The moment I realized movie soundtracks completely change how we experience films

So I was rewatching Dune: Part Two last weekend, and something just clicked for me. There’s this scene where Paul Atreides first rides a sandworm, and the combination of Hans Zimmer’s score with those visuals… it literally gave me chills. I’ve seen the movie before, but this time I really paid attention to how the music was manipulating my emotions. It made me wonder – do we give enough credit to film composers for how they shape our entire viewing experience?

I started thinking back to other movies where the soundtrack became inseparable from the story itself. Remember how in Inception, that “BRAAAM” sound became instantly iconic? Or how the Stranger Things theme by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein immediately transports you to 1980s Hawkins? It’s crazy how just a few notes can trigger such specific feelings and memories.

What’s really interesting to me is how different composers have such distinct styles. You can always tell a John Williams score – those sweeping, memorable themes for Star Wars and Harry Potter that you can hum days later. Then there’s someone like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose work on The Social Network created this entirely different vibe with electronic textures that felt so perfect for that story about tech and betrayal.

Here’s a personal story that made me realize the power of film music. When Everything Everywhere All At Once came out, I was going through a rough patch with family stuff. There’s that scene where Evelyn finally understands her daughter’s perspective, and the music swells with this beautiful, emotional theme by Son Lux. I literally started crying in the theater – not just because of what was happening on screen, but because the music reached something deep inside me that the dialogue alone couldn’t touch.

Does anyone else have moments like that? Where a film’s score just wrecked you emotionally or elevated a scene from good to unforgettable? I’m curious about which movie soundtracks people think are underrated too – the ones that don’t get enough recognition but completely make the film.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about – how streaming services and algorithms have changed how we experience film music. I’ll hear a track from a movie on Spotify and it takes me right back to specific scenes, sometimes even more powerfully than rewatching the actual movie. There’s this weird phenomenon now where people discover movie scores separately from the films themselves. Has that happened to you?

What makes a truly great film score in your opinion? Is it something that stands on its own as music, or is it only great in context of the film? I’ve been building a playlist of my favorite movie tracks lately, and it’s fascinating to notice which ones work as pure listening experiences versus which only make sense with the visual memory attached.