Over the course of the last couple of decades, composer Michael Giacchino has become one of the top names in the Hollywood film scoring scene. Since 1995, he has been credited on more than 150 films, shows, video games, and shorts. He’s worked on about every major modern franchise, ranging from the Mission: Impossible series to Star Wars and both Marvel and DC films. His first major film credit came in 2004, with his score for the now-iconic Pixar film The Incredibles, which began a partnership between him and the legendary animation studio that still continues to this day. This year alone, Giacchino has already put out some of the best scores of the year with his work on The Batman, Jurassic World: Dominion and Lightyear; meanwhile, his work on the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder is sure to impress as well.
Giacchino has been nominated for only two Academy Awards (and it’s a crime he hasn’t been nominated for more), one of which he won in 2010 for his work scoring Pixar’s Up. Now, the composer is changing up his Hollywood life, moving from composer to director as he is helming a live-action Marvel Halloween special, set to release on Disney+ this fall. Despite the illustrious career Giacchino has had so far, the work of musical score composers in film often goes underappreciated. In an attempt to give some credit where it’s due, here’s a ranked list of some of Giacchino’s best work to date.
Also, as a quick aside, before jumping into the list, props have to be given to the composer for using puns in the names of almost all of his work. Good stuff.
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7 Jurassic World (2015)
Universal Pictures
The Jurassic World series has become one of the essentials of modern blockbuster filmmaking, and Giacchino’s work on the music of the films is a major contributor to their overall atmosphere and style. While the New Jersey composer has worked on all three of the Jurassic World films, it’s his work on the first one that is being highlighted here, because that was the score that really proved that Giacchino was up to the task. Following up on the work of John Williams is no easy feat; just ask Jurassic Park III composer Don Davis, but Giacchino was able to do it by creating his own exciting and original themes while also pulling from Williams work on the original Jurassic Park.
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Giacchino smartly knew that he couldn’t score Jurassic World without utilizing the now-iconic theme from the original 1993 film, but he didn’t use Williams’ work as a crutch. There are a few moments where he subtly intermixed motifs of the score within the broader soundscape of World, but there’s only an instance or two where the entire theme can be heard. He times those occasions perfectly within the overall score, and they burst in at the precise moments that the audience is going to want to stand up and cheer as loud as they can for a T-Rex. Giacchino really hit a home run with this score, and it wouldn’t be the last time he would follow up the work of Williams in spectacular fashion.
6 Doctor Strange (2016)
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Giacchino has become a regular contributor to the sound of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with his work on the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man films, but his partnership with Marvel Studios began in 2016 with Scott Derrickson’s Doctor Strange. Earlier on in the MCU, the franchise had an issue with their film scores being fairly bland and forgettable, with about the only exceptions being Alan Silvestri’s work on Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers. However, with his work on Doctor Strange, Giacchino blew the doors open with what continues to be one of the best themes of not just any Marvel movie, but any superhero film of the last ten years.
Giacchino’s use of a harpsichord for the central theme perfectly captures the ethereal aesthetic of the film, while also injecting a sense of class into the whole thing. Just as the film itself took the MCU in some trippy new directions, Giacchino wasn’t afraid to get a little weird with this score. He kept all the grandiosity one would expect from a superhero movie, but he weaved in plenty of psychedelic and progressive news ideas as well. While Danny Elfman did a solid job taking over for Giacchino on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness earlier this summer, it’s hard to imagine anyone topping the work he did on this first Marvel collaboration.
5 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Lucasfilm Ltd.
Star Wars is a franchise whose music is and will always be associated with John Williams. With that said, Giacchino provided one of the best scores of the entire series with his work on 2016’s Rogue One. He interwove some of Williams most iconic themes from the original trilogy, while also introducing a number of new sounds and ideas to the Star Wars soundscape. His new themes for the Jyn Erso and the Guardians of the Whills are as epic as they are regal, and when he does bring in the likes of the iconic Imperial March, he doesn’t overuse or rely on it. His minimal use of the original score was just enough to give the audience a familiar taste that they’ll love while still allowing Rogue One’s overall score to stand on its own.
What makes his work here all the more impressive is the incredibly short time span in which he produced it. Composer Alexandre Desplat was originally hired to score the Star Wars Story, but he was replaced by Giacchino late in the film’s post-production. Giacchino tackled the challenge head-on and composed this entire score within the span of a month. It’s a testament to the pure talent and love the composer has for this stuff, and let’s hope that he’ll take another flight into a galaxy far, far away sometime soon.
4 Up (2009)
It was only a matter of time before one of Giacchino’s numerous Pixar scores made an appearance on this list, and spoiler alert this won’t be the last one. There’s something uniquely special about Giacchino’s score for Up. It’s the music that earned him his Oscar, and it’s easy to see why, as the melodies and instrumentation of this soundtrack perfectly capture the complex emotions of the film. While his work on The Incredibles and Ratatouille prior to this were both excellent, it was Giacchino’s score for Up that really established him as one of the best composers working today.
The music of this movie is just beautiful; there’s no other way to put it. It’s exciting and blood-pumping when it needs to be, but it’s in quieter moments that the score really shines. The main theme is simple, and to the point; yet it can lift the listener up with incredible joy just as easily as it can break their heart. Giacchino doesn’t overcrowd the music with a bunch of different instrumental layers and melodies, but rather he often pulls everything back and lets one solo piano do all the heavy lifting. He wrote several themes for the different characters of the film and brilliantly weaves them together as the film progresses to show how the different relationships are growing and evolving. It’s the kind of score that sounds simple enough on the first listen, but with each revisit, there are even more small surprises and complexities to be found within it.
3 The Batman (2022)
Warner Bros. Pictures
A year ago it would have been hard to imagine that there could be yet another outstanding, and arguably definitive, score for the caped crusader. After the ’60s television theme, Danny Elfman’s triumphant work on the Tim Burton films and Hans Zimmer’s more brooding take with the Christopher Nolan trilogy, it seemed like there just wasn’t room for another great Batman score. Yet Giacchino’s score for The Batman might just be the best of them all. What’s even more impressive is that it was done with literally two just notes played in sequence. Of course, that’s a bit of hyperbole as the music of this film is much more than just the main theme. But, with as dark and moody as The Batman is, Giacchino understood the assignment and delivered a score that so perfectly and effectively captures and enhances the atmosphere that it’s almost overwhelming.
Whether it be the interpolation of “Ave Maria” for the Riddler’s theme, the seductive piano and strings used for Catwoman, or the raw intensity of the Batmobile chase sequence, the music in The Batman never misses the mark. It’s the kind of score that so precisely matches the tone of its film that it almost becomes a character in and of itself. In a film with so many moving pieces and intricacies, Giacchino’s score establishes its presence subtly and continues to build as the film progresses. By the time the credits roll, the music has become so drilled into the viewer’s head that they’ll be humming those same two notes over and over again for weeks on end. As one of the composer’s most recent works, it proves that Giacchino is only getting better with every year.
2 Inside Out (2015)
In the years since Up, Giacchino has continued his collaboration with Pixar, producing a number of other great scores such as that of Coco, Cars 2 (the flaws of that movie are no fault of the music), and most impressively, Inside Out. Many people consider Inside Out to be one of Pixar’s best films, and the score for the film easily lives up to that praise. It’s the most wide-ranging score that Giacchino has produced for Pixar, with elements of jazz, electronic and classical music all swirled together to produce one wholistic musical landscape that’s just as imaginative as the film itself. It’s an array of music that would be worth listening to entirely on its own, even if it weren’t attached to a Pixar movie.
As one might expect from the music in a film about the emotional embodiments inside your head, the score for Inside Out wonderfully conveys the same variety of strong feelings and emotions the characters of the film are feeling. It’s panicked at times, sentimental at others, and it’s not afraid to go in some truly strange directions. Giacchino created individual themes and motifs for each of the emotions in Riley’s head, which are utilized both with those colorful characters and when the human characters are actually experiencing those emotions. It’s delightful, it’s depressing, it’s perplexing, it’s everything Inside Out needed for its music, and it’s one of the best scores you’ll find in any animated movie.
1 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
20th Century Fox
In a career full of truly incredible work, Giacchino’s score for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is his masterpiece. From the moment the film starts with the track “Level Plaguing Field” playing quietly over a prologue depicting a global pandemic (yikes), the music of the film cuts to the emotional core of the film, and provides an audible experience that is worthy of just about every award imaginable. Giacchino collaborated with Matt Reeves on the film, whom he would go on to work with again on The Batman, and the result is a score that deserves to be considered one of the all-time greats. It’s gentle when it needs to be, it’s viscerally aggressive with its percussion in the film’s action beats, and it also builds incredible tension with the use of choir vocals reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s soundtrack.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a film that doesn’t get enough credit, and Giacchino’s score for the film is an integral piece of the already amazing film. It’s a pure injection of everything Giacchino is as a composer, as he takes the lessons he’d learned from everything he’d worked on up until this point and applies them here. There are the quieter moments you might expect from a Pixar film, the intense action-adventure beats of a Mission: Impossible film and the experimental sci-fi sounds of a Star Trek or John Carter. He blends all of these elements together and produces a score that, while occasionally reminiscent of his previous and future works, stands on its own as a captivating work of art.
