Which score from the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy do you like most?

[Not Mr. Big 4,639]

23 minutes ago, artguy360 said:

I don't remember the source but RJ told a joke about watching the movie with JW for the first time for some kind of spotting purpose and while the Lucas Film logo was on screen just before the main title, he leaned over to JW and joked that he wanted to replace the main title music with something, maybe with silence? And he was a little embarrassed at his joke or something.

"This is just the temp music, we're gonna put something much better over it later" or something 

[Chen G. 3,944]

6 hours ago, Datameister said:

Johnson had someone cut together a temp track of JW music (95% from other Star Wars scores). Then they just gave him that temp track to work from. This both shocked me and made perfect sense: I don't know why in the world they'd take this approach, but it certainly helps explain why significant stretches of the score either mimic or directly quote edited versions of pre-existing cues.

 

Right. Its perhaps the most self-referential of all Star Wars scores, which would be fine had the material been developed or presented in new variations and in new musical contexts. Alas, it largely isn't. I never thought I'd have enough of Binary Sunset, and then...

 

I'm also not a fan of the way the concert presentations of the themes - which used to be unique to the album - were cannibalized for the score.

[Remco 685]

I thought it was glorious to hear the most beautiful part of Leia’s concert version in the film (so much so, that I didn’t even realize how controversial the scene itself was).

 

[Chen G. 3,944]

I think there's a value in those album/concert presentations remaining on the album and the concert stage. It sort of allows these themes to also exist as purely symphonic entities: putting a little Leipzig in our Weimar school!

[Remco 685]

I think it's nonsense. We're talking about 30 second snippets here in a *huge* score that by the way many moviegoers probably would never hear otherwise.

Also, many concert versions have their foundation in the score, such as the second half of 'Rise of Skywalker'. Why not the other way around?

 

I agree though that there is a little too much Force theme in TLJ, and in TROS as well, but that also wasn't helped by the tracking of even more Force theme (such as 'Peace and Purpose' from TLJ when Exegol blows up).

[Chen G. 3,944]

1 hour ago, Remco said:

I agree though that there is a little too much Force theme in TLJ, and in TROS as well

 

I feel like in The Last Jedi the theme "gave in to musical gravity" and really just became an abstract musical device (which is not necessarily a criticism) whereas in The Rise of Skywalker it was again used more in a narrative context where it returned to symbolize the Force and the Jedi.

[Jay 37,289]

13 hours ago, Datameister said:

directly quote edited versions of pre-existing cues

 

Ooh, where does he do this?

 

 

5 hours ago, Remco said:

I thought it was glorious to hear the most beautiful part of Leia’s concert version in the film (so much so, that I didn’t even realize how controversial the scene itself was).

 

 

Oh man, hearing that really rubbed me the wrong way.  Such a lost opportunity to have Williams write a new arrangement of her theme fitting the scene

[Chen G. 3,944]

11 minutes ago, Jay said:

Ooh, where does he do this?

 

Lots and lots of Binary Sunset (not just the theme: specifically Binary Sunset), Yoda's Theme, Leia's Theme.

 

That's all off the top of my head: I haven't listened to score in a while.

 

[Jay 37,289]

What?  I wasn't asking which themes he re-uses in TLJ, I was referring to the part I quoted - "directly quote edited versions of pre-existing cues"

[Chen G. 3,944]

Yeah:

 

"Binary Sunset" is a cue, used verbatim multiple times in the film

 

"Leia's Theme" and "Yoda's Theme" are the tracks from The Empire Strikes Back album, again used verbatim.

[Datameister 2,037]

19 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

Ooh, where does he do this?

 

Off the top of my head:

• The piccolo solo after the main title
• March of the Resistance (the suite) in the opening battle
• Poe's theme from the TFA credits in the opening battle
• Kylo's themes from the TFA credits when he's brooding in the elevator
• Rey's Theme (the suite) as she follows Luke
• Leia's Theme (the suite) for that … controversial scene
• Luke's theme from ANH (when they see the Falcon again on the Death Star) when BB-8 shoots the coins 
• Yoda's Theme (the suite) at the end of his scene
• Some of the "sneaking around" music from TFA onboard the First Order ship
• The serious, march-like passage from early in TFA, heard as Finn and Rose are marched toward their doom 
• Ways of the Force for Snoke's death
• Here They Come, Again
• The love theme's last TFA statement when Luke hands over the dice 
• The finale leading into the credits

 

Admittedly, not all of these are "edited," as I said. Some are just straight quotes.

[Jay 37,289]

4 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Yeah:

 

"Binary Sunset" is a cue, used verbatim multiple times in the film

 

"Leia's Theme" and "Yoda's Theme" are the tracks from The Empire Strikes Back album, again used verbatim.

 

Sorry, I still think we're not on the same page here:  He mentioned quoting edited versions of cues.  I'm not asking about old cues newly shortened for TLJ.  I'm asking about cues that already got shortened in a prior movie, and  now they re-recorded that artificial edit.

I hope you understand now

 

4 minutes ago, Datameister said:

 

Off the top of my head:

• The piccolo solo after the main title
• March of the Resistance (the suite) in the opening battle
• Poe's theme from the TFA credits in the opening battle
• Kylo's themes from the TFA credits when he's brooding in the elevator
• Rey's Theme (the suite) as she follows Luke
• Leia's Theme (the suite) for that … controversial scene
• Luke's theme from ANH (when they see the Falcon again on the Death Star) when BB-8 shoots the coins 
• Yoda's Theme (the suite) at the end of his scene
• Some of the "sneaking around" music from TFA onboard the First Order ship
• The serious, march-like passage from early in TFA, heard as Finn and Rose are marched toward their doom 
• Ways of the Force for Snoke's death
• Here They Come, Again
• The love theme's last TFA statement when Luke hands over the dice 
• The finale leading into the credits

 

All of those were edited down in a prior movie and that old edit was re-created on the page to record for TLJ?

[Datameister 2,037]

1 minute ago, Jay said:

 

Sorry, I still think we're not on the same page here:  He mentioned quoting edited versions of cues.  I'm not asking about old cues newly shortened for TLJ.  I'm asking about cues that already got shortened in a prior movie, and  now they re-recorded that artificial edit.

I hope you understand now

 

Oh, we've got a misunderstand then. My reference to cues being edited was about them having been edited in the temp track, and those edits carried over to the new recordings. Sorry! (EDIT: And it was perhaps hyperbolic of me to imply that most or all of these quotes have such edits; only some do, with Yoda's Theme being the most egregious because of the way the noodling string accompaniments change at the "edit" point.)

[Jay 37,289]

16 minutes ago, Datameister said:

My reference to cues being edited was about them having been edited in the temp track, and those edits carried over to the new recordings

 

Ah gotcha, so not edited in a prior movie, just edited in the temp track.  I'm on the same page now

 

 

Yea, it is a shame that they re-created those temp track edits so often instead of elegantly finding a way to get across the same tone and feel and using the same theme as the temp track, but in a totally new arrangement.

[Taikomochi 1,136]

The Leia’s theme quote is awesome and makes an otherwise silly scene work. As for the other quotes, I don’t love them (aside from Here they come and Yoda’s theme which also work well), but it’s like 5-10 min out of a 2.5 hour score. Ultimately, it’s negligible.

 

But yes, too much Binary Sunset

[rough cut 1,714]

For TLJ, didn’t RJ and his team temp the movie with already existing Star Wars music, which led to three “problems”:

 

1) Leitmotifs are used incorrectly, for example ‘Yoda’s Theme’ when Luke lifts the X-Wing

2) Over-use of “popular” themes

3) Exhausting JW:s ability to actually write new and fitting music

 

[Jay 37,289]

Yea

[Smeltington 1,436]

1 hour ago, Datameister said:

• Kylo's themes from the TFA credits when he's brooding in the elevator

 

I think you previously mentioned that some TFA Snoke material was quoted in "Revisiting Snoke" as well.

 

Nice list! It would make a good spreadsheet one day.

[Jay 37,289]

I wonder if a nice, listenable album can be carved out that covers all the highlights, themes, and story beats of the score, without any of these temp-track adhesions included (other than the post-main title end pre-end title, those are fine)

[j39m 75]

47 minutes ago, rough cut said:

1) Leitmotifs are used incorrectly, for example ‘Yoda’s Theme’ when Luke lifts the X-Wing

 

Are you thinking of the moment for TROS? Surely we can't blame this on RJ.

 

In any case, it may or may not have been JW's call, and I don't think we can say he particularly opposed it.

 

Quote

Ramiro Belgardt, the music editor, he said ‘[the scene of Luke lifting the X-wing] should be exactly the music that we had for Yoda. And Actually, J.J. questioned it, he said ‘Well, is that, are we doing that right?’ And everybody said ‘Oh yes, it has to be. You know, the fans will all know.’

 

More broadly, we have to accept some amount of leitmotivic drift across the saga. Luke is nowhere in sight when Chewbacca takes the copilot's seat for the first time in Solo — but I personally think busting out Luke's fanfare (the "main" theme) is a great choice for that moment.

 

...the specific case of Luke lifting the X-wing to "Yoda and the Force" does rankle me personally, but it strikes me as not a serious motivic jump.

[Datameister 2,037]

20 minutes ago, Smeltington said:

 

I think you previously mentioned that some TFA Snoke material was quoted in "Revisiting Snoke" as well.

 

Nice list! It would make a good spreadsheet one day.

 

Oh yeah, and for that, they literally just reused the choral recording from TFA. (JW seems to have written the TLJ material with that intention.) But the effect is the same: here we go, again.

 

I actually think many of these are perfectly fine in isolation. Some are even really fun. And it's true that there's still plenty of material that's not direct quotes. And some of that material doesn't even hearken back to a specific recognizable temp track. But for me, it's less about the percentage of the time spent on quotes, and more about the number of quotes. Each time a new one starts, my attention is drawn to it.

 

It also doesn't help that the score proper starts with several of these in rapid succession: the piccolo solo, Kylo's theme when the star destroyer arrives (sans Kylo), and the sinisterly twisty low strings from the TFA credits. There's some new writing in these passages, but much of it is reminiscent of the Anakin/Obi-Wan duel. So all this primed me to be listening for quotes, and the rest of the score continues to deliver them.

 

I'll reiterate that I do like TLJ. It's just my least favorite of those nine stellar scores.

[Smeltington 1,436]

17 minutes ago, Datameister said:

they literally just reused the choral recording from TFA

 

Well that's annoying.

 

 

22 minutes ago, Datameister said:

but much of it is reminiscent of the Anakin/Obi-Wan duel

 

I seem to remember a few discoveries like this from the TLJ score that were made on this forum, where newly written cues were structured after existing cues from the prequels etc. Unfortunately I don't seem to have made any notes about it.

[rough cut 1,714]

2 hours ago, Jay said:

I wonder if a nice, listenable album can be carved out that covers all the highlights, themes, and story beats of the score, without any of these temp-track adhesions included (other than the post-main title end pre-end title, those are fine)

Of course it is. I just haven’t gotten ‘round to it yet.

 

Any year, now…

[Jay 37,289]

I have so many projects in that status...

[Damien F 1,742]

I think Rise of Skywalker is up there with Crystal Skull as one of the poorest modern Williams OST in terms of cue selection, micro editing, and omitting loads of highlights.

[Jay 37,289]

I agree with Damien F

[Smeltington 1,436]

4 hours ago, Jay said:

I wonder if a nice, listenable album can be carved out that covers all the highlights, themes, and story beats of the score, without any of these temp-track adhesions included (other than the post-main title end pre-end title, those are fine)

 

That would be nice. Unfortunately, a lot of the obvious rehashes are for pivotal moments that stand out among the wealth of more subdued and athematic material in the score. I'm not sure if I would drop the whole Leia track just because of the bit of concert suite in it, and the cue would probably not work with just that part edited out. Same for Snoke's death, the March of the Resistance at the beginning, and the Han/Leia theme in The Spark.

 

There may be a few others that can be trimmed, though. I'm still trying to think of some kind of hack job to cut down the repeated material in the finale and end credits.

[Faleel 5,340]

20 minutes ago, Smeltington said:

 

 

 

There may be a few others that can be trimmed, though. I'm still trying to think of some kind of hack job to cut down the repeated material in the finale and end credits.

Just use the slightly more original early version

[Smeltington 1,436]

As a midi?

[Faleel 5,340]

4 minutes ago, Smeltington said:

As a midi?

Use time travel and take it from the M1-CA31 MA-113S1N0 produced expansion.

[MaxMovieMan 269]

I fucking love the score to the Last Jedi. I think the way Williams develops the themes from the previous movie is awesome and I really like the Luke material. The final few tracks of the score have some of the best moments in all of Star Wars scores IMO.

[artguy360 1,843]

4 hours ago, MaxMovieMan said:

I fucking love the score to the Last Jedi. I think the way Williams develops the themes from the previous movie is awesome and I really like the Luke material. The final few tracks of the score have some of the best moments in all of Star Wars scores IMO.

It's very good score, but the Luke in Exile theme is barely played. If it weren't for the concert arrangement The Rebellion is Reborn on the OST, I think the theme only plays once, maybe twice, in the film itself before the end credits. The theme is nice, but it barely exists in the film.

[MaxMovieMan 269]

2 hours ago, artguy360 said:

It's very good score, but the Luke in Exile theme is barely played. If it weren't for the concert arrangement The Rebellion is Reborn on the OST, I think the theme only plays once, maybe twice, in the film itself before the end credits. The theme is nice, but it barely exists in the film.

I agree it’s played far too little. But on album it sounds epic and the little of it we get in TLJ I enjoyed.

[Chen G. 3,944]

22 hours ago, j39m said:

More broadly, we have to accept some amount of leitmotivic drift across the saga. Luke is nowhere in sight when Chewbacca takes the copilot's seat for the first time in Solo — but I personally think busting out Luke's fanfare (the "main" theme) is a great choice for that moment.

 

There's a lot of this in the series: The theme we associated with the Force started life with a very strong association with Old Ben: the character of the melody is a much better fit for an elderly knight than to an ominpresent Force or deity. But already in the liners for The Empire Strikes Back, Williams calls it "The Force theme." But it also happens with the main theme, with the theme associated with the Rebels (consistently connected to the Falcon in the sequel trilogy) and many other motifs.

 

Its not a bad thing: Pierre Boulez once wrote about a similar trend in The Ring (previously criticized by Jack Stein in "Synthesis of the Arts") but said that it is precisely this "drift" that gives the work a new and unique added dimension: that we experience the passage of time within the work, but also the passage of time of a composer and his relationship to his own musical material. That is all the more true of Williams here.

 

At the same time, I think in Star Wars the degree to which this happens does risk the structural integrity of the cycle as a whole: it happens a little bit too much, with too many bits of material across too many entries.

[1977 1,743]

I don't have a clear favourite, but I would say I love TFA for it's thematic material and TLJ for it's underscore. I enjoy TRoS for it's two new hero themes but I don't feel it really capped the saga off the way I had hoped it would.

[King Mark 3,625]

On 15/11/2022 at 1:58 AM, artguy360 said:

Closely scored meaning the music follows the on screen action and flow very closely. Not like Micky Mousing, but rather that the music closely reflects what's happening in the movie instead of playing over the top of the movie. I think describing a film as closely scored is pretty common language? I know I didn't come up with it. Some examples of this off the top of my head is Yoda's death scene in ROTJ where the music changes themes and reacts dramatically to the conversation between Luke and Yoda.

 

I think that's more of a general trademark of Williams music .He litteraly re-writes the story in music, where most other composers just write music to fit the general mood.

 

I voted for Rise of Skywalker for the score. The track of that name is one of his best of all times

[ocelot 508]

The Last Jedi all the way! Brilliant score!!! I loved TFA but the lack of woodwind orchestration made the color more monotone and it's not what I want from his Adventure scores. It was brilliantly written but badly orchestrated in my book.

[crumbs 14,301]

5 hours ago, ocelot said:

The Last Jedi all the way! Brilliant score!!! I loved TFA but the lack of woodwind orchestration made the color more monotone and it's not what I want from his Adventure scores. It was brilliantly written but badly orchestrated in my book.

 

Yeah, it's a very dry score and the recording only exemplifies that.