I also want to add that I've been very happy with nearly all of the 'one off' composers that have been called on to do Bond. I say 'nearly all'.
1.George Martin - LALD - Excellent
2.Marvin Hamlisch - TSWLM - Very good (the Egypt scenes were some of the most spine tingling, music wise in the Bond cannon)
3.Bill Conti - FYEO - Very good to Excellent (experimental in some areas and somewhat disco era but still memorable, and that's the key. This score is memorable, particularly in the ski scenes and in way they pull in the theme song throughout)
4.Michael Kamen - LTK - Poor and unmemorable (thought I was watching Die Hard and Lethal Weapon combo)
5.Eric Serra - Goldeneye - Excellent (very underrated. The Goldeneye Overture was superb and he showed great potential with a new sound. He just needed to be dialled back a little).
6.Thomas Newman - Skyfall - Excellent
I think Martin, Conti and Serra each delivered for LALD, FYEO & Goldeneye respectively some of the best 'gun barrel' compositions of the series.
So only Michael Kamen disappointed me. In fact, I think all of these 'replacement' composers above except for Kamen did much better work on their one-off projects than 'in-house' David Arnold managed during Brosnan's era, when he, for the most part, created unmemorable garbage, unworthy of Bond and more in tune with standard Hollywood tripe.
I'm not sure if this was entirely Arnold's fault however (see my previous post) because I think he really did much better for Casino Royale and QOS. It could be that, like everyone else working on Bond during the time, he suffered from poor quality output during the post-Goldeneye Brosnan period. The entire Bond team really took their game back to the highest level from Casino Royale onwards.
Edited by bondjames, 21 July 2013 - 08:36 PM.