Yes, Williams is the guy that brought leitmotifs to movies (or at least the one everyone’s heard of).
There was a YouTube criticism of Marvel Super Hero movies that was basically going around asking people to hum themes from favorite movies, almost always John Williams: Star Wars, Jurassaic Park, Indiana Jones… then he´d ask people to sing people from a Marvel movie, ANY Marvel movie, and people who just mumble incoherently that they couldn’t think of anything. All those characters, all those movies, and not a single damn theme identifiable with any of character or movie, just a bunch of music generically recycled for Action or Sad or Bemused. Biggest missed opportunity in music history.
There’s also some good commentary about how themes that had definite meanings in the original trilogy got recycled and reused until they meant nothing specific. I think Luke’s theme in the swamp became Generic Music for Using the Force.
Yes, Williams is the guy that brought leitmotifs to movies (or at least the one everyone’s heard of).
There was a YouTube criticism of Marvel Super Hero movies that was basically going around asking people to hum themes from favorite movies, almost always John Williams: Star Wars, Jurassaic Park, Indiana Jones… then he´d ask people to sing people from a Marvel movie, ANY Marvel movie, and people who just mumble incoherently that they couldn’t think of anything. All those characters, all those movies, and not a single damn theme identifiable with any of character or movie, just a bunch of music generically recycled for Action or Sad or Bemused. Biggest missed opportunity in music history.
There’s also some good commentary about how themes that had definite meanings in the original trilogy got recycled and reused until they meant nothing specific. I think Luke’s theme in the swamp became Generic Music for Using the Force.