Cerebral Cortex

I'd like this post twice if I could. Great way to start Friday with some actual score insight. Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts.

I think my favorites are the reviews that talk about the score but use such pretentious and flowery language that you don't know what the fuck they're talking about. It's like they feel the need to mention the score to show how film literate they are but they didn't actually really listen to the score. It's like an AI-generated response. It's not super common, but there always is like one or two every review cycle and they always make me laugh. Something like: And it'll be from some guy called IndySolo69 on Twitter lol Okay, now THAT... that'll do quite nicely.

New footage and BTS stuff.

This is fucking fantastic, man. Thanks for sharing this with the community. It's the things like this that give this site such a beautiful feel. Such a wonderful piece of work. It will kill me if Williams doesn't lean into the vicinity of the feel of this track because those orchestrations and interpretations of Helena's Theme no joke finally made it click for me as a Williams piece. All I needed was to hear it with piano. Thanks again, you have a lovely creative mind for taking something like this on and being able to execute it so perfectly.

They didn't finish deaging Donovan in this scene:

This is worded like I went into ChatGPT and asked it to give me a joke about George Lucas in the style of a Chuck Norris joke, and I love it.

On the official Cannes film schedule, they have Dial of Destiny listed as being 2 hours and 34 minutes, which is 12 minutes longer than the 2 hour 22 minute runtime Kathleen Kennedy gave out. Could it be that she was saying the film without end credits was 2 hours and 22 minutes, meaning that we're getting at least 12 minute end credits finale cue from Williams?

I don't care if Indy wins, I just need Hitler to lose.

Hey, look what I found! 😉

Your post reminded me a bit of a long ramble I went on over in a Rise of Skywalker thread. In short, you make light of something that I mentioned there that speaks now to your point that I found so especially interesting which is seeing composers spanning literal decades by getting to approach their music of old in the here of now and now adding new pieces to that musical tapestry. To me, I couldn't agree more. That journey that Williams is making, the human narrative that gets to find closure in Williams scoring an Indy 5 is, as you said so beautifully, fucking "fascinating." It's even more interesting with Indy 5 for reasons the Star Wars films never encountered. One thing that fascinates me about the Williams Star Wars films is that to me it feels like Williams is approached in 3 different periods of his life (rising star - 70s, seasoned composer - 90s, and modern era - 2010s) and gives 3 different approaches to get at the same sound. It's like seeing an artist repeat the same painting and trying to improve each time with the skills he has picked up or improved upon in the lapse between attempts. With Indy, even with 4 films under our belts, I'm still not quite sure what the Indy sound is. To me, the first 3 films have a "sound," something you just hear and go, oh, that's Indy music! Each film kinda builds on and stretches the mold on what can count as Indy music, but it still has a cohesion to it. The 4th film for me is a score that I'm still trying to understand, and have had a difficult journey in appreciating, but it's different enough for me to say that it does not sound like the first 3 films save for a few moments. And that's where the Dial of Destiny score is gonna be so interesting. If, for example, Dial of Destiny ends up sounding differently from 4 or 1-3, then we'll know that Williams didn't have a musical rulebook for Indy that he was overly beholden to, but rather changed the musical DNA of the films and adapted it to the adventures Indy had. Which would actually mean then that it's very possible the musical cohesion of the first 3 Indy films is entrenched more than anything in the fact that they all were films that Williams scored for a few years in the 80s. In amending some of my previous post I mentioned earlier to get back on with my main point of agreement with you, with Indy 5 we are getting to see a composer who has already forever added to their indelible mark on society with a single film (Raiders) and throughout the course of multiple decades (that see both the franchise and the composer grow and change in ways not realized during the inception of the first installment) that same composer repeatedly comes back and somewhat literally has to confront the writing style of an older incarnation of themselves that no longer exists. How the composer chooses to deal with that confrontation of a previous musical identity, either through embracing it and trying to write in a style reminiscent of those years of old or by adapting and updating that identity to conform to the new musical norm for the composer, is a such an interesting puzzle to see someone tackle. One of the greatest benefits in being an observer to this unique relationship as a listener is being able to more directly than usual realize and appreciate the growth a composer has had. One thing that this film will bring that I can't wait are musical segues from Williams where he will no doubt have to jump between Indy's theme and Helena's theme. Getting too, in the space of a few seconds, hear a man span decades of life --all he has learned, all he has experienced, all he has felt, all that he is-- in those little seamless bridges between the music of new and the music of old is, well, you said it best... And while there are many people who grew up with Star Wars, Star Wars has gone through so many different eras that the feel of Star Wars has not been a consistent one. But for people who have loved Indiana Jones, that has always looked the same. Most members here have spent most of their lives loving the Raiders March. It's firmly locked in the pantheon of great film scores. It has always taken on a singular shape: Harrison Ford and John Williams. And I think in that regard it's a more emotional milestone than Rise of Skywalker. Because they're both fucking back. That's such a great point that I honestly keep forgetting. Suddenly makes me hope for Williams to end the credits by signing off with a Williams chord crescendo that evokes Shore's beautiful curtain call in ROTK. This is Williams giving it his all for something is shaping up to be a cinematic finale on multiple fronts: the Indy character, Williams scoring franchise blockbusters, Williams no longer doing film score, and the end of Harrison Ford led big blockbuster films, though I'm still holding out for a Air Force One 2. Sorry for such a long response. You made a great point that I don't see talked about a ton, and I love that you added it to the discussion. I know that this is the Dial of Destiny discussion thread, but I think your point that this is, in a way, a film about Williams to be a very interesting point of discussion.

oh shit, there's a new indiana jones movie and score coming out next month. don't get to say that everyday.

Oh no, I know! Sorry, didn't mean to imply otherwise. I meant that people who are trying to pass off fake stuff and aren't trying to be creative and funny like you were have it so much easier these days with recent advancements. I appreciate your old school throwback! It took me back and unlocked a few early Internet memories that I had forgotten, so I thank you for that, sir.

So this gave me a really good laugh, and I really appreciate you sharing, but it got me thinking during the day today and inadvertently ended up pissing me off. The reason being because it got me thinking about back in the early 2000s when people would post fake track titles for the Star Wars prequels online and some were really quite creative with a lot of thought put into them but NOW people who want to do that shit just have to go to ChatGPT and say, hey, give me some fake track title for Dial of Destiny and it'll just spit you out what you. Spreading bullshit on the Internet used to mean something, damn it! And now the people out there spreading bullshit have no idea how easy they have it now! But THEN that got me pissed off even more because I got to thinking about the fuckers that would go to the trouble to create those fake titles back in the day and put them online for obscure Internet clout! Who does that? That's like the most niche kind of scamming: fake soundtrack titles to try and fool film score fans for a few weeks before finding out that the soundtrack titles are fake and that you're full of shit! I fucking love the memories of speculating over whether or not those sorts of things were real, but, man, that's a weird thing to do haha. Also, courtesy of ChatGPT:

I hope there is a scene like that really tastefully done one in X-Men: Apocalypse where 1969 Indy walks out of seeing You Only Live Twice and says "at least we can all agree, the fifth one is always the worst." You have to search "indiana" and "jones" as separate tags. There are definitely "snakes." 👀 What are some others? I'm blanking.

I also wouldn't ignore the possibility that Williams might have been a bit reluctant to do a huge film like Indy 5 after such a seemingly miserable experience on Rise of Skywalker. Perhaps he found it easier working with Mangold and wasn't having to do constant rewrites so he felt more able to end up doing the whole thing.

If it's sharks, I don't think Williams could help himself to not do something. That would be pretty funny if he had to score for sharks again. "Sharks again," fun fact, was also the working title for Jaws 2.

Williams showing up at the next Disney stockholders meeting: "Yeah, I'm gonna need all of you sick sons of bitches to stop making Star Wars films with Daisy Ridley in them..."

This was a great cap. Williams and Spielberg just looking back on the people that have been touched be their work. It's insane how good J 'Dubs looks in these. When his eyes light up and widen when he gets excited about something, he looks like he did 20 years ago.

"Today is my 91st birthday. Yes, and alas... ninety and one years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable people! I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you as well as you deserve."

Surely the creepy crawly will be whatever Indy finds underwater, right? Williams trying to score something for eels? Eels are like the snakes of the ocean, right? It's like a full circle moment or something, I dunno...