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Holt's The Planets

Just watched ep 3… I will preface this by saying I loved Loki's score and am by no mean a Nathalie Holt hater or anything. I will also say that I found Powell's score for Solo to be great so I'm not just shittalking because it's not Williams score. But wow… the music in that episode was so bad… the music itself was bored to death and so was I. How can you possibly end up with this! There's something fishy imho.

I'll just rephrase what I said before. I have absolutely nothing against Holt - I'm sure she'll make a decent name of herself eventually - but this was most definitely not the time to be experimenting with new talent. As a lot of you said, with The Mandalorian it made sense to go off-tradition and the results were mixed but worked well overall. This, however, when you're dealing with legacy characters in a gap between two massive legacy 'eras'... it should have been fucking obvious what the requirements are.

You can tell that Natalie Holt really relished writing the first ever theme for Darth Vader.

I really enjoy all SW scores composed by aother composers, even Joseph Shirley on BooK of Boba Fett did a good stuff. But this is the first time that I am extremely disappointed. There is nothing, it's generic like all TV shows. The Theme of Obi-Wan by Williams is great, I love it, but it's only on the first episode. A new theme for Leia ? Really ? And Vader too (a brass thing with 2 notes) it's not there have allready 2 of the best thèes of musical film history. I don't understand what's happenning here. Next time, call Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab instead of the last marvel composer in the move...

That is one of the best interviews with Williams I have ever heard.

Presto also made this the Release of the Week and posted a short review. This paragraph I think accurately describes the power of the concerto and why repeated listens are so enjoyable. "Reviews of the premiere performance mentioned that the work was so full of ideas that it never quite seemed to settle down and was hard to grasp on first hearing. I agree to the extent that it took me multiple listenings to appreciate the sheer range of its invention, but I think that ultimately attests to its strength – it constantly teems with new material, none of which outstays its welcome, merely revealing more of its secrets each time. No small amount of credit must also go to Mutter, who unfailingly holds the listener to attention and is in complete command of what she has described as some unbelievably technically challenging passages. Knowing her so intimately as a performer has clearly been a source of inspiration for Williams, whose writing is tailor-made to her abilities, particularly her sweet-toned, fast vibrato that is deployed to tremendous effect throughout, from the quasi-improvisatory, jazz-inflected opening section of the Prologue to the delicate, serene conclusion to the fourth movement Epilogue (in the composer's own words, "a gentle resolution in A major that might suggest both healing and renewal")." That's a lovely article. ----- Have we seen this Williams-Mutter logo before that is in the booklet?

No idea. All I know is that she could not come up with a theme and Kathleen went to Williams to come up with one for Obi Wan. That i know is true. I personally do not think Holt is a good composer on something like Star Wars. It's all bland and has no emotional impact. I did like some of the scoring in episode three though, there is some syncopation and some rhythmic ideas, HOWEVER, what BEWILDERS me beyond belief is that we see Darth Vader and the pay off would have been huge with the Imperial March and we don't even get a hint of it? Even in Mandalorian, when they talk about Yoda, you hear his theme, when Luke uses the force, we get the force theme. What on earth is going on here?! What IDIOT green lit no use of the Imperial March. Yes Williams does not want certain composers mishandling his themes but you have Bill Ross here who can arrange any and all Williams themes specifically for when they are needed like with Vader and Force theme usage. I also agree with whomever said, why not give the whole show to Bill Ross. As a gay man I understand the whole "diversity" and "inclusion" hence Holt being named composer so they can say, oh look, we hired a woman here (again something I heard in the Hollywood grapevine). But I also think get the best person for the job.

Whoops didn't realise we were supposed to use spoilers

Listen again at 40:22 in Ep. 3 -- a minor variation of Young Leia's theme (which I like very much!). Here's a transcription of the theme on its first clear appearance in Ep. 1 for reference. Young Leia Also, for the interested, here are transcriptions of the new(ish) Stormtrooper theme from Episode 3, and the new Vader theme, from the beginning of their due. Stormtroopers Nu-Vader

You can imagine my disappointment as a teen upon learning Along Came a Spider does not feature Goldsmith scoring giant spider attacks. This is why I don't watch whatever's considered "real" movies.

Damn, it was depressing to read those mark griskey comments. I hope he works again someday 🙁

NH: And then we've got the brillant idea of not using Vader's theme when he appears. JW: Hahaha. NH: Why are you laughing? JW: That makes 42 years now that I'm enable to perform a concert without including the Imperial March and you thought you could actually score a show with Darth Vader without his theme? You're in so much trouble.

Hmm, I don't think so. This was something that he talked about end of last year: Griskey's Twitter in general is quite interesting, he was recently-ish talking about how he wants to release a 5.1 version of the KOTOR 2 soundtrack officially and is trying to get that done through the official channels. Might explain the recent DMCAs However, it's also quite sad. His house burnt down in February (and took the life of his pet sadly) and he's had to pick his life up from the pieces. I don't think he's doing well financially thanks to the fire and him allegedly getting fucked over in his contract with Lucasfilm, and it seems he's more than keen to compose for Star Wars again but no one at Lucasfilm is giving him the time of day despite his illustrious career with them. Complete and utter waste of talent, it seems like it's the same story with a lot of the absolute legends who worked on the pre-Disney expanded universe content, although some of them refused to contribute to the new era due to creative differences

Woah, if the KoTOR scores should really get official releases, that would close some kind of circle for me. You must know, in the early 2000s I ran a website called "LucasArts Soundtracks", which is by now long abandoned. You can still find snapshots of it HERE, but when LucasArts contacted me to take down all Star Wars and Indy related downloads (they were fine with me keeping their own IPs' music available), I at least added ripping and naming guides for the two KoTOR games. (KoTOR here and KoTOR II here). I've used gameplay videos of the games to come up with proper track titles (plus the music player included in KoTOR II provided some more names), and I've seen my exact track listings used in several uploads of the soundtracks over the years. I'm proud to say that I'm also partially responsible for the second game to get a high quality music patch, because I pestered Mark Griskey long enough until he gauged interest for it and shortly after a patch got released.

Man, that wasn't good. The budget limitations of the Disney+ model are really showing. This story (if it even needed to be told) really should have been a movie. The confrontation between Vader and Obi was so underwhelming. The direction was flat, the blocking/choreography clunky... Some nice visual language with the red and blue lightsabers in the dark, but compare it to the similar sequence in The Force Awakens between Rey and Kylo Ren (which had emotional stakes and brutal, heavy fight choreography) and it's almost laughable. Pathetic that Vader was stopped by a bit of fire that he and the stormtroopers could've easily walked around. And didn't he literally just extinguish a fire with the Force before the new one started? And couldn't do it again? Or, you know, pull Obi-Wan and his helpers into the fire? Maddening. They shot their wad too early bringing in Vader at this point. The dramatic tension established at the end of the last episode is now all but gone. And c'mon Natalie, you had the perfect opportunity to knock this episode out of the park. The lack of Imperial March was enough, but what is there was just so thin and uninspired, the action music in the previous episode had more punch than this. I'm stoked she got this assignment but I really feel like she dropped the ball on this ep.

I guess it makes sense now why they waited so long to announce her as the composer: they were waiting to see if Bill Ross was able to write enough music, fast enough, to give him the main credit. 😆😩 Seriously though, here's my best guess at what happened: Holt gets hired, writes and records much if not all of her score. Either test audiences or someone high up is not happy, and realizes they've got a problem on their hands. They don't want to announce her and then have to later announce that she's been replaced (partly because of the optics in 2022 of potentially replacing "the first female Star Wars composer" with an old white male), so they hold off and see what can be done about it. Kathleen Kennedy reaches out to John Williams and asks if he can do it, but he responds "I only want to write a theme for Benny" (lol, part of me really does wonder if that was the context of that quote, but they spun it for their own PR purposes), but he suggests William Ross to help "fix" the score. JW writes his Obi-Wan theme in two weeks, effectively replacing Holt's Obi-Wan theme. Ross takes JW's theme and starts arranging and adapting it for various scenes in the show. He also tackles bigger moments like the Vader/Obi-Wan duel (and likely, more scenes in future episodes), that the higher ups feel absolutely do not work with Holt's score. Eventually, they do decide to announce Holt as the composer (likely because there's simply not enough time for Ross to replace virtually everything), but Ross still gets a high-level listing in the end credits, purportedly just for adapting the Obi-Wan theme... even though in truth he obviously did much more than just that, and ended up replacing multiple other big cues that were originally written by Holt/her team. What do you think? I don't think it's an unreasonable theory, given what we know. Ohhh, my bad. Sorry! EDIT: It’s also possible that the Vader/Obi duel was originally scored with Holt’s Kenobi theme, and that that’s why Ross scored that cue… But I’m still leaning more towards my theory that they were considering replacing her completely, due to how long they waited to announce her.

Disaster

My head's exploding from all the new CDs, music, and concert work premieres. In my 30 years of being a fan, I don't recall a richer period... He should have turned 90 years ago!

I'm surprised by how bad this show is. Something just feels way off. The fight in episode three wasn't exciting or thrilling. Don't kill me, but I prefer the prequels over the other movies because of the world-building and more believable aspects (rather than Luke being a cartoonish hero figure, which was fine for the time period of the originals but never resonated with me)—and I was hoping that this show would resemble the prequels more than the originals in that respect. (which doesn't make any sense because they're too different time periods, but whatever) The guy pretending to be a jedi in episode two was boring and seemed like a rehashed version of the (second) codebreaker character in TLJ. The mining planet in episode three was just southwestern US. The inquisitors are severely cartoonish, especially the one Reva killed. However, I enjoyed seeing Alderaan for a little bit, I liked the brief hallucination of Anakin in episode three (something I was expecting in the show), and Ewan plays a broken and traumatized Obi-Wan very well. It's just that the show is bland and predictable. Perhaps Natalie Holt felt the same way while scoring? I've enjoyed some cues, but sadly, nothing has been very interesting. I know she can produce amazing work based on her previous stuff. Also, I wonder if the score would've been more cohesive if all her music had been kept in and not replaced with JW's theme. I'm just hoping the second half of the show is better. But then again, it's SW, and I think they've wanted to play it safe with the show rather than taking necessary risks

I think, the theme for Vader itself sounds very good, the problem is that there is already a better one.

I’m not educated or informed at all when it comes to music, so I’ve always just taken everyone’s word for it that the performance is bad whilst it’s remained one of the top 5 Goldsmiths I listen to the most for a decade. (All while knowing nothing about the movie. I’ll assume it’s about a lion)

I was chatting with him once about him trying to get KOTOR 2's soundtrack released and I think he made some comment about how it was looking very promising...for whatever that's worth. I know we're supposed to hate Jeremey Soule now. He seems like a weird guy, but that's not relevant to the fact that he wrote some stunning music for KOTOR 1. With that said, KOTOR 2 is easily the better score for the live orchestra alone. This is why I get so angry at people who've been Star Wars fans for five minutes. They claim all this weird different sounding in new Star Wars media can be whatever it wants to be because the only established Star Wars sound is the movies and it's time to branch out from that. There was a clear Star Wars sound for decades. Not everyone is a John Williams imitator like Haab (who I generally like a lot), but there was still distinctive Star Wars DNA in all of these scores. It's the same thing as when they didn't have an opening crawl for Rogue One and Solo, and the excuse was that only the main saga films had opening crawls and that's what made them distinctive. Again, that's how you can spot that a person is trying to speak from some authority and doesn't know their shit.

JW: ...but you could have done more.

Wow! A 30 minute interview with JW himself! This should be an incredibly rich listen... Is JW getting one step closer to appearing on @TownerFan's podcast?!

So you're just ignoring differences because of the genre, good writing and directing in the movies doesn't matter at all, terrible writing and directing in these shows is on the same level as them. Also, this would be a new element in all those other examples we mentioned, something out of the context of those fights we just pull out of our ass to whine about. Here in this scene what happens is Vader can't do the exact same things he was literally just doing for no reason except the writers couldn't write themselves out of a corner they wrote themselves into so they just gave up.

UMG just started sending out copyright strikes for KOTOR 2 music (27 tracks specifically) all of which had hidden names. Seems an official release for the score might be in the works! I mentioned this last week on the Discord.

Man, sounds like I really need to check out the KOTOR scores! Also, I'll be curious to watch the inevitable Disney Gallery: Obi-Wan documentary to see if there's been some breakthrough in Respeecher technology. Luke sounded creepy and horrible in both his Mando and Boba appearances, but Vader sounds like a million credits.

My favorite cue in all of the MCU:

Episode 3 is just one long cavalcade of fucking idiocy. Just... walk around it?

Here's the thing: it's fine if these people like "epic music," whatever. But I don't understand how they fail to see that it just doesn't work in this particular case. I'm fine with watching a Pirates of the Caribbean movie and hearing the style of music that scores the Third Sister arriving at Fortress Inquisitorius. But I'm not fine with hearing that style in what is essentially Star Wars Episode 3.5. These people no doubt play Star Wars video games and have zero problem with Gordy Haab's music, they watch the classic Star Wars movies and have zero problem with Williams' music, etc. So it's not necessarily that they even have a problem with the classic Star Wars sound. Disney had nothing to lose by having this be a traditional SW score; everyone would have accepted the score and been thrilled. The frustrating thing is that there are people out there who—even though they would have been fine with a traditional score—will defend an inferior score that doesn't fit. The go-to argument seems to be that we are all just Williams purists who can't handle any other composers or musical styles... even though I enjoy Goransson's work, Kiner's work, the Star Wars Visions composers' work, and I'm sure I will enjoy Britell's work for Andor. It's such a simplistic viewpoint, and they're not taking the time to consider how this show is different from all the others. It's strange to me that we here at this forum seem to have a far better grasp on the importance of this show in the SW story (I mean, just consider the marketing, consider the show's place in the timeline, consider all the returning cast), than a lot of SW fans do.

This is the worst thing star wars has ever done musically. I don’t want to hear any complaints about Ludwig Goransson, Shirley or Giacchino, this is sooo much worse

I'm so grateful that Jurassic talk is more fun than what you guys get up to.

I love Doyle. I at least like every score he's ever written. My favourite might be Indochine, which has a theme I can never get enough of. I imagine most people will respond by saying that Doyle has lost is way in recent years, but I'd counter that by saying that Cinderella and Murder on the Orient Express are two of the best scored Hollywood movies of recent times. Doyle's score for the latter tells Christie's story far better on album than Branagh did on film. And Cinderella is just a marvel of a score (and film!). Always present, always gently guiding the viewer along but never becoming cloying or insincere... I think it's magic.

My introduction was Dead Again, followed soon by Frankenstein, Much Ado About Nothing, and Henry V - the latter two are still favourites. Carlito's Way is quite brilliantly scored in the finale, with that effective little time motif. In more recent years, it seems Doyle's music has become more generic, affecting both themes and orchestration. Probably a matter of adapting to the current state of Hollywood film music (I believe composers today mostly have 3 options: a) adapt to an expectation and workflow that rarely allows for individuality and leaves not time for writing sophisticated underscore; a+) be a project manager for a team of composers who can write more music in a short time, but inevitably end up being just as generic; b) stick to your style and M.O. and only score a few very select projects (Williams can afford that, but few others); or c) quit film scoring and write other music). But scores Brave and Cinderella show that he can still shine with his own voice when he gets the chance.

No one cared about C-3PO in the Skywalkers Saga!!! They erased his memory, silenced him, ignored him, deactivated him, they sent him to scrap, made him freeze, they tried to blow him up, and then used his features to translate Sith messages!

This concert is TOMORROW! https://www.albanysymphony.com/upcomingconcerts/2022/6/4/american-music-festival-trailblaze

Sorry for the shit photo, but i'm simply happy to found it at last !

Some highlights of the previous 2 years, because... OMG, it goes so fast!!! Brossé - World Soundtrack Awards – Tribute to the Film Composer Kamen - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (expanded) Williams - The Eiger Sanction (expanded) Goldsmith - Legend (expanded)

disturbingly close to: They sell electric land-speeders...and distribute fake emission-control software.

That reminds me of the Wexler-McGill logo from Better Call Saul!

Are you for real? My defence was literally from an emotional standpoint, unless you want to argue emotion doesn’t matter in melodramatic space drama It sure seems like you’re willing to bend over backwards to not have to address anything we specifically are saying I think you misunderstand what I actually value about film. I put evoking emotion at the absolute top of the list, which is why I value consistency because I can only feel things if the illusion of these being real people in a real world is maintained. That doesn’t require 100% realism either because it’s contextual to the universe, as long as it follows it’s own internal mechanics then I can still buy it as real even if it’s way off from my own universe Hence I like to approach analysis holistically, I don’t like singling out writing because all the elements of a scene contribute to its effectiveness. I know it may seem like it but I genuinely am not a robot who runs purely on rationality and logic, I just recognize those two things are very effective tools for achieving compelling cinema Wat How does that stop Vader from dragging Kenobi through the fire like he did a couple seconds earlier?

Well do it in a way that doesn't make the villain so obviously dumb!

Check out the games

Because it's not actually a radical departure?

Ross would have been the perfect main-only composer for this series. Its a shame they wont let him shine.