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THE ADVENTURES OF HAN - 2018 John Williams theme for Solo: A Star Wars Story


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48 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

Revel in ignorance.

 

This supposed film journalist who is also a film critic and the editor at large of an online film publication outlet thinks Han has 3 seperate "songs" to his name in V VI and VII and that Williams is writing a fourth "song" for Han for this film.

 

https://theplaylist.net/john-williams-solo-star-wars-story-20180102/

 

 

Hey, they're great songs!

 

Quote

No reason has been given why Williams has been roped into the spinoff, but it will allow him to write another song for the character following “Han Solo and the Princess” for “Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back,” “Han Solo Returns (At the Court of Jabba The Hut)” for “Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi” and “Han and Leia” for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

 

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On 12/30/2017 at 9:29 AM, Stefancos said:

I think he only composed the new themes.

 

On 12/30/2017 at 9:32 AM, Jurassic Shark said:

Didn't he compose the themes (including orchestration or approving orchestration), while Bill Ross adapted them and conducted?

Williams was supposed to only write a few themes but ended up writing the whole new score material and Bill Ross adapted material from Sorcerer's Stone to put into other sections. 

This whole ongoing notion that Bill Ross is secretly writing for John is pure horse crap, lol. Williams love to use him on conducting assignments now because of his ongoing back troubles etc.

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On 12/30/2017 at 11:55 AM, TheUlyssesian said:

2. Very underhand and Kennedy kinda clipped Powell's nuts with this right? Imagine telling someone You getting to score what is surely the biggest film in your career in the biggest brand franchise on Earth but you are not good enough to write the main theme? It is humiliating.

 

Surely Kennedy couldn't have done this with Gia or Desplat? 

Kennedy could easily have done that with any composer out there. Composers are work for hire, be it for a whole film or theme. I do believe Williams wanted to do this himself. If you think, he has a theme (or at least a motif) for Luke, Leia, Yoda, Rey, Poe, Vader, Kylo etc etc, but no theme for Han. Now he gets to have the main characters covered for his oeuvre.

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7 minutes ago, TheGreyPilgrim said:

 

Trashy, crass, utterly classless, dragging three great composers through the muck.  Its creator, you who posted it, and all those who liked it should be ashamed.

 

WTF? You are hypersensitive!!!:lol:

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10 minutes ago, ocelot said:

Kennedy could easily have done that with any composer out there. Composers are work for hire, be it for a whole film or theme. I do believe Williams wanted to do this himself. If you think, he has a theme (or at least a motif) for Luke, Leia, Yoda, Rey, Poe, Vader, Kylo etc etc, but no theme for Han. Now he gets to have the main characters covered for his oeuvre.

 

Well Williams was never asked to write Jyn's theme even when Desplat and Gia were onboard for R1.

 

So there is clearly a difference here. While I love the fact that JW is writing Han's theme, there is no reason he should be writing it. This movie is a one-off and the theme wont be used in any other film.

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One thing I think I am hearing on this thread is the notion that John Powell's style or orchestral music is not up to snuff for the project. As far as I am concerned, John Powell is a fantastic orchestral composer. He goes more modern with other projects, but the guy can write for orchestra. Anyone who doesn't think so is off base to me. He has the chops. I really don't think this is a "oh shit, the score is not good" I think this is probably either Disney coming to Williams and saying, hey, you never wrote a theme for Han Solo, do you want to? Or Williams going, Hey, I never wrote a theme for Han Solo, do you want it? That's all. Fabulous news for us, and not a sleight on Powell. The guy is a great fully formed orchestral composer, unlike that cappuccino guy as someone called him, lol, I did think that was funny :) 

2 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

 

Well Williams was never asked to write Jyn's theme even when Desplat and Gia were onboard for R1.

 

So there is clearly a difference here. While I love the fact that JW is writing Han's theme, there is no reason he should be writing it. This movie is a one-off and the theme wont be used in any other film.

See my above post. I believe that is because Han is an established character in the movies and Williams never wrote a theme for him. Jyn and the rest are all new characters that Williams does not have a past with. That's all I believe this is, no more. However, make no mistake. Kathleen Kennedy calls ALL the shots here. She could have asked Williams to write something for Rogue One. They just did not at the time and there was already a clusterfuck of a thing happening with the firing of Desplat and bringing in Cappuccino and his help to do the score very fast. Williams also likes to take time on his scores and themes from everything I know. He wrote so many different variations of Rey's theme and was not satisfied till the end.

5 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

Revel in ignorance.

 

This supposed film journalist who is also a film critic and the editor at large of an online film publication outlet thinks Han has 3 seperate "songs" to his name in V VI and VII and that Williams is writing a fourth "song" for Han for this film.

 

https://theplaylist.net/john-williams-solo-star-wars-story-20180102/

 

Exhibit A as to why the opinions on film score of these hippie new age blogger/film critics are basically BS. They are literally talking out of their ass when talking about film scores and don't know what the hell they are on about.

And this guy calls himself a film critic?! LOL..... What a Joke. I posted to his article not that it will make any difference.

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It's pretty easy to guess whether or not I've ignored you.

 

-Are you a relatively new member whose content includes a significant portion of childish Zimmer jokes?

 

-Are you here, and posting often, solely as a result of the new Star Wars score?

 

-Are you unable to tell when I don a mantle of caricatured self righteousness, and do you fire back on all cylinders as a result?

 

-Are you gkgyver?

 

 

 

 

 

18 hours ago, ocelot said:

And this guy calls himself a film critic?! LOL..... What a Joke. I posted to his article not that it will make any difference.

 

Film music journalism/writing needs only the likes of Alex Ross, Frank Lehman, and Doug Adams.  Best to ignore the rest.

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2 hours ago, Richard said:

 

No love for John Burlingame, TGP?

I'm just asking, but...why is that?

 

Simply slipped the mind. 

 

Also thumbs up for Kaya Savas. 

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6 hours ago, Tom said:

Just pure speculation on my part, but to the discussion on why Williams did not compose a theme for Jyn or such for RO, maybe it was the time factor or complete lack of interest.  However, it might be because she was a new character, so there was not really a connection to it.  Han Solo, on the other hand, goes to the heart of his SW scoring over the last 40 years, and he might have felt a certain "ownership" that he does not for new characters. 

Jyn's theme obviously takes its inspiration from Rey's Theme, and by the time Giacchino was brought on, there was little time to think about asking anyone else to write a theme for a singular character.

 

If Williams was asked to write a theme for Solo my guess is that they wanted to breed familiarity and close the gaps between the standalone films and the main saga in terms of the music. At this point the film has gone through reshoot hell, and attaching Williams to it seems like a good press move? 

 

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I'd be shocked if Williams wasn't asked to compose both Rogue One and Solo, but turned them down. Then, later, he may have thought of something that he figured would make for a good Han Solo theme and reached out to somebody and said, hey, remember when you asked me to work on this movie?

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9 hours ago, Arpy said:

 At this point the film has gone through reshoot hell, and attaching Williams to it seems like a good press move? 

 

I do not see this as a PR move.  Disney knows the average fan is not going to care one bit who scores this thing.  Maybe 200 people will now see Solo (when they otherwise would not have) given Williams' theme.  Plus, if they really thought new JW music was good PR, they would have used it in their marketing of VII and VIII in a substantial way.

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I don't see how it couldn't be a PR move. Of course it's not solely a PR move (aha!), but it is obviously about marketing the movie, like all of the movie and the talk about its creation is.

 

I'm going out on a limb and wondering whether Han's theme will be based at least partly on The Asteroid Field - a one-off melody that scores Solo's audacity, and can be turned into something with attitude (John Powell has been writing themes 'with attitude' for some time now!). It also has to be a melody with a hook, and Johnny hasn't been writing many of those lately (as engaging as Holdo's Resolve and March of the Resistance are to listen to for me, as a film score fan, hooks they have not).

 

 

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4 hours ago, Miz said:

I don't see how it couldn't be a PR move. Of course it's not solely a PR move (aha!), but it is obviously about marketing the movie, like all of the movie and the talk about its creation is.

 

Well, insofar as anyone connected to the movie taking about the movie is PR, then yes, this is PR.  But the decision to have Williams write the theme does not seem like PR to me.  The only way it increases the BO is if the theme is so good it elevates the movie.  this may happen and this may even be Disney's intention, but I just don't see this as a PR issue (again, unless everything connected to the movie is PR--then the term just loses any real meaning).  

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On 2. Januar 2018 at 8:08 PM, Chen G. said:

Than again, half the people here see dozens and dozens of supposed "motifs" that Williams never ever intended for, too.

 

And the other half can't hear a Battle Of The Heroes quote when it nibbles on their nuts, and hears Imperial March references where there are none (The Spark).

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2 hours ago, gkgyver said:

 

And the other half can't hear a Battle Of The Heroes quote when it nibbles on their nuts, and hears Imperial March references where there are none (The Spark).

:lol: If anything I would say the Imperial March idea has more backing than the Battle of the Heroes. That some think he quoted or unconsciously plagiarized the latter is honestly surprising to me.

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12 hours ago, Ludwig said:

 

That would be cool, but my guess is that Han's theme will be in a minor key unlike the Asteroid Field's opening melody, which is major-based. It's interesting to compare good-guy themes from the OT and ST so far in terms of whether they are based on a major or minor tonic, especially since the ST is closely modeled on the OT:

 

Original Trilogy

- Luke's Theme - Major

- Leia's Theme - Major

- Rebel Fanfare - Major

- Force Theme - Minor

- Han Solo and the Princess - Major

- Yoda - Major

- Ewoks - Major

- Luke and Leia - Major

 

Sequel Trilogy (so far)

- Rey's Theme - Minor

- Poe's Theme - Minor

- March of the Resistance - Minor

- Luke in Exile - Minor

- Desperation (of the Resistance) - Minor

- Rose - Major

 

There's a very clear trend of having the primary good-guy themes in the sequel trilogy almost entirely minor (only Rose's Theme is major, no doubt due to her childlike innocence) whereas in the original trilogy, they are very much the opposite - almost all major (only the Force Theme is minor, no doubt due to its function as a "struggle" theme). This change from major to minor is probably due to the change in the tone of films nowadays. So many films of the 80s have an optimistic tone whereas today they are much darker and in many ways pessimistic, and I think Williams is reflecting this trend in his music for the heroes.

 

Anyway, I thought this would be interesting to share. So yes, I'm guessing Han's Theme will be in a minor key.

 

Pardon my ignorance, but what does major and minor mean in terms of music?

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44 minutes ago, someonefun124 said:

Pardon my ignorance, but what does major and minor mean in terms of music?

 

I'm referring to them as the "home" chord of a theme, which in most cases (and in all those I cited) is the first chord we hear, which sets the chord as a kind of home base for the music. Major and minor are usually described as being opposite to one another, major being "happy", minor being "sad". Of course this is over-simplified, so I like to say that major is positive whereas minor is negative, at least in the way they are portrayed in most Western music.

 

Part of me also thinks (or maybe wants to believe) there will be a love theme in Solo, and if that's the case, you can bet it would be major rather than minor, regardless of who composes it.

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3 hours ago, Ludwig said:

Part of me also thinks (or maybe wants to believe) there will be a love theme in Solo, and if that's the case, you can bet it would be major rather than minor, regardless of who composes it.

 

But since Han Solo doesn't have a lover during the events of Star Wars, surely any romance which will transpire during the events of Solo will have failed or ended in tragedy. That sets us up to a tragic love theme, which will probably by in minor, no?

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45 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

But since Han Solo doesn't have a lover during the events of Star Wars, surely any romance which will transpire during the events of Solo will have failed or ended in tragedy.

 

Well, not that we know about. He doesn't return Leia's "I love you" at the end of TESB. Hmm, a sense a mistress somewhere. Scoundrel!

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For all it's worth, the EU portrayed Han as a frequent womanizer and girl chaser before the events of ANH, so I personally don't doubt that Han will have a love interest, perhaps even several, in this film.

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