# The Rise of Skywalker score is online



## Fry777

Edited to the updated link to the full score, available on Disney's VEVO Youtube channel

What do you think ?

I haven't listened to all of it yet, but the couple of tracks I heard were excellent


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## KallumS

Smart of them to not release the track names


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## ism

Is this likely to be William's last score before he retires? I think I read that somewhere.


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## Alex Fraser

KallumS said:


> Smart of them to not release the track names


Track names are available online should you go looking..


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## NoamL

Exciting!! I want to wait to experience this with the film. 

However much people didn't like TLJ (and although I liked it, I'm not at all looking forward with eagerness to TROS), I thought John's score for TLJ was one of his absolute best for the Star Wars series. It's in my top 4 somewhere together with ANH, ESB, and TPM. He's still got it - he never let go of it!


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## Gerbil

I love Williams' music and am looking forward to the film. But I'm also hoping this is the last of it!


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## MauroPantin

Good on them not including the track names, I still remember the release of the album for Episode I with a track called "Qui-Gon's Noble End"


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## jbuhler

NoamL said:


> Exciting!! I want to wait to experience this with the film.
> 
> However much people didn't like TLJ (and although I liked it, I'm not at all looking forward with eagerness to TROS), I thought John's score for TLJ was one of his absolute best for the Star Wars series. It's in my top 4 somewhere together with ANH, ESB, and TPM. He's still got it - he never let go of it!


I loved the score to TFA, disliked the score TLJ (I mean to the extent that I can dislike the music to any SW film scored by Williams), mostly because it sounded like too much of it had been tracked in from previous films, and when in doubt they went for the Force theme. I did quite like TLJ as a film though. I also have much trepidation to TROS, which started about the time the released the title.


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## Consona

Fry777 said:


> 50 minutes of JW goodness  (tracks aren't named to avoid spoilers by the way)
> 
> https://disneystudiosawards.com/star-wars-score.html
> 
> What do you think ?
> 
> I haven't listened to all of it yet, but the couple of tracks I heard were excellent


The link redirects me to https://disneystudiosawards.com/


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## Fry777

Consona said:


> The link redirects me to https://disneystudiosawards.com/



Yep it's been taken down... they probably realised they put it online too soon (or was it an intentional leak for marketing purpose ?  )


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## Light and Sound

The full score is now available online via various sites places (ie spotify). It appears the versions on the Disney site were not the complete ones, some lovely extras in the OST, currently loving track 7. _(Names are available but won't reveal them here incase you don't want spoilers)._


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## Alex Fraser

The reviews for the movie look


Spoiler



a little depressing..


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## Consona

Alex Fraser said:


> The reviews for the movie look
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> a little depressing..


Well, The Last Jedi got great reviews and the film was utter crap.


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## dcoscina

Consona said:


> Well, The Last Jedi got great reviews and the film was utter crap.


I almost walked out of TLJ on opening night screening. It was such a polar opposite experience to TFA for me. And let's put this into context: I was 10 years old when Ep.4 A New Hope came out in 1977 and I also loved it. Yes, TLJ was a refresh of that storyline but I didn't care. It took me back to that 10 year old who loved that movie and the spectacle. 

The official soundtrack has been released on all major streaming services and iTunes and plays even better than the FYC copy. I urge everyone who is a fan to check it out and make their own minds up. There's some stunning writing from Williams on this last instalment.


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## José Herring

dcoscina said:


> I almost walked out of TLJ on opening night screening. It was such a polar opposite experience to TFA for me. And let's put this into context: I was 10 years old when Ep.4 A New Hope came out in 1977 and I also loved it. Yes, TLJ was a refresh of that storyline but I didn't care. It took me back to that 10 year old who loved that movie and the spectacle.
> 
> The official soundtrack has been released on all major streaming services and iTunes and plays even better than the FYC copy. I urge everyone who is a fan to check it out and make their own minds up. There's some stunning writing from Williams on this last instalment.


We are the same age and had the exact same experience. The reboot of SW took me straight back to 1977. For some reason though I liked TLJ, I didn't get that same feeling. For some reason it wasn't the same. The script was bad or something. Not savvy enough as a script writer to critique but it was just off.

But, JW is killing it. It's like he doesn't care anymore but in a good way. He's putting everything into these scores and they far outshine the movie. It's good because I never suspected that movies could take such advanced writing. It's like he's leaving us a template of what movie music could be capable of if anybody ever cares to really make something more of the medium.


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## José Herring

Okay listen to the first track. It's killer. Orchestra sounds great. Different than LSO but nobody can tell me that LA can't handle it just as well as LSO. Love the production. Not nearly as mushy as the recordcing space in London. We still got some good scoring stages here. Hopefully in the near future we will build some more.


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## handz

The movie will be horrible (no doubt here, previous 2 were too, and destroyed the whole franchise...) and the music is JW - it can not be bad, but it is no way on par with his works on the old trilogy or prequels. JW is the best movie composer ever for me but I think he just not try as hard as he did lets say 10-20 years ago. And, I do not blame him honestly.


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## Alex Fraser

I think TLJ is one of the best in the entire series, weirdly (or wilfully) misunderstood by the more rabid fans elsewhere on the 'net. Though that's probably a debate for another section of the forum..


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## CT

Pretty awesome score! Kind of surreal to realize it's his farewell to Star Wars.


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## Alex Fraser

News just in regarding the great man..



Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



Allegedly, he has a cameo. Look for the composer on the planet Kijimi, as the band of friends enter the droid shop. He appears for a moment only to shake his head in dismay at the group storming in.


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## ManicMiner

The tracks are named now.. :s
I'm going to see the film on Sunday, and am trying hard to avoid spoilers.


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## Light and Sound

Alex Fraser said:


> News just in regarding the great man..
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker
> 
> 
> 
> Allegedly, he has a cameo. Look for the composer on the planet Kijimi, as the band of friends enter the droid shop. He appears for a moment only to shake his head in dismay at the group storming in.





Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



Just got out of the film, spotted him!


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## jbuhler

Alex Fraser said:


> I think TLJ is one of the best in the entire series, weirdly (or wilfully) misunderstood by the more rabid fans elsewhere on the 'net. Though that's probably a debate for another section of the forum..


I think both TFA and TLJ are potentially great films, on par with ESB, albeit for very different reasons. But like good TV so much depends on what happens in the next episode. If the last film badly misfires, the other two will also diminish.


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## DS_Joost

Listened to the score... It's... Eh. It's Star Wars alright. I am a huge John Williams fan, but I find the outcome of all three scores for this trilogy were lesser than any of the prior ones. I don't blame him, seems to be the same thing as Howard Shore with The Hobbit, just lesser and less creatively inspiring material to work with.

I also firmly believe that Lucas was able to get more out of people, especially John Williams. Just listened to the opening of Revenge of the Sith and that track alone has more memorable moments than the whole of TROS combined.

It's like Williams was pretty much on automatic pilot for these three. Which is to say, technically superb, and far above anyone else in the business, but technical prowess only takes a score so far. I missed the heart of it all. The emotion. The true high highs. 

I know the prequels weren't the best movies to say the least, but at least their highs were truly high. Lucas was a master at that. And it trickled down into William's work, something I sorely miss here. The scores are very functional, but this is Star Wars, not your generic Netflix series #314. They shouldn't be functional, they should be exceptional.

My feelings for the last three scores are the same as for the last three films: they are just there. Which is, well, not enough for me.


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## jbuhler

DS_Joost said:


> Listened to the score... It's... Eh. It's Star Wars alright. I am a huge John Williams fan, but I find the outcome of all three scores for this trilogy were lesser than any of the prior ones. I don't blame him, seems to be the same thing as Howard Shore with The Hobbit, just lesser and less creatively inspiring material to work with.
> 
> I also firmly believe that Lucas was able to get more out of people, especially John Williams. Just listened to the opening of Revenge of the Sith and that track alone has more memorable moments than the whole of TROS combined.
> 
> It's like Williams was pretty much on automatic pilot for these three. Which is to say, technically superb, and far above anyone else in the business, but technical prowess only takes a score so far. I missed the heart of it all. The emotion. The true high highs.
> 
> I know the prequels weren't the best movies to say the least, but at least their highs were truly high. Lucas was a master at that. And it trickled down into William's work, something I sorely miss here. The scores are very functional, but this is Star Wars, not your generic Netflix series #314. They shouldn't be functional, they should be exceptional.
> 
> My feelings for the last three scores are the same as for the last three films: they are just there. Which is, well, not enough for me.


I thought the music for TFA was really inventive and Williams composed a lot of new material for it, and he offered up many new variants of older thematic material. It sounds like SW, but it somehow manages a wiser and deeper take on it. It's my favorite score in the whole series. TLJ reused a lot more material and when themes reappeared it was often with little to no variation. I did not especially care for the score—this one did feel thin and merely "functional"—though I thought the film was excellent and opened the universe in ways that will be helpful to the franchise as it goes forward.

Any word on whether they restored the Fox Fanfare for this one?


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## handz

jbuhler said:


> I think both TFA and TLJ are potentially great films, on par with ESB, albeit for very different reasons. But like good TV so much depends on what happens in the next episode. If the last film badly misfires, the other two will also diminish.



Ehm...NO. No way by any means. TFA was a cheap New Hope reboot for "modern audience" TLJ is utter trash. So it really does not matter how is the third part (and from all the reviews from people who have some critical view on star wars it is a horrible, horrible movie) - the Star Wars are dead now. After the fact that George Lucas hates what they did with the movies - there is no need to protect the Disney SW movies - they are bad and it was a mistake.


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## Consona

handz said:


> Ehm...NO. No way by any means. TFA was a cheap New Hope reboot for "modern audience" TLJ is utter trash. So it really does not matter how is the third part (and from all the reviews from people who have some critical view on star wars it is a horrible, horrible movie) - the Star Wars are dead now. After the fact that George Lucas hates what they did with the movies - there is no need to protect the Disney SW movies - they are bad and it was a mistake.


Must agree here. TLJ was one of the worst films I have ever seen, be it Star Wars or not, and the fact it is Star Wars makes it even worse.

I cannot recall any other film where I hated literally every other minute of the movie. Horribly written characters (literally all of them), incredibly messy story/screenplay, ultra-cringy "humor", some ultra-cringy scenes, even bad fight choreography, utterly stupid lore decisions and changes, that film felt like a failed parody.

TFA was such an uninventive Ep.IV rehash with the most important part missing, the heros journey. After seeing both Abrams Star Trek and Star Wars I feel like he totally does not understand either. For him, it is both like "pseudo-retro pew pew in space".


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## Loïc D

handz said:


> TLJ is utter trash.


No, really no.
I’ve been watching 007 spoof played by filipino midget, infected muppet-cat slasher movie, italian disturbing SM Mad max, Turkish Star Wars, Turkish Star Trek, Malaysian Conan The Barbarian, Turkish ET, French nazi-zombie invasion, Filipino peplum, US semi-improvised Deliverance sub-product, naziploitation softcore, robocop boobies, Turkish tin foil Robocop, etc.

This is utter trash.


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## jbuhler

I'm comfortable with my opinion. Invective certainly won't change it.


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## Fry777

I think we're better off focusing our discussions on the score in this thread...


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## MauroPantin

I liked the score. It's idiomatic and fits with the previous work. Rey's theme is one of my favorite motifs, so I'm looking forward to seeing it synced to the movie. 

Of course, there's nothing groundbreaking in the music or anywhere else in SW nor has there been for a long time, but it figures. People play it very safe because nobody likes to be accused of ruining somebody else's childhood on the internet like when Ep I came out.


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## Henu

I think this score is the best out of the three newest films. There's something i can't explain which just ....lacked earlier, and now it's definitely there. Also....am I going nuts, or am I hearing a bit of certain magical brooms and sorcerers scattered around the score sometimes?


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## handz

LowweeK said:


> No, really no.
> I’ve been watching 007 spoof played by filipino midget, infected muppet-cat slasher movie, italian disturbing SM Mad max, Turkish Star Wars, Turkish Star Trek, Malaysian Conan The Barbarian, Turkish ET, French nazi-zombie invasion, Filipino peplum, US semi-improvised Deliverance sub-product, naziploitation softcore, robocop boobies, Turkish tin foil Robocop, etc.
> 
> This is utter trash.



No, you clearly do not understand the point here, some movies are made as utter trash with no higher ambitions, and what did you name is exactly that. On the other hand, SW is one of the most adored movie franchises in movie history, it has more hardcore fans than any other franchise, everything that happens around it is under the microscope of people who saw every previous movie 100x, the expectations are super high here, you can't just come with anything. 

And TLJ is anything, anything but good SW movie, or just any movie. The plot, characters, humor - its completely pulled out of a** and it is an insult to all the people who love the original movies. And by original I mean those by George Lucas - the creator of this universe, who hates the new movies too (which makes me really wonder why anyone has a need to advocate these movies - George Lucas hates them, Mark Hamill hates them - and these people are Star Wars)

But ok, lets rather stop this debate, the movie is a flop and I am happy that Disney finally got a punch into face for what they did.


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## Loïc D

handz said:


> No, you clearly do not understand the point here, some movies are made as utter trash with no higher ambitions, and what did you name is exactly that. On the other hand, SW is one of the most adored movie franchises in movie history, it has more hardcore fans than any other franchise, everything that happens around it is under the microscope of people who saw every previous movie 100x, the expectations are super high here, you can't just come with anything.
> 
> And TLJ is anything, anything but good SW movie, or just any movie. The plot, characters, humor - its completely pulled out of a** and it is an insult to all the people who love the original movies. And by original I mean those by George Lucas - the creator of this universe, who hates the new movies too (which makes me really wonder why anyone has a need to advocate these movies - George Lucas hates them, Mark Hamill hates them - and these people are Star Wars)
> 
> But ok, lets rather stop this debate, the movie is a flop and I am happy that Disney finally got a punch into face for what they did.


My post was a bit tongue-in-cheek.
That said, all the movies I mentioned were not comedies and were made with a serious goal. Ok maybe not Roboboobs, nor the farting green ET. I forgot to mention also South Korean & North Korean propaganda cartoons with headaching animation.
DM me if you want references ; I used to collect those movies.
To stick back to topic, one of the worst is of course the Star Wars Holiday Special.

So to speak, I’m immune against bad movies.
And I don’t take them too seriously, even if it’s Star Wars or whatever big name (ok ok I got a little pissed by the Hobbit though).
Anyway, My favorite will be Miyazaki’s Chihiro whatever happens next


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## South Thames

> My feelings for the last three scores are the same as for the last three films: they are just there. Which is, well, not enough for me.



Quite. For the last decade or so, Williams' music has gradually taken on a sort of bland, note-spinning, posterity-conscious quality that has largely made me lose interest, the occasional cue notwithstanding. The 'uninspired' Williams always had a weakness for this I think (some of his concert pieces are full of this tendency), but increasingly his choice of projects is so limited (reheated Star Wars and the films of a much-diminished Spielberg) in their demands that we don't get to hear anything else and I guess at this point we probably won't.

May be age has something to do with it -- and that anyone can work this well at 87 is amazing -- but in his early seventies he turned out AI, Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can, three very different and highly compelling scores that oozed creative energy. I think it's a lot more about the material he chooses to work with sadly.


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## jbuhler

handz said:


> No, you clearly do not understand the point here, some movies are made as utter trash with no higher ambitions, and what did you name is exactly that. On the other hand, SW is one of the most adored movie franchises in movie history, it has more hardcore fans than any other franchise, everything that happens around it is under the microscope of people who saw every previous movie 100x, the expectations are super high here, you can't just come with anything.
> 
> And TLJ is anything, anything but good SW movie, or just any movie. The plot, characters, humor - its completely pulled out of a** and it is an insult to all the people who love the original movies. And by original I mean those by George Lucas - the creator of this universe, who hates the new movies too (which makes me really wonder why anyone has a need to advocate these movies - George Lucas hates them, Mark Hamill hates them - and these people are Star Wars)
> 
> But ok, lets rather stop this debate, the movie is a flop and I am happy that Disney finally got a punch into face for what they did.


Lots and lots and lots of people disagree with you. I’ll leave it there since you are wanting to shout not argue.


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## PerryD

Hard to speak badly of John Williams. I have been a fan since he was "Johnny Williams" doing music for the Lost in Space TV series.


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## re-peat

Back in the nineties, I could never have imagined in a million years that Williams would eke out the autumn and winter of his glorious career writing such empty, tiresome and boring music as he has done during the past two decades (especially for the SW franchise) and probably will continue to do for the remainder. And, it’s not just boring to me, I find it actually irritating to listen to as well. Because the key ingredient that made mid-season Williams such a unique and freakishly musical phenomenon has disappeared completely from his recent music: inspiration.

The one thing that makes Williams’ music enjoyable to me — ‘passionately loved’ used to be a far more accurate description — are _great ideas_, be they melodic, harmonic, rhythmical, contrapuntal, developmental, … whatever. Between 1975 and 1995, his music literally burst with great ideas, resulting, in my view, in some of the most exciting and indestructible music of the previous century. (In its most inspired moments, every bit as good as much of the 'serious' concert repertoire of those decades, I believe.)

But take those great ideas away, as started to happen increasingly from 1995 onwards, and what you’re left with is amazing technique and superb craft, but also predictable formulas, minute after tedious minute on autopilot, annoying mannerisms and a gaping lack of memorable musical invention. (Williams, for example, hasn’t written a truly great melody in the past 20 years, in my opinion.) Most of this stuff sounds like a Williams pastiche to me, creepily accurate stylistically, written by someone who has mastered the Williams language to perfection but doesn’t have anything to say in it.

In pre-2000 Williams, you would get short stretches of this type of music too, sure, but it would be confined to fleeting transitional material that built bridges between one great idea and the next. As such, these bits had musical purpose. In recent decades however, this transitional stuff is being elevated to function as the main material — a purpose and function that is far beyond the powers of its weak intrinsic musical qualities — making it doubly disappointing because not only is it mediocre material in itself but you also know that’s all that this music is going to give.

There are, in my opinion, more memorable ideas and more great music in the four minutes and twenty seconds of “The Asteroïd Field” than there are the entire last six SW scores put together. It’s remarkable, actually.

Williams, once the Mozart of film composers, sort of turned into the Paganini of film composers, I find: devilishly virtuosic and flawless in its technical mastery, but all that bravoura no longer carries anything of true substance.

I do agree with José though on the exceptional quality of the performance and the recording of this new score. For that reason alone, it's definitely worth a thorough listen. (Unless you’re in the middle of doing an orchestral mock-up in which case listening to TROS will prove a very frustrating experience.)

But it used to be that sound quality didn’t matter and that it didn’t enter the discussion; a time — the spring and summer of Williams’ glorious career — when all we marvelled at was the staggering, unparallelled quality and eternally fresh beauty of his music.

_


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## Henu

re-peat said:


> Williams, for example, hasn’t written a truly great melody in the past 20 years



*cough*harrypotter*cough*


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## N.Caffrey

Henu said:


> *cough*harrypotter*cough*


haha I thought the same while reading!


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## re-peat

I am *cough* sorry, but I don’t *cough* think _anything_ in “Harry Potter” measures up to what came before. Potter always sounded to me, and still does, as if assembled with left-overs from “Hook” (which is musically superior in every way).

_


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## Loïc D

N.Caffrey said:


> haha I thought the same while reading!


Me too hahaha.


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## Gerbil

re-peat said:


> Williams, for example, hasn’t written a truly great melody in the past 20 years, in my opinion.


I think Anakin's theme from The Phantom Menace is as good a melody as anything he's written but otherwise I tend to agree with you.


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## Fry777

Gerbil said:


> I think Anakin's theme from The Phantom Menace is as good a melody as anything he's written



While I have my opinion on the movie I think John Williams' recent (post original trilogy) Star Wars work was at its best for the Phantom Menace. Everybody remembers Duel of the Fates but I far prefer the rest of the score, like :

Anakin is Free

The Racer Roars to Life


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## Brasart

To me Rey's Theme is the most beautiful and fitting theme written by John Williams, and is once again arranged masterfully in IX


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## re-peat

Odd (and fascinating) how we hear things so very differently, isn’t it? Me, I don’t hear anything special in “Rey’s Theme”. Tunes like that used to flow out of Williams’ pen by the dozen during his best years — any composer with a slightly better than average gift for melody should be able to write melodies like this — and the best these themes could hope for, if they were selected for inclusion in the first place, was B- or C-status in scores that had MUCH stronger melodic material as their thematic focus.

Williams’ best music is far too good to provide room for something as banal as “Rey’s Theme”.

And I don’t wanna listen to Williams to hear music that just about any self-respecting professional or technically savvy imitator can write. I want to listen to Williams to hear the stuff that sets him galaxies apart from everybody else. The stuff you can’t teach, study, learn or imitate. I want to listen to that exceptionally inventive musical volcano that exploded incessantly for 20 years non-stop, delivering truly unique work in comparison to which TROS and its five predecessors are but empty artifice.

_


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## Kent

jbuhler said:


> I also have much trepidation to TROS, which started about the time the released the title.


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## dcoscina

re-peat said:


> Odd (and fascinating) how we hear things so very differently, isn’t it? Me, I don’t hear anything special in “Rey’s Theme”. Tunes like that used to flow out of Williams’ pen by the dozen during his best years — any composer with a slightly better than average gift for melody should be able to write melodies like this — and the best these themes could hope for, if they were selected for inclusion in the first place, was B- or C-status in scores that had MUCH stronger melodic material as their thematic focus.
> 
> Williams’ best music is far too good to provide room for something as banal as “Rey’s Theme”.
> 
> And I don’t wanna listen to Williams to hear music that just about any self-respecting professional or technically savvy imitator can write. I want to listen to Williams to hear the stuff that sets him galaxies apart from everybody else. The stuff you can’t teach, study, learn or imitate. I want to listen to that exceptionally inventive musical volcano that exploded incessantly for 20 years non-stop, delivering truly unique work in comparison to which TROS and its five predecessors are but empty artifice.
> 
> _


You know, I'm inclined to agree, however painful it is. Williams is 87 now and while it's a truly remarkable feat that no other composer has or will achieve in their lifetime (scoring 9 movies in a single franchise that spans over 40 years), his output has been less than what it was in the period of 1975-1990. I'd say the late 70s early 80s bore witness to his greatest achievements those being Jaws, Star Wars CEot3K, Dracula, The Fury (severely underrated score), Jaws 2 (musically better than Jaws), Superman (IMHO his magnum opus), Empire (close second to Supes), Raiders, and ET. From there he was still composing exquisite scores like Born on the 4th of July, Accidental Tourist (oh what a lovely theme!), Jurassic Park (does't age that well to be honest) and Hook which probably was his last truly virtuosic score. 

His post 90s work has had mixed success with me. But if I were to measure the lasting appeal of his music based on how often I play his scores, most of his late 90s through to present don't get as much spins as Superman, The Fury, ET and Empire. I do enjoy Rey's Theme but I feel it strays from the harmonic vocabulary that Williams set forth in the original series and to a lesser extent, the prequels.

TROS mostly suffers from narrative gaffes and patchwork storytelling. It's also pretty obvious where re-shoots occurred because events that seem to move toward a natural resolution veer off into another avenue. I'd like to see Abrams' original conception of the movie. My guess is that it felt more like a natural conclusion compared to the contrived ending we got (I saw it last night- liked it, but was frustrated at several times). Taken all this into consideration, Williams did a serviceable job but I cannot help but think if he'd brought on say, John Powell, like Solo, the music would have been more "fun". I loved what Powell brought to the table even if that movie wasn't all that good. He pulled a Goldsmith and wrote a score that was for a better film. We could have used him on this one too as he's got some fresh ideas. Oh well, that's wishful thinking....

I'm going to see TROS again however. Expectations certainly are a factor with an event film like this and watching a second time might smooth out the rough edges that the 9 year old boy in me (I'm 51 now so old enough to remember seeing Ep. 4 ANH in theatres in 1977) brings to any new SW movie.


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## Alex Fraser

Saw RoS this morning. Loathed it. Partly the reason the score doesn’t have an impact is that it doesn’t have the space. The film moves at such a rate, it’s jarring. Such a pity.


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## Loïc D

I just finished listening to the score (I didn't watch the movie yet).
I has sure less impact that the first generation, but, well, this is an epilogue so it MUST feature all previous themes which leaves less space for experimentations and new themes.

Some tracks are still really beautiful ("Rise Of Skywalker").

Did anyone consider that JW is keeping his best next themes for Star Wars X ?


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## Akarin

MauroPantin said:


> Good on them not including the track names, I still remember the release of the album for Episode I with a track called "Qui-Gon's Noble End"



wait... he dies?!?


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## Brasart

re-peat said:


> Odd (and fascinating) how we hear things so very differently, isn’t it? Me, I don’t hear anything special in “Rey’s Theme”. Tunes like that used to flow out of Williams’ pen by the dozen during his best years — any composer with a slightly better than average gift for melody should be able to write melodies like this — and the best these themes could hope for, if they were selected for inclusion in the first place, was B- or C-status in scores that had MUCH stronger melodic material as their thematic focus.
> 
> Williams’ best music is far too good to provide room for something as banal as “Rey’s Theme”.
> 
> And I don’t wanna listen to Williams to hear music that just about any self-respecting professional or technically savvy imitator can write. I want to listen to Williams to hear the stuff that sets him galaxies apart from everybody else. The stuff you can’t teach, study, learn or imitate. I want to listen to that exceptionally inventive musical volcano that exploded incessantly for 20 years non-stop, delivering truly unique work in comparison to which TROS and its five predecessors are but empty artifice.
> 
> _



I mean I'm pretty sure I respect both myself and my peers, but I've yet to hear the endless stream of "C-status" Rey's Themes that are easily composed and thrown away.

I forgot why I never partake in Star Wars discussions — as it seems every _""self-respecting"" _JW/SW fan is out there trying to be as condescending as possible, you don't have to bring something down to celebrate another.

When I hear Rey's Theme, I hear the entire career of Williams encapsulated in what's best at its core; simple, efficient, and working exceptionally well alongside what it needs to be describing -- Rey.
I don't hear a "C-status score", I hear someone's infinite knowledge being used to serve his craft the best way he can, and it works -- at least for me


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## DS_Joost

Brasart said:


> I mean I'm pretty sure I respect both myself and my peers, but I've yet to hear the endless stream of "C-status" Rey's Themes that are easily composed and thrown away.
> 
> I forgot why I never partake in Star Wars discussions — as it seems every _""self-respecting"" _JW/SW fan is out there trying to be as condescending as possible, you don't have to bring something down to celebrate another.
> 
> When I hear Rey's Theme, I hear the entire career of Williams encapsulated in what's best at its core; simple, efficient, and working exceptionally well alongside what it needs to be describing -- Rey.
> I don't hear a "C-status score", I hear someone's infinite knowledge being used to serve his craft the best way he can, and it works -- at least for me



Except that it's describing nothing because Rey isn't really an established character... Therefore the music is filling up what isn't there, but since Rey never gets established, the theme is only hinting at what the character is about. And I don't think a Harry Potter reject is what they were aiming for, which is what Rey's theme sounds like in this context. 

It's not a bad theme, taken loosely from the character. But it doesn't describe the character at all. Partly because... Rey isn't really a character, but a cardboard cutout acting like one.

This is to blame on the writers and on the directors. Williams just had to write a theme. Sadly, what has to be a Star Wars theme sounds like one from Harry Potter because, well, she HAS to has a theme but how can one write it if know one involved in the franchise has any idea where it's gonna go?


----------



## Brasart

DS_Joost said:


> Except that it's describing nothing because Rey isn't really an established character... Therefore the music is filling up what isn't there, but since Rey never gets established, the theme is only hinting at what the character is about. And I don't think a Harry Potter reject is what they were aiming for, which is what Rey's theme sounds like in this context.
> 
> It's not a bad theme, taken loosely from the character. But it doesn't describe the character at all. Partly because... Rey isn't really a character, but a cardboard cutout acting like one.
> 
> This is to blame on the writers and on the directors. Williams just had to write a theme. Sadly, what has to be a Star Wars theme sounds like one from Harry Potter because, well, she HAS to has a theme but how can one write it if know one involved in the franchise has any idea where it's gonna go?



I'm pretty sure this isn't the first character with a background clouded in mystery in film history, and regardless of your personal enjoyment of the movies, to say that Rey isn't a character or never gets established is just plainly... wrong? but ok.

I can also hear her character - and her character's journey through all 3 movies - very well in her theme, but to each his own I guess!


----------



## dcoscina

DS_Joost said:


> Except that it's describing nothing because Rey isn't really an established character... Therefore the music is filling up what isn't there, but since Rey never gets established, the theme is only hinting at what the character is about. And I don't think a Harry Potter reject is what they were aiming for, which is what Rey's theme sounds like in this context.
> 
> It's not a bad theme, taken loosely from the character. But it doesn't describe the character at all. Partly because... Rey isn't really a character, but a cardboard cutout acting like one.
> 
> This is to blame on the writers and on the directors. Williams just had to write a theme. Sadly, what has to be a Star Wars theme sounds like one from Harry Potter because, well, she HAS to has a theme but how can one write it if know one involved in the franchise has any idea where it's gonna go?


I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. I like Rey but she's not developed enough. Kylo Ren however is given a back story, motivation and classic character conflict. It's more his story than Rey's.....she's more of a plot device to move the story forward. She's not been developed enough. She's either angry or fighting someone. There's few moments in the entire trilogy where we get to know her more. There's always these flashbacks but not enough substance to give her dimension that she deserves.


----------



## DS_Joost

Brasart said:


> I'm pretty sure this isn't the first character with a background clouded in mystery in film history, and regardless of your personal enjoyment of the movies, to say that Rey isn't a character or never gets established is just plainly... wrong? but ok.
> 
> I can also hear her character - and her character's journey through all 3 movies - very well in her theme, but to each his own I guess!



It isn't the first, no. But it also isn't the first victim of JJ Abrams' patented mysterybox device. Which describes that said mystery is never earned. It's mystery for the sake of it. It has no purpose. She has no purpose. She's a plot device, just like Finn, and Poe. They aren't characters, they are walking, talking plot devices and joke delivery machines. Which is, yes, part of why I didn't enjoy all three of the new movies. They were movies scary of showing real emotion, of going anywhere, of revealing anything. Corporate drivel, it was.

I miss the prequels, I seriously do.

Never thought I'd say this. But at least those movies were made by someone who was deeply emotionally invested in his movies (to a deep flaw, yes).

The new ones all three feel soulless. Disney doesn't have a clue what makes Star Wars Star Wars. Or what makes good movies good movies anymore for that matter.


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

I love how Piet writes about John Williams. Clearly, he loves his music. There is no denying the genius of the man. 

I do disagree with him in principle. I don't think, his powers were lost around 1995. But, I do see where he is coming from and perhaps some moments in the last 20 years indicate that. 

For me, John Williams has given us a gift, in the form of beautiful music. One may like some of it or all of it. However most of it is masterful, inspired, full of wonder, unspeakable emotion, that will infinitely echo through the passage of time.


----------



## DS_Joost

Tanuj Tiku said:


> I love how Piet writes about John Williams. Clearly, he loves his music. There is no denying the genius of the man.
> 
> I do disagree with him in principle. I don't think, his powers were lost around 1995. But, I do see where he is coming from and perhaps some moments in the last 20 years indicate that.
> 
> For me, John Williams has given us a gift, in the form of beautiful music. One may like some of it or all of it. However most of it is masterful, inspired, full of wonder, unspeakable emotion, that will infinitely echo through the passage of time.



I do disagree with him solely on the fact that we got Tintin which I would rank among his top scores. Whatever happened to that sequel? 

I LOVED that movie!!!


----------



## MauroPantin

Akarin said:


> wait... he dies?!?



"No one's ever really gone..."


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

DS_Joost said:


> I do disagree with him solely on the fact that we got Tintin which I would rank among his top scores. Whatever happened to that sequel?
> 
> I LOVED that movie!!!



I think they gave up on it! 

Yes, I can still think of many scores that I like from Williams, even recently. I pretty much listen to everything he writes. 

But, here is another gem (not from films) that I adore:


----------



## JohnG

Tanuj Tiku said:


> For me, John Williams has given us a gift, in the form of beautiful music.



I guess that's how I feel. You can love all your children but they are all different.




DS_Joost said:


> ... Tintin which I would rank among his top scores. Whatever happened to that sequel?
> 
> I LOVED that movie!!!



I like the score too; found the movie itself pretty embarrassing but the score was great fun.


----------



## CT

This particular score aside, if someone can't hear the sheer brilliance in certain Williams scores written well after his supposed Golden Age, well... it's not worth arguing about, but it's a damn shame.


----------



## tebling

DS_Joost said:


> I do disagree with him solely on the fact that we got Tintin which I would rank among his top scores. Whatever happened to that sequel?
> 
> I LOVED that movie!!!



Funny story - I was fortunate enough to have worked on VFX for Tintin, and to celebrate the wrap they set up a live video conference between Spielberg and the VFX crew in New Zealand who he wanted to thank. As you can imagine I was pretty excited to be on a call with Spielberg (albeit with hundreds of my co-workers), but my heart skipped a beat when I saw that John Williams was on the call as well! Despite Spielberg doing all the talking, I couldn't take my eyes off JW, and couldn't stop the fan boy in me hoping he'd make eye contact. Definitely a moment I'll never forget.


----------



## re-peat

DS_Joost said:


> I do disagree with him solely on the fact that we got Tintin which I would rank among his top scores.



I like “Tintin” too, as well as several others among his post-2000 output — it would be a very pretentious, disrespectful and ungrateful specimen of musical infusoria to deny the many remarkable qualities in Willliams’ output of the past 20 years — but the thing is, “I like it” is the best I can say about it. I don’t love it. “Love”, in the fullness of its meaning, is the verb that I reserve for his best pre-2000 work.

When I listen to Williams’ post-2000 output, I might enjoy it, I might admire it, and I’ll certainly recognize the supreme mastery with which it is made, but … it doesn’t sweep me off my feet. It doesn’t leave me breath- and speechless with brainshattering awe — that feeling you get when in the presence of talent, creativity, passion and dedication that transcends all rational comprehension —, the way his best earlier music does.

See, I can ‘understand’ most of Williams’ post-2000 output. Meaning: I can comprehend how someone sits down behind his/her piano or at his/her desk and writes it. And I can also measure the talent required to write it. With his best pre-2000 work however, I simply cannot grasp the scale of inspiration, focus, talent, intelligence, arrogance, ‘métier’, instinct, commitment and passion whence this music sprang.

The real superman in “Superman”, to me, is John T. Williams. Literally: a composer out of this world. Giving us, far above and beyond the duties and requirements of the assignment, music so rich with sublime ideas, that language fails me trying to describe the experience of listening to it. I honestly can not talk about it because there are no words for that degree of intensity of musical pleasure.

__

(Do people still use words like “whence” these days? If not, I do apologize. My English, not my first language, and being acquired in part from long-dead authors, may have a few archaic bents, I’m afraid. Please don’t mistake it for pomposity.)


----------



## ed buller

re-peat said:


> Back in the nineties, I could never have imagined in a million years that Williams would eke out the autumn and winter of his glorious career writing such empty, tiresome and boring music as he has done during the past two decades (especially for the SW franchise) and probably will continue to do for the remainder. And, it’s not just boring to me, I find it actually irritating to listen to as well. Because the key ingredient that made mid-season Williams such a unique and freakishly musical phenomenon has disappeared completely from his recent music: inspiration.
> 
> The one thing that makes Williams’ music enjoyable to me — ‘passionately loved’ used to be a far more accurate description — are _great ideas_, be they melodic, harmonic, rhythmical, contrapuntal, developmental, … whatever. Between 1975 and 1995, his music literally burst with great ideas, resulting, in my view, in some of the most exciting and indestructible music of the previous century. (In its most inspired moments, every bit as good as much of the 'serious' concert repertoire of those decades, I believe.)
> 
> But take those great ideas away, as started to happen increasingly from 1995 onwards, and what you’re left with is amazing technique and superb craft, but also predictable formulas, minute after tedious minute on autopilot, annoying mannerisms and a gaping lack of memorable musical invention. (Williams, for example, hasn’t written a truly great melody in the past 20 years, in my opinion.) Most of this stuff sounds like a Williams pastiche to me, creepily accurate stylistically, written by someone who has mastered the Williams language to perfection but doesn’t have anything to say in it.
> 
> In pre-2000 Williams, you would get short stretches of this type of music too, sure, but it would be confined to fleeting transitional material that built bridges between one great idea and the next. As such, these bits had musical purpose. In recent decades however, this transitional stuff is being elevated to function as the main material — a purpose and function that is far beyond the powers of its weak intrinsic musical qualities — making it doubly disappointing because not only is it mediocre material in itself but you also know that’s all that this music is going to give.
> 
> There are, in my opinion, more memorable ideas and more great music in the four minutes and twenty seconds of “The Asteroid Field” than there are the entire last six SW scores put together. It’s remarkable, actually.
> 
> Williams, once the Mozart of film composers, sort of turned into the Paganini of film composers, I find: devilishly virtuosic and flawless in its technical mastery, but all that bravoura no longer carries anything of true substance.
> 
> I do agree with José though on the exceptional quality of the performance and the recording of this new score. For that reason alone, it's definitely worth a thorough listen. (Unless you’re in the middle of doing an orchestral mock-up in which case listening to TROS will prove a very frustrating experience.)
> 
> But it used to be that sound quality didn’t matter and that it didn’t enter the discussion; a time — the spring and summer of Williams’ glorious career — when all we marvelled at was the staggering, unparallelled quality and eternally fresh beauty of his music.
> 
> _



I agree....it's harsh to say, but as he was on fire for nigh on thirty years he's earned his rest. But yes the current Star Wars films are very very pale to the original trilogy in terms of depth of ideas. The Asteroid field remains the Sistine chapel of action cues and although I disgree abut the potter theme....so much of the potter ouput was a tad phoned in. Endless tarnhelm cycles in chamber of secrets etc etc.........As to REY's theme....it's ok !......nice ditty but can you imagine what JW would have done with it in 75 ??

best

ed


----------



## South Thames

> Except that it's describing nothing because Rey isn't really an established character...



Whilst this is true to an extent, it's also true that Princess Leia's theme -- lush, wistful and supremely romantic -- was objectively not really a great fit for the tough, resourceful character of Leia, who is virtually never portrayed in the high romantic terms the theme suggests. Some times one of Williams' great gifts was his willingness to elaborate musically far beyond what the film justifies or suggests; it's one of the ways he enriches, rather just accompanies, the films.



> See, I can ‘understand’ most of Williams’ post-2000 output. Meaning: I can comprehend how someone sits down behind his/her piano or at his/her desk and writes it. And I can also measure the talent required to write it. With his best pre-2000 work however, I simply cannot grasp the scale of inspiration, focus, talent, intelligence, arrogance, ‘métier’, instinct, commitment and passion whence this music sprang.



This is great clip of Williams identifying (not explicitly) the unexpected death of his first wife Barbara in 1974 as a major turning point in his life and work. As impressive as his work pre-1975 was, something just flipped around that time, and thereafter he was on fire creatively for the best part of three decades.


----------



## jbuhler

kmaster said:


>


No, it’s all good. Loved the film and the score works well in the film. 

This thread is full of folks choosing weird hills to die on.


----------



## ism

re-peat said:


> The real superman in “Superman”, to me, is John T. Williams. Literally: a composer out of this world. Giving us, far above and beyond the duties and requirements of the assignment, music so rich with sublime ideas, that language fails me trying to describe the experience of listening to it. I honestly can not talk about it because there are no words for that degree of intensity of musical pleasure.



I really don't have enough knowledge to agree or disagree here with anyone musicological .

But I certainly agree that nothing will ever be as amazing as hearing the sheer operatic romance of those first few cues in SW as a six year old. I think that's what it must have been like to be present at a Verdi premiere. The only think that matched it maybe was Prokofiev (Peter and the wolf, especially the duck. And maybe also the cat. And the bird. ).

Except to say that Rey's theme, for all its simplicity - or maybe because of its simplicity - momentarily brought me back to that moment of discovering not just Williams, but in some sense music itself as a six year old. 

Sadly, I was lukewarm at best on the rest of the film. Except for the cue where Han and Leia reunited. And in some sense I had been waiting more for the Williams cue more than the film itself (I don't think that moment in the film was itself a particularly great piece of film making, except for the Williams cue). Which I loved, however fleetingly, as much as Rey's theme. 

Sadly I found no moments like this in the last couple of SW films. But I really felt like Williams was entirely on form - as a film composer - for at least those two, cues, which where breathtaking in their immediate, filmic, effect.


----------



## Guy Rowland

FWIW...

For me, however good the film's score is when listened to in isolation, its primary purpose is always to serve picture. The best scores are the soul of the movie. JW has done that more frequently, and better than anyone. While we argue whether or not the musical merits of Harry Potter equal Superman, I do know without a shadow of a doubt that the score for Harry Potter is the soul of the film, never more evident than when that main theme returns in the final movie after a long absence. I know what effect it has on people when they hear just the opening notes on Randy's Celeste. For that alone, it is another example of his brilliance.

As yet I barely know the RoS score, so I can't really comment on it. I do know it worked great in the picture which was a lot of fun, and also that Williams is now 87 years old. I find that remarkable. The peak of his powers may be over where he could produce seemingly effortless brilliance at a dizzying rate, but I feel we are still extremely lucky to still be living in his age.

Merry Christmas to all at VI-C.


----------



## Dewdman42

I think it’s just remarkable that JW is doing anything at all at his age. His craftsmanship is always present. I would presume he’s getting help too, which will logistically remove some of his intuition from the process.

above it all, JJ Abrams is no lucas, nor Spielberg. The last three SW films have been totally lacking in good storytelling, simple as that. I almost walked out of the theater in TLJ. I managed to sit through ROS without getting angry but it was totally blah notwithstanding. It seems Abrams read all the reviews about TLJ and tried to interject story concessions to SW fans notwithstanding his obvious contempt for George Lucas’ original story and concept. I almost fell asleep in the theater. Ok well it was a midnight showing so there is that.

The great JW scores we love the most were scores behind incredible stories being told with just the right pacing and wonderful character development and arcs all over the place with storytelling significance. Of course those things influenced JW’s intuition in what he composed also. The film material he is mostly working with now pales in comparison by a wide margin in terms of storytelling. My expectations of JW would not be great here because if he attempted to compose some big sweeping romantic thing into a JJ ABRAMS piece of garbage storyline it would come off like over acting, which by the way there is a lot of in ROS also.


----------



## Land of Missing Parts

The fact that I got to see a new Star Wars scored by Williams makes me smile.

New JW, life is good.



Dewdman42 said:


> The last three SW films have been totally lacking in good storytelling, simple as that. I almost walked out of the theater in TLJ.


I don't understand why people are so down on The Last Jedi. That's my second favorite of all the Star Wars movies ever made (The Empire Strikes Back being my favorite). C'est la vie.

The Rise of Skywalker is fun. The villain's story doesn't really make sense if you actually think about it. But whatever, I love watching them and I say keep 'em coming.


----------



## Consona

Just saw the film, after Johnson's rancid diarrhoeaic puke, this was at least entertaining.



re-peat said:


> (Williams, for example, hasn’t written a truly great melody in the past 20 years, in my opinion.)


The prequel trilogy is one great theme atop another.


----------



## patrick76

Love John Williams and enjoy Star Wars, but man, sometimes when reading this type of thread I am so glad my enjoyment of the original films doesn't ruin my enjoyment of films and scores after Star Wars.


----------



## CT

And which of these buttons on your chest calls your mom to come pick you up?


----------



## NoamL

Extremely scattered thoughts on a very scattered movie…

*SPOILERS N'SUCH*







Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



This movie is a lot like TLJ, it’s a 5/10 or 6/10 movie with some enjoyable bits drowning in all the things it “needs” to be by Disney Mandate. I’ll probably not see it again.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



The positives first - I loved the scene of Rey healing the sandworm… the continuing psychic bond and portal-between-worlds thing that Rey and Ren have going on is fun…. I liked Adam Driver’s scene with Harrison Ford… I liked the waves planet and the scene with Rey and the skimmer. I liked the ending between Rey and Kylo Ren. I liked the design of Exegol (not the arena ghosts, the other stuff).









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



Acting wise, Adam Driver continues to carry this entire trilogy on his fuckin’ back and Daisy Ridley once again does a creditable job. Oscar Isaacs and John Boyega would also be doing a good job if they had ANYTHING to work with. ANYTHING.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



All the stuff in the movie that was magical and mystical and “leaned into” Star Wars being a fantasy movie, I liked. In fact some of the moments of this movie that should’ve been the cringiest on paper, were my favorites. John Williams’s music was also great. There was one bizarre scene early in the movie where JJ Abrams had clearly temped the music from Kamino in Episode II and told JW to copy it almost beat for beat (?!?!) and I didn’t feel that the music was developing much in the middle of the movie, but JW was just saving his big guns for the finale of this movie, which is really something musically.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



The rest of this movie is such a DAMNED waste of time it makes me mad. The New Empire vs New Rebels stuff has never made sense in any of these three movies and continues to have totally unexplained stakes, with the powers/capabilties of either side changing on a dime. All of a sudden Palpatine is back (?) and the First Order is happy to be taken over by him &/or is now irrelevant (?) Palpy somehow has thousands of Star Destroyers (?) they can EACH destroy a planet (?) but that’s okay because the Rebels suddenly have all the ships in the Galaxy too (?) and they need to destroy one specific ship because that will make it so the other evil ships can’t take off (?) so the Rebels lead a charge on horseback across the exterior of that ship (?) it just doesn’t make a fucking atom of sense. And none of it is original. It feels like a theme park. It’s a mish mash of Star Wars Stuff. No matter how kinetic these action scenes are shot, they’re boring as hell. I just kept wanting the movie to cut back to Kylo Ren and Rey.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



The old (elderly?) cast continue to be horrible in these movies. Nobody’s going to say anything because they’re Hollywood legends or whatever, but holy shit. There is NO justification for Billy Dee William to be in this movie. Harrison Ford was tolerable in his two minute scene. The old cast are given NOTHING to do other than deliver Light Side Pep Talks. A lot of moments in this movie are just there for you to clap at something you recognized, starting with Billy Dee Williams’s entire role in the film. It’s like the adult version of cheering when you see Mickey at Disneyland. Some of the “reveals” in this film are trying to be like Avengers Endgame and faceplanting completely.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



This movie is a big-ass vindication for anyone who even MILDLY appreciated The Last Jedi. It should be pretty clear by now that if anyone wanted a new trilogy with a cohesive creative vision and a NEW STORY, it should have been RJ in charge. RJ was the one who tried to refocus the trilogy on Kylo and Rey, he was the one who tried to put the Empires vs Rebels bullshit on ice, he was the one who actually took the story in unexpected and novel directions. People who hate TLJ have fantasized about the counterfactual, that is, what would this trilogy have been like if JJ Abrams was in charge of all three movies? Well, this movie shows you what that would’ve been like, because it’s practically a sequel to TFA that completely ignores TLJ. Everything in this movie pops straight out of JJ Abrams’s ass starting with Palpatine being “behind everything all along.” The stakes are entirely reset for a new plot with NO explanation whatsoever - at least in the cut I saw - for how Palpy survived ROTJ or whether Original Trilogy Palpy was a clone of this Ancient Palpy or WHAT.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



The critical drubbing this movie is receiving is a little satisfying (it’s currently Rotten on RottenTomatoes!) but it’s the reception The Force Awakens should’ve got years ago. The movies share the exact same positives and negatives, as do JJ’s two Trek movies. Underneath the competent cinematography and the breathless script, JJ is making Theme Park Films. They are full of “remember this? remember that?” Strip away all the reused props, lines and settings and you have one of the silliest action movie scripts of all time. At one point the good guys are looking for a spaceship because they are told it will contain a clue that will lead them to an object that will lead them to Palpatine.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



The pacing of this movie’s lore is ridiculous. Do you remember the scene in Wrath of Kh- uh, Star Trek Into Darkness, where Kirk and Khan are having a tense faceoff and all of a sudden Kirk asks Bones what he’s doing with that tribble (Hey Audience: remember tribbles?) and Bones says he’s injecting it with Khan’s super-blood because Khan has magic healing and this ENTIRE absurdly retrospectively-shoved-into-the-movie scene exists only to justify Kirk coming back to life at the end? Rise of Skywalker has about four or five beautiful little “This is what happens when you give JJ Abrams the script” moments like that.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



All of the “new” Star Wars stuff (which is really recycled old Star Wars stuff) in this movie is nearly intolerable. I hated Zori Bliss’s character, and the festival planet, the Knights of Ren are stupid and we know before the movie even starts that Kylo Ren will murder them all. I really disliked the Falcon “lightskipping” so JJ could reach a quote of Awesome Star Wars Locations in one minute. C3PO was awful as the comic relief and then the movie resets his memory so that… he can be the comic relief? Wasn’t he already the comic relief? Plus like every other JJ Abrams movie this one is full of cute little payday cameos for people who worked with him in TV fifteen years ago.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



This movie is full of its own importance, in a way that Avengers Endgame barely pulled off, and no other movie ever will. Remember when the prequels came out and people said one of the problems with them was that we were being cinematically TOLD to care about the relationship between Hayden & Ewan’s characters because they BECOME the Darth Vader and Obi-Wan we know from the originals, but what we see of these two characters WITHIN the prequels never justifies that trilogy ending with a 15 minute swordfight and Ewan’s Obi-Wan shouting about how Anakin was his brother? If that was a moviemaking sin, The Rise Of Skywalker is going straight to Hell. This movie is so full of itself. At one point Oscar Isaac’s character literally rallies the troops by saying that the franchise (er, Rebellion) that their mothers and fathers participated in cannot be allowed to end here. A little later, Palpatine tells Rey that her death will be “the last word in the story.” The meta awareness of these films is just ridiculous. That extends to the cringily meta handling of “Leia’s” death; a lightsaber fight between Kylo and Rey where the only & entire thing at stake is whether one of them will lose a hand; the retconning of Snoke; and so on.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



Overall the directing is not good. The cinematography of certain shots or even entire action scenes is good. But the movie never actually lets any emotion sink in - it has a few shots where it wants you to THINK the movie is taking a breather, and those scenes last about half as long as they should be. The perfect example is where JW wants to unfurl Leia’s Theme at the moment of her death and the music is literally stepped on by dialogue trying to move the plot along. JJ Abrams does not understand Star Wars as a musical story which from our perspective as composers may be his biggest sin as a Star Wars director. The moments in this movie which should be carried by music are OVERWHELMED with pounding, visceral, ridiculous, vain, sound effects.









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



Oscar Isaac and John Boyega seem super checked out of their characters and who can blame them. This movie puts a weird spotlight on the Finn & Poe characters, they are practically the top two supporting characters, and yet they don’t have any arc at all? They just do stuff? Also so much for Disney being “woke,” they are terrified of revealing that Poe is gay huh?









Spoiler: Rise of Skywalker



I loved Rey’s new Force power of healing. You could argue it’s totally out of left field and too religious for Star Wars but the slow, cinematic and emotional pacing of her using that power was reminiscent of the old movies (just like Yoda lifting Luke’s X-Wing). There is some other Force stuff in this movie and I can only describe it as “Dragonball Z Bullshit.” It is RIDICULOUS. At one point Palpatine shoots Force Lightning and disables a million ships, at another point Rey does a Force Jump and does like a trillion backflips in the air, it’s STUPID.







5/10 could have been a good movie but it had to be “A Star Wars movie.”


----------



## NoamL

PS totally disagree with "JW has lost it since [insert arbitrary date]." It's not even worth discussing!


----------



## ProfoundSilence

I cannot fathom your love for TLJ 

we are at literal odds, I think the trilogy would have actually made sense if RJ didnt throw out all the setup from JJ and male one of the worst paced pieces of cinema I've ever sat through(starwars or not). 

I do agree that driver is definitely the single carrying entity, even if the end of TLJ was jarring unrealistic and awkward in terms of character development - drivers performance is everything anakin should have been


----------



## ProfoundSilence

I'm going to go with this order on SW films when it comes to music

1. episode 3
2. TFA
3. episode 1
4. TLJ
5. episode 2
6. ESB
7. ANH
8. RoS
9. RotJ

in terms of mixes it would only be fair to compare the new trilogy,

1. TLJ
2. TFA
3. RoS


----------



## jbuhler

ProfoundSilence said:


> I'm going to go with this order on SW films when it comes to music
> 
> 1. episode 3
> 2. TFA
> 3. episode 1
> 4. TLJ
> 5. episode 2
> 6. ESB
> 7. ANH
> 8. RoS
> 9. RotJ
> 
> in terms of mixes it would only be fair to compare the new trilogy,
> 
> 1. TLJ
> 2. TFA
> 3. RoS


Interesting ranking. I could possibly agree with the rankings of the prequels that high only because Williams' music is doing so much work in those films and to the extent that they succeed or even make dramatic sense it's only because of the scores.


----------



## ProfoundSilence

jbuhler said:


> Interesting ranking. I could possibly agree with the rankings of the prequels that high only because Williams' music is doing so much work in those films and to the extent that they succeed or even make dramatic sense it's only because of the scores.


it's the pinnacle of thematic development to me.

it's like the whole soundtrack is on par with the battle of Crait

edit, but anakin v obiwan/battle of heroes has no equal lol


----------



## purple

ism said:


> Is this likely to be William's last score before he retires? I think I read that somewhere.


before he retires _again..._


----------



## ProfoundSilence

purple said:


> before he retires _again..._


re- is right in the name. hes an old guy... ofcourse he gets re-tired.


----------



## purple

I felt it was somewhat uninspired compared to most of his other work (especially star wars), but honestly so was the whole movie, maybe not his fault. This however places it still in the league of better than 95% of film music for me. Parts of it were cool but to me it seemed a bit rushed. I say let the man retire! He's written a million of the best scores in history! He has earned his retirement more than most people in the industry or in any industry...


----------



## ProfoundSilence

I dont personally care if he retires or not. 

if he wants to go full debussy / picasso and start some really primitive buttrock nickleback cover band - I just want him to be happy


----------



## MaxOctane

NoamL said:


> Extremely scattered thoughts on a very scattered movie…
> 
> *SPOILERS N'SUCH*
> ...



The most interesting SW:ROS review I've read yet, and it's here on VI-C. neat.


----------



## re-peat

NoamL said:


> PS totally disagree with "JW has lost it since [insert arbitrary date]." It's not even worth discussing!




Maybe our opposing views on the matter arise from the fact that we both listen/look for different things in Williams' music, Noam? I imagine that, if you listen to this music in the context for which it was written and evaluate it on the basis of its functionality, its narrative powers and its expressive effectiveness, there are indeed few arguments for saying that the quality of Williams' output has declined over the years. If anything, it might even have gotten 'better', as Williams in recent decades restricts himself, much more than he used to, to providing the right musical backdrop at the right time, and rarely fails, whereas, in his earlier years, he was occasionally prone to allowing himself to write music for music's sake, rather than for the scene's sake. (I have always been of the opinion that Williams, particularly during his 'golden' years ('75-'95) was not always an infallible film composer, because, in several instances, he couldn't quite restrict himself to the requirements of a scene, frequently writing music that was far too complete in itself and, as such, a little distracting in its role as film music. (Something which you would never catch Goldsmith doing.) It's not too difficult to list several cues from scores of Williams' mid-season period where that occurs.

But the thing is, I don't listen to Williams' earlier music as film music. Never have, never will. The fact that it is film music doesn't mean anything to me. I listen to it as absolute music, the way I listen to all music: strictly for what it has to offer as pure music. I don't recall scenes or think of characters from movies when I sit down to listen to Williams' music. Those things are, in fact, entirely irrelevant in my enjoyment of his best work. (I don't like most of the movies that Williams wrote music for anyway.) The only thing that means something to me, is the music itself, abstract and totally free from extra-musical context.

And from that perspective, I am and remain firmly of the opinion, that Williams' pre-1995 work is immeasurably superior to what came after. Much stronger ideas, much more inspired and distinctive melodic material, much more brazen and inventive writing, much less tameable in its conception, much less reliant on stylistic formulas or proven solutions, and, unlike his more recent output, never feeling any less complete when stripped from the dramaturgical particulars it is associated with.

_


----------



## ProfoundSilence

I enjoy the music for the music but I'm a musician. 

however, I would not likely have enjoyed the original trilogy without the music.


----------



## South Thames

> in terms of mixes it would only be fair to compare the new trilogy,
> 
> 1. TLJ
> 2. TFA
> 3. RoS



I still prefer the sound of Eric Tomlinson's recordings of the originals to Shawn Murphy's recordings of the latest six. Somehow the LSO 'wall of sound' never sounded better (whilst not necessarily sounding more 'real') than it did in the original trilogy. Of course, the music is much better as well, but that's a whole other discussion.


----------



## Saxer

I didn‘t like Ray‘s theme at all when listening to it. But I saw the movie on x-mas and I was really surprised how well everything fits into the story. There were glorious moments and a constant path of keeping my attention driven by the music.

I think a lot of Williams genius time curve is in the listeners perspective. He has his style and vocabulary and he is using it. But a lot, including me, are tired from listening to too many Leia theme and Star Wars mockups and analyzing his scores to death.


----------



## NoamL

Final thoughts the day after seeing it, after everything has sunk in.



Spoiler



The giant ship battle at the end is horrible. Palpatine has a trillion ships - who made them? Also why does Palpatine need a trillion of them, he could have 5 and that would be like having five Death Stars? But then it turns out that he built a trillion ships and NONE OF THEM CAN LEAVE the planet unless a particular antennae works? Okay fine, that’s classic Star Wars I guess. But then the Rebels show up with a trillion ships of their own led by Lando. Huh? Hey remember at the end of TLJ where Leia’s entreaties to the entire galaxy fell on deaf ears but then we were told that Luke’s noble sacrifice was going to inspire the galaxy to fight back? Remember Broom Kid? I guess that never happened and then nobody helped for a year even after the Emperor came back? But then a trillion ships show up because LANDO asked? Also wasn’t the cool premise of Exegol that you can’t get there because it’s in the uncharted regions and surrounded by a maze of red death clouds? Did all the rebel ships go through the death clouds too? How did they know about the Sith wayfinder? All of this just so we can have a dumb scene of “my space battle is the biggerest ever” because JJ Abrams already shoved a PLANETARY Death Star into his first movie and he has to top that somehow.





Spoiler



I love the scene where Rey jumps into space to get to the Millennium Falcon. It’s weirdly underemphasized in the cinematography. She jumps through the cold vacuum of space and is fine. That’s badass even for a Jedi. I hate Palpatine’s arena. It’s ridiculous and overdone to SLEDGEHAMMER you with the universe-ending threat Palpy now represents. The set design is basically yelling at you to stop asking questions about how and why Palpatine is suddenly the big bad. The Dementor ghosts are there so Palpatine can have some audience to ham it up. Just makes me think of “worst actor’s director of all time” George Lucas and how trusted his actors enough to construct a plot that ends with Palpatine confronting the protagonists alone in a room.





Spoiler



TLJ and ROS are actually quite similar movies. There’s a great movie at the core of both of them featuring the two main actors and a plot about the Jedi’s legacy, but both films end up drowning in Mandatory Star Wars Stuff. That’s what makes TROS almost doubly frustrating: if JJ Abrams wants to undo Rian’s plot, fine, but shouldn’t he have at least seen the potential for a more Rey-focused story in that film? Where Rian Johnson engages in Mandatory Star Wars Stuff with grudging obedience, JJ Abrams does so with relish, littering the screen with alien puppets and two-line characters. Just think of all the Rando Calrissians who appear in this film for five minutes or less. For what? To give JJ’s friends a payday? To tie into some videogame or novel? There are so many levels of bad here: Finn and Poe shouldn’t be the main focus, yet they are given way too many scenes, in which they each do little of interest and have no arc, AND two new characters are introduced who serve as their respective “Uhuras” (as in JJ’s Trek remake, where Zoe Saldana’s character exists solely to be a conversational foil for Spock and establish his heterosexuality). So instead of Finn completing an arc, like maybe he convinces other First Order soldiers to desert or something, instead he meets up with Janna, they have a 2 minute conversation where she is revealed to be ex-stormtrooper too, and then she does NOTHING for the rest of the film except be Finn’s tag-along. Meanwhile the scene where Rey finds out she is a Palpatine is literally shoved into the middle of Poe’s adventure.





Spoiler



The lack of focus on Kylo and Rey is also because the director seems terrified of real moviemaking. Isn’t Rey like, the protagonist of this series? What difficult choice does Daisy Ridley’s character ever make, that she has to live with? It would have been cool to let the audience think that Rey ACTUALLY killed Chewbacca, even by accident, for more than TWO MINUTES before we see that he’s alive. I can’t recall anything big that Rey decides in this movie, she’s just carried along and all the hard consequences like 3PO’s memory wipe and Kylo Ren’s chest wound are just magically undone. Even the choice of which “half” of the Force dyad dies is made by Kylo Ren, not Rey. She’s not a Mary Sue, but, there’s a lot more “good acting” in this movie than “actual character work” because Ridley and Driver are given very little to work with at all.





Spoiler



Rey being a Skywalker is dumb. Yes she has absorbed Ben Skywalker’s life force, I get why she calls herself a Skywalker now, but… She gives up on the Jedi and buries the lightsabers? Shouldn’t she be training new Jedi? The Force doesn’t go away at the end of the movie, so the rise of a new Dark Side is a perpetual threat that it would be lunacy not to guard against with a new Jedi order right? And weren’t all three movies about Rey’s search for a family? So now she goes to become a hermit on a planet she never lived on before? What? This is just one more example of how everything in these movies is puppeteered from outside the fictional world of the story - nothing happens because of character motivation, and we aren’t even expected to believe that it does. We aren’t expected to believe that Rey is happy on Tatooine, just that it’s a “fitting ending for the movie.” We aren’t expected to believe that Maz Kanata WANTS to give Chewie a medal, we’re just supposed to appreciate that “Chewie got his medal after all these years!”





Spoiler



Quoting Jenny Nicholson: “So Palpatine designed Snoke to test Kylo Ren and prepare him for his role as the heir to the Sith, but also influenced Snoke's mind to ensure that Kylo Ren would be able to kill him, and he spent years looking for Rey but he, through Snoke, commanded Kylo Ren multiple times to kill Rey, as a test? To call his bluff? But also he needs Rey alive to strengthen himself, so when he meets Kylo Ren he tells him again to kill Rey, and Kylo Ren defies him, but that's ok because in fact he wants Rey to both be alive and kill him, so SHE can be heir to the Sith, but then Kylo and Rey get there and he drains their life force without having to die, and then hurls Kylo Ren to his death, and fights Rey. The perfect crime!”





Spoiler



This Disney trilogy has revisited or reenacted the Return Of The Jedi throne room scene THREE separate times. They’ve referenced Binary Sunset at the end of two separate movies. They’ve blown up planets with Death Star beams in three different movies. FOUR OUT OF FIVE Disney movies have ended (or begun!) with a full on capital-ship fleet battle betwen scrappy Rebels and a skyful of Star Destroyers. Something that happened literally once in the original trilogy (end of ROTJ) and once in the prequels (beginning of ROTS) is now a ONCE PER MOVIE event for Disney. They haven’t made more Star Wars, they’ve ruthlessly USED UP Star Wars.


----------



## Uiroo

NoamL said:


> Final thoughts the day after seeing it, after everything has sunk in.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> The giant ship battle at the end is horrible. Palpatine has a trillion ships - who made them? Also why does Palpatine need a trillion of them, he could have 5 and that would be like having five Death Stars? But then it turns out that he built a trillion ships and NONE OF THEM CAN LEAVE the planet unless a particular antennae works? Okay fine, that’s classic Star Wars I guess. But then the Rebels show up with a trillion ships of their own led by Lando. Huh? Hey remember at the end of TLJ where Leia’s entreaties to the entire galaxy fell on deaf ears but then we were told that Luke’s noble sacrifice was going to inspire the galaxy to fight back? Remember Broom Kid? I guess that never happened and then nobody helped for a year even after the Emperor came back? But then a trillion ships show up because LANDO asked? Also wasn’t the cool premise of Exegol that you can’t get there because it’s in the uncharted regions and surrounded by a maze of red death clouds? Did all the rebel ships go through the death clouds too? How did they know about the Sith wayfinder? All of this just so we can have a dumb scene of “my space battle is the biggerest ever” because JJ Abrams already shoved a PLANETARY Death Star into his first movie and he has to top that somehow.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I love the scene where Rey jumps into space to get to the Millennium Falcon. It’s weirdly underemphasized in the cinematography. She jumps through the cold vacuum of space and is fine. That’s badass even for a Jedi. I hate Palpatine’s arena. It’s ridiculous and overdone to SLEDGEHAMMER you with the universe-ending threat Palpy now represents. The set design is basically yelling at you to stop asking questions about how and why Palpatine is suddenly the big bad. The Dementor ghosts are there so Palpatine can have some audience to ham it up. Just makes me think of “worst actor’s director of all time” George Lucas and how trusted his actors enough to construct a plot that ends with Palpatine confronting the protagonists alone in a room.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> TLJ and ROS are actually quite similar movies. There’s a great movie at the core of both of them featuring the two main actors and a plot about the Jedi’s legacy, but both films end up drowning in Mandatory Star Wars Stuff. That’s what makes TROS almost doubly frustrating: if JJ Abrams wants to undo Rian’s plot, fine, but shouldn’t he have at least seen the potential for a more Rey-focused story in that film? Where Rian Johnson engages in Mandatory Star Wars Stuff with grudging obedience, JJ Abrams does so with relish, littering the screen with alien puppets and two-line characters. Just think of all the Rando Calrissians who appear in this film for five minutes or less. For what? To give JJ’s friends a payday? To tie into some videogame or novel? There are so many levels of bad here: Finn and Poe shouldn’t be the main focus, yet they are given way too many scenes, in which they each do little of interest and have no arc, AND two new characters are introduced who serve as their respective “Uhuras” (as in JJ’s Trek remake, where Zoe Saldana’s character exists solely to be a conversational foil for Spock and establish his heterosexuality). So instead of Finn completing an arc, like maybe he convinces other First Order soldiers to desert or something, instead he meets up with Janna, they have a 2 minute conversation where she is revealed to be ex-stormtrooper too, and then she does NOTHING for the rest of the film except be Finn’s tag-along. Meanwhile the scene where Rey finds out she is a Palpatine is literally shoved into the middle of Poe’s adventure.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> The lack of focus on Kylo and Rey is also because the director seems terrified of real moviemaking. Isn’t Rey like, the protagonist of this series? What difficult choice does Daisy Ridley’s character ever make, that she has to live with? It would have been cool to let the audience think that Rey ACTUALLY killed Chewbacca, even by accident, for more than TWO MINUTES before we see that he’s alive. I can’t recall anything big that Rey decides in this movie, she’s just carried along and all the hard consequences like 3PO’s memory wipe and Kylo Ren’s chest wound are just magically undone. Even the choice of which “half” of the Force dyad dies is made by Kylo Ren, not Rey. She’s not a Mary Sue, but, there’s a lot more “good acting” in this movie than “actual character work” because Ridley and Driver are given very little to work with at all.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Rey being a Skywalker is dumb. Yes she has absorbed Ben Skywalker’s life force, I get why she calls herself a Skywalker now, but… She gives up on the Jedi and buries the lightsabers? Shouldn’t she be training new Jedi? The Force doesn’t go away at the end of the movie, so the rise of a new Dark Side is a perpetual threat that it would be lunacy not to guard against with a new Jedi order right? And weren’t all three movies about Rey’s search for a family? So now she goes to become a hermit on a planet she never lived on before? What? This is just one more example of how everything in these movies is puppeteered from outside the fictional world of the story - nothing happens because of character motivation, and we aren’t even expected to believe that it does. We aren’t expected to believe that Rey is happy on Tatooine, just that it’s a “fitting ending for the movie.” We aren’t expected to believe that Maz Kanata WANTS to give Chewie a medal, we’re just supposed to appreciate that “Chewie got his medal after all these years!”
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Quoting Jenny Nicholson: “So Palpatine designed Snoke to test Kylo Ren and prepare him for his role as the heir to the Sith, but also influenced Snoke's mind to ensure that Kylo Ren would be able to kill him, and he spent years looking for Rey but he, through Snoke, commanded Kylo Ren multiple times to kill Rey, as a test? To call his bluff? But also he needs Rey alive to strengthen himself, so when he meets Kylo Ren he tells him again to kill Rey, and Kylo Ren defies him, but that's ok because in fact he wants Rey to both be alive and kill him, so SHE can be heir to the Sith, but then Kylo and Rey get there and he drains their life force without having to die, and then hurls Kylo Ren to his death, and fights Rey. The perfect crime!”
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> This Disney trilogy has revisited or reenacted the Return Of The Jedi throne room scene THREE separate times. They’ve referenced Binary Sunset at the end of two separate movies. They’ve blown up planets with Death Star beams in three different movies. FOUR OUT OF FIVE Disney movies have ended (or begun!) with a full on capital-ship fleet battle betwen scrappy Rebels and a skyful of Star Destroyers. Something that happened literally once in the original trilogy (end of ROTJ) and once in the prequels (beginning of ROTS) is now a ONCE PER MOVIE event for Disney. They haven’t made more Star Wars, they’ve ruthlessly USED UP Star Wars.


Yes, yes, yes. Actually, I decided not to watch the film, and I grew up loving Star Wars, I even have a lightsaber, like one of the really good ones. I read a ton of books, even wrote some short storys.
But at this point I'd rather throw my money into the trashcan, I won't pay for this bulls**t.

The first 6 movies aren't masterpieces of filmmaking in my opinion, they had many flaws, but they had a soul. 

And now they have super-massive-mega-hardcore flaws and no soul, at least not in my view.


----------



## Consona

He's up to something with this interpretation.


----------



## South Thames

> But the thing is, I don't listen to Williams' earlier music as film music. Never have, never will. The fact that it is film music doesn't mean anything to me. I listen to it as absolute music, the way I listen to all music: strictly for what it has to offer as pure music. I don't recall scenes or think of characters from movies when I sit down to listen to Williams' music. Those things are, in fact, entirely irrelevant in my enjoyment of his best work. (I don't like most of the movies that Williams wrote music for anyway.) The only thing that means something to me, is the music itself, abstract and totally free from extra-musical context.
> 
> And from that perspective, I am and remain firmly of the opinion, that Williams' pre-1995 work is immeasurably superior to what came after. Much stronger ideas, much more inspired and distinctive melodic material, much more brazen and inventive writing, much less tameable in its conception, much less reliant on stylistic formulas or proven solutions, and, unlike his more recent output, never feeling any less complete when stripped from the dramaturgical particulars it is associated with.



Interesting perspective, but I think you're missing something. I don't think it's any coincidence that the best period of Williams career coincided with, in my view, the finest 10-20 year period of creativity popular film making, or even entertainment in general, ever saw. I don't think that's in any way incidental to the fact that Williams' best and most enduring work dates from that period. The themes that animated popular film making and makers during that time are obviously those that Williams responds well to time and time again, and I don't think they can be separated. I always remember seeing a backstage interview with Williams from the Boston Pops where a kid asked him what emotion he liked writing the most -- he said 'exhilaration'. And that's precisely what Williams' most enduring music delivers like no other.


----------



## Guy Rowland

re-peat said:


> The fact that it is film music doesn't mean anything to me. I listen to it as absolute music, the way I listen to all music: strictly for what it has to offer as pure music.



This is heresy to me also. I love film music in no small part because its film music. There is something magical in the juxtaposition of image and sound, of visual storytelling and music. To ignore all that and simply look at it as music is, for me, missing the whole point. I absolutely get the images in my head as I listen or, better, the emotions or the feelings that the film awakens in me, or perhaps those of the characters.

Not talking to you here Piet, but one of the saddest things I ever read here or on other forums are composers who are frustrated because the dialogue keeps getting in the way of their beautiful music. I long for every person to have ever though that to pursue something else. Film music is there to serve film, always. The film isn't there to be worked-around, to haurraumph at imposing its restrictions upon you.

And that is why I love it so. It's not concert music, it shouldn't be concert music. Of course plenty is worthy of being listened to if you haven't seen or know nothing about the film, but you're missing its heart, its soul, its raison d'être if you do. Every note (in theory) is there because of that story, that world, those characters. It is designed to evoke, to compliment, to juxtapose, to illuminate or obfuscate. The composer is a co-storyteller. And so for me, good film music is usually tied to a good film. They can't - or shouldn't - really be separated.

Why rob all that unique stuff of the music? Better to not listen at all perhaps, to focus only on music which is music for its own sake and needless to say there's whole worlds of that to explore. Piet, we've both read Torn Music, the tales of rejected scores down the decades including supreme masters such as Maurice Ravel whose doubtless wonderful music was rejected because he delivered it without seeing the film and wouldn't change a note, as I recall. He wasn't a film composer at all, he was a wonderful concert composer. I'll just bet they were right to reject it.

All all this is why film music is so precious to me. Its a magical alchemy, in service to something beyond itself. That's not something to ignore, it is something to embrace wholeheartedly.


----------



## chillbot

NoamL said:


> Final thoughts the day after seeing it, after everything has sunk in.



Good read Gnoam. I agree with almost all your points.

Very close to a like-worthy post, good job.


----------



## NoamL

To summarize: John Williams is a film composer


----------



## CT

I was personally not a fan of Gnome's post. Seemed disconnected from previous installments.


----------



## NoamL

miket said:


> I was personally not a fan of Gnome's post. Seemed disconnected from previous installments.



Seems hasty to judge that until the end of the trilogy, Mike


----------



## NoamL

miket said:


> I was personally not a fan of Gnome's post. Seemed disconnected from previous installments.



Also next time instead of "installments" you should use a more intellectual phrasing, such as "dramaturgical particulars"


----------



## jononotbono

re-peat said:


> And I don’t wanna listen to Williams to hear music that just about any self-respecting professional or technically savvy imitator can write. I want to listen to Williams to hear the stuff that sets him galaxies apart from everybody else. The stuff you can’t teach, study, learn or imitate. I want to listen to that exceptionally inventive musical volcano that exploded incessantly for 20 years non-stop, delivering truly unique wo
> _



Really curious what you favourite JW work is.


----------



## brek

Had a lot of fun watching this one, as I have all of the new ones. 

My main complaint is that the trilogy as a whole lacked an identity (someone made a Marvel comparison which, sadly, is fitting). I would've preferred the whole thing be the vision of one director/writer. Either JJ or Rian - but the franchise suffered by a lack of overall vision. In a weird sense, even though the individual movies are not so good, the Prequels kind of form the best, most complete, trilogy of the three (fwiw, I only watch the de-JarJar'ed versions so maybe they are much worse than I give credit for). 


As far as the music, I absolutely think JW is much better at scoring and supporting the drama in this trilogy. For those that just want to listen to the music, don't overlook the March of the Resistance and Scherzo for X-Wings suites from TFA. 

My favorite bit of scoring in RoS was the sort of bumbling version of March of the Resistance that plays when Finn and Poe infiltrate the Star Destroyer. The theme doesn't play again (that I recall) until the final mission begins when we get the full treatment (unfortunately, it seemed cut straight from the end credits of TFA).

Not a JW criticism, but I wouldn't complain if they dipped into the Force Theme honey-pot half as often in these last two. 

For fun, and to throw away any credibility I have, my SW ranking:
7, 9, 5, 3, 8, 4, 1, 6, 2


----------



## WilliamKersten

re-peat said:


> Back in the nineties, I could never have imagined in a million years that Williams would eke out the autumn and winter of his glorious career writing such empty, tiresome and boring music as he has done during the past two decades (especially for the SW franchise) and probably will continue to do for the remainder. And, it’s not just boring to me, I find it actually irritating to listen to as well. Because the key ingredient that made mid-season Williams such a unique and freakishly musical phenomenon has disappeared completely from his recent music: inspiration.
> 
> The one thing that makes Williams’ music enjoyable to me — ‘passionately loved’ used to be a far more accurate description — are _great ideas_, be they melodic, harmonic, rhythmical, contrapuntal, developmental, … whatever. Between 1975 and 1995, his music literally burst with great ideas, resulting, in my view, in some of the most exciting and indestructible music of the previous century. (In its most inspired moments, every bit as good as much of the 'serious' concert repertoire of those decades, I believe.)
> 
> But take those great ideas away, as started to happen increasingly from 1995 onwards, and what you’re left with is amazing technique and superb craft, but also predictable formulas, minute after tedious minute on autopilot, annoying mannerisms and a gaping lack of memorable musical invention. (Williams, for example, hasn’t written a truly great melody in the past 20 years, in my opinion.) Most of this stuff sounds like a Williams pastiche to me, creepily accurate stylistically, written by someone who has mastered the Williams language to perfection but doesn’t have anything to say in it.
> 
> In pre-2000 Williams, you would get short stretches of this type of music too, sure, but it would be confined to fleeting transitional material that built bridges between one great idea and the next. As such, these bits had musical purpose. In recent decades however, this transitional stuff is being elevated to function as the main material — a purpose and function that is far beyond the powers of its weak intrinsic musical qualities — making it doubly disappointing because not only is it mediocre material in itself but you also know that’s all that this music is going to give.
> 
> There are, in my opinion, more memorable ideas and more great music in the four minutes and twenty seconds of “The Asteroïd Field” than there are the entire last six SW scores put together. It’s remarkable, actually.
> 
> Williams, once the Mozart of film composers, sort of turned into the Paganini of film composers, I find: devilishly virtuosic and flawless in its technical mastery, but all that bravoura no longer carries anything of true substance.
> 
> I do agree with José though on the exceptional quality of the performance and the recording of this new score. For that reason alone, it's definitely worth a thorough listen. (Unless you’re in the middle of doing an orchestral mock-up in which case listening to TROS will prove a very frustrating experience.)
> 
> But it used to be that sound quality didn’t matter and that it didn’t enter the discussion; a time — the spring and summer of Williams’ glorious career — when all we marvelled at was the staggering, unparallelled quality and eternally fresh beauty of his music.
> 
> _


re-peat

What a pile of shit. Re-peat - you are a non-entity of music, criticizing people who are vastly your superior.

Your long, ludicrous, laughable diatribe against my Romantic Symphony (anyone who wants to see it just search) indicated, far more than anything else, you could not understand the music, and yet - strangely - you wished you had written it. Because you can't write a melody, a good harmonic progression, anything worth shit in music - because you're a modernist. And you know you're not a real composer. You're a fuck modernist faker. That is how you get away with your worthless garbage "music." You have no understanding or ability at creating anything worthwhile, but have the utter arrogance to place yourself over people like John Williams - a total genius composer - or myself - both of whom have written five minute stretches of music that obliterate everything of your life's work. And you know this. That is what makes you so silly with your so-called "critiques." You are not capable of a serious "critique" because you have no true knowledge or expertise. You are in fact a nonentity of the internet - a troll. And you know it. That is what makes you so vicious. You can't stand the reality of yourself.

Hey - Nick Batzdorf ! Do you like this post? It is stating something true, and I predict - you won't like it. So what are you going to do? Ban me? Oh no! I won't be able to converse with fucking morons like re-peat.

That will make me SO SAD.


----------



## jononotbono

This thread just got interesting 😂


----------



## Jdiggity1

WilliamKersten said:


> re-peat
> 
> What a pile of shit. Re-peat - you are a non-entity of music, criticizing people who are vastly your superior.
> 
> Your long, ludicrous, laughable diatribe against my Romantic Symphony (anyone who wants to see it just search) indicated, far more than anything else, you could not understand the music, and yet - strangely - you wished you had written it. Because you can't write a melody, a good harmonic progression, anything worth shit in music - because you're a modernist. And you know you're not a real composer. You're a fuck modernist faker. That is how you get away with your worthless garbage "music." You have no understanding or ability at creating anything worthwhile, but have the utter arrogance to place yourself over people like John Williams - a total genius composer - or myself - both of whom have written five minute stretches of music that obliterate everything of your life's work. And you know this. That is what makes you so silly with your so-called "critiques." You are not capable of a serious "critique" because you have no true knowledge or expertise. You are in fact a nonentity of the internet - a troll. And you know it. That is what makes you so vicious. You can't stand the reality of yourself.
> 
> Hey - Nick Batzdorf ! Do you like this post? It is stating something true, and I predict - you won't like it. So what are you going to do? Ban me? Oh no! I won't be able to converse with fucking morons like re-peat.
> 
> That will make me SO SAD.


----------



## CT

I expect that Mr. Williams himself would have some choice words for the conduct of certain people on this forum.


----------



## WilliamKersten

Yeah right - read this creep Re-peat trashing my music and see what you think. He is a vile piece of garbage who wants to harm people. He needs to be exposed to the same crap that he gives out.


----------



## WilliamKersten

Also - to hear somebody like this Re-peat guy criticizing John Williams - it is so funny. He can't write two seconds of music to compare to Williams. And the fuck knows it. So what does he do? He "critiques." 

If you can't do, "critique." (It used to be "teach." But that is actually quite admirable.)


----------



## ProfoundSilence

piet is not only entitled to his opinion, but he supported it well. Sorry your feelings were hurt previously but dragging that drama into this is just plain silly. 

keep your personal issues to PM.


----------



## jononotbono

What’s any of this (of which I have no idea about anyway) got to do with JW’s latest and final Star Wars score?


----------



## chillbot

brek said:


> 7, 9, 5, 3, 8, 4, 1, 6, 2


Wait is this films or music? I'm confused. I want to play, too.

Here's my ranking for films:

5, 6, 4, 8, 7, 9, 2, 3, 1

Here's my ranking for music:

5, 6, 4, 7, 3, 2, 9, 8, 1

What do I win?


----------



## ProfoundSilence

chillbot said:


> Wait is this films or music? I'm confused. I want to play, too.
> 
> Here's my ranking for films:
> 
> 5, 6, 4, 8, 7, 9, 2, 3, 1
> 
> Here's my ranking for music:
> 
> 5, 6, 4, 7, 3, 2, 9, 8, 1
> 
> What do I win?


a free trip to hoth


----------



## NoamL

chillbot said:


> What do I win?



Hopefully @Jdiggity1 bringing back the thumbs down reaction. AOTC better than TPM???


----------



## CT

Films: 6, 3, 5, 4, 2, 1

Scores: 3, 6, 2, 1, 5, 4

I don't have strong feelings about the new ones.


----------



## chillbot

NoamL said:


> TPM???


I hated every bit of the phantom menace so much maybe I am biased.

Signed,

Jar Jar


----------



## Mike Greene

WilliamKersten said:


> ... So what are you going to do? Ban me? Oh no! I won't be able to converse with fucking morons like re-peat.
> 
> That will make me SO SAD.


Wish granted.


----------



## ProfoundSilence

Mike Greene said:


> Wish granted.


----------



## chillbot

Mike Greene said:


> Wish granted.


You are a true ruiner of fun, Mike.


----------



## NoamL

Films: 4 & 5 > 6 >> 8 > 7 >>>>>> 1 & 9 >>>> 3 >>>>>> 2

Scores: they are good


----------



## Guy Rowland

4 has always been my favourite film and score. I can give a solid defence of this - to this day 4 is the only movie that works standalone, is perfect structurally and the entire Battle For Yavin sequence in both film and score (including the interplay between sound design and music) is in a class of its own. But rewatching a year ago, I had to rethink, at least for the film. Its not the pacing, its that to modern eyes and ears its all so obvious. Every film that followed started putting twists on those original ideas, to the point where 8 films later it feels like a vanilla cone, albeit a beautifully constructed one.

I also then realised something else. There is nothing a new Star Wars film can offer that can ever come close to capturing the impact of the first, it simply isn't possible. All they can ever do is entertain and evoke old feelings. And they've done this with varying degrees of success.

Probably for me The Force Awakens is the most solid film that holds together with contemporary eyes. I'd put Solo high up, a vastly underrated and thoroughly entertaining romp. Rise Of Skywalker washes its face perfectly well (I know it makes little sense, but none of them did if you really start to think about them for more than 10 seconds). Empire Strikes Back is solid enough but has no ending, Return Of The Jedi is too much of a rehash of New Hope, all the prequels are utterly meritless except for the music, sound design and podrace in Phantom Menace, Rogue One is a wretched indulgent mess that the entire Star Wars saga would become if man-babies were in charge.

For those of us of a certain age, we love Star Wars because of how that first film made us feel, our collective horizons shattered. You know the Star Wars film I really want? The film about the story of how they made it. It's a tale to me every bit as classic as the movie itself, the hero's journey complete. There's Lucas' call to a great adventure, the endless battles along the way are a catalogue of woe from the crew laughing at the film as they shot it it was so bad to Industrial Light And Magic failing to turn in a single shot for over a year, Fox being tipped to go under such was the scale of the disaster, with all this right up to the point where they saw the first line around the first block after they'd finished the mono TV mixes overnight. They'd forgotten that the film had been released at all. And film was then changed forever.

Now THAT's a story.

Score-wise of the main 9 I'm still putting 4 top, with everything else joint second.


----------



## re-peat

South Thames said:


> I don't think it's any coincidence that the best period of Williams career coincided with, in my view, the finest 10-20 year period of creativity popular film making, or even entertainment in general, ever saw. I don't think that's in any way incidental to the fact that Williams' best and most enduring work dates from that period.




I don’t go along with the argument that Williams used to write better music because he was handed better or more ‘important’ movies in those days. Looking at his filmography, one would almost be inclined to say the opposite is true.

Williams wrote his best music for some of the most ridiculous and flawed pictures ever made, and during much of his career, you could have given the man the most embarrassing turd of a movie and he would still have woven the most sublime music around it. During two blessed decades, nothing mattered to Williams but the music. His music. The force of his talent was simply too strong for any outside factor (a script, a director, a producer, …) to have any significant influence whatsoever on his music. He wrote phenomenally good pieces of music for scenes (and entire movies) that didn’t need it.

Seriously, how many truly great films did Williams ever score? I can’t think of all that many, to be honest. Not during the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s, and not now. But bad, small or average films never stopped Williams before (“Witches of Eastwick”, “1941”, “Spacecamp”, “Dracula”, “The Fury”, “Empire Of The Sun”, “Monsignor”, “Always”, …), so I see no reason why it should be an excuse today.

Let’s also not forget that when Williams signed on to do “Jaws”, nothing much indicated that that movie would become the mother-of-all-blockbusters it turned out to be. The lasting acclaim and classic status of “Jaws” is something attributed in hindsight, certainly not something Williams could have been aware of at the time he was busy writing the music. (At that moment, everything suggested that the troubled shark movie of a young, unknown upstart would turn out to be a quickly forgotten and, for its director, career-ruining debacle.)
Besides, he also did “The Eiger Sanction”, “Towering Inferno”, “Black Sunday” and “Earthquake’ around the same time: pretty dreadful and forgettable films, all four of them. And all four them also containing music that is, at times, most remarkable. (“Black Sunday” especially.)

Or take “Superman”. Super example. As ghastly and cringeworthy a waste of celluloïd as you could ever imagine — surely, an insult to the intelligence and talent of everyone who worked on it — , and yet … wrapped in music of an inspiration, a creativity and a quality that, in its best moments, I easily rank alongside most anything written by some of the most revered composers in the past three centuries.

And even when he worked on the first “Star Wars”, again, all the signs pointed to the movie being another silly, forgettable B-movie that had no hope of any lasting success (or prestige for its creators) whatsoever. There’s no way that Williams could have known — nobody did — that they were working on what was to become the biggest, most successful, most iconic and most influential movie franchise in the history of cinema.

Why did all these movies get such astounding music then? There was no need to. Why? If it had been merely serviceable music, that would have been more than good enough — as the latest SW installments illustrate — and it would tell the industry that, no matter the circumstances, John T. Williams is a reliable, gifted and very skilled professional. A reputation most composers would have been, and still are, perfectly happy with.
Not John T. Williams though. He gave those pictures much, much more than merely serviceable music. He gave them extra-ordinary music. And what’s all the more remarkable: music that he knew very few people would actually listen to (soundtracks weren't as big in the seventies and early eighties as they've become since), music that even fewer would grasp the unique quality of — even today, most people have no idea how very-very-very special some of Williams’ 70’s-80’s music actually is —, and music that would most likely disappear the moment the movie had ended its run. And yet he wrote it. Almost as if he owed it to himself.

There was a time when Williams was unstoppable. Score after score, he produced music of a stunning quality that neither the movie required him to write nor that anybody expected him to write. But he did it. Fully aware of his unique powers (one can’t be that exceptional and not know it), refusing to be hindered by anything as trivial as a laughable movie — or a good one, for that matter —, fully determined, without allowing anything or anyone to stand in his way, to write the best possible music he was able to write, no matter if it suited the cinematographic vehicle it was attached to or not. During those years, you could have given him the phonebook and he’d score it. And a very special score it would have been too.

So why did it change around 1995-2000? I don’t know. Whatever happened, some combination of factors reduced Williams’ volcanic fire into something more akin to a cozy fireplace, at times even a pilot flame. The technical mastery and unsurpassed skill remained as fabulous as before, but that freakish drive — both wholly selfish and amazingly generous at the same time — somehow disappeared from his work. Maybe the sheer intensity of that fire is also what caused it to dwindle when it did.

_


----------



## re-peat

Guy Rowland said:


> (...) but you're missing its heart, its soul, its raison d'être if you do. Every note (in theory) is there because of that story, that world, those characters. It is designed to evoke, to compliment, to juxtapose, to illuminate or obfuscate. The composer is a co-storyteller. And so for me, good film music is usually tied to a good film. They can't - or shouldn't - really be separated.





Guy Rowland said:


> There is something magical in the juxtaposition of image and sound, of visual storytelling and music.




Yes, there is, Guy, I don’t dispute that, but there’s too much evidence in Williams’ earlier work that show, at least to my ears, that 'magical storystelling' was only of secondary importance to him in those days, a distant second to what he, first and foremost, wanted to do musically. With a composer of Williams’ talent and skill, effective storytelling is an assumed given, a job relatively easily accomplished — praising him for something so obvious as the fact that his music fits and enhances a story, or perfectly evokes a character, is doing him and his music a very grave injustice, I’ve always felt —, it’s only past that point where things become really interesting, I find. As the music, and nothing but the music, time and again, indubitably proves.

You don’t write “One Barrel Chase” the way he wrote it if storytelling is all you care about. You don’t write “Chasing Rockets”, “Superfeats” or “March Of The Villains” (as glorious but ill-fitting a piece of music as ever made it into a movie) if the movie is the music’s only raison d’etre. The quality of that music simply contradicts it.

And Williams’ 75-95 music is littered with such cues: music which, from its first bar to the last, completely refutes the romantic notion that “every note is there because of that story, that world, those characters”.

Beyond being a mere circumstantial trigger, the story has nothing to do with what notes are part of “Sea Attack Number One” or “The Asteroïd Field”. Nor have the characters from “The Fury” have had any real influence on the musical perfection that is “For Gillian”.

There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the fact that “The Arrival Of Tink And Flight To Neverland” enhances “Hook” the way it does. Any skilled composer of some substance could have accomplished something similar. What is so truly astounding about that musical sequence — and this has again nothing whatsoever to do with the movie —, is the mindblowing musical quality of it. A quality that far transcends the music’s function or storytelling requirements.

See, I don’t think it is me that’s missing the music’s heart and soul by isolating it from the purpose or context it was written for, I strongly feel. Quite the contrary, in fact. It’s by keeping this music confined to its subservient storytelling role that you miss out on just about everything that makes it so intrinsically musical sublime. To me, the heart and soul of great music is music. And nothing but music.

_


----------



## South Thames

NoamL said:


> Star Destroyers. Something that happened literally once in the original trilogy (end of ROTJ) and once in the prequels (beginning of ROTS) is now a ONCE PER MOVIE event for Disney.





Guy Rowland said:


> ow nothing about the film, but you're missing its heart, its soul, its raison d'être if you do. Every note (in theory) is there because of that story, that world, those characters. It is designed to evoke, to compliment, to juxtapose, to illuminate or obfuscate. The composer is a co-storyteller. And so for me, good film music is usually tied to a good film. They can't - or shouldn't - really be separated.





South Thames said:


> st -- he said 'exhilaration'. And that's precisely what Williams' most enduring music delivers like no other.





re-peat said:


> I don’t go along with the argument that Williams used to write better music because he was handed better or more ‘important’ movies in those days. Looking at his filmography, one would almost be inclined to say the opposite is true.
> 
> Williams wrote his best music for some of the most ridiculous and flawed pictures ever made, and during much of his career, you could have given the man the most embarrassing turd of a movie and he would still have woven the most sublime music around it. During two blessed decades, nothing mattered to Williams but the music. His music. The force of his talent was simply too strong for any outside factor (a script, a director, a producer, …) to have any significant influence whatsoever on his music. He wrote phenomenally good pieces of music for scenes (and entire movies) that didn’t need it.
> 
> Seriously, how many truly great films did Williams ever score? I can’t think of all that many, to be honest. Not during the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s, and not now. But bad, small or average films never stopped Williams before (“Witches of Eastwick”, “1941”, “Spacecamp”, “Dracula”, “The Fury”, “Empire Of The Sun”, “Monsignor”, “Always”, …), so I see no reason why it should be an excuse today.
> 
> Let’s also not forget that when Williams signed on to do “Jaws”, nothing much indicated that that movie would become the mother-of-all-blockbusters it turned out to be. The lasting acclaim and classic status of “Jaws” is something attributed in hindsight, certainly not something Williams could have been aware of at the time he was busy writing the music. (At that moment, everything suggested that the troubled shark movie of a young, unknown upstart would turn out to be a quickly forgotten and, for its director, career-ruining debacle.)
> Besides, he also did “The Eiger Sanction”, “Towering Inferno”, “Black Sunday” and “Earthquake’ around the same time: pretty dreadful and forgettable films, all four of them. And all four them also containing music that is, at times, most remarkable. (“Black Sunday” especially.)
> 
> Or take “Superman”. Super example. As ghastly and cringeworthy a waste of celluloïd as you could ever imagine — surely, an insult to the intelligence and talent of everyone who worked on it — , and yet … wrapped in music of an inspiration, a creativity and a quality that, in its best moments, I easily rank alongside most anything written by some of the most revered composers in the past three centuries.
> 
> And even when he worked on the first “Star Wars”, again, all the signs pointed to the movie being another silly, forgettable B-movie that had no hope of any lasting success (or prestige for its creators) whatsoever. There’s no way that Williams could have known — nobody did — that they were working on what was to become the biggest, most successful, most iconic and most influential movie franchise in the history of cinema.
> 
> Why did all these movies get such astounding music then? There was no need to. Why? If it had been merely serviceable music, that would have been more than good enough — as the latest SW installments illustrate — and it would tell the industry that, no matter the circumstances, John T. Williams is a reliable, gifted and very skilled professional. A reputation most composers would have been, and still are, perfectly happy with.
> Not John T. Williams though. He gave those pictures much, much more than merely serviceable music. He gave them extra-ordinary music. And what’s all the more remarkable: music that he knew very few people would actually listen to (soundtracks weren't as big in the seventies and early eighties as they've become since), music that even fewer would grasp the unique quality of — even today, most people have no idea how very-very-very special some of Williams’ 70’s-80’s music actually is —, and music that would most likely disappear the moment the movie had ended its run. And yet he wrote it. Almost as if he owed it to himself.
> 
> There was a time when Williams was unstoppable. Score after score, he produced music of a stunning quality that neither the movie required him to write nor that anybody expected him to write. But he did it. Fully aware of his unique powers (one can’t be that exceptional and not know it), refusing to be hindered by anything as trivial as a laughable movie — or a good one, for that matter —, fully determined, without allowing anything or anyone to stand in his way, to write the best possible music he was able to write, no matter if it suited the cinematographic vehicle it was attached to or not. During those years, you could have given him the phonebook and he’d score it. And a very special score it would have been too.
> 
> So why did it change around 1995-2000? I don’t know. Whatever happened, some combination of factors reduced Williams’ volcanic fire into something more akin to a cozy fireplace, at times even a pilot flame. The technical mastery and unsurpassed skill remained as fabulous as before, but that freakish drive — both wholly selfish and amazingly generous at the same time — somehow disappeared from his work. Maybe the sheer intensity of that fire is also what caused it to dwindle when it did.
> 
> _



I didn’t use the word ‘important’. It’s totally beside the point - in fact one the great things about many of those films is how unselfconscious they are. ‘Importance’ was clearly not what Williams was responding to.

Your own idiosyncratic assessments are not particularly relevant - Star Wars, Close Encounters, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, ET etc. are widely considered classics by film critics and for good reason (you seem to think this has some necessary connection with how ‘important’ they were considered at the time - it doesn’t). Some of the others are more arguable, but many are still superior examples of genre film making in many ways. And, I also think Williams produced a fair amount of less distinguished material in the the same period for other films.

So, I guess we’ll just agree to disagree that given the phone book in 1982 Williams would have written great music for it. (He wrote a fairly cringeworthy song for Mon Signor that year I recall - not a good film). I, along with most others here, happen to think what film composers write has something to with the films they write for. But each to their own.


----------



## ism

South Thames said:


> I didn’t use the word ‘important’. It’s totally beside the point - in fact one the great things about many of those films is how unselfconscious they are. ‘Importance’ was clearly not what Williams was responding to.
> 
> Your own idiosyncratic assessments are not particularly relevant - Star Wars, Close Encounters, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, ET etc. are widely considered classics by film critics and for good reason (you seem to think this has some necessary connection with how ‘important’ they were considered at the time - it doesn’t). Some of the others are more arguable, but many are still superior examples of genre film making in many ways. And, I also think Williams produced a fair amount of less distinguished material in the the same period for other films.
> 
> So, I guess we’ll just agree to disagree that given the phone book in 1982 Williams would have written great music for it. I, along with most others here, happen to think what film composers write has something to with the films they write for. But each to their own.





I think re-peat was making a subtler point than that.

But I also think a dynamic in this is that the genre of films he's writing for has fundamentally changed.

For instance, I do actually like the new SW films - as JJ Abrams (and that other guy) films.



But its like Lewis' theory of secondary epic - where Homer's Odyssey defines the genre of epic, Virgil's Aeneid (Milton's Paradise Lost, etc) are written necessarily with the anxiety of the influence of the primary epic. And so they function slightly less purely.

Any film made in 2019 can only reference the primary texts of the genre (SW, raiders etc). Most JJ Abrams films in particular feels very much like homage to primary epics of the 80s. And while they're perfectly ok (or at least okish) there's none of them have the purity of the originals.

Not that Star Wars was ever "pure". It itself is an a very conscious and meticulously created homage to numerous other genres. It's just that my 7 year old self didn't know this, and experienced it with the purity of primary epic.

I also think that in the history of film music, there was a moment when Williams (and other) hit upon something fundamental to the nature of Wagner's not music-drama - where somehow the element fuse in a new way. And Lucas' silly little film about space wizards realized becomes only the libretto to a much greater work.


----------



## South Thames

ism said:


> I think re-peat was making a subtler point than that.
> 
> 
> But I also a dynamic in this is that the genre of films he's writing for has fundamentally changed.
> 
> For instance, I do actually like the new SW films as JJ Abrams (and that other guy) films.
> 
> But its like Lewis' theory of secondary epic - where Homer's Odyssey defines the genre of epic, Virgil's Aeneid (Milton's Paradise Lost, etc) are written necessarily with the anxiety of the influence of the primary epic. And so they function slightly less purely.



His subtle point seemed to be that he dislikes or loathes every film Williams has ever scored and believes Williams did his best work in spite of the films, not because of them. There’s no accounting for taste of course, but it’s fair to say that this is a fairly idiosyncratic point of view. I also suspect it would come as a surprise to John Williams who frequently cites Close Encounters or ET as his favourite score, and makes immediate mention of the qualities of those films that he admires so much.


----------



## ism

South Thames said:


> His subtle point seemed to be that he dislikes or loathes every film Williams has ever scored and believes Williams did his best work in spite of the films, not because of them. There’s no accounting for taste of course, but it’s fair to say that this is a fairly idiosyncratic point of view. I also suspect it would come as a surprise to John Williams who frequently cites Close Encounters or ET as his favourite score, and makes immediate mention of the qualities of those films that he admires so much.



I'm going to side with re-peat on this. I don't think that's what he's saying at all.

Maybe a less provocative way to develop the argument is like this, starting with the fact that, at least sometimes, the combination of music and films seeks to create something greater that the sum of its parts. There was a bitter debate about this in the 19th century amongst the likes of Wagner and Verdi. While the public demand was for bel canto, such composers longed for the fusion of the elements into the "music-drama" (in Wagner's theorization - making him at least arguably the first theorist of muti-media).

I once read an account of an editorial in the NY Times written at the moment when the medium of silent-film (or what was then called, "film") evolved into the medium sound-film (or what is now called, "film"). It argued that with the long awaited restoration of music to drama, now, finally, composers could be restored to their rightful place as the primary artistic forces behind the medium.

And the reasons this didn't happen were, at least arguably, determined by the commercial structure of the film industry. 

And I think when Lucas originally asked Williams to just find some Wagner to play behind his silly little film about spaces wizards, it was Williams who saw the opportunity through a lens or greater artistic possibilities.

And yet ... if you separated the elements of Verdi who would you remember - the composer or the librettist? 

Similarly if you separated the elements of Raiders or Star Wars, which would stand up best on its own? 

I think pretty clearly that it's Williams that gets to be Verdi here. Not that Lucas wasn't talented in giving him an interesting (visual) libretto to work off of. But I doubt it would have been remembered as a great film (or even remembered at all) if Williams hadn't elevated it to the level of Wagnerian music-drama.

And this is, I think (?), somewhere in the neighbour hood of the point that re-peat is making. (maybe).


----------



## South Thames

ism said:


> I'm going to side with re-peat on this. I don't think that's what he's saying at all.
> 
> Maybe a letter provocative way to say it is like this: The combination of music and films creates something greater that the whole of its parts. There was a bitter debate about this in the 19th century amongst the likes of Wagner and Verdi. While the public demand was for bel canto, such composers longed for the fusion of the elements into the "music-drama" (in Wagner's theorization - making him at least arguably the first theorist of muti-media).
> 
> I once read an account of an editorial in the NY time written at them moment when the medium of silent-film (or what was then called "film") evolved into the medium sound-film (or what is now called "film"). It argue that with the restoration of music to drama, now composers could be restored to their rightful place as the primary artistic forces behind the medium.
> 
> And reasons this didn't happen, at least arguably, determined by the commercial structure of the film industry.
> 
> And I think Lucas originally asked Williams to just find some Wagner to play behind his silly little film about spaces wizards.
> 
> And yet ... if you separated the element of Verdi who would you remember, the composer or the librettist? Similarly if you separated the elements of Raiders or Star Wars, which would stand up best on its own? I think pretty clearly that it's Williams that get to be Verdi here. Not that Lucas wasn't talented it giving him a great visual libretto to work off of.
> 
> And this is, I think (?), somewhere in the neighbour hood of the point that re-peat is making. (maybe).



Well, that very much sounds like your point, not his. And i don’t particularly have any strong reaction to it, except to say that one of things that always appealed to me about Williams is he didn’t truck in such lofty abstraction about film music. The scores exist because of the films. Whether they are better than the films deserve, in some cases quite possibly, but Williams has written enough (comparatively) mediocre film and concert music for us to know that the quality (in the broadest sense) of the film is a massive and important variable in the quality of what he produces. That’s my only point.


----------



## ism

South Thames said:


> one of things that always appealed to me about Williams is he didn’t truck in such lofty abstraction about film music.



And yet .. there's great musical sophistication behind what Williams does. Sure, he's not trying to be Mahler, but the understanding of classical tradition that he brings to even scores to dumb moves is immense. 

Sure, you don't need to understand this sophistication to enjoy the music, or the films. But it doesn't mean it isn't there, or that it isn't absolutely central. Which is why a lot (and I mean a *lot*) of would be Williams imitators can never match the depths of their idol - they try to imitate Williams with the years of classical study and "lofty abstraction" that make Williams scores possible. 

Peasants used to sing Verdi in the fields . No loft abstraction here. Yet he was a deeply sophisticated composer, immersed in "lofty abstraction" without with the arias sung by peasants would never have been possible. 

So it might not have been William's style to publicly foreground the depth of his penchant for "lofty abstraction", but without such "lofty abstraction" I'd argue that there is no Williams. (Well, maybe the Gilligan's Island theme, but probably not much of his subsequent great work ).


----------



## ism

South Thames said:


> The scores exist because of the films



This is an important point. But I'd also add that in a very real and equally important sense, the films also exists only because of the scores.


----------



## jbuhler

ism said:


> And reasons this didn't happen, at least arguably, determined by the commercial structure of the film industry.


The structure of the film changed quite markedly. Where in the silent era music had been ubiquitous in the sound film music became intermittent.

But in the early days of sound film none of this was apparent (as late as 1929 you still find articles wondering if the talking film is a fad) and the dominant thought through say 1927 maybe even 1928—what was driving the industry to the sound film—was that sound film would allow film to have recorded music, allowing the producers to fix the musical accompaniment to the film so the experience of the film would be more or less the same wherever it played. There were lots of reasons studios had for liking the idea, especially the fact that they owned theaters and musicians’ costs was one of the highest costs of running a theater. Composers initially embraced the sound film in part because they thought music would continue to hold the place it did in the silent film.

Films did change markedly between 1990 and 2000 and by 2000 the change in scoring style is quite evident. I’m on record attributing the stylistic change largely to technology and postproduction workflow associated with digital filmmaking, though there are undoubtedly other factors at work. Williams’ style also changes during this period and an article by Frank Lehman (of Hollywood Harmony fame), forthcoming in an anthology I’m editing for Routledge, documents this change quite thoroughly.


----------



## South Thames

From my POV, you’re blurring a little the line between Williams enormous technical skill and musical learnedness and the higher cultural aspirations that an art composer of the 18th or 19th century might have harboured in his position. I just think these sorts of aspirations are anathema to him. Williams’ influence is immense of course, but it’s my impression that it is not the product of these kind of grand designs, but rather the product of an unassuming but phenomenally talented man who has shared his gifts and his joy in music making with the world through the truly amazing medium of film.


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## ism

South Thames said:


> From my POV, you’re blurring a little the line between Williams enormous technical skill and musical learnedness and the higher cultural aspirations that an art composer of the 18th or 19th century might have harboured in his position. I just think these sorts of aspirations are anathema to him. Williams’ influence is immense of course, but it’s my impression that it is not the product of these kind of grand designs, but rather the product of an unassuming but phenomenally talented man who has shared his gifts and his joy in music making with the world through the truly amazing medium of film.





Verdi wasn't a pretentious elitist snob. Peasants sang his arias in fields. Opera as a signifier of pretentious snobbery is very much a 20th century phenomenon.


So you're quite right, I'm very intentionally blurring the line between great art and commercial art.


If anything, I'm arguing that Williams restores something of what was lost when, in the 20th century the music-drama of opera became lost to the popular sphere and co-opted as a signifier of class and elitism.

Imagine being 11 years old in 1870 and being at the premier of Die Valkerie. I think it would have been just like seeing the Empire Strikes Back as an 11 year old in 1980.

I very much doubt the current JJ Abrams films will have that kind of effect on 11 year olds today. I think they operate as conscious homages to the films of his childhood that don't capture the purity of "primary epic" in remotely the same way the Lucas (and Williams) did. Though I'd love to be wrong.


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## South Thames

ism said:


> Verdi wasn't an pretentious elitist snob. Peasants sang his arias in fields. Opera as a signifier of pretentious snobbery is very much a 20th century phenomenon.
> 
> 
> So you're quite right, I'm very intentionally blurring the line between great art and commercial art.
> 
> 
> If anything, I'm arguing that Williams restores something of what was lost when, in the 20th century the music-drama of opera became lost to the popular sphere and co-opted as a signifier of class and elitism.
> 
> Imagine being 11 years old in 1870 and being at the premier of Die Valkerie.
> 
> I very much doubt the current JJ Abrams films will have that kind of effect on 11 year olds today. Though I'd love to be wrong.



I understand where you are coming from.

I used to care about where the line was drawn and these kind of historical comparisons, but in recent years the line between commerce and art has become less distinct and less heavily guarded, at least as far as I can see.

And Williams is probably the most lauded and celebrated composer on the planet and does not want for respect or recognition ( I still remember having to patiently explain to people that being a John Williams fan didn’t mean you liked guitar music).

I guess I just don’t see the need to fight that corner anymore.


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## VinRice

@ism - I think those are the most insightful posts I have ever read on the nature of film music on this forum. Respect.


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## Guy Rowland

ism said:


> I very much doubt the current JJ Abrams films will have that kind of effect on 11 year olds today. I think they operate as conscious homages to the films of his childhood that don't capture the purity of "primary epic" in remotely the same way the Lucas (and Williams) did. Though I'd love to be wrong.



It's hard to imagine any film having that impact now. The leap between pre-Star Wars and Star Wars simply can't ever be matched.

Some great posts here. When it comes to storytelling, it's clearly not a case of "good guy music" / "bad guy music" (though Williams isn't above being this literal almost on a shot-by-shot basis on occasions). The richness he brings to it is part of the filmic landscape, Star Wars simply wouldn't be the same film without it. Strongly agree with this:



South Thames said:


> I also suspect it would come as a surprise to John Williams who frequently cites Close Encounters or ET as his favourite score, and makes immediate mention of the qualities of those films that he admires so much.



Of course I can see why its possible to see all this in the way Piet does, that JW's musicality can't be contained by the movie itself. But it remains to me a poor way of appreciating film music, to try to ignore the entire film part of it. The film should be embedded into every note, and something magical happens not only on-screen, but to ourselves as we listen and reflect.


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## re-peat

Perhaps, Guy, but as I said, to me, Williams’ best music (or any excellent film music) is more than film music. Just as “Petrushka” is more — much, much more — than music to dance to, or the B-minor Mass is more — infinitely more — than music to worship to. Or, sticking with Bach, the Inventions are much, much, much more than music to improve one’s keyboard skills with.

I have absolutely nothing with Fellini’s universe, but I love, nay, revere the music Nino Rota wrote for it. Five minutes into a Leone film and I’d rather be watching paint dry (which is almost, but not quite as boring) but, again, I adore Morricone’s music. Very little of Shaeffer’s “Planet Of The Apes” has aged well if you ask me (if it was ever well to begin with), except … Goldsmith’s music, an ageing-proof masterpiece of 20th century music. (I will never in my life watch that movie again, but the soundtrack is something I listen to very frequently, not a second thinking of simians.)

And I could go on and on and on. Almodóvar? Not my cup of tea. But Alberto Iglesias’ music? Yesss. Musicals? God, please no. But what breathtakingly wonderful, supremely beautiful music has been written for some of them. (“Sweet Charity”, “Hello Dolly”, “Cabaret”, “My Fair Lady”, “The Sound Of Music”, “West Side Story”, …). And is there any half-decent Bond movie? Certainly not that I know of. But Barry’s music … wow. And wow again.
And I have never seen anything that Waxman wrote the score for (except “Rebecca”) but his music is one of the most treasured discoveries of my life.

And in all those cases, I simply cut the umbilical cord between movie and music, and enjoy the latter for purely musical reasons. As I do with all of Williams’ best music. Far too good in my opinion to remain imprisoned in the movies it was written for.

- - -

And in response to something Thames said: I never said I loathed every film that Williams has written music for. I said I disliked most of them, yes, — the entire Star Wars series in particular is completely wasted on me, I’m afraid — but I also implied, when I said “I can’t think of all that many”, that there are a handful of good ones.

“E.T.” may not be my kind of film but I sure as hell recognize it as a masterpiece in its genre. The first “Jaws” is, again, not the type of film that speaks to me, but I can certainly see that it is an amazing feat of filmmaking. And “Raiders” is still the benchmark for anyone who plans on doing a roller-coaster adventure movie. (“Close Encounters”, though often recommended as a must-see Spielberg gem, never quite grabbed me the way it is supposed to, I’m sorry to say.)

Other than that, yes, … I just browsed through Williams’ filmography on Wikipedia (the need to do so already told me that I wouldn’t come across anything memorable), from Jane Eyre (1970) onwards up until today, and I have to admit there’s not a single other entry in there, besides the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph, which I would call a truly great movie. (I would have liked, for obvious reasons, to be able to single out “Schindler’s List” as another one, but I can’t.) Several which I enjoy watching every few years or so, sure, but summits in the mountain range of a century of cinema? I don’t think so.

_


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## Dewdman42

Are there any movies that you do like?


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## re-peat

Yes.

-


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## South Thames

re-peat said:


> Yes.



But you hate their scores, right?


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## re-peat

No.

_


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## jononotbono

Jurassic Park needs more love. Great film, great story, still looks excellent, music is incredible.

Maybe I just like Dinosaurs. I do come from the Isle of Wight after all


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## ism

Guy Rowland said:


> It's hard to imagine any film having that impact now. The leap between pre-Star Wars and Star Wars simply can't ever be matched.



Perhaps, but I sincerely hope there's a young filmmaker / composer duo someone reading this and thinking: "Hold My Beer".



Guy Rowland said:


> Of course I can see why its possible to see all this in the way Piet does, that JW's musicality can't be contained by the movie itself. But it remains to me a poor way of appreciating film music, to try to ignore the entire film part of it. The film should be embedded into every note, and something magical happens not only on-screen, but to ourselves as we listen and reflect.



I'm really not quite sure what you're arguing for here.

So yes, we have the Wagnerian ideal of the music-drama in which all the elements wholly and organically and inextricably combine into a unified whole.

But then, even Wagner would fail by this standard - witness, or instance, the Lohengrin Wedding Song in the hands of a church organist finding further ways to be meaningful. Or the Ride of the Valkyries in the hands of Francis Ford Coppola.

Similarly, iconic images from a film can find further contexts in which to be meaningful when divorced from the music and the original film context. Or lines of Dialogue, or design aesthetics, or lighting or anything else.

Of course, lots of bad music (ie music that is bad when listened to in isolation) might be made much more meaningful in the ambient context of a film.

But there's no reason to suggest that any individual elements of film can't transcend the original context. Just that they don't need to be good in context.

I'd even argue that the power of a film like Star Wars explicitly lies precisely in its ability to constantly connect its multitude of elements with ideas, feelings, experiences, in the world beyond the immediate context of the film. As all manor of elements connect to the larger cultural and individual contexts of meaning.

For instance, Princess Leia's hair was inspired by rebelling peasant women in the Mexican revolutions. And much the design aesthetic of the baddies alludes to Nazi aesthetics. The choice of accents (American = good, British = bad) evokes the American Revolution. And the Death Star ... well, quite uncomfortably, 1977 isn't all that long after the liberation of Auschwitz.

And the ability of audiences to connect all these elements to their own knowledge or experience is a part of the densely woven network of reference and homage, which extends to the storytelling and narrative, all of which collectively is what make Star Wars so accessible.


So we have all of these multitude of elements of film which, in the hands of a talented filmmaker, very much are designed not to create a unified self contained single entity, but rather trying to build a network of connections of all the multitude of the film's elements that can somehow connect to our lives.


And the depth of William's classical understanding is again important here. The SW score doesn't just reference Wagnerian leitmotif (shamlessly). It connects extensively to entires traditions of music, classical and filmic.

At times I hear, for instance, a kind of 1920s impressionistic sort-of-mayble-a-little-Debussy-esque quality that just, somehow, captures something of whatever it was that Debussy (and his contemporaries) discovered that music thus composed was - amazingly - capable of capturing a sense of in human ... longing... or unfiltered experience ... or something (Seriously don't ask me what. I have a book on Debussy on my desk waiting to be read ... perhaps I'll be able to find words for whatever this quality is after I read it. But whatever it is, it's there is Williams, and I bet a musicologist would be able to trace it to something in the general vicinity of Debussy without much difficulty. ITs this sense that also excites me in the spaces that BBCSO can go ... but lets not get into that here )


So here again I have to again side very, very strongly with re-peat. Film music doesn't need to transcend it's immediate context. But that it can is fundamentally built into the nature of music itself.


And it's not an accident that it's a composer like Williams with such depths of engagement in traditions of music beyond film music who is capable of writing cues able to continue to be meaningful in ways that go far beyond the original film, or anything that the film studio would every care about when hiring a composer.


Were he born 100 years earlier, I could entirely see him as a towering Verdi-like figure.


Were he born 20 or 30 years later, I fear that his commercial oeuvre in the style of the Gilligan's Island theme might have been what paid the bills.






jononotbono said:


> Maybe I just like Dinosaurs.



I'm totally with you on this one.


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## ism

VinRice said:


> @ism - I think those are the most insightful posts I have ever read on the nature of film music on this forum. Respect.




Thanks - but I'm really just riffing on stuff by writers a great deal more insightful than myself. 

Current reading this: 




Which is great!


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## jbuhler

ism said:


> But then, even Wagner would fail by this standard...


I'll take it further and state _Götterdämmerung_ is as bad and as much a narrative muddle (if I'm honest, more) as any finale of a Hollywood blockbuster franchise. Still lots of compelling music in it.


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## Dewdman42

Comparing JW to Wagner is humorous to me.

There is/was nothing particularly original or innovative about JW's work with regards to considering it without the picture. An awful lot of it was in fact very derivative. But JW was a storytelling genius who happened to be schooled and capable of applying advanced compositional and arranging skills related to the symphony orchestra...yes...a lot of it quite derivative in nature....but nearly always being quite perfectly and exactly what the picture needed. Not only needed, but contributed to the story telling process in a collaborative way.

Very very very gifted film score composer. IMHO, without the movies behind the scores, none of it ever would have been created and none of us would have ever heard his name. His true musical genius was specifically related to film scoring.

He has composed very memorable themes, which were highly influenced by the picture and even the way we perceive them is effected by the picture and story behind them. They never would have come to be without it. With JAWS for example, perhaps the most famous movie theme of all time, he set out to create a particular theme that enhanced the robotic, ancient, insistence on the shark pursuing and eating its prey. It is quite simply a perfect theme. Two notes. It is not classical composing genius of any kind. it is film scoring story telling genius and that is what JW was always about, regardless of whether he was writing something much more complex in other places. Yes he applies the craft perhaps as well as anyone, but something about his scores resonates with the story and characters behind them and it is a combined effort that made them magical.

Some of you that think he fell off a cliff in 1995 and stopped caring, as if you can read his mind, I think you should present us with specific examples of the films you think he stopped caring about. I am one of those people that think film making fell off a cliff around that time too.

I also happen to be of the opinion that film making hit a pinnacle in the 70's and 80's. After that, there have been very very few films that have hit my soul the ways those did. I watch them now and I think, wow there is some cheesy acting and hoaky effects in there compared to modern stuff, but the story telling is still just way ahead of what has come later for a variety of reasons. Too much attention is given now to action, special FX, constant violence. The heart and soul of real story telling about the human experience is missing in many of the films written since that time, and JJ Abrams is perhaps the worst of the bunch in my view. He definitely knows how to create an entertaining spectacle and visual feast to be sure, but I think of it more like an amusement park ride then film for the soul. JW knows how to reach into the soul, along with the story at hand. But how can he do that with JJ Abrams spectacle happening? That's why it does just sound like rambling notes devoid of the the soul of earlier works. Its a nice sentimental thing that Abrams let JW compose the final SW score, but he could have used anyone with equal effect, even samples would have been fine in my opinion, maybe better actually because trying to throw JW orchestral romanticism on it was disspointing and didn't fit the narrative.


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## ism

Dewdman42 said:


> IMHO, without the movies behind the scores, none of it ever would have been created and none of us would have ever heard his name. His true musical genius was specifically related to film scoring.



And Verdi is remembered for his operas and not his woodwind quintets. What's the problem?


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## jbuhler

When you recognize that these criticisms—amusement park ride, empty, derivative film making that rarely rises above pastiche—are the same ones that were hurled at the films of the 70s and 80s it gives you pause.


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## Dewdman42

well you know what they say about opinions and a holes.... everyone has one.


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## South Thames

> And Verdi is remembered for his operas and not his woodwind quintets. What's the problem?



The problem is that someone has been arguing that film has simply been a convenient if undeserving venue for Williams to expose a sudden 20-year burst of inspired genius, but is quite certain that the films themselves are of little or no consequence to this - he basically told us Williams could have scored the phone book and it would have been as good as Star Wars etc. This is clearly nonsense. The truth is that Williams' richest and most exceptional work has generally been for exceptional films (many of them sharing similar themes - fantasy, childhood, heroism etc that Williams has consistently responded to sympathetically) during an exceptional period in film history. And within the same period he's certainly written other film and concert scores which have not been exceptional in that same way. [1975 may have been the year of Jaws, but it was also the year of Thomas and the King  ]


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## re-peat

Some strange manoeuvres here, *Thames*. That you're twisting my words into something I never said, invent stuff I'm supposed to have said and ignore the things I actually said, ok, have it your way if you must, but you're also submitting as 'truth' statements which are every bit as much subjective perception as the viewpoint you dismiss as 'clearly nonsense'. You are obviously entitled to be of the opinion that "Superman", "The Fury", "Jaws II", "Temple Of Doom", "Dracula" and "Hook" — all of which contain many minutes of some of Williams' great music — are 'exceptional films', but The Truth it ain't.

*Dewd*, if I may: does music need to be innovative and original in order to qualify as great?

_


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## Dewdman42

I didn't say those words(that music has to be innovative and original to be "great"), so please don't put them in my mouth.


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## re-peat

I don't put anything in your mouth, I ask a question. Honestly.

_


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## Dewdman42

you are asking a generic question now or are we still talking about JW and the latest SW movie? In a generic sense, great music does not require the two words you are now quoting from me out of context. In JW case, his music is great specifically because of its association to the films. It is not even remotely comparable to Wagner and many other composers either when talking strictly about the music without the relation to the films. Sorry.


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## Alex Fraser

Saw RoS with the family this afternoon. Second viewing for me.

Hated it first time around. Less so the second as I was more willing to go along for the ride. My 6 year old continually exclaimed to his mother that he “saw that coming” at several points in the film. Perhaps that says all you need to know about the story.

Much preferred TLJ though which makes me “one of them..”
A


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## NoamL

TLJ's reputation will grow with time, if people remember these movies at all.


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## Alex Fraser

NoamL said:


> TLJ's reputation will grow with time, if people remember these movies at all.


Oh, agreed. I think its reputation is already growing with comparisons to the latest film.

BTW, I’d recommend a second viewing of RoS. It becomes an easier watch and is best viewed as a series of “random cool things that happen” strung together by a messy plot.

Leave brain, sense of logic etc in the cinema foyer. Remember coffee.


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## South Thames

> Truth it ain't.



Not that I'd go out to bat for anything on that list other than Superman (an exceptional and highly influential film, though not a perfect one by any means)...

But you've scornfully dismissed for one reason or another virtually every movie (whether scored by Williams or not) you've brought up so far. So why don't you tell us the name of a film which you are actually prepared to say that you like? You let us all know that Schindler's List didn't make the cut, grudgingly acknowledged ET to be a classic that wasn't for you. I'm truly intrigued to know what films you actually enjoy, if any?


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## ism

South Thames said:


> Not that I'd go out to bat for anything on that list other than Superman (an exceptional and highly influential film, though not a perfect one by any means)...
> 
> But you've scornfully dismissed for one reason or another virtually every movie (whether scored by Williams or not) you've brought up so far. So why don't you tell us the name of a film which you are actually prepared to say that you like? You let us all know that Schindler's List didn't make the cut, grudgingly acknowledged ET to be a classic that wasn't for you. I'm truly intrigued to know what films you actually enjoy, if any?



Kind of not the point though.


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## Gingerbread

I guess it would make sense to re-peat that the films couldn't have been the inspirational force behind the greatness of Williams's scores, given that re-peat doesn't like those films.

But that doesn't mean that _Williams_ didn't like those films, and wasn't inspired by them. If Williams was like the rest of the world, he _did_ like them. And very likely, was inspired by them.

I absolutely agree with re-peat that, with rare exception, Williams hasn't made a truly great score in decades--certainly not like the great scores of his first 20 years. Likely for a combination of reasons, including a lack of inspiration from the films themselves, laurel-resting, and the fog which comes from age.


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## Tice

I saw the movie just before Christmas, didn't want to listen to the soundtrack before seeing it. It was rather emotional to realize that this will be the last time Williams delves into Star Wars. His work remains a big inspiration to me, especially his work on this series. A grand master at work. I've spent a lot of time studying how the music has evolved since A New Hope. The change of venue, the changes in orchestration over time, the newer themes compared to the old ones... I can spend a life-time learning from these works.

Thank you, John Williams!


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## VinRice

ism said:


> Thanks - but I'm really just riffing on stuff by writers a great deal more insightful than myself.
> 
> Current reading this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which is great!




Ooh, haven't seen that one before. Sold. On the shoulders of giants etc...


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## jbuhler

NoamL said:


> TLJ's reputation will grow with time, if people remember these movies at all.


The PT is remembered. These films will be as well. At least as long as culturally we keep revisiting the OT. My guess is TLJ will have a long life as an orienting point for future development of the franchise outside the Skywalker saga.

I appear to be one of the few people who basically liked both TLJ and ROS. I liked TLJ better than ROS, but I liked ROS far better than ROTJ and I liked it better than Endgame (though it shared many of the flaws of both those films). Watching ROS a second time, I found both more things to like about it and more things to dislike. But on the whole it didn’t close off the messy openness of TLJ, which given the title was more than a distinct possibility so I chalk that up to the good (even if it seems a ridiculously low bar to clear). FWIW I remember being profoundly disappointed with ROTJ when it came out and the original epilogue to it was painful.


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## Alex Fraser

jbuhler said:


> FWIW I remember being profoundly disappointed with ROTJ when it came out and the original epilogue to it was painful.


Yub Nub.


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## dcoscina

re-peat said:


> I don’t go along with the argument that Williams used to write better music because he was handed better or more ‘important’ movies in those days. Looking at his filmography, one would almost be inclined to say the opposite is true.
> 
> Williams wrote his best music for some of the most ridiculous and flawed pictures ever made, and during much of his career, you could have given the man the most embarrassing turd of a movie and he would still have woven the most sublime music around it. During two blessed decades, nothing mattered to Williams but the music. His music. The force of his talent was simply too strong for any outside factor (a script, a director, a producer, …) to have any significant influence whatsoever on his music. He wrote phenomenally good pieces of music for scenes (and entire movies) that didn’t need it.
> 
> Seriously, how many truly great films did Williams ever score? I can’t think of all that many, to be honest. Not during the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s, and not now. But bad, small or average films never stopped Williams before (“Witches of Eastwick”, “1941”, “Spacecamp”, “Dracula”, “The Fury”, “Empire Of The Sun”, “Monsignor”, “Always”, …), so I see no reason why it should be an excuse today.
> 
> Let’s also not forget that when Williams signed on to do “Jaws”, nothing much indicated that that movie would become the mother-of-all-blockbusters it turned out to be. The lasting acclaim and classic status of “Jaws” is something attributed in hindsight, certainly not something Williams could have been aware of at the time he was busy writing the music. (At that moment, everything suggested that the troubled shark movie of a young, unknown upstart would turn out to be a quickly forgotten and, for its director, career-ruining debacle.)
> Besides, he also did “The Eiger Sanction”, “Towering Inferno”, “Black Sunday” and “Earthquake’ around the same time: pretty dreadful and forgettable films, all four of them. And all four them also containing music that is, at times, most remarkable. (“Black Sunday” especially.)
> 
> Or take “Superman”. Super example. As ghastly and cringeworthy a waste of celluloïd as you could ever imagine — surely, an insult to the intelligence and talent of everyone who worked on it — , and yet … wrapped in music of an inspiration, a creativity and a quality that, in its best moments, I easily rank alongside most anything written by some of the most revered composers in the past three centuries.
> 
> And even when he worked on the first “Star Wars”, again, all the signs pointed to the movie being another silly, forgettable B-movie that had no hope of any lasting success (or prestige for its creators) whatsoever. There’s no way that Williams could have known — nobody did — that they were working on what was to become the biggest, most successful, most iconic and most influential movie franchise in the history of cinema.
> 
> Why did all these movies get such astounding music then? There was no need to. Why? If it had been merely serviceable music, that would have been more than good enough — as the latest SW installments illustrate — and it would tell the industry that, no matter the circumstances, John T. Williams is a reliable, gifted and very skilled professional. A reputation most composers would have been, and still are, perfectly happy with.
> Not John T. Williams though. He gave those pictures much, much more than merely serviceable music. He gave them extra-ordinary music. And what’s all the more remarkable: music that he knew very few people would actually listen to (soundtracks weren't as big in the seventies and early eighties as they've become since), music that even fewer would grasp the unique quality of — even today, most people have no idea how very-very-very special some of Williams’ 70’s-80’s music actually is —, and music that would most likely disappear the moment the movie had ended its run. And yet he wrote it. Almost as if he owed it to himself.
> 
> There was a time when Williams was unstoppable. Score after score, he produced music of a stunning quality that neither the movie required him to write nor that anybody expected him to write. But he did it. Fully aware of his unique powers (one can’t be that exceptional and not know it), refusing to be hindered by anything as trivial as a laughable movie — or a good one, for that matter —, fully determined, without allowing anything or anyone to stand in his way, to write the best possible music he was able to write, no matter if it suited the cinematographic vehicle it was attached to or not. During those years, you could have given him the phonebook and he’d score it. And a very special score it would have been too.
> 
> So why did it change around 1995-2000? I don’t know. Whatever happened, some combination of factors reduced Williams’ volcanic fire into something more akin to a cozy fireplace, at times even a pilot flame. The technical mastery and unsurpassed skill remained as fabulous as before, but that freakish drive — both wholly selfish and amazingly generous at the same time — somehow disappeared from his work. Maybe the sheer intensity of that fire is also what caused it to dwindle when it did.
> 
> _


Superman for me is Williams’ Ring cycle compressed into a single score. It moves through so many styles and phases but always seems to play as a singular work with variations and development of his core ideas. For me, it’s infinitely more diverse than Star Wars except maybe Empire. But I’d still take Supes as a score over ESB. I listen to Superman a few times a month. I seldom listen to any SW scores.


----------



## dcoscina

re-peat said:


> Yes, there is, Guy, I don’t dispute that, but there’s too much evidence in Williams’ earlier work that show, at least to my ears, that 'magical storystelling' was only of secondary importance to him in those days, a distant second to what he, first and foremost, wanted to do musically. With a composer of Williams’ talent and skill, effective storytelling is an assumed given, a job relatively easily accomplished — praising him for something so obvious as the fact that his music fits and enhances a story, or perfectly evokes a character, is doing him and his music a very grave injustice, I’ve always felt —, it’s only past that point where things become really interesting, I find. As the music, and nothing but the music, time and again, indubitably proves.
> 
> You don’t write “One Barrel Chase” the way he wrote it if storytelling is all you care about. You don’t write “Chasing Rockets”, “Superfeats” or “March Of The Villains” (as glorious but ill-fitting a piece of music as ever made it into a movie) if the movie is the music’s only raison d’etre. The quality of that music simply contradicts it.
> 
> And Williams’ 75-95 music is littered with such cues: music which, from its first bar to the last, completely refutes the romantic notion that “every note is there because of that story, that world, those characters”.
> 
> Beyond being a mere circumstantial trigger, the story has nothing to do with what notes are part of “Sea Attack Number One” or “The Asteroïd Field”. Nor have the characters from “The Fury” have had any real influence on the musical perfection that is “For Gillian”.
> 
> There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the fact that “The Arrival Of Tink And Flight To Neverland” enhances “Hook” the way it does. Any skilled composer of some substance could have accomplished something similar. What is so truly astounding about that musical sequence — and this has again nothing whatsoever to do with the movie —, is the mindblowing musical quality of it. A quality that far transcends the music’s function or storytelling requirements.
> 
> See, I don’t think it is me that’s missing the music’s heart and soul by isolating it from the purpose or context it was written for, I strongly feel. Quite the contrary, in fact. It’s by keeping this music confined to its subservient storytelling role that you miss out on just about everything that makes it so intrinsically musical sublime. To me, the heart and soul of great music is music. And nothing but music.
> 
> _


I like Williams’ nod to Stravinsky’s Firebird on Arrival of Tink especially considering Robin Williams refers to her as a “firefly from hell” and the subtext is about his impending re birth as Peter Pan.


----------



## Guy Rowland

ism said:


> So we have all of these multitude of elements of film which, in the hands of a talented filmmaker, very much are designed not to create a unified self contained single entity, but rather trying to build a network of connections of all the multitude of the film's elements that can somehow connect to our lives.



This is true only to a point, because it leaves out one inescapable fact - every one of these elements was specifically designed to work as part of that whole. The director doesn't just get given a bag of tasty bits, each of those parts were moulded specifically for that purpose.

Of course they can then work outside this, maybe on occasion even more successfully, but it is a perilous thing to do. I'm still not over the shock of hearing John Powell's climactic cue from United 93 ripped off by the film's director and slapped over the end of Captain Philips. Sure, on one level it worked I guess, I doubt most filmgoers noticed anything amiss. For me, that soul of the movie simply collapsed the moment I heard it. The emotion and intensity that was written for one specific purpose suddenly plastered over a film where the original composer had nothing to do with it was just awful to me. Maybe I'm in a minority here, but to me that's very different to using a piece of commercial or concert music, which never had a purpose other than itself being re-imagined.

Granted, these are personal things. That score to United 93 is something I'd lived with for years, marvelling at its simplicity yet how perfectly it captured the soul of that movie which was an extraordinary testimony to the lives of so many good and brave people. When I first watched it, I came out not even knowing it was scored at all, I was so immersed in the film I didn't think about any of that, this is high praise incidentally. Grenngrass' trick seemed like a betrayal of the composer / director bond to me, even if Powell shrugged and gladly took the cheque. Greengrass' sin was then exacerbated by then ripping off Hans Zimmer's Time and I left with my respect for him greatly diminished.

Film music is unique, and its that uniqueness that I love. With someone such as JW who really does score to picture, I feel it most keenly, how the narrative of the film imposes its shape on the score. The best film composers embrace this and do not resent it trampling over their unconfined brilliance. It is these very aspects that I love, and why I react so viscerally to casually sweeping them aside from those preferring to focus on their standalone musical merits alone, as if the original purpose is a triviality not worthy of a real composer's consideration.


----------



## South Thames

> Kind of not the point though..



It's absolutely the point. Somebody who holds most films of the era in question in something approaching contempt (not an unfair reading of Re-peat's posts on this thread) is really not going to be the best judge of to what extent the composer has responded to the film.

Superman is a case in point. Not a perfect film by any means, but if anyone can't see the obvious connection between the ambition and scale of that enterprise, combined with its deep respect for, as it were, the 'mythology' of Superman, and the incredible score that Williams in response, then there's no helping them.



> I'm still not over the shock of hearing John Powell's climactic cue from United 93 ripped off by the film's director and slapped over the end of Captain Philips. Sure, on one level it worked I guess, I doubt most filmgoers noticed anything amiss. For me, that soul of the movie simply collapsed the moment I heard it.



I certainly noticed, and, as you say, if one cares at all about such things, it's pretty ruinous. 'The End' I always thought was an uncommonly well-judged piece of scoring, in a situation that could have so easily have gone too far. I felt almost as though Greengrass was trying too hard for an equivalency between the climaxes of the two films.


----------



## Guy Rowland

South Thames said:


> I felt almost as though Greengrass was trying too hard for an equivalency between the climaxes of the two films.



That's quite a gracious thought. I figured he just went "that music worked great on the last one, lets do it again".


----------



## re-peat

South Thames said:


> (...) Somebody who holds most films of the era in question in something approaching contempt (not an unfair reading of Re-peat's posts on this thread) (...)



Irksomely unfair reading of my posts is something of a speciality of yours, it would seem, Thames. Three times in a row you’ve done it now. (And I’m sure a fourth will follow.) Where did I say, or even suggest, that I hold ‘most films of the era' in something approaching contempt? I said I didn’t particularly like most of the films that Williams has written music for, yes. I also said that his filmography includes several which I enjoy watching every few years or so. And while not my kind of films, I do recognize — and not ‘grudgingly’, as you suggest — the excellence of "E.T.", "Raiders" and "Jaws I".

Quite annoying discussing with you if you keep inventing things I never said, or assume to know how I said what I said. Why do you do that?

As for “Superman”: it’s not because I have a very low opinion of that movie — as most people of robust mental health do, you’ll find — that I’m ignorant about the ‘mythology’ (if you wanna use that word) behind the story and how it has influenced some of the music. Yes, I hear that Williams refers indirectly, by way of nodding interval-wise to Richard Strauss’ “Zarathustra”, to Friedrich Nietzsche, where the ‘Superman’ idea stems from. (People who don’t know that, are quick to accuse the composer of plagiarism.) So much for me not 'seeing the obvious connection’ between movie and music. And what more help do I need, do tell me, before I’m allowed to give my opinion on the music?

Why should my dislike for “The Witches Of Eastwick”, the movie, disqualify me from fully appreciating the lovely composition that is “The Seduction Of Suki & Ballroom Scene”. Answer me that please.
Or why can’t I have an opinion, according to you anyway, on the many musical qualities of “The Land Race” when I don’t like the movie (“Far And Away”) it was written for. Please, explain.

And as I said before: I don’t care about how John Williams or any other composer ‘responds to the film’. I’ll tell you why: because I don’t find that interesting in the least. I find it soooo obvious that any self-respecting composer, especially one of Williams' rare powers, responds fittingly to the specific challenges presented by movie/story/character, that I consider it almost insulting to single it out as an accomplishment. Of course Williams' music will serve the picture like few other music can. So what? I never considered that in any way remarkable, given the man's dedication, talent and skill.

What I’m interested in, is what a composer does during the time when he or she sits behind his/her desk or piano and works. That "E.T." triggered Williams into writing some of his finest music, is of no interest to me (other than that I’m extremely grateful for it), but that that music, on its own, is as good as it is — and again: I’m exclusively using purely musical, non-contextual parameters to determine this (for myself) —, is of a personal importance and musical satisfaction I can’t begin to describe.

Why is that such a problem?

_


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## ism

Dewdman42 said:


> Comparing JW to Wagner is humorous to me.



You're missing the point - it's not about comparing Williams and Wagner note for note score for score harmonic innovation for harmonic innovation.


The impact of Wagner was in his development of the "music-drama" - the fusion of elements beyond the traditional Bel Canto tradition where Opera = unimportant story + nice songs. 

I don't think it's at all a stretch to compare the cultural moment of innovation in music and storytelling that reached its height in late 19th century opera (before becoming all but lost in elitism and class in the 20th century) and the cultural moment that emerges in film making with post-Gilligan's Island Williams. So think of the comparison in terms of cultural impact.





South Thames said:


> Superman is a case in point. Not a perfect film by any means, but if anyone can't see the obvious connection between the ambition and scale of that enterprise, combined with its deep respect for, as it were, the 'mythology' of Superman, and the incredible score that Williams in response, then there's no helping them.



You do make an important point about the important of the grounding of the music in the medium of film, not unrelated to the objection of comparing Williams to Wagner. But this, I feel, also misses something fundamental.

Consider this famous Aria in Rigoletto



There's brilliant counterpoint here, but it's not the counterpoint of Bach.

Its the Duke's tenor - singing smugly about his conquests. And the innocent Gilda in the soprano. And the incandescent Rigoletto (fresh off his own "Vile and Damnable race of Courtiers" aria ) and so on. (In Othello he has a nonet - 9 parts of dramatic counterpoint, although at this point I have to think he's just showing off).

And it's this *dramatic* counterpoint that Verdi is the master of, that comes to music through the medium of opera. Not that you need to hear it in an opera. Not only is it's entirely possible to be an Italian peasant enjoying this Aria in beerhalls without caring about what's going on in the Opera houses of Milan, but even without understanding the libretto, you can *feel* the narrative dramatic counterpoint.

You could probably even arrange for this effective where Rigoletto becomes a bassoon, Gilda a flute etc and still keep virtual all of that sense of dramatic, narrative counterpoint. But it's not something that Bach or Mozart would ever have done. The medium of music of their era simply didn't possess that structural possibility. And this is the gift of Verdi and Wagner and their contemporaries to music, even if you don't like opera.


So the analogy I want to draw here - to support the (surprisingly controversial) contention that film music can transcend bad films (or films that simply aren't to our taste) - is that, just as the specifically *narrative* nature of the medium of opera point gives rise to this notion of dramatic counter point that continues to function in music beyond the original operatic context, so too the nature of film gives rise to innovations that enter the world of music, beyond the specific context of individual films. Good or bad. And in fact, the medium of film, like opera before it, has proven to be capable of transforming music itself.


Dramatic counterpoint in opera is one example. Leitmotif would be another - the dramatic counterpoint of interacting themes and leitmotifs is probably a more directly example of dramatic counterpoint at work Williams.


But the visual nature of film also gives music a further dimension of dramatic contrapuntal function - for instance, when character looks fine on the outside, but the music suggests inner turmoil or elation. This convention of dramatic counterpoint of music and visual in film, well its one of the most important functions of film music. But beyond individual films, it gives us new ways to understand music, even when we're not watching a film.


Another example might be connection with impressionism. The image of the binary sunset, for instance, would make quite a nice Monet painting. And in some of the SW underscore, I feel (but lack the knowledge to formalize) an Debussy-esque impressionistic influence in the score. And the impressionistic painters, as well as the larges debate of realism and representation and the nature human subjectivity going in literature and philosophy at the time, were an influence on the likes of Debussy. Who becomes an influence of the likes of Williams.


Something as simple as the ubiquitous convention of adding a certain type of texture to a simple underscore question of a certain type of image in film gives us, I would argue, new ways to listen to music itself.


I'd further argue that a lot of the present neo-classical music - Richter, Arnalds etc, is bringing some of these modes of listening to concert music.

For instance, from the experience of being immersed in film music, an audience in 2019 can bring to a concert work various modes of listening and interpretation that an audience in 1970 probably couldn't.

I suspect Olafur Arnalds would have been laughed out of the Royal Albert Hall if this was 1970. Part of this is that the vocabulary of minimalist (ie Part et al) wasn't yet established. But part of it is also that our immersion in film and media music has creating new modes of listening and interpretation in which the textures of Arnalds make sense in a way they wouldn't have in 1970. I fell like there's almost a kind of implicit visual impressionism to this.

100 years ago, For Debussy to be able to evoke a visual of "La Mer" via his innovations in harmony and sense of the impressionistic drew on a great deal of cultural context. And I'd draw a direct parallel with just how much Olafur Arnalds is able to evoke with an extremely simple cello line in 2019 - something about the mere possibility of this music rests on our ambient vocabulary of film music.


So the contention that a Williams score can't be understood outside of the (often kind of dumb) films that they arise from ... is true. But not quite as literally as is being argued here.

Superman, for instance, isn't a film I would particularly want to have to sit through again (although I did like it as a kid). And I particularly don't want to have to care about the superhero mythology in order to appreciate the music. Especially in the wake of all these Marvel moves which all seem to blur into a single homogenous mush, musically dramatically, visually.


And yet I can still listen to the Superman music, with an understand that it's counterpoint is more narrative and dramatic than Bach. That it works to invoke a certain kind of visual ethos, more like Debussy the Beethoven. And that it evokes theme of the kind of visceral human emotion that film is typically better at evoking than the chamber music of Mozart's.


----------



## Dewdman42

I was watching mike Verta’s live stream yesterday. I don’t know if it’s still on you tube or not. It’s at least four hours long. But anyway about halfway through he had one of his little mini rants where he declared that there is NO WAY that JW wrote most of the score for ROS.

hehe I found it humorous considering this discussion was happening at the same time. Mike Verta has studied JW music intensely for 40 years. Not to say that he is right about everything but he has a good sense about what JW does, how and why he does it. His opinion was that ROS music was so far removed from structure that he would expect in a JW filmscore, that he just thinks it wasn’t JW. He didn’t spend a lot of time on the topic but his cynicism about the ROS score was clear.

he also made the point that even at his age he didn’t think JW would forget how to use the structures he has been using for 40+ years, which he felt were missing entirely from ROS.


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## Dewdman42

Mike also made some other interesting points about how the older JW work was more complex then later works but he said in his view that is because JW became more efficient at conveying the emotional aspects of the story with less long winded musicality.


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## Alex Fraser

Dewdman42 said:


> I was watching mike Verta’s live stream yesterday. I don’t know if it’s still on you tube or not. It’s at least four hours long. But anyway about halfway through he had one of his little mini rants where he declared that there is NO WAY that JW wrote most of the score for ROS.
> 
> hehe I found it humorous considering this discussion was happening at the same time. Mike Verta has studied JW music intensely for 40 years. Not to say that he is right about everything but he has a good sense about what JW does, how and why he does it. His opinion was that ROS music was so far removed from structure that he would expect in a JW filmscore, that he just thinks it wasn’t JW. He didn’t spend a lot of time on the topic but his cynicism about the ROS score was clear.
> 
> he also made the point that even at his age he didn’t think JW would forget how to use the structures he has been using for 40+ years, which he felt were missing entirely from ROS.


Probably worth mentioning that the Force Awakens score was split, chopped and moved around with the final edit. So it’s not a guarantee that music underpins the same footage that JW wrote to.


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## Henu

As a bit off-topic, how old is Mike Verta, really? I've been under the impression he's born in the early 70´s, making him about 47-49 years old. But people talking about "even at his age", and him having been studied Williams' music "for 40 years" doesn't match that at all. So, either Mike is miraculously well-preserved 60- year old guy or a child prodigy who started his career when being way under ten years old. :D


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## Dewdman42

Mike said in the live stream that he has been studying JW for 40 years. I have no idea how old he is or whether he was exaggerating. But I’d put him at over 50.


----------



## NoamL

jbuhler said:


> The PT is remembered. These films will be as well. At least as long as culturally we keep revisiting the OT. My guess is TLJ will have a long life as an orienting point for future development of the franchise outside the Skywalker saga.
> 
> I appear to be one of the few people who basically liked both TLJ and ROS. I liked TLJ better than ROS, but I liked ROS far better than ROTJ and I liked it better than Endgame (though it shared many of the flaws of both those films). Watching ROS a second time, I found both more things to like about it and more things to dislike. But on the whole it didn’t close off the messy openness of TLJ, which given the title was more than a distinct possibility so I chalk that up to the good (even if it seems a ridiculously low bar to clear). FWIW I remember being profoundly disappointed with ROTJ when it came out and the original epilogue to it was painful.



yep, I'm just barely old enough to remember when "ROTJ was the bad one." Then the prequels came out... 

TFA and ROS, I doubt if they will be remembered. People already don't talk about, for instance, Star Trek Into Darkness. If these films are remembered it will be as products of their time the same way people think of Point Break or True Romance as "Nineties movies."

ROS especially will be considered a "2010s movie" because of the way it tries to get an "Iron Man Laugh" out of the audience every ten minutes. I cannot believe that films will keep on being like this for the rest of my life. All the 4th-wall-leaning jokes like "They fly now!" - they pop the bubble of any serious drama or danger, and undercut the authenticity of any real emotional engagement to the film. 

This self mocking writing style, of pointing out constantly that you're watching a movie and that the people in the movie are characters - this insincerity is just sincerity with an agenda. What it reminds me of is that Old Spice ad that exists to point out how ridiculous commercials are:



Sure it's funny, but at the end they're still selling the product. The film wants you to buy in but only on the basis of a cynical, critical detachment that lets you think you're smarter than the film. That may be the measure of our current cultural moment - nobody reviews a film saying what THEY felt or thought about it, they always review films on whether or not they will "connect with an audience," but nobody says they're part of the audience - but that state of things can't continue forever, can it? Eventually REAL sincerity will come back into film and then these 2010 movies will be fucking grating chores to watch.


----------



## Gingerbread

Verta is about 48. In one of his classes, "On Horner", he describes how he began analyzing Williams's music at around 10 years old, on his own. Not in a formal academic setting, but just listening and breaking it down on the piano. So, that's the context of his "studying Williams for 40 years".


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## purple

Fillms:
S tier: 4, 5
A tier: 6
B tier: 8, 3
C tier: 1
D tier: Rogue 1, Solo, 9, 7
F tier: 2

Music:
S tier: 4, 5, 6, 3, 1, 2
A tier: 8, 7
B tier: 9
C tier: Rogue 1
D tier: Solo
F tier:


----------



## jbuhler

NoamL said:


> yep, I'm just barely old enough to remember when "ROTJ was the bad one." Then the prequels came out...
> 
> TFA and ROS, I doubt if they will be remembered. People already don't talk about, for instance, Star Trek Into Darkness. If these films are remembered it will be as products of their time the same way people think of Point Break or True Romance as "Nineties movies."
> 
> ROS especially will be considered a "2010s movie" because of the way it tries to get an "Iron Man Laugh" out of the audience every ten minutes. I cannot believe that films will keep on being like this for the rest of my life. All the 4th-wall-leaning jokes like "They fly now!" - they pop the bubble of any serious drama or danger, and undercut the authenticity of any real emotional engagement to the film.
> 
> This self mocking writing style, of pointing out constantly that you're watching a movie and that the people in the movie are characters - this insincerity is just sincerity with an agenda. What it reminds me of is that Old Spice ad that exists to point out how ridiculous commercials are:
> 
> 
> 
> Sure it's funny, but at the end they're still selling the product. The film wants you to buy in but only on the basis of a cynical, critical detachment that lets you think you're smarter than the film. That may be the measure of our current cultural moment - nobody reviews a film saying what THEY felt or thought about it, they always review films on whether or not they will "connect with an audience," but nobody says they're part of the audience - but that state of things can't continue forever, can it? Eventually REAL sincerity will come back into film and then these 2010 movies will be fucking grating chores to watch.




The appeal of Star Trek is not that of SW. That’s why we even still talk about the PT. The Marvel stuff is closer but they made many choices that mean those films will likely not have extended shelf lives, even though I think many of them made very fun cinema and a couple of them are even decent films.

The next SW film will be revealing. And it will be interesting to see if culturally we still care about this myth.


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## Alex Fraser

jbuhler said:


> The next SW film will be revealing. And it will be interesting to see if culturally we still care about this myth.


Absolutely. I think that SW will get better. As much as I’ve enjoyed the OG cast being around for the new films, they’ve brought a lot of “baggage” and with that, the need to reference the films that came before. 

With a clean sheet, SW can move on. But the bigger question is: Who is it for? Whilst _I_ could see the cracks and broken logic throughout RoS, my kids, with their short attention spans and innocence, thought it was the best Star Wars ever.


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## Dewdman42

Here's Mike Verta's comment about ROS:


----------



## jbuhler

Alex Fraser said:


> Absolutely. I think that SW will get better. As much as I’ve enjoyed the OG cast being around for the new films, they’ve brought a lot of “baggage” and with that, the need to reference the films that came before.
> 
> With a clean sheet, SW can move on. But the bigger question is: Who is it for? Whilst _I_ could see the cracks and broken logic throughout RoS, my kids, with their short attention spans and innocence, thought it was the best Star Wars ever.


SW was never culturally innocent or the adolescent film it presented itself as being, even if it proved it could sell toys and other ancillary merchandise like few other films. But the Cold War allegory the OT encoded was hardly subtle and there was a reason Reagan named his missile defense system after the films. Even so, the political commitments of the films and of the underlying myth are not especially clear, and this underdetermination is part of its power and likely one reason so much culturally has been staked on the films and the reception of both the PT and ST has been so contentious.


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## NoamL

purple said:


> Fillms:
> S tier: 4, 5
> A tier: 6
> B tier: 8, 3
> C tier: 1
> D tier: Rogue 1, Solo, 9, 7
> F tier: 2
> 
> Music:
> S tier: 4, 5, 6, 3, 1, 2
> A tier: 8, 7
> B tier: 9
> C tier: Rogue 1
> D tier: Solo
> F tier:



Very agreed



Alex Fraser said:


> Absolutely. I think that SW will get better. As much as I’ve enjoyed the OG cast being around for the new films, they’ve brought a lot of “baggage” and with that, the need to reference the films that came before.
> 
> With a clean sheet, SW can move on. But the bigger question is: Who is it for? Whilst _I_ could see the cracks and broken logic throughout RoS, my kids, with their short attention spans and innocence, thought it was the best Star Wars ever.



I almost feel the opposite. Star Wars isn't a cinematic setting, it's a film saga. Maybe that's why people are re-appraising the prequels recently. They may be much worse films than the sequels, but the prequels clearly intend to enrich and extend the saga. The sequels are trying to be Marvel movies, film-length TV episodes in an endless "setting" pointed nowhere in particular but culminating every so often in a "season finale."

I saw lots of comments on ROS that say a certain plot twist "undoes Vader's sacrifice." Of course just having TFA completely undoes the end of ROTJ. It doesn't build on ROTJ in any way, it resets the universe back to the Empire vs Rebels status quo with all of the original Mandatory Star Wars Stuff in play (lightsabers, orphans, etc) except now the original characters are wandering around the set as senior citizens.

The saga ends with Vader's pyre. Everything after that, whether created by Disney or Timothy Zahn or whoever, is fanfiction.


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## NoamL

jbuhler said:


> SW was never culturally innocent or the adolescent film it presented itself as being, even if it proved it could sell toys and other ancillary merchandise like few other films. But the Cold War allegory the OT encoded was hardly subtle and there was a reason Reagan named his missile defense system after the films. Even so, the political commitments of the films and of the underlying myth are not especially clear, and this underdetermination is part of its power and likely one reason so much culturally has been staked on the films and the reception of both the PT and ST has been so contentious.



Rather than politics I think a better lens to view it through is religion. It's the first film series that had fans literally arguing what is and isn't "canon." It's the first film series where information about the universe was scattered across media and a series of books explaining plot holes from the film (fulfilling the function of apologetics). "Jedi" is by far the largest fictional religion that people choose to identify in censuses. A fictional religion features in the film itself. And above all, when people argue about why they hate this or that piece of Star Wars fiction, they say it "ruined the Force" or "character assassination of Luke Skywalker" or something like that, where they clearly are positioning the mythos of the film as extrinsic to the movies! They treat the characters and The Force as things which exist apart from their appearances in a series of films. 

If a film doesn't "faithfully" represent Luke Skywalker, it's treated as LITERAL HERESY by the fans. The whole thing is basically just a big escapist film-religion.


----------



## Alex Fraser

NoamL said:


> The saga ends with Vader's pyre. Everything after that, whether created by Disney or Timothy Zahn or whoever, is fanfiction.


Yep, 1-6 form a cohesive story at least: The rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker. 7-9 feel like an extended epilogue to me. For the record, I always liked the prequels. Judge away.. 

The issue with the saga films is (like the Avengers) they deal with the "top line" - the fate of all life/the galaxy/time/everything is under threat. There's nowhere to go from there. Perhaps the future of the franchise is telling the "smaller" stories. Like the Mandolorian.

Under the right guidance (rumoured to be Rian Johnson) and set far enough away from the established saga, there's room for the franchise to grow. It's a tricky needle to thread though. Lucasfilm will find a way. There's too much money invested.


----------



## Loïc D

NoamL said:


> ROS especially will be considered a "2010s movie" because of the way it tries to get an "Iron Man Laugh" out of the audience every ten minutes.


This !
I can't stand these forced comedy elements every 10 minutes that are disconnected to the story and utterly distractive.


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## Guy Rowland

LowweeK said:


> This !
> I can't stand these forced comedy elements every 10 minutes that are disconnected to the story and utterly distractive.



There were only a couple of moments that jarred for me, I think this is being way overplayed. Goofy humour has always been integral to Star Wars movies, and I found tonally no9 was pretty much spot on. No8 was much more daring there, and I very much enjoyed that aspect, one of the strongest of the movie, though I know many others didn't like it. That droid hacker puppet in no9 was belly laugh stuff to me, felt very much part of the SW universe.

Yes it is like a religion to many and it perplexes me. Star Wars turned my world upside down when I was 10, I lived and breathed it, yet even back then I never saw it in that odd, intensely puritan way. Rather than dwell on all the lore, I was always fascinated by how they did it, especially the visual effects and sound. Of course internal consistency of narrative is important, but it's never been very good at that. Luke and Leia's kiss in A New Hope? Good God. I damn near threw up on the subsequent revelation that Luke and Leia were siblings, then figured "oh well, gotta go with it I guess". They've always been making it up as they go along. 

This is why I considered Rogue One the single genuine betrayal in the Star Wars universe. Ever since good-if-flawed Empire Strikes Back, the man-babies have been longing for this version of Star Wars with the humour stripped out, the plot complexity bumped up, the kids in the audience excluded and the darkness embraced. I don't want that from Star Wars, and never will. It's about thrill, simple myths, comedy, good guys and bad guys action - a big ol' space romp. In Rogue One the Rebel Alliance were no better or worse morally than the Empire, it seemed to me. Screw that - give me-sa Jar Jar Binks over that.

And this revisionist tosh about the Prequels. They were - and are - terrible movies. Terrible scripts, terrible structure, terrible acting due to terrible direction. They contain some of the best thematic ideas of them all, but it doesn't matter one jot. Good intentions doth not maketh good movies. They are not betrayals, it is just clumsy wrong-headed execution on an epic scale. Phantom Menace is the only one with any non-technical merit at all, and that's pretty much entirely contained in the pod-race and sabre duel. The rest of the two hours is pretty much bilge.


----------



## ism

NoamL said:


> Rather than politics I think a better lens to view it through is religion. It's the first film series that had fans literally arguing what is and isn't "canon." It's the first film series where information about the universe was scattered across media and a series of books explaining plot holes from the film (fulfilling the function of apologetics). "Jedi" is by far the largest fictional religion that people choose to identify in censuses. A fictional religion features in the film itself. And above all, when people argue about why they hate this or that piece of Star Wars fiction, they say it "ruined the Force" or "character assassination of Luke Skywalker" or something like that, where they clearly are positioning the mythos of the film as extrinsic to the movies! They treat the characters and The Force as things which exist apart from their appearances in a series of films.
> 
> If a film doesn't "faithfully" represent Luke Skywalker, it's treated as LITERAL HERESY by the fans. The whole thing is basically just a big escapist film-religion.



There's a (postcolonial) politics to the way SW appropriates eastern religion also.

The "Jedi" religion as reported by westerners on census is a probably more a form of western postmodern irony that probably has little or nothing do with the actual cultural and religion that the film appropriates in telling it's tale of magic space wizards.

The "ruined the force" critique of the PT is Lucas seemingly failing to understand how the mysticism of the OT actually functioned. Reducing his pseudo-eastern-mystical magic space wizards to pseudo-scientific-mitichlorian-powered space wizards seems a dubious narrative choice at best. But it reflects more on western disenchantment via scientific reductionism that anything related to actual religion.

So it's politics all the way down.


----------



## jbuhler

NoamL said:


> Very agreed
> 
> 
> 
> I almost feel the opposite. Star Wars isn't a cinematic setting, it's a film saga. Maybe that's why people are re-appraising the prequels recently. They may be much worse films than the sequels, but the prequels clearly intend to enrich and extend the saga. The sequels are trying to be Marvel movies, film-length TV episodes in an endless "setting" pointed nowhere in particular but culminating every so often in a "season finale."
> 
> I saw lots of comments on ROS that say a certain plot twist "undoes Vader's sacrifice." Of course just having TFA completely undoes the end of ROTJ. It doesn't build on ROTJ in any way, it resets the universe back to the Empire vs Rebels status quo with all of the original Mandatory Star Wars Stuff in play (lightsabers, orphans, etc) except now the original characters are wandering around the set as senior citizens.
> 
> The saga ends with Vader's pyre. Everything after that, whether created by Disney or Timothy Zahn or whoever, is fanfiction.


There’s a lot of truth to this, especially the televisual aspect of the indefinite series. But I don’t think indefinite series is at odds with mythic storytelling and there are many more or less successful series that have accomplished it aside from falling apart when it came to ending the series. (Closure is hard and even more challenging when content is mythically charged and the very structure of the show has been defined by its perpetual deferral.) 

I do think the new trilogy built on RotJ and even more on the failures of the prequel trilogy. I indeed take that to be its very premise: It grapples with the failure to change the world. The world is again in disarray, old demons we thought were dispatched have returned. This is not lazy filmmaking; it’s an allegory of our world, just as the original was an allegory of its world. Characteristic of SW since the first film it is a deeply confused allegory, but that too is part of its fascination.

Let me add that I think one reason the prequels are getting more attention today is that the kernel of their idea has proved quite prescient about our current situation. And though at one level the new trilogy is all about putting the prequels to rest, at another the new trilogy has helped me at least discover the powerful kernel at the heart of the prequels, that has indeed stirred them more than put them to rest.


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## handz

Oh no, the movie debate is still going strong here? One really can escape this on the Internet currently. After the absolute disaster, TRoS is I did a crazy thing - watched TLJ again, while still being far from good, it is definitely better than TRoS. The way it treats Luke is bad and the Rose character paired with Finn is like billion Jar Jars combined, but it not rip of scenes from any previous movies and does not completely ruin everything that happened in older movies. I actually call it the best from the new trilogy.


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## robgb

Some blasphemy here: I've never particularly liked the Star Wars score. I much prefer other Williams scores.


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## robgb

handz said:


> watched TLJ again, while still being far from good, it is definitely better than TRoS.


My profession is writing fiction. Have made my living at it for decades. While I will not try to negate anyone's experience—you like what you like—I can tell you, hands down, that from a storytelling POV, The Last Jedi is not only a terrible movie, it is an affront to writers everywhere who believe that characters, structure, and, most importantly, story logic are of fundamental importance. The Last Jedi was a meandering, empty, ridiculous piece of excrement that used convenient and woefully weak plot devices to further its storyline.

This surprised me because Rian Johnson is usually a good writer and filmmaker. Unfortunately, with LJ he screwed the pooch.

I have not yet seen the new one. But I can't imagine it could be worse than The Last Jedi.


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## ism

robgb said:


> My profession is writing fiction. Have made my living at it for decades. While I will not try to negate anyone's experience—you like what you like—I can tell you, hands down, that from a storytelling POV, The Last Jedi is not only a terrible movie, it is an affront to writers everywhere who believe that characters, structure, and, most importantly, story logic is of fundamental importance. The Last Jedi was a meandering, empty, ridiculous piece of excrement that used convenient and woefully weak plot devices to further its storyline.
> 
> This surprised me because Rian Johnson is usually a good writer and filmmaker. Unfortunately, with LJ he screwed the pooch.
> 
> I have not yet seen the new one. But I can't imagine it could be worse than The Last Jedi.



I really didn't hate it. Bits of it were really fun. But it did feel a like fragments of scripts from several tv episodes, each very different in tone, frankensteined together.

I especially thought that the bit with the kids was designed as a pilot for a future Disney channel property. Which would have been more fun that the "I'm Batman" ethos of that new Disney property. But it was tonally all over the place. Only the score gave it any sense of unity at all.


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## Dewdman42

I actually like RoS more then TLJ, just barely; which isn’t saying much because I literally hated TLJ along with the entire disney franchise for doing it.

It’s pretty clear that Disney heard the complaints about TLJ’s sacrilege and attempted to soften the blow if not correct some of it in RoS. The storytelling is not any better in ROS though, if anything their intent to correct things led to bad story writing in its own way. But really it’s just dreadfully boring.



Spoiler: click here for spoiler



Nobody gives a rip about Rey Palpatine. In three consecutive movies she made absolutely no journey of the soul And accomplished nothing other then burying Anakin’s god forsaken lightsaber in the end, even though it was just used to finally destroy Emperor Palpatine once and for all, we hope.

Emperor palpatine was just as engaging as he was 30 years ago! That was the highlight of the movie for me. They should have used him sooner rather then trying to throw out this last minute plot-twist-game-save right before ending it all


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## Gingerbread

ism said:


> The "ruined the force" critique of the PT is Lucas seemingly failing to understand how the mysticism of the OT actually functioned. Reducing his pseudo-eastern-mystical magic space wizards to pseudo-scientific-mitichlorian-powered space wizards seems a dubious narrative choice at best. But it reflects more on western disenchantment via scientific reductionism that anything related to actual religion.



I heard from a source "in the know" that Lucas's choice to downgrade the Force to biological midichlorians was a deliberate result of his concern that he had inadvertently created a religion that some were now professing to actually follow. Being a secularist, he was concerned that he'd created a monster, and sought to squelch it by removing all the mysticism from it.

Not sure if I believe that, but the person who told me was in a position to know.


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## gussunkri

Gingerbread said:


> I heard from a source "in the know" that Lucas's choice to downgrade the Force to biological midichlorians was a deliberate result of his concern that he had inadvertently created a religion that some were now professing to actually follow. Being a secularist, he was concerned that he'd created a monster, and sought to squelch it by removing all the mysticism from it.
> 
> Not sure if I believe that, but the person who told me was in a position to know.


I heard that the midichlorians and whills were both part of his early sketches for the first film, but they didn’t make the cut.


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## Tanuj Tiku

re-peat said:


> Yes, there is, Guy, I don’t dispute that, but there’s too much evidence in Williams’ earlier work that show, at least to my ears, that 'magical storystelling' was only of secondary importance to him in those days, a distant second to what he, first and foremost, wanted to do musically. With a composer of Williams’ talent and skill, effective storytelling is an assumed given, a job relatively easily accomplished — praising him for something so obvious as the fact that his music fits and enhances a story, or perfectly evokes a character, is doing him and his music a very grave injustice, I’ve always felt —, it’s only past that point where things become really interesting, I find. As the music, and nothing but the music, time and again, indubitably proves.
> 
> You don’t write “One Barrel Chase” the way he wrote it if storytelling is all you care about. You don’t write “Chasing Rockets”, “Superfeats” or “March Of The Villains” (as glorious but ill-fitting a piece of music as ever made it into a movie) if the movie is the music’s only raison d’etre. The quality of that music simply contradicts it.
> 
> And Williams’ 75-95 music is littered with such cues: music which, from its first bar to the last, completely refutes the romantic notion that “every note is there because of that story, that world, those characters”.
> 
> Beyond being a mere circumstantial trigger, the story has nothing to do with what notes are part of “Sea Attack Number One” or “The Asteroïd Field”. Nor have the characters from “The Fury” have had any real influence on the musical perfection that is “For Gillian”.
> 
> There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the fact that “The Arrival Of Tink And Flight To Neverland” enhances “Hook” the way it does. Any skilled composer of some substance could have accomplished something similar. What is so truly astounding about that musical sequence — and this has again nothing whatsoever to do with the movie —, is the mindblowing musical quality of it. A quality that far transcends the music’s function or storytelling requirements.
> 
> See, I don’t think it is me that’s missing the music’s heart and soul by isolating it from the purpose or context it was written for, I strongly feel. Quite the contrary, in fact. It’s by keeping this music confined to its subservient storytelling role that you miss out on just about everything that makes it so intrinsically musical sublime. To me, the heart and soul of great music is music. And nothing but music.
> 
> _



Piet, beautifully put. We can certainly agree on the fact that Williams seems to have written music for the sake of music itself. 

It would indeed be more than adequate to be serviceable. But, he seems to inject, a sort of dedication to each cue, in a way that is mostly unheard of. To top it all off, he did this consistently for decades. 

As a body of work, there simply lived no film composer before him (that I know of) with the kind of musical quality, genius and consistency he has delivered. 

I have no doubt that the work of John Williams is worthy enough to sit besides those of the greatest masters. As Steven Spielberg once said, he truly is a national treasure. 

Of course, his music has traveled beyond borders and will be remembered for a very, very long time, if not forever.


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## handz

robgb said:


> My profession is writing fiction. Have made my living at it for decades. While I will not try to negate anyone's experience—you like what you like—I can tell you, hands down, that from a storytelling POV, The Last Jedi is not only a terrible movie, it is an affront to writers everywhere who believe that characters, structure, and, most importantly, story logic are of fundamental importance. The Last Jedi was a meandering, empty, ridiculous piece of excrement that used convenient and woefully weak plot devices to further its storyline.
> 
> This surprised me because Rian Johnson is usually a good writer and filmmaker. Unfortunately, with LJ he screwed the pooch.
> 
> I have not yet seen the new one. But I can't imagine it could be worse than The Last Jedi.




Sorry, but if you write yourself, then you should agree that the worst thing to do is to take exact parts of another book and use it on your own. This both is happening in TFA and TRoS. And it is wrong and lame. This makes them completely horrible from the start (not even mentioning other horrible things, TRoS - is a complete disgrace) 

I HATE this trilogy but after seeing the latest episode, I have to rewatch LJ - and even it is, of course, bad, it is definitely not as bad as the other two, it does not rehash the previous material, not use fan service in the lamest way possible and it has a really great visual (not that it matters) and trying to dig deeper into the Force mythos, it not came as good as planned, flying Leia - my god... the humor - Ewww... Lukes death (WHY?) but - nothing was so bad so it should result in a HORRIBLE MESS TRoS is. There still could be a way better finale to this story without pissing on everything Lucas did in original movies.


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## dcoscina

Had another listen to the commercial release. There are some great tracks. Williams is in his twilight period of composing much like Goldsmith entered after Total Recall where he decided he wouldn't write as complex music since he was competing with 90 tracks of sound FX. Williams still writes better than 90% of everyone out there but when he was at his peak, he was otherworldly insofar as talent and technique.


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## robgb

handz said:


> Sorry, but if you write yourself, then you should agree that the worst thing to do is to take exact parts of another book and use it on your own. This both is happening in TFA and TRoS. And it is wrong and lame. This makes them completely horrible from the start (not even mentioning other horrible things, TRoS - is a complete disgrace)


I don't believe I mentioned the other two movies, but TFA, despite its repetition of Star Wars tropes, was at least a coherent, well-constructed movie. The Last Jedi was not.


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## Leandro Gardini

The smartest of Williams is that in 2020 he keeps away from internet discussions which can be way depressing sometimes.


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## Loïc D

At last, I went to watch it last Friday.
Really enjoyed the movie & the score too.
It's not a masterwork, but probably better than most of the people here seem to complain about. 
Very swashbuckling action movie.




Spoiler: Spoiler



The only ridiculous/pointless thing to me is that Rey-"granddaughter" thing. It doesn't make ANY sense regarding the rest of the story - previous episodes included. Ah also, the map thing is pretty absurd.
But the places are great, design is good too, love the references to the old episodes and I appreciate Rey character more & more. And at last, great roles for the droids.


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## ed buller

Guy Rowland said:


> And this revisionist tosh about the Prequels. They were - and are - terrible movies. Terrible scripts, terrible structure, terrible acting due to terrible direction



What he said !!

best

ed


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