JOHN WILLIAMS

I think unfortunately this came down the film post-Coruscant cutting between a budding romance (solid theme, but it's development isn't the most gripping musical thread of STAR WARS) and a mystery w/ occasional bursts of action. The mystery side of things entails much Bernard Herrmann style scoring, except in the violent eruptions (Jango's Escape and Asteroid Chase, which are two of Williams' lesser modern action cues for me). So there's a lot of running arpeggiations up-the-scale, down-the-scale, etc. If you think about it, none of the other STAR WARS films concentrate on mystery for such a large section of their plots, so it's natural that this isn't going to fit in very well. The strongest section of it for me is probably when Anakin finds his mother and then erupts in rage, then returns home. Some good stuff there. (The entry to Kamino is good too, but on the album, that's the first track!)

Incidentally, I'm not saying you're wrong. ATTACK OF THE CLONES wouldn't be on my list of greatest scores, Williams scores, Star Wars scores, or sci-fi scores. It probably would be on my list of 2002 scores, and that's partly because when he decides to write music that tries to be murky and mysterious, he still writes it better than most of his colleagues would.