But I'd say that the biggest issue with William's music in the Prequels isn't that it's forgettable. The actual cues of the PT are probably more memorable to some degree. The Duel of the Fates and Across the Stars come to mind. The songs are very memorable. The problem is that those cues aren't inextricably LINKED with memorable moments. They're just songs pasted into the movie because they need to be there. That's the beauty of the OT, and especially the ESB score. The visuals and the music are so perfectly intertwined because they were designed for one another. You can listen to it and imagine every beat of the film. Every cut, every expression. You can't listen to the PT scores and experience the same thing, because William's music was cut up and pasted in to fit the editing. It was in no way the natural, intertwined score that we heard in the OT.
Williams is no worse a composer now than he was then.