Williams "didn't stop until he had written over two hours of music" for Indiana Jones 5

[Schilkeman 955]

I hear way more Gordy Haab quoting old Star Wars than JW quoting him. I'm begging some of you to learn the difference between similar and the same. 

10 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

Powell is in his prime, and Williams, while still delivering some fine scores, is not at the stage he was in the 80s/90s of delivering hit after hit.

JW's style has become much more organic, elastic, and mature in voice. He's less concerned with writing "immediate" scores. It's not worse, just different. Like the late period of many composers who lived long enough to have one.

[Datameister 2,037]

12 hours ago, Drew said:

 

 

Holy shit. I missed that whole thing. Yeah, those are too close to be mere stylistic convergences. Very interesting.

[Brónach 1,301]

9 hours ago, Docteur Qui said:

While on the topic of temp tracks but bringing it back to Indy, I hope the film wasn't just temped with only previous Indy scores (or worse, a generic "Williams-style" approach lifting from any of his scores). This terrific post by @Manakin Skywalkerperfectly sums up my issue with that approach for the sequel films:

 

 

Williams is always at his best when he's being challenged, and the best music he's ever written is when he's inspired by better composers than him. Giving him an edit scored with his own music and being told to just do what he would normally do to me is a waste of the man's talents. If I was Mangold and absolutely had to use a temp track... I'd look to who inspired Williams back in 1981 for Raiders: Maurice Jarre, Korngold etc. But looking at temp track options I'd also want to look outside of the box as much as possible and remind myself of some of JW's most inspired moments; like scoring a magical three-storey bus ride with an unhinged swing big band piece, or a ballet lightsaber battle with an epic vocal cantata.

 

i don't think i'd have the guts to give JW a temp track, but if i did, yeah, very complicated or weird or old music

[Andy 4,087]

The only temp track I'd give JW would be me singing humming and boom-tishing what I want it to sound like.  

[Courtney Sees Ghosts 269]

There aren't enough words in the world to describe how excited this blurb makes me. I assumed the initial approach was going to be John writes a theme and someone else does the rest for a few reasons. Thought he wouldn't do it after Spielberg left and the fact he was coming off of 3 Star Wars movies which I'm sure aren't easy to score at his age. And it worked out incredibly well on Solo. 

But I'm glad he's doing the score himself. Helena's Theme is an amazing sign of things to come.

[Cerebral Cortex 3,357]

I keep reading this thread title and thinking of Mangold locking Williams up in a room until he wrote the whole score for Indy 5 in a horrific display of elder abuse.

[Tom 4,639]

24 minutes ago, Cerebral Cortex said:

I keep reading this thread title and thinking of Mangold locking Williams up in a room until he wrote the whole score for Indy 5 in a horrific display of elder abuse.

Misery: Score Edition.  

[Remco 685]

I’m a bit surprised by this news. JW was always announced as the sole composer. So when Mangold tweeted ‘John had read the script and is ready to go’, he wasn’t actually supposed to write the entire score…?

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5 minutes ago, Remco said:

I’m a bit surprised by this news. JW was always announced as the sole composer. So when Mangold tweeted ‘John had read the script and is ready to go’, he wasn’t actually supposed to write the entire score…?

 

John read the script and was ready to write the new themes!

 

Which could be why the film has "lotsa new themes" instead of just a couple. Maybe the unexpected change from writing only the themes, to completing the entire score himself, yielded more themes than he'd otherwise have written?

 

I remember one interview where JW said he'd finished "mapping out the thematic structure" of the film, which was an interesting statement. Definitely didn't sound like Helena's Theme plus a few motifs.

 

Also a positive sign JW decided to finish the score himself after watching the film.

[Brónach 1,301]

John read the script? That's new

[Richard Penna 3,673]

But there was the whole official 'Williams has officially signed to score' thing from LFL... I mean, either he signs on to score it or they work out who's helping him. Sounds very odd to report that he only did the whole thing because he kept writing, and not because of contracts and stuff.

[Brónach 1,301]

maybe he has a weird contract that only binds him to do some stuff. he's technically retired, has the caché.

[Tom 4,639]

4 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

But there was the whole official 'Williams has officially signed to score' thing from LFL... I mean, either he signs on to score it or they work out who's helping him. Sounds very odd to report that he only did the whole thing because he kept writing, and not because of contracts and stuff.

You expect the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from a PR person?

 

That's sweet.   

[Brónach 1,301]

Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth.

[Alex 2,833]

Poor Bill Ross may have missed out on one of his biggest gigs yet

 

 

[Richard Penna 3,673]

Ross can do Indy 6.

[Jurassic Shark 12,030]

1 hour ago, Brónach said:

John read the script? That's new

 

Bill read it to him.

[Richard Penna 3,673]

22 minutes ago, Tom said:

You expect the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from a PR person?

 

That's sweet.   

 

Heh. It's not really even the PR though - would Mangold and co. not sort out whether JW is going to score the whole thing at the outset? Seems like a really basic thing to agree on.

[Faleel 5,340]

34 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

But there was the whole official 'Williams has officially signed to score' thing from LFL... I mean, either he signs on to score it or they work out who's helping him. Sounds very odd to report that he only did the whole thing because he kept writing, and not because of contracts and stuff.

They also say Zimmer signs on to score films

[Richard Penna 3,673]

I was counting down for the first person to mention HanZ  

[Marian Schedenig 8,174]

Marian's law of Zimmer analogies: As a film music discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Remote Control Productions or Zimmer approaches one.

[Remco 685]

How did this go with CoS?

 

For Solo, I remember that Powell was announced first, the JW theme later, but Powell did say that this was always going to be the plan.

 

It strikes me as odd to announce JW as the composer twice, only to refrain from it later.

 

I guess that deep down JW wanted to compose the entire thing, just in case he’d get in a TROS situation he had a way to spread out the task if necessary.

[Tom 4,639]

34 minutes ago, Remco said:

I guess that deep down JW wanted to compose the entire thing, just in case he’d get in a TROS situation he had a way to spread out the task if necessary.

I would not doubt that JW now has a "JJ" clause in all of his contracts.  

[Jurassic Shark 12,030]

On 13/04/2023 at 6:55 PM, Richard Penna said:

But there was the whole official 'Williams has officially signed to score' thing from LFL... I mean, either he signs on to score it or they work out who's helping him. Sounds very odd to report that he only did the whole thing because he kept writing, and not because of contracts and stuff.

 

He didn't stop writing before he had to sharpen his pencil.

[Bayesian 1,359]

5 minutes ago, Tom said:

I would not doubt that JW now has a "JJ" clause in all of his contracts.  

I wonder how badly soured the friendship between JJ and JW is. It seems like JJ is a decent guy and he clearly is a huge fan of JW. It’s be a shame if they’re less friendly now after TROS, especially given that it wasn’t all JJ’s fault. 

[Kasey Kockroach 2,343]

On 10/04/2023 at 6:59 PM, Edmilson said:

@Kasey Kockroach would.

 

 

[TolkienSS 405]

An announcement "John Williams has signed for Indy 5" doesn't mean he has signed to write the whole thing. 

It's obviously a PR spinning of words to make people assume something that's not explicitly said.

 

Maybe JW was originally meant to only lay out the themes, and Mangold dropped a "John Williams has signed", which technically was correct, to get more hype going, and was hoping Williams would eventually do more than that, which ended up happening.

[ThePenitentMan1 742]

1 hour ago, Kasey Kockroach said:

 

 

 

So, how'd you end up here, Pinocchio?

[mrbellamy 6,272]

16 hours ago, TolkienSS said:

An announcement "John Williams has signed for Indy 5" doesn't mean he has signed to write the whole thing. 

It's obviously a PR spinning of words to make people assume something that's not explicitly said.

 

Maybe JW was originally meant to only lay out the themes, and Mangold dropped a "John Williams has signed", which technically was correct, to get more hype going, and was hoping Williams would eventually do more than that, which ended up happening.

 

The exact phrasing by Lucasfilm in 2021 was "John Williams will return to score the film."

 

So in any case I'm glad that's all we had to go on and it turned out the way that it seemed from the beginning. Saved us a lot of anxiety as opposed to something like "John Williams will be involved with" or "John Williams will contribute new themes" 

 

Then again it might have been extra exciting if we started picking up clues that he was doing the whole thing. But we also would have had a lot of gloomy "Guys he's probably not" mentality. Ignorance was bliss in this case.

 

For all we know Mangold was misinformed or JW was just being his usual "Oh no, I'm much too stuffed, I couldn't possibly, oh well maybe just one more" self lately. "Jim Mangold is many things."

[Richard Penna 3,673]

20 hours ago, TolkienSS said:

An announcement "John Williams has signed for Indy 5" doesn't mean he has signed to write the whole thing. 

 

I suppose my reaction is more that it seems unusual for a director of a huge tentpole movie to seem uncertain or flippant about whether Williams would be able to complete the score without help. It's not like CoS where they explicitly hired Ross at the outset to help, and it was a case of how much JW could do before handing over.

[Bespin 8,480]

More than 2 hours of music? Cool, so the OST will contain only 70 minutes of music as usual, not chronological and starting with 4 suites back-to-back.

 

Wow!

 

[Jurassic Shark 12,030]

Just now, Bespin said:

4 suites

 

I hope so!

[Tom 4,639]

I would love an end credits suite ala TLC and KotCS. I have a bad feeling, though, the when he brought Mutter in to record at the very end, such a suite was dropped in favor or a violin arrangement of Helena's theme.  

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22 minutes ago, Tom said:

I would love an end credits suite ala TLC and KotCS. I have a bad feeling, though, the when he brought Mutter in to record at the very end, such a suite was dropped in favor or a violin arrangement of Helena's theme.  

 

It's been a staple of the series since TOD so I'd hope JW stays true to form. I do think the Mutter arrangement will be an album exclusive though.

 

Curious to see what gets included on the album though. Standalone tracks with the orchestral and Mutter arrangements of Helena's Theme, plus another (shorter) arrangement in the end credits? Not heaps of room left for film cues after that (and the requisite Raiders March opener).

[Tom 4,639]

I suppose it could have the Mutter arrangement, but not the one he has been conducting as a standalone--the latter being interwoven into the end credits.  But, yes, have both the mutter and other as standalones would be repetitive.  

[crumbs 14,304]

I'm hoping for a credits suite that cycles through all the new thematic ideas though... not just Raiders March > Helena > Raiders March.

 

Seems like a missed opportunity given the film has "lotsa new themes"

[Kasey Kockroach 2,343]

On 17/04/2023 at 11:47 AM, ThePenitentMan1 said:

 

So, how'd you end up here, Pinocchio?

Don’t make me come back to this forum just to quote the entirety of KH1.

 

I WON’T HESITATE, B*TCH

[Brónach 1,301]

21 hours ago, Bespin said:

More than 2 hours of music? Cool, so the OST will contain only 70 minutes of music as usual, not chronological and starting with 4 suites back-to-back.

 

Wow!

 

 

well we have to get a recording from at least some of the suites from somewhere.

 

because you know... what it's like... when they're not anywhere...

[ThePenitentMan1 742]

5 hours ago, Kasey Kockroach said:

Don’t make me come back to this forum just to quote the entirety of KH1.

 

I WON’T HESITATE, B*TCH

 

"Really...  Well, we'll just see about that!"