Star Wars no longer using Star Wars music

[Datameister 2,044]

I'm guessing this whole trend has a few different causes:

 

1. The percentage of JW-scored stories keeps decreasing as the Star Wars media universe continues to grow beyond the Skywalker saga. And of course, at some sad point, there will be no more new JW SW music at all, forever. We may have already passed that point. So there's an inescapable trend toward other composers taking over Star Wars, and the reality is that JW's style is difficult to emulate well. Ergo … the longer they keep making more Star Wars, the smaller a role his music will play in it. It's natural for that to be reflected in the advertising.
2. JW's approach is no longer popular with filmmakers, studios, or audiences. There's plenty of reverence for the man and his work, but his style simply isn't "in" anymore. People like unobtrusive, anonymous film scores and huge, overtestosteroned trailer music.
3. There's a limited amount of JW SW music, and most of the good stuff has already been used a lot in advertising.

Not trying to say I like any of this, but I get it.

[Tallguy 3,395]

3 minutes ago, Datameister said:

I'm guessing this whole trend has a few different causes:

 

1. The percentage of JW-scored stories keeps decreasing as the Star Wars media universe continues to grow beyond the Skywalker saga. And of course, at some sad point, there will be no more new JW SW music at all, forever. We may have already passed that point. So there's an inescapable trend toward other composers taking over Star Wars, and the reality is that JW's style is difficult to emulate well. Ergo … the longer they keep making more Star Wars, the smaller a role his music will play in it. It's natural for that to be reflected in the advertising.
2. JW's approach is no longer popular with filmmakers, studios, or audiences. There's plenty of reverence for the man and his work, but his style simply isn't "in" anymore. People like unobtrusive, anonymous film scores and huge, overtestosteroned trailer music.
3. There's a limited amount of JW SW music, and most of the good stuff has already been used a lot in advertising.

Not trying to say I like any of this, but I get it.

 

That all makes sense. Except when they do a Princess Leia / Carrie Fisher video tribute and they track it with a sound-alike it means they aren't trying for a "new sound" it means they just aren't paying for Williams. Or Williams isn't letting them use the music which has never been the case in the past.

[Datameister 2,044]

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

 

That all makes sense. Except when they do a Princess Leia / Carrie Fisher video tribute and they track it with a sound-alike it means they aren't trying for a "new sound" it means they just aren't paying for Williams. Or Williams isn't letting them use the music which has never been the case in the past.

 

That is weird, true. Not sure what to make of that.

[Brónach 1,302]

it means the marketing guy doesn't like JW

[GerateWohl 4,370]

1 hour ago, Datameister said:

I'm guessing this whole trend has a few different causes:

 

1. The percentage of JW-scored stories keeps decreasing as the Star Wars media universe continues to grow beyond the Skywalker saga. And of course, at some sad point, there will be no more new JW SW music at all, forever. We may have already passed that point. So there's an inescapable trend toward other composers taking over Star Wars, and the reality is that JW's style is difficult to emulate well. Ergo … the longer they keep making more Star Wars, the smaller a role his music will play in it. It's natural for that to be reflected in the advertising.
2. JW's approach is no longer popular with filmmakers, studios, or audiences. There's plenty of reverence for the man and his work, but his style simply isn't "in" anymore. People like unobtrusive, anonymous film scores and huge, overtestosteroned trailer music.
3. There's a limited amount of JW SW music, and most of the good stuff has already been used a lot in advertising.

Not trying to say I like any of this, but I get it.

This all might be true. Still John Williams not only gave Star Wars a very special but also very popular musical identity. Why not keep that?

And why not maintain that?

And even If his style is hard to emmulate even for experienced studied composers (why???), why are the new scores so clumsy and weaker than almost any random modern adventure score?

[Datameister 2,044]

8 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

This all might be true. Still John Williams not only gave Star Wars a very special but also very popular musical identity. Why not keep that?

And why not maintain that?

And even If his style is hard to emmulate even for experienced studied composers (why???), why are the new scores so clumsy and weaker than almost any random modern adventure score?

I was intentional when I said his style is hard to emulate well. The results may roughly resemble his work, but they tend to sound like cheesy mimicry. And they're usually not quite as sophisticated as JW's writing; he makes a lot of genuinely complex harmonic and orchestrational choices. Consider R1. Michael Giacchino made a concerted effort to give it a JW Star Wars sound, complete with sweeping melodies and chromatically planing brass triad triplets. Yet for me, at least, the strongest parts of the score tend to be the ones where MG just does his own thing (e.g. "Your Father Would Be Proud"). Solo provides an interesting comparison, because while Powell was given a new JW theme, he still scored things in his own style, and for my money, the results are more effective.

 

That being said, yes, a strong composer who's extensively studied JW may be able to convincingly ape his style for short stretches.

[Faleel 5,350]

4 minutes ago, Datameister said:

 

 

That being said, yes, a strong composer who's extremely studied JW may be able to convincingly ape his style for short stretches.

[GerateWohl 4,370]

3 hours ago, Datameister said:

I was intentional when I said his style is hard to emulate well. The results may roughly resemble his work, but they tend to sound like cheesy mimicry. And they're usually not quite as sophisticated as JW's writing; he makes a lot of genuinely complex harmonic and orchestrational choices. Consider R1. Michael Giacchino made a concerted effort to give it a JW Star Wars sound, complete with sweeping melodies and chromatically planing brass triad triplets. Yet for me, at least, the strongest parts of the score tend to be the ones where MG just does his own thing (e.g. "Your Father Would Be Proud"). Solo provides an interesting comparison, because while Powell was given a new JW theme, he still scored things in his own style, and for my money, the results are more effective.

 

That being said, yes, a strong composer who's extensively studied JW may be able to convincingly ape his style for short stretches.

Funnily after Star Wars in 1977 it became a fashion to score science fiction and fantasy movies with big orchestral scores like The Black Hole, Star Trek TMP, Alien, Clash of the Titans etc. None of these is really emulating Williams style. Still these scores represent a certain same romantic musical tradition that was a trademark of Star Wars.

By the way, I again mention Dario Marianelli. This would be for me Williams emulation enough:

 

I would love to get a Star Wars score from him.

[Datameister 2,044]

1 hour ago, GerateWohl said:

Funnily after Star Wars in 1977 it became a fashion to score science fiction and fantasy movies with big orchestral scores like The Black Hole, Star Trek TMP, Alien, Clash of the Titans etc. None of these is really emulating Williams style. Still these scores represent a certain same romantic musical tradition that was a trademark of Star Wars.

By the way, I again mention Dario Marianelli. This would be for me Williams emulation enough:

 

I would love to get a Star Wars score from him.

 

That was very "in" at the time. Unfortunately for us, it's not anymore.

 

I'm not familiar with Marianelli. That track is is fun.

[Richard Penna 3,694]

16 hours ago, Tallguy said:

 

That all makes sense. Except when they do a Princess Leia / Carrie Fisher video tribute and they track it with a sound-alike it means they aren't trying for a "new sound" it means they just aren't paying for Williams. Or Williams isn't letting them use the music which has never been the case in the past.

 

Yes, it's a strange one - it's not like they're using a generic fantasy adventure type library music, but a piece that was clearly composed to be a soundalike for SW.

 

But I don't think that points to anyone hating SW/Williams - quite the opposite in fact, because the music is so remininiscent. Could just be the producer of these videos looking at their budget and deciding there are things that need it more than having Williams' actual music in them.

[Tallguy 3,395]

1 hour ago, Richard Penna said:

But I don't think that points to anyone hating SW/Williams

 

No. That's just the people actually making Star Wars SHOWS. (And in some cases damn good ones.)

 

1 hour ago, Richard Penna said:

Could just be the producer of these videos looking at their budget and deciding there are things that need it more than having Williams' actual music in them.

 

That's where I'm trying to figure out if the price point changed. Because that didn't used to be the case.

 

The way I see it, the opposite ends are:

 

The Vast Conspiracy: "We don't want the Star Wars musical identity to be John Williams anymore. Even in places where it used to be. It's time to move on."

 

The Money Grubbing Business: "Hey, this stuff costs cash! We can't just keep paying for Williams' jet and his private island for the next hundred years!"

 

And then there are all the gradations in between.

[GerateWohl 4,370]

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

The Vast Conspiracy: "We don't want the Star Wars musical identity to be John Williams anymore. Even in places where it used to be. It's time to move on."

Yes, I think, you are right with this. The decision makers look at the topic not from a musical perspective. Probably they have no clue about music. But they might think, Williams brought something new to the genre and that is what Star Wars stands for. So we need people who continue that spirit. And it is undeniable that even Williams changed the way he scored these movies over time.  But still there is something, that could be called the musical DNA of Star Wars, that he always kept. It is a little bit like with James Bond, were all composers more or less sticked to the franchises musical DNA that was invented by John Barry (except Thomas Newman who mostly ignored it and did...something).

 

Göransson, you can like what he did even though it's not Star Wars music and he is pretty blank at this Star Wars DNA thing, because he is not an orchestral composer, he is a technical music garage artist who lets orchestrators add orchestral textures to what he does. His creations for Mandalorian are somewhat ok, but season one and two became actually bad, when he decided to do something with the big orchestra to sound cinematic. That has luckily changed for good, as obviously now with Joseph Shirley there is at last someone at the stearing whell who knows how to deal with this orchestra thingy.

 

Britell has some footprint in chamber music pastiche textures, but has no idea what a Williams does there with an orchestra or what a Star Wars musical DNA might be or should have to do with what he did for Andor.

 

Holt, we never know what she would have come up with, if she would have had all the artistic freedom and Williams would not have kept her away from his themes and director and producers not insisting to her to do something ultra new. But I doubt, that we would have got something better than what we have at hand.

 

[Richard Penna 3,694]

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

The Vast Conspiracy: "We don't want the Star Wars musical identity to be John Williams anymore. Even in places where it used to be. It's time to move on."

 

I agree about the two potential extremes, but I find it hard to see this one particularly. If the video above had used just some generic fantasy music (and there's loads of that in libraries) then I'd tend to agree that maybe they're moving on.

 

However, this track is clearly an attempt by a composer to get as close as possible to Williams' theme, strongly suggesting to me that they wanted to use the original but couldn't.

 

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

That's where I'm trying to figure out if the price point changed. Because that didn't used to be the case.

 

I'd see it the other way round - if budgets for this sort of thing aren't what they were, using Williams' music might just be one of the things they lose.

[enderdrag64 624]

I don't understand why using Star Wars music would cost them anything at all - my understanding was that Lucasfilm had completely paid off the reuse fees for the OT scores (and likely the PT as well) as a lump sum so they'd never owe them again

[Tallguy 3,395]

11 minutes ago, enderdrag64 said:

I don't understand why using Star Wars music would cost them anything at all - my understanding was that Lucasfilm had completely paid off the reuse fees for the OT scores (and likely the PT as well) as a lump sum so they'd never owe them again

 

That's certainly how they have acted in the past. That's what makes the current "situation" so weird.

 

It's hard to believe that this is going back a few years, but the Lucasfilm web series "The Star Wars Show" used to open with a dance version of Rey's theme. (Just checked, that ended two years ago.) Heck, even that terrible Lucasfilm Logo when they wouldn't use 20th Century Fox at the start of Empire and Jedi was a mish mash of Williams, right?

[Brando 1,864]

15 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

Heck, even that terrible Lucasfilm Logo when they wouldn't use 20th Century Fox at the start of Empire and Jedi was a mish mash of Williams, right?

Yes 

 

[Schilkeman 964]

All Star Wars projects from now on should just use tracked music from Shadows of the Empire.

[Tallguy 3,395]

10 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

All Star Wars projects from now on should just use tracked music from Shadows of the Empire.

 

Just not the Williams stuff.

[TheAvengerButton 175]

19 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

All Star Wars projects from now on should just use tracked music from Shadows of the Empire.

I would not mind this. That music is a gold mine and I wish it could come back in some form so that material can be used in newer projects.

[Schilkeman 964]

5 hours ago, TheAvengerButton said:

I would not mind this. That music is a gold mine and I wish it could come back in some form so that material can be used in newer projects.

It’s the only Star Wars music not written by John Williams that I consider worthy of John Williams. Amazing that he wrote it in ten days.

[TheAvengerButton 175]

It's absolutely amazing. To be fair, he takes shortcuts (lifts very liberally from several classical pieces, but John also did that for the original Star Wars score so I'm not knocking that against McNeely) but overall Shadows of the Empire has a quality to it that even Johnny's prequels scores don't have when it comes to matching the energy and simplicity of the original trilogy scores. I often joke that it's my favorite Star Wars movie score.

[SilverTrumpet 638]

15 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

It’s the only Star Wars music not written by John Williams that I consider worthy of John Williams. Amazing that he wrote it in ten days.

 

In fairness, there are a lot of video games that fit the bill very nicely too.

 

See, that's the thing. Obviously all the points above about how its just inevitable that Williams music won't be in Star Wars much longer is true, but it ignores the fact that until Disney took over, there was still a Star Wars style that was easily recognizable. I don't get the justification for stuff that sounds anti-Star Wars.

[Schilkeman 964]

1 hour ago, SilverTrumpet said:

 

In fairness, there are a lot of video games that fit the bill very nicely too.

Gordy Haab does a reasonable facsimile, non of the others have impressed me much, and I’ve played almost every Star Wars game ever made.

 

Most of the music getting used in Star Wars now feels about as in tune with the films as the cinematography and costume design: not really

4 hours ago, TheAvengerButton said:

I often joke that it's my favorite Star Wars movie score.

I don’t know if I’d go that far lol, but it’s very good.

[Datameister 2,044]

4 hours ago, SilverTrumpet said:

 

In fairness, there are a lot of video games that fit the bill very nicely too.

 

See, that's the thing. Obviously all the points above about how its just inevitable that Williams music won't be in Star Wars much longer is true, but it ignores the fact that until Disney took over, there was still a Star Wars style that was easily recognizable. I don't get the justification for stuff that sounds anti-Star Wars.

I've never been particularly interested in any of the SW video game scores I've heard. Granted, there are a lot of these scores I haven't heard, and I still haven't listened to Shadows of the Empire, so my perspective could be pretty skewed. But usually, the harder a composer tries to sound like Williams, the more I just want to listen to the real thing. Or to another really interesting composer writing in their own natural idiom.

[Faleel 5,350]

4 hours ago, Datameister said:

I've never been particularly interested in any of the SW video game scores I've heard. Granted, there are a lot of these scores I haven't heard, and I still haven't listened to Shadows of the Empire, so my perspective could be pretty skewed. But usually, the harder a composer tries to sound like Williams, the more I just want to listen to the real thing. Or to another really interesting composer writing in their own natural idiom.

Shadows is more of a concert work than a video game score (it was written "to" the novel, not for the game BTW)

[SilverTrumpet 638]

8 hours ago, Datameister said:

I've never been particularly interested in any of the SW video game scores I've heard. Granted, there are a lot of these scores I haven't heard, and I still haven't listened to Shadows of the Empire, so my perspective could be pretty skewed. But usually, the harder a composer tries to sound like Williams, the more I just want to listen to the real thing. Or to another really interesting composer writing in their own natural idiom.

 

That's why I specified Star Wars style and not John Williams style. Most of the guys writing the original music still tapped on a style for Star Wars that didn't necessitate you sounding just an imitation of JW.

 

They use a Star Wars style as a base and branch out from there, but they're always tied to that base no matter where else you go musically.

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

On 16/05/2023 at 4:59 PM, Tallguy said:

 

That all makes sense. Except when they do a Princess Leia / Carrie Fisher video tribute and they track it with a sound-alike it means they aren't trying for a "new sound" it means they just aren't paying for Williams. Or Williams isn't letting them use the music which has never been the case in the past.

I cannot imagine any universe where JW would refuse use of his music for a tribute to Carrie Fisher (or anyone associated with a film he scored) so it probably does come down to cheapness.

 

18 hours ago, TheAvengerButton said:

It's absolutely amazing. To be fair, he takes shortcuts (lifts very liberally from several classical pieces, but John also did that for the original Star Wars score so I'm not knocking that against McNeely) but overall Shadows of the Empire has a quality to it that even Johnny's prequels scores don't have when it comes to matching the energy and simplicity of the original trilogy scores. I often joke that it's my favorite Star Wars movie score.

I think that's part of what makes Shadows of the Empire so good; Joel McNeely understood that a lot of the DNA of the Star Wars sound (in addition to JW's own style) was Prokofiev*, William Walton** and other classical composers, so leant on the same reference points. It goes back to the old "photocopy of a photocopy" analogy. Joel McN took his inspiration from the original source like JW, but Michael Giacchino took his from JW, suffused with 2000s blockbuster film music style, which I think is partly why Rogue One sounds so clunky in places.

 

*Xizor's Theme is essentially a variation on the Montagues and the Capulets from Romeo & Juliet.

**Passages from his ballet The Quest get a lot of air time in Shadows of the Empire, particularly the action music. It's a terrific Walton work, well worth checking out. I think a lot of people would be surprised how much you recognise if you're familiar with Shadows.

 

It's funny that there's an FSM podcast from years ago when Giacchino's 2009 Star Trek score came out and how Jerry, James Horner and Cliff Eidelman all leant on romantic classical music for their Star Trek sound so you get all those harmonies that were, maybe more at the time, associated with space (Gustav Holst, I'm looking at you) whereas Giacchino's sound was just 2000s blockbuster movie scoring with lots of tutti and hammering chords and loud percussion to cut through the sound mix and so his scores lost a lot of the romance that made those earlier scores so wonderful. I think MG's Star Trek score was one of the most disappointing experiences in my film music life. I genuinely thought he'd continue the Jerry/James Horner tradition, at least to some extent... but no. Not really.

 

But getting back to the original point, it seems more likely to be just cheapness on Disney's part. I expect a lot of the decisions are indirectly made by KK or whomever sending edicts down from high regarding, which affects how people down the food chain make decisions. As they (probably rightly) figure that most people won't notice/care, they may as well use soundalike, royalty free music especially if they already have it to hand and come in on/under budget. Disney, putting the business into show business since always... track in FakePrincessLeia'sTheme.mp3.

 

Random thought... George gave JW a fraction of a percent on the original Star Wars profits (don't know if that extended to the other movies) but maybe there was something in the contract that means his residuals/royalties or whatever for the Star Wars music, especially from the original movie, are higher than average, hence Warner Bros. (for example) don't feel the cost as much for Harry Potter than Disney do if that was a more typical fees arrangement. Or maybe WB actually realise how important the music identity of Harry Potter is. For a company that has long traded in the musical output from its movies and endlessly banging on about it, Disney don't actually appear to give much of a shit when it comes down to it.

[GerateWohl 4,370]

This might be a little off-topic, but somehow it fits here. I just watched the BBC documentatry on Hans Zimmer and I found it interesting that it seems to be obligatory, if you praise Zimmer and his achievements in film music it doesn't work without doing a little bashing on traditional symphonic film scoring. Because directors, who want to work with him obviously apprechiate, that he doesn't do that but focusses on textures and sounds and has a footprint in 80s synth pop.

Advantage is, now I slightly understand his approach to filmscoring better and it explains as well why to me still his music does not much sense outside of the movie context and really doesn't stand on its own. And even though this music works so well in so many movies I don't want that style in a Star Wars movie. But I am afraid, this kind of sound is exactly where we are heading to (prticularly already did).

 

[TheAvengerButton 175]

6 hours ago, Tom Guernsey said:

I think that's part of what makes Shadows of the Empire so good; Joel McNeely understood that a lot of the DNA of the Star Wars sound (in addition to JW's own style) was Prokofiev*, William Walton** and other classical composers, so leant on the same reference points. It goes back to the old "photocopy of a photocopy" analogy. Joel McN took his inspiration from the original source like JW, but Michael Giacchino took his from JW, suffused with 2000s blockbuster film music style, which I think is partly why Rogue One sounds so clunky in places.

 

*Xizor's Theme is essentially a variation on the Montagues and the Capulets from Romeo & Juliet.

**Passages from his ballet The Quest get a lot of air time in Shadows of the Empire, particularly the action music. It's a terrific Walton work, well worth checking out. I think a lot of people would be surprised how much you recognise if you're familiar with Shadows.

Yes! Thank you, this was what I was referring to but was too lazy to elaborate.

I do agree that this is a huge part of why Shadows of the Empire works so well, and why when doing a Star Wars score one should reach back to familiar compositions in order to reshape and make anew.

 

While I also like newer Star Wars soundtrack material, people like Gordy Haab (who is absolutely masterful at recapturing JW's harmonic and compositional language) rely on reworking the JW scores themselves instead of reaching back further and taking inspiration from older works. In the case of Gordy, it works for the projects that the music covers and very well in most cases, but it's still not the same.

 

I know when I talk about Gordy Haab I sound more critical, but I am a huge fan of his Star Wars output as evidenced by my yearly Gordy Star Wars soundtrack threads.

[Edmilson 7,466]

7 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

But I am afraid, this kind of sound is exactly where we are heading to (prticularly already did).

Andor is precisely that: a score for a Star Wars production that sounds more like a Zimmer Nolan score than anything written for the franchise. Of course it got rapturous reviews and I don't doubt some blue check marks on Twitter were saying that "it's better than anything JW wrote recently".

 

For me, though, it was mostly amorphous wallpaper. Aside from one or other decent cue, it could've been replaced with royalties-free library music and it wouldn't make any difference.

 

Actually, considering Disney's financial crisis, I suggest them to actually use library music instead of Britell's for season 2. It will save them some pennies.