Is John Williams Over Nominated at the Oscars?
The Oscars are just over a month away, which means I’m in the mood to talk about all things Oscar related. One of the most nominated people in history is none other than the maestro himself, John Williams. But several of his nominations, especially over the last several years, feel more like career nominations than actually nominating him for great scores. It raises the question, is John Williams over nominated at the Oscars? Let’s talk about it!
My Thoughts
In simple words, yes, I think John Williams is over nominated at the Oscars. It’s kind of frustrating to be saying that because like so many people, I believe that John Williams is the greatest film composer of all time. He has so many great scores from Jaws to Star Wars to Superman to Indiana Jones to Jurassic Park, all of which are top tier film scores. He was rightfully nominated for those films, except Jurassic Park which I think is one of the biggest WTF nominations. How was Jurassic Park not nominated for best original score? It’s baffling to me that he didn’t get nominated for that score. Anyways, for 20+ years he was the top film composer that every year would put out fantastic film score after fantastic film score.
At the turn of the century, I don’t feel like his scores have lived up to what he was doing in the past. Some of that is that he’s gotten older and you can’t be in your prime forever. Even top directors like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese haven’t been in their prime for quite some time. You look at Williams’ nominations in the 2010s and they aren’t as inspired or great as they were throughout that ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. He has done some great scores this century with the Harry Potter films that have some of the best fantasy music of all time. I’d say that The Sorcerer’s Stone was maybe his last great score that was worthy of an Oscar nomination.
Especially over the last few decades he’s gotten nominated for the Star Wars sequel trilogy and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and those seem like nominations that happened because it’s John Williams composing an iconic franchise. I like the score for The Force Awakens, there’s a lot of themes that are good. But The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker don’t really have any music that I think is super memorable. Especially with The Rise of Skywalker you look at the films it got in over and it’s crazy. The Rise of Skywalker, one of the most universally disappointing movies of the century, got more Oscar nominations than Avengers Endgame. Both of them were films designed to close out the franchise, one of them worked and one of them didn’t. The fact that John Williams’ score got nominated over Alan Silvestri’s score for Avengers Endgame is truly baffling to me. Endgame’s score plays over some truly iconic moments in cinematic history and it’s a score that people still remember seven years later. How many people remember Rise of Skywalker’s score? Probably very few. There’s a similar argument to be made about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, this feels like a nomination that happened because it’s Indiana Jones. When the category is “original score” and you’re nominating a sequel, there should be a lot of new music in the film that’s great. I couldn’t tell you any new themes or melodies from Dial of Destiny. It was probably nominated because the central Indiana Jones theme is iconic. The score that should’ve gotten in over Dial of Destiny is Across the Spiderverse. That film had one of the best scores of 2023 and wasn’t nominated.
There’s a few examples of these people that are over nominated, I think Martin Scorsese is the other example. This century he’s had three films get 10 Oscar nominations, Gangs of New York, The Irishman, and Killers of the Flower Moon, all of them won zero Oscars. That’s when it feels like they nominate Scorsese and Williams because of who they are rather than nominating the right great films. Look, I love John Williams, I hope his score for Disclosure Day is fantastic and reminds you that Williams is still the GOAT. But I do think his nominations over the last several years have felt more like career nominations rather than nominating actually great scores.
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