Sharkissimo

But surely not every Star Wars film needs to be a Greek tragedy, and likewise should every Star Wars score have a grand, classical, choric function in the vein of The Last Jedi? You risk fatiguing an audience that way.
 
I think there's room in these non-saga films and scores for burlesque and a general lightness of touch.

That's because the Jurassic Park universe is inherently zany, and Giacchino can do zany.
 

 
He suffers from a deplorable excess of personality, especially for a composer.
 
 
I'm a bizarre, intriguing person.

But surely not every Star Wars film needs to be a Greek tragedy, and likewise should every Star Wars score have a grand, classical, choric function in the vein of The Last Jedi? You risk fatiguing an audience that way.
 
I think there's room in these non-saga films and scores for burlesque and a general lightness of touch.

Can this be the theme? Please?
 
 

Can an admin please add an "eye roll" reaction icon beneath our posts?
 
- On that note an "aroused" reaction might be useful, too, on occasion. To keep it tasteful, I suggest a tree or a slice of heartwood.

Blume nails it again.  Especially the post immediately above this one displays a certain willful ignorance of musical craft seemingly for no other reason than to overly deify someone who needs no such artificial laudits.

But surely not every Star Wars film needs to be a Greek tragedy, and likewise should every Star Wars score have a grand, classical, choric function in the vein of The Last Jedi? You risk fatiguing an audience that way.
 
I think there's room in these non-saga films and scores for burlesque and a general lightness of touch.

- See below

That sounds like one of the Lithuanian daina-derived motifs from The Rite. The second phrase is near identical.
 
 
It's the gift that keeps on giving!

Well sure. Compared to sky338 I'm the most boring man in the world, but I do hold a few controversial opinions.
 
- The Godfather Part III is the greatest of the trilogy.
 
- Sofia Coppola's performance as Michael Corleone's daughter is the highlight of her career.
 
- The Sopranos and Breaking Bad are both morally repugnant.
 
- The Deer Hunter, Forest Gump, American Beauty, Grand Budapest Hotel, and No Country for Old Men stink.
 
- Natalie Portman is an awful actress. 
 
- Joseph Losey is one of the greatest directors ever.
 
- George Clooney should never write or direct another film again. He's done enough damage.
 
- Gus Van Sant has only one good film. My Own Private Idaho.
 
- River Phoenix, Heath Ledger and James Dean all had potential but are ridiculously overrated.
 
- All The Presidents Men, The Post, Spotlight, and Three Days of the Condor are glib trash. Journalists are not our saviors.
 
- Prostitution should be legalized, regulated, monitored and taxed.
 
- Kathleen Turner should've won Best Actress for Serial Mom in 1994.
 
- Jessica Lange was miscast in Feud and Faye Dunaway's performance in Mommie Dearest is superior
 
- Showgirls is actually a good film.
 
Take your pick.

That sounds like one of the Lithuanian daina-derived motifs from The Rite. The second phrase is near identical.
 
 
It's the gift that keeps on giving!

Which is why there's a big ol' flanging ARP 2600 in Return of the Jedi. Pure 40s!
 
FFS

That sounds like one of the Lithuanian daina-derived motifs from The Rite. The second phrase is near identical.
 
 
It's the gift that keeps on giving!

In order to celebrate my 25,000th post on JWFan... which took me almost 12 bloody years to accomplish... I'll be listening to my first ever JW score score (not the first JW album, mind you):
 
 
It will be the LLL album, of course. Such a great score, so butchered in the film. I was really shocked when I rewatched it the other night. After 21 years, still one of the more unique blockbuster scores from the maestro...heart-pounding and filled with dark jungle spirit. Absolutely beautiful work. Oddly, my favourite cues are also the one that are the least accessible. The dark and moody horror cues like these two.
 
 
 
Karol

Perhaps this is a point that has been made in this thread if not years prior, but I find it so strange that when Williams (or apparently other composers like Powell) uses certain devices in recent years, or does things with a certain economy, some immediately launch into the belief that they have been stricken with the "RCP virus" and that their writing has been "tainted". Especially considering that some of these Williams has been using for decades!
 
Is it really so much a stretch, for example, to believe that No Man's Land was written by the man who wrote On The Tank? Or that the man who wrote Munich also wrote Black Sunday thirty years prior? If anything, I find it very inspiring that a composer with the magnitude of John Williams, after decades upon decades of experience in fields of music that can be very dense and complex, still tries to find the Occam's Razor of what makes a piece of music "speak" to a listener and/or filmgoer.

That sounds like one of the Lithuanian daina-derived motifs from The Rite. The second phrase is near identical.
 
 
It's the gift that keeps on giving!

Of the current heavyweights I'd probably pick Chris Young. If you want exotic, grimy and grotesque, he's your man.   
 
I still haven't quite warmed to Beltrami, even after Gods of Egypt, but given his resume he'd be an obvious choice.

I'd love a Christopher Young Star Wars score!
 
 
Karol

Of the current heavyweights I'd probably pick Chris Young. If you want exotic, grimy and grotesque, he's your man.   
 
I still haven't quite warmed to Beltrami, even after Gods of Egypt, but given his resume he'd be an obvious choice.

The A theme is decent but the "Searching" B-theme is way cooler IMO.  It has the catchy melody and unexpected twists that Williams is great at.  

Oh gimme a break. They're all friggin' kids movies, not some dark and disturbing indie arthouse filums.

L3 theme is one of the obvious one, in regards to Powell's materials. It's also connected with a plot point in the movue
 
L3 theme variations
 
First heard in its "warming up" mode in this track  at 00:04-00:15
 
then transitioned into a introductory mode at 00:26 - 00:35
 
But i think both aforementioned statements are not the original note
 
I think this is the original one, at 00:01 - 00:14
 
and then it changes into a full millitary style march in "Mine Mission", a fugue on its own, and yes it's connected to the plot. You get the sense of rebellion because that what it is, at 00:26  onward
 
 
and then goes into its glory mode at 00:12 - 00:18 in "Break Out"
 
and then in its "hurry" mode at 4:10 - 4:18
 
and then changes into its sad mode, and by this point, you get the idea of whats going on in the plot 4:54 - 5:12
 
 
and then later on, in Reminscence Theraphy, you get to hear it in its Searching mode  at 5:23 - 5:45. I love tis quiet arrangement with the flute. And yes this is tightly connected with the plot at this point
 

Something that I love about the "Searching" theme from TAOH is that it has great rhythmic flexibility. Consider these three different approaches of accentuating the notes in the melody:
 

 
Pattern #1 is based on how the music is actually notated and conducted. It is also how JW introduces it for the first time in TAOH, from 0:37 (focus on the bass). Pattern #2 is the "naive" beat - it is what the naive listener would hear when listening to the melody on its own. Pattern #3 is a natural extension of #2 and is what I would call the "disfigured 2/2" where rather than 1:1 you get a 4:5 ratio between the beats. They are three different beat patterns yet they all work naturally with the melody. And you can easily create more, e.g. by removing the 2nd beat of pattern #1, or the third beat from pattern #2. In the same way that Han is searching for a sense of fulfillment in his soul, this theme is "searching" for a sense of rhythmic stability.
 
And Powell does end up playing with some of these rhythms in the score, particularly in Corellia Chase. For instance, that awesome transition from 2:07 is to me just an exploitation of pattern 3:
 
 
And what's more, Powell also exploits pattern #2 as a counter-beat in some of his cues, i.e. whenever the Searching theme is played as a counter-melody, by virtue of its implicit "naive" beat generation. For example, if you listen from 1:58, the mere inclusion of the Searching theme in the background (played by strings, accentuated by trumpets) adds another layer of rhythm to the music which is independent, by the way, of the underlying drum rhythm which, all things considered, goes something like :
| U o o U U U U o o |
('U' indicates an accented note, 'o' is unaccented, '|' is a bar line. The important point here is that it is not | U o U o U U U o o |).
 
In short, the Searching theme yields a whole plethora of rhythmic possibilities AS IT IS, which is atypical of the usual Williams theme.
 
EDIT: Here's something else that's cool:
Looking at pattern #2, you can see that the first 3 beats are identical in rhythm to the whole of pattern #1. That is, if you take the first three beats of pattern #2 and stretch them out 1.5x, to fill a whole 9/8 bar, you get pattern #1.
Well, this is exactly how Powell transforms the Searching theme, at 2:24:
 

Exactly. ROTS with its thudding daikos sounded more "RCP" (an epithet that's becoming more meaningless and this thread wears on) than this.
 
This is a lighter, airier prelayed percussion sound common to Powell, Arnold, HGW and their 90s contemporaries. The fact that it's elicited such a visceral reaction here is... predictable, yet somewhat amusing.

Lots of nostalgic, half-awake memories with that one.