Chen G.

Wasn’t the flashback in Chamber of Secrets Black and White? Urgh.

Yeah, but also being the director (and one of the writers) of the first entry (of this trilogy, that is), would he not want Williams to see the existing themes through, first? I dunno.

I don't know about "cut and paste" but I, for one, would like it if the end-credits would feature snippets of the main themes of all nine entries (I think @Nick1066 first suggested this idea). It'd be neat! Lets face it, this film can't ever really be the summation of all nine episodes: but the score still can. Kinda.

I wouldn't be too optimistic with regards to quantity. And not because I'm expecting another The Last Jedi, but because the third film in a trilogy tends to offer less opportunities for entirely new themes. If we look back to both Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith, both don't boast too many new thematic elements. In fact, two of the latter's "themes" are pieces from The Phantom Menace revisited by Williams. The third film is as much a conclusion of the previous two films, as it is its own film, and as a result there tend not to be a lot of new narrative elements. I think so far we know of two new characters or so. So there's less for the composer to latch unto. Likewise, the composer himself may be more interested in paying off the existing thematic ideas than he is in introducing new ones. Of course, depending on how Williams chooses to pay off those existing themes, such a lack of abundance of new themes might not turn out to be a problem. Williams isn't a composer that likes having too many leitmotivic ideas floating around, anyway.

Aggregate scores tend to settle on some early number and then, as more reviews come in, gradually go down - not up. Doesn't impress me, though: Rotten or not, I'll probably still like it more than The Chamber of Secrets. That is, if I'd be inclined to watch it.

Well, Across the Stars always had a shade of melancholy. Its certainly much more melancholic than the Han/Leia one. that that theme got a melacholic shade in Williams most recent itiration of it, stems from him knowing how it ends (per the sequel trilogy). The love theme is very much attached to Leia's theme: it "grows" out of it. Besides, he already had a suite of Leia's theme. The original suite of the love theme was really just a film cue.

We aren't hearing the entire piece. I'm sure there's stuff from the first film in it, too.

Yeah, but that's the difference between doing sequels and doing prequels: the beginning is a much less definitive moment than the ending. The story of Star Wars as a series can start in The Phantom Menace, in Attack of the Clones, in the original Star Wars, in Empire Strikes Back, etcetra. It can even start before The Phantom Menace: you can churn out prequels almost ad infinitum. And ultimately, with the reveal that Darth Vader is Luke's father, people did have a need to see that, and see why and how it happened. They didn't necessarily needed three films of it, and certainly didn't need to see it turn out like it did, but there was certainly reason to make prequels for Star Wars. On the other hand, Return of the Jedi, while I don't think its terribly good movie, is the end: no other film in the series is, unless of course one is content with just the original Star Wars. The fact that the main characters live on does not necessarily mean that the story goes on. After that crescendo, we don't need three more (quite lengthy, by Star Wars standards) films set afterwards. Its kind of like how we just don't need Indiana Jones 4 and 5. We'll wait for IX, I guess.

Ad Hominem much, John?

I would literally not change a frame of it: its effectivelly perfect, to my mind.

Not at all.

I never thought I would be able to say: "No, please! No more binary sunset!"

Fine, then. Shore definitely knows what to do with the human voice so...

Isn't a mass a christian, liturgical composition?

And that's the thing: will its sequels even feature live action, at all?

For crying out loud, his name's HOWARD SHORE. It doesn't get more Jewish than that! Its even more Jewish than being called James Horner!

a mass? Isn't Howard Shore a bit too...um...what's the word...Jewish, for that?

I don't know. If people left the theater after The Last Jedi unenthused, that couldn't have been good for Solo's box office. Ultimately, its not the sort of thing you can rule-out all that easily.

In a way, I'm starting to feel that. We'll wait for IX and see.

Depends on what you'd consider harm. They certainly didn't compromise the series' stylistic uniformity: they feel like they came from the same hand as the original Star Wars - although from the same hands as Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi. But they were - for the most part - much lesser films than these Disney productions; and they did change stuff about Star Wars: the pseudo-science explaination of The Force, for instance. I'm not sure that Solo tanked because of The Last Jedi. I just think no-one was particularly enthused for it, based on the concept of a Han Solo prequel. It has nothing to do with the character or the casting. Its just that there's something wrong about Star Wars being an athology (like Marvel) and a unified story (like The Lord of the Rings) at the same time. For my money, pick one mode and stick with one. Its not. Kathleen Kennedy isn't a director, she's a producer. Her job is simply to make money, and while Solo is certainly an embarrasment, overall her track record is friggin' amazing: comfortably over a billion dollars for each entry? That's bonkers.

Yeah, I marvel at it when people describe it as a horror film. The horror is just the veneer on top of a very, very good drama film. It can get a bit creepy and from memory there was a jump scare that really worked for me somewhere in it (namely because it wasn't a horror film up until then, so it caught me off-guard), but otherwise there's very little horror, and its not terribly scary.

Mostly An Unexpected Journey, and even that's not so bad. The Battle of the Five Armies reuses some of the same pieces in several places (the dragon sickness material from Mithril for Thorin overcoming his dragon sickness; pieces of Sons of Durin for the Chariot sequence and riding up Ravenhill), but overall the later two benefitted from having the scoring process close to home.

Its the sort of thing that can affect the storytelling, if it happens. While its not "feminist" per se, the social commentary of Rose in Canto Bight kind of felt at odds with the rest of the film. Timely themes don't necessarily mesh together with timeless ones.

But, again, because there is a feminist agenda in the management of Lucasfilm, its not unreasonable to fear for that same agenda manifesting itself in the movies they produce. I guess we'll have to wait and see IX.

I think its clear from watching The Last Jedi that Rian Johnson got to do what he wanted.