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TRoS - the film an embarrassment, the score buried?


Pellaeon

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Are we even going to get a Rise of Skywalker published concert suite? Live-to-projection concerts? I think it is a shame, because the soundtrack was an instant and total hit for me, but it seems like maybe Star Wars fatigue and malaise have set in even worse than it was for AotC and RotS. Sad if the score doesn’t live on. Who knows, maybe the next generation will resurrect it.

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I certainly know my interest in the score, excellent though it may be, has been tempered with by the subpar quality of the film.

 

Then again, it was popular enough. I mean, it made plenty of money.

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2 hours ago, Tydirium said:

It's not SW fatigue; good SW content (THE MANDALORIAN, for example) is still loved by many. This trilogy was just a dumpster fire. 

I agree.  the whole notion of X-fatigue is studio excuses for bad BO--we should not tacitly consent to their propaganda by using the term.

A live to projection is going to be tough, give the chop-job done to the score.  They could give us a concert cut using full cues like the Speeder Chase, but that would require TPTB to give a damn about Williams music.  

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I would actually argue that, whatever its other faults, TRoS actually comes closest to that pulpy sense of fun.  The movie has the zippy humor and fist-pump moments of Episode IV in spades, and its biggest failing is that it fails to properly land the enormous Star Destroyer of a mythology, which Star Wars hadn’t yet become the last time it had that sense of pulpy fun.  

Same goes for the TRoS score.  Its two major action set pieces, “The Speeder Chase” and whatever we’re calling Lando’s unreleased return, come closer to the spirit of “Chasm Crossfire” than anything since the Ewok battles. Compare them to the frantic pseudo-fun of “The Falcon” or “The Fathiers” or “A New Alliance” and see what I mean. (You can make a case that “Canto Bight” has that spirit, too, but that sequence leaves such bile in my throat that I can’t dissociate it enough to tell.)

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10 hours ago, Thor said:

 

Save the movies? The first two are great, easily favourites of each respective year. The third leaves something to be desired, but still a solid 20th place on last year's list.

Out of interest, Thor, what are the first 19?

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I didn't liked the movie, it was one of my biggest movie disappointments in my life because I liked very much episodes VIII and VII. I think they could have done something better and after the death of Carrie Fisher I'd moved the last instalment to this year, in order to write a better script and take more time to edit the movie. I don't think it was SW-fatigue but a too tight schedule for a "big movie". 

 

Anyway, speaking of the music, I love it but definitely in the movie doesn't sound as good as it should. Is not well edited, there's too many tracked music for my taste and in many cases the music is simply buried with sfx. An expanded release would definitely put more interest in the score and specially if we can listen to original ideas and themes from Williams. 

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32 minutes ago, DrTenma said:

I didn't liked the movie, it was one of my biggest movie disappointments in my life because I liked very much episodes VIII and VII.

 

Basically this. It's the garbage fire TROS that soured me on the whole trilogy. That JW was able to salvage such an incredible score is miraculous in itself (presumably the film he scored was more comprehensible than the final product).

 

Also, he's John Williams, and doesn't let a bad movie get in the way of a great score. 

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2 hours ago, crumbs said:

 

Basically this. It's the garbage fire TROS that soured me on the whole trilogy. That JW was able to salvage such an incredible score is miraculous in itself (presumably the film he scored was more comprehensible than the final product).

 

Also, he's John Williams, and doesn't let a bad movie get in the way of a great score. 

 

You're right, I think that probably he scored a longer and more cohesive edit. That's why I feel TROS might be the most interesting expanded score. Hope to be alive when they finally release these scores...

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18 hours ago, Pellaeon said:

Are we even going to get a Rise of Skywalker published concert suite?

Not even piano solo books yet. I'm sure the Signature Edition concet suite will be published eventually, but it makes me wonder if they would publish the piano books now that so much time has passed and the hype around the movie has died down...

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19 hours ago, Tydirium said:

It's not SW fatigue; good SW content (THE MANDALORIAN, for example) is still loved by many. This trilogy was just a dumpster fire. 

Maybe Joker is the new Easy Rider and The Rise of Skywalker is the new Cleopatra? Introducing a new New Hollywood!

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I thought the movie was really enjoyable. 

If the sequel trilogy were EU books, TLJ would have been the technically detailed Timothy Zahn book that I put down after reading the first chapter and TRoS is the colorful, action-packed pulpy adventure book  (Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, The Glove of Darth Vader)

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I liked Tros and even thought it was the best of the three, but I would call it a 3 star movie at best.  My real irritation is both the score mix and the horrificness of the chop-job.  It's like Adrian Monk was putting together the movie.  

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7 hours ago, crumbs said:

Basically this. It's the garbage fire TROS that soured me on the whole trilogy.

 

I thought that would be the case for me, but having checked out the other two again, they still work for me. I'm not particularly enamoured with any of them - and I still think they shouldn't have been made - but they are good films. The Rise of Skywalker is not.

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I think it is not "bad bad" as such, just really really gutless and bland. The films does a serviceable job and connecting dots but it does so with as little imagination as possible. I didn't care one bit. But there are much worse things out there.

 

Karol

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No, its "bad bad", alright. It has redeeming qualities, to be sure, the score not being the least of them, but the story (if you can call it that) is on fast-forward, and the idea of redeeming Ben Solo is deplorable.

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Another thing to add to the list: We still have't gotten official piano arrangements. In fact, Disney is literally preventing independent transcribers from publishing their arrangements on Musicnotes until they approve the "official" ones. The problem? It's been almost three months! 

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The scoring sessions ran pretty late, maybe they just haven't had time yet. Or maybe JW wasn't fully happy with the concert suites on album and wanted to refine them first, or even write more suites before publishing. Kylo Ren suite?

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4 hours ago, Drew said:

Another thing to add to the list: We still have't gotten official piano arrangements. In fact, Disney is literally preventing independent transcribers from publishing their arrangements on Musicnotes until they approve the "official" ones. The problem? It's been almost three months! 

Looks like the Piano book is now coming out on April 15th (was February something before iirc):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1540083349/?coliid=I2F0JNHZZJ2OXV&colid=116GFANW4WTVZ&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

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2 hours ago, crumbs said:

Kylo Ren suite?


I was listening to one of the FYC tracks with the “Kylo Ben” variation on his theme the other day, and I was imagining what he might be able to come up with if he combined Kylo’s two-and-a-half themes and that low cello bit from the TFA credits. He could take Ben on a dark-light musical journey. Whatever the folly of redeeming Ben in the films, It’s musically tantalizing. 

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1 hour ago, igger6 said:


I was listening to one of the FYC tracks with the “Kylo Ben” variation on his theme the other day, and I was imagining what he might be able to come up with if he combined Kylo’s two-and-a-half themes and that low cello bit from the TFA credits. He could take Ben on a dark-light musical journey. Whatever the folly of redeeming Ben in the films, It’s musically tantalizing. 

It is not going to happen. He's the man who was mean to Daisy. 

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4 hours ago, kelliwisethebrave said:

Looks like the Piano book is now coming out on April 15th (was February something before iirc):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1540083349/?coliid=I2F0JNHZZJ2OXV&colid=116GFANW4WTVZ&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

 

Makes me wonder if JW wanted to put some more of his own piano arrangements in from the trilogy, hence the delay. Potentially some of the solo piano arrangements that were recored with TFA.

 

edit: sorry @crumbs missed that you said pretty much the same thing!

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I saw some sheet music sites list band and beginner band arrangements for TROS so I emailed Hal Leonard and all they could say was that they were coming soon, and to keep an eye out but that they didn't have a date yet. I figured one of you around here would notice those or the Signature Edition before I would, though.

 

It feels like its been so much longer since the movie than it has been. I guess because people stopped talking about it REAL quickly. 

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On 3/10/2020 at 3:56 PM, Tom said:

I agree.  the whole notion of X-fatigue is studio excuses for bad BO--we should not tacitly consent to their propaganda by using the term.

 

Eh, but that’s not the whole story. Plainly there was less of an appetite for a new film in 2018-19 than there was in 2015.

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The Hobbit trilogy sank like a stone soon after BotFA came out. This seems to be a similar situation. The series goes along, people are dissatisfied, but still want to see where it's going and if it gets better. The hype continues up until the last entry in the series. Then when people don't like that final entry, all the excitement dies out super fast.

 

It's lucky the FYC (and film) came out when it did, or we might be in another situation like Solo.

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23 hours ago, igger6 said:

Whatever the folly of redeeming Ben in the films, It’s musically tantalizing. 

 

Yeah. It was always bound to be a rotten story decision, but musically Williams really capitalized on it. I love how he somehow took the menace out of the Kylo Ren material.

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2 hours ago, kelliwisethebrave said:

On the other hand, I see Ben's redemption as one of the few good things, plot-wise, in the movie. Different strokes!  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 


I think I liked the movie more than most around here, but since you mentioned it, I’ll elaborate on my complicated feelings regarding that. I was a die-hard non-redemptionist before the movie came out, but I thought the way it was accomplished—by essentially rewinding Han Solo’s death visually and thematically, albeit a bit abruptly and glibly—was the best way they could have pulled it off. And the reintroduction of Palpatine made it a lot less anticlimactic and more palatable (Palpatable?) than otherwise. 
 

But the kiss was still dumb pandering.

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8 hours ago, kelliwisethebrave said:

On the other hand, I see Ben's redemption as one of the few good things, plot-wise, in the movie.


My issue with it isn’t plot-related, it’s thematic. To my mind, it’s the series greatest moment of moral bankruptcy, topping “to be angry is to be human.” That’s an important issue in a series as moralistic as Star Wars.

 

Kylo Ren had been too villainous to be worthy of redemption, certainly of one so half-arsed. Plus, unlike Vader who is redeemed in his next-to-last scene, here we are asked to actively invest in the reformed Kylo for the last third of the movie, as he’s going to help Rey.

 

Bloody awful.

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8 hours ago, Chen G. said:


My issue with it isn’t plot-related, it’s thematic. To my mind, it’s the series greatest moment of moral bankruptcy, topping “to be angry is to be human.” That’s an important issue in a series as moralistic as Star Wars.

 

Kylo Ren had been too villainous to be worthy of redemption, certainly of one so half-arsed. Plus, unlike Vader who is redeemed in his next-to-last scene, here we are asked to actively invest in the reformed Kylo for the last third of the movie, as he’s going to help Rey.

 

Bloody awful.

I think we disagree entirely on the thematic effect and meaning of his redemption (for example, I thought it was foreshadowed from TFA and only reinforced in TLJ), and what his story is supposed to mean. and what Star Wars is supposed to mean (i.e. mythic fairy tale vs. realistic one-to-one morality play). Vader himself did worse things and for longer, as did other characters in Star Wars - who also were redeemed (and some of them even lived and were forgiven, and happy, like Agent Kallus!) - and remember if a character deserved to be redeemed, they wouldn't need it (paraphrasing a C.S. Lewis quote). I'll agree with you that it should have been done better (and could have been done better) but that's on JJ and Chris Terrio. At the end of the day I'm just glad it happened and that John Williams wrote fantastic music for it. 

But that we disagree is OK. Star Wars can mean different things to different people. Not interested in rehashing it any further online at this point. That's what twitter is for. :unsure:

 

14 hours ago, igger6 said:

But the kiss was still dumb pandering.

Again, disagree. But I think if he was going to disappear (die?) the kiss is too cruel to Rey, so he should have lived and continued the journey of atonement if it was going to happen.

Yet again, it obviously works for some people and doesn't for others so we don't need to argue the fine points endlessly. I suppose there's some hypocrisy in me continuing to respond, but since it appears few on this board share my opinion, I felt obligated to respond to show that not everyone here feels the same.

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4 hours ago, kelliwisethebrave said:

I thought it was foreshadowed from TFA and only reinforced in TLJ.

 

It kinda was. We now know that Kylo Ren's redemption was a traejectory that the filmmakers had in mind from the moment they set up his internal conflict.

 

In The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren does choose the darkness in killing his father, but there's a closeup of him immediately afterwards, and Abrams in the commentary says: "I think that, once he does it, he regrets it." The Last Jedi didn't shut the door on Kylo's redemption, but certainly - by the end of the film - bolstered his stand on the side of evil. You can even read the early parts of The Last Jedi as Kylo Ren feigning his internal conflict to Rey so as to get her to be there for his coup.

 

In either case, just because something is set-up, doesn't mean that the payoff is gonna work. It'd be like giving Voldemort a redemption arc in The Deathly Hallows or giving Commodus a redemption in Gladiator.

 

Its not really a tragedy if the character dies a hero.

 

4 hours ago, kelliwisethebrave said:

Star Wars is supposed to mean (i.e. mythic fairy tale vs. realistic one-to-one morality play).

 

Fairytales are moralistic. Inherently and extremly so, in fact. Certainly, Star Wars is that.

 

4 hours ago, kelliwisethebrave said:

Vader himself did worse things

 

1. No, he didn't.

2. Even if he did, two wrongs don't make a right.

3. Even if it did make a right, its still deriviative: you'd think they'd want to try something truly different for once.

4:

 

Quote

unlike Vader who is redeemed in his next-to-last scene, here we are asked to actively invest in the reformed Kylo for the last third of the movie, as he’s going to help Rey.

 

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It was always obvious he would "turn to the light side" given a few things:

- He's Han and Leia's son

- He always showed he was conflicted, via Adam Driver's performance, through his Vader wannabe status in TFA, and killing Snoke/guards in TLJ

- The new movies stuck so closely to the old ones, and he was the Vader equivalent

 

It was also obvious he would die, just because he couldn't truly be considered "one of the good guys" and deserve to live happily ever after, after how evil he was. That's kinda basic storytelling.

 

The kiss was not so obvious, although there was a lot of sexual tension between the two of them in TLJ in particular. And lots of fans who wanted that.

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35 minutes ago, Smeltington said:

It was always obvious he would "turn to the light side" given [that...] he's Han and Leia's son

 

which is awful. Being somebody's son appearantly gives you, morally, a get-out-jail-free-card; and for patricide, no less!

 

35 minutes ago, Smeltington said:

He always showed he was conflicted [...] and killing Snoke/guards in TLJ

 

Just because a character is conflicted, has a tortorous past, shares a connection to good characters or posseses sympathetic qualities, doesn't make the bad things he does any less villanous. If anything, that Kylo Ren does what he does in spite of his moral compass telling him otherwise makes him all the more monsterous.

 

Again, it'd be like ending Gladiator with a redemption for Commodus. Few things are more satisfying that watch a villain like Kylo or Commodus beaten to a pulp, and we're robbed of that with Kylo and his stupid, cheap and insidious redemption arc.

 

Also, the killing of Snoke wasn't an act of moral conflict: it was a cut-and-dry coup. Its telling that during the ensuing fight, Rey helps Kylo, but he lets Rey fend for herself: helping her out was never his objective. He just needed her there.

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1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

Also, the killing of Snoke wasn't an act of moral conflict: it was a cut-and-dry coup. Its telling that during the ensuing fight, Rey helps Kylo, but he lets Rey fend for herself: helping her out was never his objective. He just needed her there.

 

As I said in my post, we're never going to agree on these things. We don't agree on what is even happening in the scenes so we're not going to agree on what they mean.

 

As a side note, check out the excellent comic series The Rise of Kylo Ren written by Charles Soule and illustrated by Will Sliney (the final issue came out on Wednesday). A lot of people like me had things we theorized and inferred about the character confirmed by the comic.

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TROS was not an embarrassment. It was an average sci-fi flick. However, I do agree the score was hacked to death and buried behind some questionable sound mixing.

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If this movie had nothing to do with Star Wars and was just a random blockbuster movie I probably would have given it like a 3/10 and dismissed it entirely. It's pretty incoherent even as far as these things go. 

 

Since I get some basic enjoyment out of the series it's like a 5/10ish from me. I think it's about on par with the prequels in that way. Some of it is better than what George was doing, some of it really seems worse. It's weird to say but I think Eps I-III may be vaguely more "normal" i.e. linear and watchable as far as their story nuts and bolts go, but JJ's direction and his actors are obviously a little more consistently engaged. Kinda splits the difference....I will say Revenge of the Sith beats it as a trilogy finale due to more prolonged cathartic moments in the film and especially score.

 

...tbh Phantom Menace may win on points as well, nothing in Rise really strikes me as memorably crafty like the podrace sound design or the editing/choreography/scoring of Maul vs Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon. 

 

On 3/13/2020 at 2:47 PM, Evanus said:

I thought the kiss was kinda dumb and out of place, a hug would've been better IMO.

 

I picture a hug being even worse. The kiss is meh but at least it's a big gesture.

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