Chen G.

I think to treat these things in trilogies - as Lucas would doubtlessly want us to - is wrong. In lumping these films up that way, a lot of the nuance in terms of the merits and demerits of the individual entries, is lost. And, again unlike Herr Schilkeman, I personally think the stylistic incongruity between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back is a huge, gaping abyss. To me, the feeling of the films could hardly be more different if they tried. It furthers my case that these films are better seen as six entries, rather than as two trilogies, AND your point that Star Wars and the elusive Star Wars "feeling" is effectively redefined with each passing entry, certainly within the "Lucas" canon.

Certainly. Many a great composer were lousy pianists: Haydn comes to mind, but also Schubert and Wagner. Okay, "lousy" is not necessarily the right term, but certainly not very great pianists.

I do think Andor is at the very fringes of what could concievably be considered Star Wars. I mean, remove the few mentions of Palpatine and touch up only a few of the visuals, and it could have been any space opera. I think that's part of the issue when a series becomes so big that you get a prequel (Andor) to a spinoff (Rogue One) of a sequel (Revenge of the Sith) to a prequel (The Phantom Menace) of a sequel (The Empire Strikes Back). That's my only "conceptual" beef with Andor, which apart from that and from some fragmented storytelling, I like very, very much.

I think so too. I see no reason to believe Lucas was aware of these works before circa 1972. But I do also think that, in terms of Star Wars, he was probably reading Dune, bit-by-bit, and thought "Oh, Fremen! They're like Bedouin" and that immediately led him back to Lawrence of Arabia and so the entrance of the Sith warrior (not yet Darth Vader) in his rough draft is not unlike Sharif Ali's entrance as the Masturah well, and the first designs for Vader follow suit: even in the finished film, you could say the black figure entering against an entire field of white is an extreme abstraction of Ali's entrance, which he had in mind since 1974.

Now, that's not a fair accusation. I've gone through a lot of comics that Lucas seems to have been through: as far as I can tell, his research STARTED with the Weird Worlds comic-strip, which adapted several Burroughs stories, and only then got into the actual Burroughs' paperbacks. Later on, he and his artists also looked into some recent Flash Gordon strips, works by Moebius and others. And he was certainly inspired by the works of people who illustrated many of these pulp works, including Frank Frazetta, Kelly Kae Freas, John Schoenherr. Furthermore, Lucas had a particular way of working where he drew on literary sources, but processed them through movies: so Dune led him to thinking in terms of Lawrence of Arabia and Metropolis, Galactic Patrol led him to thinking in terms of James Bond and 2001, Princess of Mars got him thinking of The Searchers, The Stainless Steel Rat got him thinking of Casablanca, Tolkien made him think of Disney films, et cetera... Flash Gordon has obvious similarities to Star Wars, and certainly a primary source for Lucas, especially the third serial, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. But, as I'm sure you'll agree, the relationship is less one of the specifics. Look at the main characters: Flash, Dale and Zarkov. A simple-minded person could say "Well, they're just Luke, Leia and Ben." But anyone who watched the serials would know that's absolutely false equivalency. Lucas is influenced by Flash Gordon, but he by no means rips-off Flash Gordon. That's not to say Flash Gordon isn't a crucial, primary source for Lucas, from the initial instigation to pursue the project, to its name "Star Wars" (Lucas would have known Flash Gordon as "Space Soldiers"), to the whole basic vernacular of rayguns (although in Lucas' film they look more like vintage pistols) and landspeeders (Luke's is straight out a then-recent Gordon strip) to the basic concept of a rebellion against a tyrannical emperor, and some of the (more minor) environments in the sweep of the films like Cloud City and the Gungan city. What's more, the ramshackled look and the basic approach of metaphorically taking scraps from other movies and books and hitching them together are from Flash Gordon moreso than any other space opera property. Another hugely important influence of Flash, which is of the essence for JWFan, is the score: the idea of doing a symphonic score and many of the specific choices of the temp-track, which obviously sent Williams down certain avenues, comes from Flash Gordon.

Oh yes, very much so! The Empire Strikes Back is also along those lines: its really mostly The Ewok Adventure and, to a lesser degree, the original film, that are in that more Tolkienian vein.

I do think Andor is straddling the line in terms of "feeling like Star Wars." It has almost none of the Burroughs-cum-Tolkien "fairytale" touches that had defined the series in the past: its much, much more sci-fi in the usual sense of the word. I don't think any of this is particularly indebted to it being driven by dialogue (although some portions, like the Mon Mothma scenes, do) and I do think the dichotomy that Herr Schilkeman builds relies too much on viewing Star Wars via what George Lucas says he did with it, rather than by what he actually did. Star Wars had always been very reliant on rat-a-tat dialogue, with some characters lik the Droids or Vader all but entirely dependent on it.

Say it is not so!

Okay, so what to make of this? Stephen is going back to New Zealand: https://www.instagram.com/stephengallaghermusic/p/C5HJVHLyeIb/ Now, when he left for London, Gallagher had only recored 80 minutes of music for a film of some 130 minutes. Now, there is the distinct option that that's all the music he wrote for the film, which is not impossible being that this is the first project of this scale for Gallagher. I'm less taken with it, because if this was a wrap, he'd probably say so. Another reason why I think its less likely, is this (clearly joking) comment from Stephen: "Unfortunately this trusty model’s high ‘A’ key is now not working (after many years of being thrown in a backpack or suitcase) so I guess this means the the rest of the score has to be in E-flat minor…" Of course, there's the possibility that Stephen had recorded additional string and wind parts in London - he certainly recorded more crumhorn parts in London - which would amount to a more substantial length of score. But I feel like we'd know if he drafted another body of strings and woodwinds. He had been in London an awful long time, but from watching his posts its more that he wanted to make such a long trip worth his while, rather than necessarily being in the weeds recording: in fact, we know they went into mixing shortly after he arrived: his visit to Air Lyndhurst a few days back seems to have not entailed any recording being done there. Another possibility is that the film is not entirely "locked" and so they're recording the score in a couple of separate sessions. This seems supported by this comment from producer Joseph Chou:

That's what I think. For Season One, Amazon tried - and largely succeeded - in roping-in a huge number of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit luminaries: Howe, Shore, Plan 9, Weta Workshop, WetaFX; the art director, Jules Cook, was from Lord of the Rings; we're told half of the people on the sound department worked on the films; the costume designer, Kate Hawley, was going to do the costumes for Del Toro's Hobbit; Caligrapher Daniel Reeve and dialect coach Leith McPherson, were all on the payroll, and alll them felt this issue: WetaFX had to redesign Durin's Bane and Weta Workshop had to make a new Narsil. There was an interview of Sir Richard Taylor who said he wasn't personally involved in the show because he "felt I couldn't offer anything new to the television series," and I can only imagine this was motivated by the legal situation, because shortly afterwards in an interview for Rohirrim (which on the face of it offers less opportunities for "new" things than the show) he turned and said: "To be on this journey, making The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, feels a bit like coming home. There's so much that is familar - the landscapes et cetera - but so much that is fresh and exciting." I can only imagine Shore felt the brunt of this issue, because you can feel from his opening titles sequence that he WANTS to harken Rivendell: beyond the contour, the orchestration and harmonic background bear it out. But he couldn't, so he changed the rhythm some and substituted the flat sixth for a tritone.

Well, in the video, Monovernatus cites the motivic simplicity of the piece as the cause for some people finding it underwhelming. Certainly, its built on massed orchestrations and on the simplest motivic ideas - a broken arpeggio, falling scales and third-related chords - rather than on some long, italianate melody line. But then, that's true of all of Shore's Tolkien oeuvre, and of many composers prior. To be fair, it had merited some critiques, not least of which by members of this board. I think the reason some - not I - find it underwhelming is a combination of this issue with issues of dynamics and, most of all, context. Ultimately, Howard Shore just isn't one to write a track that's introductory in nature, as this one is , with a loud, attention-grabbing dynamic in the Rossini vein. Possibly his most salient description of his procedures comes from the period of recording An Unexpected Journey: "I think a film score can be succesfull if it transports the audience into the world of the film in a very seamless way, so they don't really know that they've been taken there." Now, when we're presented with an entire Howard Shore score, the very understated openings make "structural" sense to us. But here where we only have this one track from Shore, followed by a McCreary score in a completely different style, we're kind of left wanting. If we listen to it rather as a prelude to the films, rather than as part of the show, I think it works much better.

You know its got to be that on this day:

I can't imagine that being the case, but who knows! Bear surely writes very differently from Shore - the imitative use of timbre notwithstanding - and I do think some might see Bear's composition as a little too much of a "oicture postcard from Middle Earth", but if there were to be any displeasure on Shore's part I can't imagine that would be the impetus of it. Certainly, to hear Bear talk about it, his audience with Shore was perfectly cordial.

Unerhörtes Werk!

No, I mean its more the way we move from on-set, tentative vocals to a souped-up studio recording that's saccharine. The performance itself is very accomplished and touching. But its a Plan 9/David Long composition!

Listening to interviews with Bear, it seems the situation with Shore was already a given when Bear came on.

That was my suspicion for a while, too! But I've since been told on good authority that Shore only previewed the piece we hear.

I think its just weird to hear it within the context of a McCreary album or, for that matter, an episode mostly scored by McCreary. The two could not sound more different if they tried, in melodic and harmonic content (notwithstanding some connections so abstractly 'musicological' as to be nonexistent) but even just in terms of orchestration: you hear 90 seconds of Shore's massed, blended orchestrations and then you shift to the mock-Late-Romantic Hollywood sound of Bear.

For a while there, I had a suspicion that there had been something unsavoury happening behind the scenes, but I'm no longer inclined to think so, and at any rate this is the McCreary thread so I'm not going to rain on people's parade with explaining what might or might not have happened with another composer... And I suppose because its just one piece by Howard, it does stick out. The way to appreciate it surely is to look at it as a prelude to the Shore scores, not within the framework of Bear's score. And as a prelude to Howard's scores, its pretty masterfull how Howard had distilled so much of his Tolkien "sound" into 90 seconds, and being that it IS a prelude to a show, in large part, about the past of Elvendom and Elrond, the allusions to Rivendell are extremly apposite. And this is sad proof to my building thesis that Plan 9 and David Long are something of unsung heroes, because they also provided the show with some extremly worthwhile contributions: This is the second time that Plan 9 and David Long had written a song for a Tolkien piece that, at least as far as people at large are concerned, is the "big tune" of the piece. I admit, something about the transition from Megan Richards singing a-cappella to a souped-up studio recording with accompaniment does feel a little saccharine to me, but the melody is very gratiating and sits very well with Shore's and Plan 9's previous contributions to the soundscapes of the Hobbits. The version by Plan 9's Janet Roddick is a very intelligent interpertation of the melody and lyrics.

Hey, look at it this way: off of this release, we got more Howard Shore and Plan 9 pieces in physical media!

I don't have a problem conceptually with setting the film as early in Anakin's life as Lucas had: I think it would have worked better if Anakin were that little bit older: maybe eleven like Harry Potter? Twelve? Since the film is so removed from the rest, it functions more as a prelude than as an episode, which is fine...except at 132 minutes its a little on the long side for a prelude: Lucas should have tightened it to a brisk 90-something minutes for it to function in that way.

Hey, I mean I'm MENA of a sort... To me, all the Arabic and Farsi terms are mostly just a little... I don't want to say "silly" but just something one has to try and get used to and look past, because its pretty funny to see Herbert (and, by extension, Denis) use these terms which I'm sure read as very exotic-sounding to him...while to me at least some of them could crop-up in daily conversation... "Usul" and "Mahdi" are pretty commonplace Arabic words... "Kwizats Haderach" is a kind of bastardised Hebrew for saying "hopping." It all gets pretty hokey...

That, had they cast MENA actors, the same people would make the opposite criticism: "Look at how they hired MENA people only to put them in roles that ridicule Muslim religious fervour (Stilgar), demonise it (pretty much all the others), fetishize them and put a white saviour at their head."

There's no winning with these people...

Ahem... *clears throat* H A R D I N G F E L E !!! https://www.instagram.com/stephengallaghermusic/p/C4_OEdcsRd3/