My two-cents: Most opinions are based in personal bias regarding taste, emotional experience watching a film, etc. Back away and look at the body of work from the beginning until now. Rational thought coupled with honest analysis will demonstrate that Hans Zimmer is a brilliant composer. First of all, he brought an entirely original sound to film scoring. Second, he has influenced a school of musical composition not only in film scoring but that of television, pop music and classical. Because film scoring is such a high profile form great ideas can and have been generated from his influence world-wide.
I had a conversation with one of the show hosts I worked with a couple of years ago and even though he was hosting a home makeover television show, he is a huge fan of film scoring. We talked about how film scoring is one of the last bastions of commissioned orchestral work that exists today. Thanks to modern recording technology and archiving luckily a lot of this stuff will survive well into the future. Only a handful of good source recordings from the "old days" survive and even less sheet music. That's a huge bummer... but I've digressed a bit.
Hans Zimmer's music has brought film scoring into a different stage of evolution much like the advent of recorded soundtracks emerging from the silent film / wulitzer organ days, etc. His talent and army of composers / musicians are worthy of accolades and praise for the quantity of music they have produced for film. Every score can't be a home run but then again, a "home run" in film scoring is very heavily influenced by personal taste.
Just like other professions (ie: business, education, technology, politics, etc) cast a judgement based on the resume and achievements of a composer on his overall influence and advancement of the artform not only personal likes and dislikes. In the end, I think Hans will be regarded like unto composers such as Waxman, Williams, Goldsmith, the Bernsteins and Newmans.
