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For his 85th Birthday, John Williams Gives the Gift of THE LAST JEDI

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Bobby Roberts

Banned
la-et-cm-star-wars-force-awakens-music-score-j-001.jpeg


Interesting bit of news regarding The Last Jedi just dropped this morning, courtesy of writer/producer/general genre entertainment gadfly Robert Meyer Burnett's twitter.

Robert Meyer Burnett said:
LAST JEDI scoring update. Last Thursday was John Williams' 85th Birthday. He's conducting. Rian Johnson wants to use the score for editing.
Click to expand...

For people following the film's production, Williams going into the studio around December was already known, and some people (including myself) were theorizing that this was due to a couple factors: Maybe he's just recording a trailer score like he did for The Force Awakens. Maybe there's already a rough cut. Maybe Williams isn't being precious about his age and figures the sooner the better. And maybe some of that stuff still applies—but:

A lot of people consider one of Williams' high points (and I'd argue Williams himself believes this to be the case, too, considering he ends a lot of his concerts with this piece) to be the last 15 minutes of E.T.

Escape/Chase/Saying Goodbye

A big reason this works as well as it does is due to the unorthodox way it was done: Typically, scores are written & recorded once the film is in some sort of edit, preferably the final edit. The last reel of E.T. wasn't edited, however, until Williams had written the music for it. Williams & Spielberg did it backwards: Make sure the music is an emotional tour de force all on its own, and then cut the imagery to that.

Apparently, this is the approach that Rian Johnson will be taking with the entirety of The Last Jedi.

That means it's very possible a large amount of this film's emotion is going to be pure John Williams, not boxed in by imagery or timing. Granted, there's still going to be aspects of that, I'm sure. He's not gonna go untouched (and even the last 15 of E.T. were massaged after the fact, I believe). But this is just yet another detail that has my faith in Rian Johnson affirmed.

I'd already thought this had the potential to give Empire a run for its money. But finding out that John Williams is being given this much freedom to just compose for mood and emotion, for this Star Wars movie?

man.
 
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opricnik

Banned
Cool at least there wont be temp music for editing. That ruined Force Awakens music. It had some cool themes like Rey theme i hope they wont be forgotten and will be back.
 
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brandonh83

Banned
Yep this sounds fantastic, I know if I were a director but was provided a score before being fully finished that I'd probably try and work around the score instead of making the score work around a more finalized edit. And the way the music brings Star Wars alive and is a key component in why it all works, this should be good.

opricnik said:
Cool at least there wont be temp music for editing. That ruined Force Awakens music.
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Not really, most incomplete edits have temp tracks, it didn't "ruin" the score, the score was very well implemented into TFA.
 
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Bobby Roberts

Banned
And yeah, he loves writing for Rey, as he's said multiple times, he loves that theme, and being allowed to explore it (and Kylo's theme, which is also multilayered), plus knowing he's writing for Carrie Fisher's last role?

The movie is supposed to be mostly lighthearted and fun, according to Johnson, but I can't imagine this won't pack a motherfucker of a punch.
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
That means it's very possible a large amount of this film's emotion is going to be pure John Williams, not boxed in by imagery or timing. Granted, there's still going to be aspects of that, I'm sure. He's not gonna go untouched (and even the last 15 of E.T. were massaged after the fact, I believe). But this is just yet another detail that has my faith in Rian Johnson affirmed.
Click to expand...

What a fantastic way to honor his legacy. The guy is still nailing it. You can skip to any bar of a Williams composition and recognize it, including the texture of the instruments he uses.

Music snobs and experts may disagree with this, but he's absolutely the Beethoven of his time - making popular, comprehensible and emotionally manipulative experiences that improve and amplify the emotional nature of the things they accompany.
 
F

Frozenprince

Banned
Bobby Roberts said:
And yeah, he loves writing for Rey, as he's said multiple times, he loves that theme, and being allowed to explore it (and Kylo's theme, which is also multilayered), plus knowing he's writing for Carrie Fisher's last role?

The movie is supposed to be mostly lighthearted and fun, according to Johnson, but I can't imagine this won't pack a motherfucker of a punch.
Click to expand...

If we get anything even approaching Duel of the Fates.
 
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brandonh83

Banned
Frozenprince said:
If we get anything even approaching Duel of the Fates.
Click to expand...

Well this is more about how the music will gel with the picture, not necessarily the quality of individual tracks. But like with every SW score, there will be a plethora of fantastic, individual tracks and themes. It's 7 for 7 so far.
 
F

Frozenprince

Banned
brandonh83 said:
Well this is more about how the music will gel with the picture, not necessarily the quality of individual tracks. But like with every SW score, there will be a plethora of fantastic, individual tracks and themes. It's 7 for 7 so far.
Click to expand...

I know, I mean something that fit as thematically perfect in the context of when Duel was used in TPM. It's the only real redeeming quality of that films editing, tbh.
 
kunonabi

kunonabi

Member
Hopefully it turns out better than the extremely dull TFA score. Such a shame after how excellent the rest of his star wars work was.
 
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Fancyarcher

Member
Cool! I loved TFA's score, so I'm definitely looking forward to hearing TLJ on it's own.

opricnik said:
Cool at least there wont be temp music for editing. That ruined Force Awakens music. It had some cool themes like Rey theme i hope they wont be forgotten and will be back.
Click to expand...

It's JW, of course, Rey's theme will be back.
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

Member
Very good news! Hopefully he'll still be around for episode IX also. Three trilogies of John Williams music would be godlike!
 
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brandonh83

Banned
Mysterious said:
Episode 9 is going to be so shit with the Jurassic World duo. -_-
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This is what some people think I guess.

Regardless of what you think of Jurassic World, this is a different environment for Trevorrow and Connolly to work in. Jurassic 4 went through development hell and the script was touched by about a thousand people.
 
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KeyBladerXIII

Member
Nice! So he's still watching early edits to know the big moments and the mood of the scenes, but then they'll edit it again to fit what he composes?

I can't recall anything from TFA, not that it wasn't good, just that nothing hit me as super memorable except for Lin-Manuel Miranda's cantina song. Hopefully this one has some amazing melodies.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Not sure if this will really contribute to a better soundtrack than TFA's, but hopefully it does.

kunonabi said:
Hopefully it turns out better than the extremely dull TFA score. Such a shame after how excellent the rest of his star wars work was.
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Well, you know, nobody can't maintain a John Williams-level of quality forever, not even John Williams!

Frozenprince said:
John Williams the GOAT at the peak of his powers conducting a score that they will then edit around?

Oh god yes, in my veins.
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I really don't think so bro.
 
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brandonh83

Banned
TFA's soundtrack is fantastic.

Rey, Kylo Ren, Resistance themes are traditional Williams quality stuff. Falcon chase through Jakku had an incredible track.

I think too many people just have KORA DUNYA BABA RATTATA in their heads and refuse to listen to anything new.
 
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jb1234

Member
Writing music before the picture has been edited has become more common in recent years. Some directors like to have the option to just edit the score into the picture however they want.

I don't look at this as a positive. For instance, Giacchino's Jupiter Ascending was mostly composed in this way, which made for an especially effective soundtrack album. But in the film, the music was hacked to pieces. Modern technology makes it very easy for this to occur and to be fair, most people aren't going to notice (and the composers make it easier by writing the music in a very repetitive, ostinato-friendly manner).

If Johnson is actually willing to edit the film around the music, that's a very different situation and quite rare. We'll see what happens.
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
jb1234 said:
If Johnson is actually willing to edit the film around the music, that's a very different situation and quite rare.
Click to expand...

But why wouldn't he, though?

I'm not saying it wouldn't be rare (the whole thing is rare, even if the practice is picking up more these days) but I don't get assuming Johnson would take care to get Williams in the studio for the beginning of 2017 only to hack up what he delivers.

Rian Johnson isn't the Wachowskis.
 
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jb1234

Member
Bobby Roberts said:
But why wouldn't he, though?

I'm not saying it wouldn't be rare (the whole thing is rare, even if the practice is picking up more these days) but I don't get assuming Johnson would take care to get Williams in the studio for the beginning of 2017 only to hack up what he delivers.

Rian Johnson isn't the Wachowskis.
Click to expand...

I don't think Williams would have agreed to the process without at least some assurance that a musical butchering wouldn't occur so I'm optimistic. He was reportedly upset over the hackjob his Phantom Menace score got.

(To the point where it was decided no original music would be written for the Geonosis scenes in AotC, just to avoid the same thing happening again.)
 
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Bobby Roberts

Banned
Yeah, I'd heard those stories as well, although they're harder to verify now (I've looked a couple times) but I very much remember hearing that the last reel of Attack of the Clones is made out of TPM leftovers primarily because of how many different times he rescored the last two reels of Phantom Menace only to have it all hacked up in the final edit anyway.

The difference is that some versions of the story have Lucas saying "dont' bother writing anything, because we're not gonna have any of this edited in time for you to write something for it" and other versions have Williams saying "just track in all the stuff you didn't use for Phantom Menace for the arena fight, I'll be working on the finale/end credits"
 
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Father_Brain

Banned
Hopefully, we get at least a prequel-quality score from him (AotC is a garbage film, but Across the Stars is up there with the best of his work from the OT), and not whatever he phoned in for TFA.
 
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brandonh83

Banned
The Geonosis arena sequence got a huge original track but wasn't used in the movie beyond the intro with the swelling love theme and a little bit after that. It was later used in Revenge of the Sith. So... the Geonosis scenes did get original music, but they did use TPM score for it instead. Dumb, but w/e
 
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