So who is the best? This is not a vote on your favorite score from a composer, but who you think has the best body of work. Below are links to each composer's (in the poll) IMDB page, if you are wondering what each has composed.

John Williams - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002354/

Hans Zimmer - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001877/

James Newton Howard - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006133/

Howard Shore - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006290/

Alan Silvestri - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006293/

Randy Newman - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005271/

James Horner - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000035/

Jerry Goldsmith - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000025/

Danny Elfman - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000384/

Alexandre Desplat - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006035/

Marco Beltrami - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001937/

My personal favorite is Hans Zimmer. Nobody does epic quite like him and is second only to John Williams in scores that are iconic and extremely memorable.

My top five favorite Zimmer scores are:

1. The Rock
2. Pirates of the Caribbean (DMC/AWE)
3. The Dark Knight
4. Gladiator
5. Inception

I know these are mainly modern composers, so I'm interested to see if the "other" option conquers due to some older composers still holding a soft spot in people's hearts.

Williams is by far the best
Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jaws, Close Encounters, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, ET, could go on but too many to list.

Philip Glass

Morricone.

John Williams
Danny Elfman

Alive: John Williams and Ennio Morricone

Dead: Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein

Overall: Jerry Goldsmith

John Williams, Howard Shore, and James Newton Howard. Too hard to choose.

James Horner

Runner-ups: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard

Yeah, there's no excuse for his absence here.

1. Zimmer, 2. Elfman, 3. Hisaishi, 4. Glass

I went with James Newton Howard. While I love Hans Zimmer and James Horner (and Harry Gregson-Williams gets an honorable mention for Chronicles of Narnia), Newton Howard won simply because of his score for Peter Pan 2003.

James Horner comes in at close second.

Oh, sure, I could have gone with John Williams and/or Danny Elfman, but I'm finding myself less and less impressed with each new score from them. To me, it all is just starting to sound alike.

Hans Zimmer is the biggest hack in the world and stole the inception theme from a flaming lips song. I'm not sure if Steve Reich has ever composed a film score bit he probably has so I'll say him.

omg this thread is so funny!

it would be michael giacchino if he only had done incredibles and ratatouille

so probably joe hisaishi

1. Ennio Morricone
2. Hans Zimmer

1. Hans Zimmer
2. MICHAEL GIACCHINO (this one is missing in the poll)
3. John Williams
3. Randy Newman
4. Thomas Newman
5. Danny Elfman
6. Jame Newton Howard

I basically just chose the composer's whose movies had made the most money and were most familiar to me. I was planning on having Giacchino in the poll, but just forgot and figured Morricone would come up at some point. So, I did go ahead and added them to the poll and changed the option for people to re-vote.

Popol Vuh

-Bernhard Hermann
-Ennio Morricone
-Sergei Prokofjew
-Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov
-Georges Delerue
-Antoine Duhamel
-Nino Rota
-Giovanni Fusco
-Zbigniew Preisner
-Krzysztof Komeda

the contempt score is really repetitive and I don't get it

Mirdochegal.

John Williams, though Hans Zimmer is pretty much the modern day John Williams. Very unique sound, easily identifiable music, gets all the big films...and of course his music is excellent.

Gladiator, Batman, Pearl Harbor, The Thin Red Line are all top notch.

John fuckin Williams.