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Popular music, beginning with jazz, began to proliferate and indeed dominate the film score from the early 50's. In the 60's this soon progressed to the popular rock music of the time. This was largely due to the marketing possibilities of selling the sound tracks as records to a increasingly younger audience.

Many have argued that pop music took away from the film, as they were void of such devices as the 'liet motif' which enhanced the on screen action in a subtle and sophisticated way. It's use can be completely non-diegetic in nature.

Furthering the part from classical musical in films was the advent of synthesised sound, which could quite often replace acoustic instruments altogether. However composers such as John Williams brought the “classical film score to its position of pre-eminence. He very sophistically used the music to create mood and emotion which tied to the narrative content of the film. His use of the liet-motif as an attribute of characters within a film is possibly his greatest classical scoring tool.

The article “John Williams and 'The Empire' Strike Back” by Kathryn Kalinak details quite succinctly all the classical compositional tools he uses to create great orchestral film works in the same operatic style of such composers as Wagner.