Home … Fortress of Solitude … March of the Villains … Can You Read My Mind … it’s crazy that each one has a hook – you can whistle it.So here’s “Leaving Home” notable: the first minute and a half is the creepy green crystal theme (Green Crystal and Planet Krypton bounce off each other throughout) also notable: this is the scene with the real hardcore Cheerios Product Placement (not shown here). I could imagine Salkind being like “Why can’t we cut all this bullshit with Clark and his Mom?”And Richard Donner being like, “Well, it would be a shame to lose that Cheerios shot…”
hahaha pretty sure that convo actually happened. Man DC films have been produced by a lot of blowhards for half a century.
Um, in your hypothetical convo, you have the Donner and Salkind priorities reversed.
Critical point about CEOTTK: the music is the movie. Neither would exist in their current state without the other. This is a huge achievement of creativity and storytelling between Williams and Spielberg.
Jurassic Park is way too low on this list. The whole soundtrack is a masterwork, and the main theme might be my favorite single piece he’s ever done. I’d put it second only to Star Wars (either the original film or the franchise) for him, and a close second at that.
1. Jaws 2. Star Wars 3. Indy 4. Jurassic Park. There I fixed your top 4.
Jurassic Park so low is fucking egregious
The original Star Wars soundtrack also takes top spot for its non-symphonic side trips into interstellar jizz. As Lucas prompted him, aliens interpreting Benny Goodman, with an off kilter assembly of off kilter instruments. The entire track goes through some wonderful permutations and breaks and even has a proper finish.
I’d replace Sorcessor’s Stone with the much better Prisoner of Azkaban score.
In no universe is The Cowboys not in John Williams’ top 20 works.It is a complete masterpiece and remains a sweeping, moving score for a tremendous John Wayne film.
The Cowboys – Overture (John Williams – 1972) – YouTube
Superman’s should be number 1And the Force Theme is better than the main Star Wars theme.
Hot take:
Temple of Doom and Last Crusade are both better overall soundtracks than Raiders. While Raiders is great, the best part of that score is also in the other two which both have more individual memorable pieces.
I was just humming the tank chase theme 30 minutes ago.
Honorable mention to “Lost in Space”.
Enjoyable list, the only favorite of mine that was missing was Amistad. Perhaps forgotten for the best as the movie has aged poorly, but I loved his score from it. “Cinques Theme” is beautiful as it must be, “Adams’ Summation” has elements explored further in Lincoln, and the main theme/reprise “Dry your Tears, Afrika” stands out.
Superman should be at #2. Nothing’s going to be as iconic as Star Wars, but Williams’ theme for Superman is the theme music for an entire GENRE. Every superhero film or TV soundtrack that actually makes an effort (so most of the MCU is disqualified here) owes a debt to Williams’ Superman score. All of them sound at least somewhat like responses to this piece. If someone says “superhero theme music,” that’s the tune that plays in your head.
You just have to put Jaws at #1. That music was the shark in such an indelible way. I cannot recall another score achieving that precise concordance of theme and oh, shit, look out, without the referenced character being seen, though I am open to suggestions. The Imperial March mirrors Vader, but you get to see Vader a lot more.
tour de forces
tours de force
great list, except Empire’s score is objectively, massively better than ANH’s. and his Phantom Menace score should be on the list. hate the movie all you want but Williams *DID NOT MISS* on that score.
I think this should have been on that list.
JW is so good that the main reason I will pay an outrageous ticket price to see Indiana Jones 5 on the big screen this weekend is to hear the Raiders March on a rockin’ sound system. Incidentally, it was also the main reason i saw Indiana Jones 4. I was the only one in the theater who stayed all the way through the credits, much to the chagrin of the 16 year old dude who wanted to get in there and sweep the place up.Also, shout out to Stephen Thomas Erlewine. Is he now an employee at the AV Club? (Is anybody really an employee of a place like this?) I remember the early days of the All Music Guide circa 25 years ago when that man greatly influenced the way my limited music budget was spent on CDs.
I’m glad you picked some of his non-Spielberg/non-Lucas collabs, because he really has had a varied career with a ton of depth (remember he also wrote the theme for The Olympics and NBC News and NBC Sunday Night Football).It’s hard to argue that Star Wars and Empire shouldn’t be on this list, but I think The Phantom Menace should really be in the mix. You can tell when Johnny Williams is inspired, because his score will contain dozens of new themes, and theme writing is his composer superpower. TPM is wall to wall with new themes: a theme for Trade Federation, a theme for Jar Jar, a theme for the Gungans, a theme for Escaping Naboo, a theme for Anakin, and theme for Darth Maul, a theme for Qui Gon, a theme for the Podrace, and so forth and so on, rarely reusing or remixing, and rarely calling back to this original trilogy themes at all. As crazy as good as Duel of the Fates is, I think the rest of the score to the Phantom Menace is equally as great (I particularly love the Podrace flag parade fanfare and the Arrival at Coruscant music). Much like Empire, it is wall to wall with original leitmotifs, and I think Williams as the Wagnerian is his sweet spot.The Hook score also rules 🙂
One score I think is underrated from him is actually from The Patriot. It reminds me of the Olympics. Schindler, Ryan, Catch Me if You Can, so many greats that get overshadowed by his more bombastic stuff. But I can’t deny the bombastic stuff would dominate my Top 10. For me it’s really hard to pick a #1. But my favorite two are Superman and Jurassic Park.
Harry Potter’s used to bug me because it sounded so much like Home Alone, but the music definitely expanded with the sequels. And if two Star Wars movies get to count, my list would include all 3 Indiana Jones films.
As a kid, The Temple of Doom (along with Conan the Barbarian) was some of my first favorite movie music. This one in particular:
And the franchise may not get any more beautiful than the poignant Holy Grail themes from The Last Crusade:
Where’s “Daddy-O”
Not mentioned here, but I was a big fan of his music for The Accidental Tourist, so much so that I pretty much wore out the cassette.
Should’ve done songs vs. films and made this much longer.
The fact that the Superman theme is only 9 is just… woof. One of the most iconic themes of all-time and it’s not ranked higher? Good lord.
Martin Short looks SO much like John Williams in that makeup, it’s amazing
The scores for both Home Alone movies and Saving Private Ryan need to be ranked much higher.
https://open.spotify.com/track/3SZwCb3pLqVYNJAfh6yF3O?si=28795001883a42fd
https://open.spotify.com/track/5yGNB5uc8kuZQenQOqx7Dy?si=a3ab5181e1084d16
https://open.spotify.com/track/3jzMcM9ZnDXzmNM4d97xd4?si=c3b7120d6e2c4595
I’ve always had a soft spot for his Adventures of Tintin soundtrack. It’s a bit jazzier than some of his other stuff at points.
You don’t get any of those Harry Potter scores without THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK.
At 93 John Williams just got done composing the musical score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but what happens to music in film after John Williams is gone?
Movie scores…
Jaws
Star Wars
Superman
Close Encounters of the Third King
Indiana Jones
E.T.
Jurassic Park
Schindler’s List
Home Alone
Saving Private Ryan
Harry Potter
to name a few
“JAWS II”. Seriously extraordinary.