John Williams is one of the best movie composers in America.
Marty is the best game composer in America.
How do they stack up against each other?
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John Williams' pieces romanticise heroism and evil too much for me, while Marty's adequately convey a mixture of sadness, hope, the burdens of the hero, and even the desperation of a tight situation. He goes beyond good and evil to craft a story that could really be told solely through the music, where John Williams is truly a soundtrack artist, matching perfectly his pieces to the visual and auditory aid that comes alongside it. All in all, Marty is a superior composer, but John Williams is better at soundtracks. I've always felt that Marty's time with Bungie was a terrible waste of his talents, as he could be an outstanding symphony composer. His pieces almost even distract you from what's going on on-screen because of how beautiful and outstanding they are, where Williams' seem to fit in more seamlessly by being less remarkable than what's going on in the film, and acting as more of an aide to the environment than a crafting element as Marty's pieces are. If Marty weren't a game composer, he would probably never have written a soundtrack, because the level at which his pieces operate take you to the place they want you to go, and in a game that is acceptable, because you control the environment. In film, however, the picture he paints would be too vivid and could probably never be utilised effectively because a piece that emotionally accurate could never correlate precisely to the scene taking place on screen. John Williams' more broad and more widely applicable pieces work better there. Danny Elfman sucks.