Came back from the film a couple of hours ago.
Pawel likened it to The Last Crusade (which IMO is not only the best Indy score, but on my all-time top 10 JW list), but I’m afraid I didn’t hear it. In fact, I felt quite the opposite. TLC is ripe with one individual set piece after the other, containing longlined themes and clearcut beginnings, middles and ends. It’s like a string of different concert pieces, both on album and in the film. Dial, on the other hand, is far more in line with Crystal Skull, or the new Star Wars scores — i.e. ‘contemporary’ JW, with lots of small cells alternating and stacked on top of each other, like a puzzle. A short brass outburst there, a cymbal crash there, frenetic strings jumping around the scale. It’s very busy, schizophrenic and — to be honest — very close to what I had expected.
That being said, there were some interesting nuggets here and there. “Helena’s Theme”, obviously, which is nice. Some references to existing Indy music, also beyond “Raiders”. And — interestingly — a suspense ostinato fairly early on which sounded like it came right out of the Minority Report/War of the Worlds school. Basically a version of the “Spyder” theme from Minority Report. That was cool.
There’s also some set piece music that is similar to “A Whirl Through Academe” from Crystal Skull or the swashbuckler sequence in Tintin. I think JW played a bit from this in the surprise premiere performance. That was okay too.
I found the mix OK for a modern action blockbuster, but the most “actioney” sequences had the music mixed too low (I saw the film in IMAX, btw). So I’m looking forward to hearing this on the OST to find if my film impression holds up or not.