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Darth Plagueis Motif in Return of the Jedi?


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Okay, this was bugging me as soon as I watched ROTJ tonight. There's an eerily similar motif in these two scenes. Am I going crazy or is this potentially an intentional link between the two scores?

ROTJ, the musical motif from 4:07 onwards (which I can't place):

ROTS: the short motif from 0:19 onwards:

I can't write sheet music, but both of these statements follow the same pattern. They start around the middle of the stave, the second note is lower, the third note is the same as the first, the fourth note goes higher, then the last note lower.

Is it too much of a stretch to say this might have been intentional? Is the motif from ROTJ an excerpt from a theme that I just haven't recognised? Feedback please!

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What you're probably picking up on is similarities in harmonic rhythm and melodic contour. The differences are in actual harmony (the ROTJ is partially chromatic: Bm -> Bbm -> Bm -> Em/C#, whereas the Darth Plagueis bit is completely tonal - tonic, subdominant and tonic in the key of C#m) and the melody (F#->F->F#->B vs. E->D#->E->F#).

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Both of those film scenes and score cues are really very good.

In Revenge of the Sith especially, McDiarmid and Williams just nailed it between the 30-50 second mark.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I want to hear what you're trying to say, but I just don't. At least not, so far....

Oh yeah, ROTJ marked the FIRST time that a lightsaber duel was underscored by music.

Star Wars didn't do this.

Nor did Empire.

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