DarthDementous

I remember seeing an interview with JW where he was asked what he considers to be his best score and he said something along the lines of he always hopes his next one will be

I'm very confused.

I have always thought the short quote of "The Duel" in RotS was pretty cool.

Counterpoint: Azkaban. One of his most imaginative, magical, dark, and mysterious scores.

For me the thing is simple... as they didn't make movie like "before" anymore, JW just can't produce scores like "before" anymore.
 
I know some of you guys try to view the scores as an "isolated" thing, some of you even hear scores without never having seen the movies (what an horror!). 
 
But you can't really separate a score from the movie it belongs to....They are linked, that you like it or not.
 
Movies where slow, scenes where long... and we got the music that goes with. But it's a past thing... now with all the quick and frenzy montages made by computers... we got the music that goes with!
 
JW didn't change.  But the way we make movies today changed a lot.
 

My favorite is "The Arrival Of Tatooine". It makes it seem as if the planet of Tatooine suddenly barged into the plot unannounced.
Actually, that is sort of what happened, so never mind.

What he says is that the choir was a way to add diversity to the soundscape due to the amount of music (and particularly loud/action music) that the films required. He says nothing about being less focused on characters.
 
Basically, in the first SW film, Lucas and Williams decided to have a 15 minute section without any music between the escape from the Death Star and the final battle, a breather between loud musical segments. That could be done in the 1970s, but not in the 1990s and 2000s.

The Immolation Scene is too similar for him to not have heard it during the spotting or, at the very least, for George to have told him the piece (which was really all JW needed to know to see exactly what tone GL wanted for the sequence, which could've been scored a multitude of ways).
 
Of course JW makes the final cue entirely his own, adding an intangible musical layer of tragedy, unease and dissonance to the strings which marries with the visuals perfectly, as only John Williams can.
 
It's yet another example in a long list of examples of musical moments you cannot comprehend being improved upon in any way. It is note for note perfect; on first glance the cue is fairly "simplistic" relative to some of his action cues in the series, but if you read the sheet music for The Immolation Scene it is incredibly dense with complex orchestration. He's brilliant.
 
 
Mainly just because classical music is not written to conform to the constraints of images or cuts, to line up with shot changes or characters making an action. Classical music breathes and runs its own race.
 
Temping films with film music creates an edit which copies the rhythm and pace of the temp film music, forcing the composer into greater constraints so far as their ability to craft their own original score. They become more focused copying the rhythm of the temp than the texture of the temp. Adagio for Strings is a brilliant example of why GL's use of classical pieces works brilliantly for a classically trained composer like JW. He took the core idea of the temp track then extrapolated into a perfect cue for that scene.

That fits amazingly well, great bit of insight into the temp. Would be cool to know what other classical pieces George used.
 
It's an edge that his films have musically over other films nowadays, even TFA, which temp with film music rather than classical music (probably explaining why modern films don't "breathe" as much, and jump from shot to shot and scene to scene with less fluidity).
 
 

No.
 
"And less wooden performances from the child actors" would be too far.

@TownerFan @artguy360
 
*This post has been edited for clarity*
 
It's hard not to get the sense that in the prequels Lucas was purposely shifting away at least a little from the Saturday afternoon adventure serial feeling of the originals. I mean, 6 films that he says are about the fall and redemption of Vader - that's not only fun kids stuff anymore, really. That's an epic saga that deserves to be studied and treasured by film (and ideally literature) scholars.
 
TownerFan, I know you have some reservations about "personal taste," but I think I just have to come back to something I said earlier: I look at Star Wars a little like a book, so the story is at the center. I most value rich symbolism and complex storytelling. For me the acting, directing, etc. is only important to the film insofar as it is good enough to make the story interesting and give it the required impact. And I don't require much more.
 
You seem to look at it differently. You look at direction and acting as an art on its own and look at the fine details of those arts. You think the story is only a small part of Star Wars and you focus on the other things equally.
 
To me, everything else in a SW film is in service to the story. Others may think differently.
 
(By the way, this post doesn't deal with Williams's terrific music; I'm talking about other stuff) 

It's most certainly always been in vogue to hate on the prequels, but mostly just because they shat vigorously on everything most Star Wars fans had previously loved. The original trilogy featured archetypal characters, clear plots, minimal kiddie humor, and acting that rarely dipped below "passable." For the prequels, the "faster, more intense" mantra was replaced with slow expository dialogue that didn't actually expose much, a lot of it revolving around political subplots that never connected with the audience in any human level. "Tell, don't show" was the name of the game.
 
The degree to which you enjoy the prequels is mostly just a function of what's important to you in a film. The films have plenty to offer. Those offerings just don't line up with what most people wanted.

Obviously Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy and Hand of Thrawn Duology.
 
I also enjoyed Tatooine Ghost, The New Jedi Order starts out sort of weak, but picks up with Luceno's duology.
 
Jedi Academy trilogy is good, but a bit quirky and has two superweapons (one even being the Prototype Death Star)
 
Correllian Trilogy is decent.
 
Courtship of Princess Leia and Truce at Bakura are not really that great, but introduce some things that have roles in later books
 
Skip Barbara Hamblys books and The Crystal Star.
 
Dark Nest trilogy is a bit meh
 
Legacy of the Force is good, and has some things similar to what happened in TFA
 
Fate of the Jedi is good.
 
Check out the last two series in Audiobook form, the usage of SW SFX and Music, plus an actual voice actor doing voices for each character is phenomenal. 
 
The interest thing is that quite a few of the books stand on their own, they do fit together in larger story,  there are mysteries that were established in the books released pre-TPM that payed off in 2008-2012.

Whatever, I wasn't born yet. 
 
My point was simply that it seems the vast majority of people don't like the prequels.
 
By the way I do just want to reiterate that I'm not trolling. I've noticed that I'm starting to sound like a troll, but I promise you that is not my intent. I'm just trying to have an interesting discussion about the prequels. I want to examine others' point of view and I hope others do the same for mine, even if they don't agree with it.
 
I do not mean to say that anyone who doesn't like the prequels is stupid or has bad taste, and I apologize if that was ever implied. I understand that others have different tastes and different opinions for various legitimate reasons. My mission isn't really to convert prequel haters to prequel fans. It's more in the hope that others will understand why I think what I do, rather than being dismissive of this opinion, as at least a few have been. I certainly don't mean prequel haters are bad people; this is simply one ultimately minor opinion that I disagree with. It's nothing more than that. Many prequel haters are terrific people, and I don't want to put distance between myself and them. 

I tried creating a similar patch in Omnisphere 2 using a built-in Whistling Choir one:
 
http://picosong.com/tR4s/
 
I added just a little bit of phasing. Sounds pretty close! I suppose using a Women's Choirs Oos type of patch would have worked as well - I'm not sure if this one would be able to create the more identifiable choir sound at 1:14 in Bounty Hunter's Pursuit.

EDIT: Combining the Whistling Choir patch with a Boy's Choir Oos and delaying the attack of both by about a second does the trick. Very "hologram"-esque in the upper register, and more choir-esque in the lower.

As someone who enjoys the prequels for what they are, I'd recommend Plinkett's hilarious yet insightful YouTube reviews to anyone who holds the prequels on high esteem. They may help clarify others' point of view - although if something like the quality of the acting doesn't influence your enjoyment of a film, your perspective may just be fundamentally incompatible. If you're not just trolling, that is...no offense intended whatsoever, but when someone starts calling the prequels the greatest filmmaking achievement ever, little alarm bells start going off.

Masterpieces? Oh man. I will acknowledge that some scenes are done well, but most are awfully acted, shot, and edited. 
 
Take just one scene for example. In ROTS when Obi-Wan tells Padme about Anakin killing younglings. I've seen better acting on daytime soap operas. Both actors are completely awful in that scene. But JW scores it with some of the most emotional and poignant music in the entire SW saga, and definitely some of the best music of the prequels. In my mind he is scoring "beyond the film" in a sense. The scene and music actually don't match very well. But JW takes the melodrama to 11 because without his music, that scene goes from bad to unwatchable.

Revenge of the Sith is the best comedy of 2005 for sure.

Not at all. "Across the Stars" is not a "rhythmic figure & variations" the way "Rey's Theme" and much of the rest of the score is.
 
Listen, I know everyone is going apeshit over this new STAR WARS score, but the fact is that I haven't warmed to it. You can ridicule that all you want, but you just have to deal with it. Instead of just saying "I don't like it", which wouldn't be true, I'm trying -- in my laymen terms -- to explain what my issues are. For me, it comes off as more of a figure, a motif, underdevelopped, shortlined, whatever you want to call it. I think, deep down, most of you know what I mean when you have an extrovert theme like "Across the Stars" to compare with. I'm sorry that I don't have the musical vernacular to get the point more succinctly across.

Marvel fans, and anyone hoping a non-Marvel film copies Marvel tropes.

One thing that's really encouraging to me is the prospect of a theme like Rey's, to which Williams gave several different sections, phrases and iterations being the centerpiece of the this sequel trilogy

Sooooo goooooood. That repeating, rising figure where you start questioning how long he can sustain it, its emotionally draining and just incredible.

That's a great one! 
 
Reminds me of this awesome moment from the same score (which I heard first):