Star Wars: The Last Jedi score

Every Star Wars album has a concert arrangement, meaning a track that is arranged and edited to be played live in a concert setting. For example:

Leia's theme from A New Hope, Leia and Luke and Parade of the Ewoks from ROTJ, Duel of the Fates, Across the Stars, Battle of the Heroes, Rey's Theme, and now The Rebellion is Reborn.

These tracks don't appear in the films per se in the form that they are in on the albums.

 

I did enjoy the score overall, as it sounded very appropriate for a SW saga episode. There were lots of great familiar moments, like several spots with the use of the force theme, nice usage of the Resistance march at the beginning, bits of Rey's theme, brief bit of Leia's theme, and IIRC Luke and Leia's "Skywalker Legacy" theme from ROTJ. But those were simply super short reworkings of cues we'd heard before.

There were no actual NEW score themes that stood out to me, the way Rey's Theme and March of the Resistance did in TFA, except for Rose Tico's theme I guess. Nice classic melody there, very 'hummable,' but IMO that was it.

Still, it was a great soundtrack overall, if not much to offer in the way of new notable material. At least not that I could remember after two viewings. To me, if a film score is truly to be considered great, it has to stand out for me right away-from the first viewing, and stick in my head. Some of TFA did that.

 

Congrats to John Williams and the Last Jedi for the Best Original Score Oscar nomination!

 

I hope he wins!

 

After listening to the OST 5 times now, it's definitely the best Disney era SW OST. The only track I don't like is Canto Bight, I feel it's out of place. My favourite track though is Battle of Crait. This OST also has so many PT and OT references which is nice to hear.

 

Rian Johnson has posted the original recording for the TLJ main title on Vimeo.

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I think that the film was a whole "unfinished business", that's why we only get hints at love themes and duel themes because they must develop. In this sense the score of JW is really unparalleled. I cannot wait to hear his magic in Ep. IX

I love the music when Rey moves stones from the cave, very evocative, quite a "prophecy theme". The Last Jedi indeed!

 

I don't see how that could be the case. Rogue One's soundtrack was done on very short notice closely before the release. TFA took quite long to get ready for release as well. TLJ, on the other hand, was ready for release way before the other two were, and had no apparent issues during its development cycle. If anything, this would suggest that there was more time to develop the music.

Johnson only having worked with one composer throughout all his work may have led to a different situation than with the more experienced Abrams, but I don't think the development of the movie itself was in any way unclear.

 

I don't see anything really crazy about most of the music building off of previous material rather than being new. If you all remember the TPM-AOTC situation was very similar.

 

That is awesome!!

Why did they not use that version though is beyond me...

 

Actually no. In the prequels there were only a handful of statements of old themes, and most of the material was totally new.

 

I think Darkslayer meant that AOTC used plenty of themes that got established in TPM, not that TPM and AOTC made heavy use of the OT-material.

 

Ok, but in any case, that's untrue. AOTC used mostly new material, with a handful of statements of old themes (either from the OT or TPM). And there was a clear new main theme that dominated the movie.
Now, because there was no music composed for the final battle, music was directly lifted and tracked from TPM, but that cannot be really considered part of the score Williams composed for AOTC.

 

This is indeed what I meant.

 

I agree to an extent that the PT episodes re-used several cues from the previous films. Actually the OT does that too-ROTJ is rife with it. But the difference here is that IMO for the PT, JW introduced some of the best and most memorable SW score in all the saga to date: Duel Of The Fates, Across The Stars and Battle Of the Heroes, to mention just one from each that still sits near the top of many fans' lists (including mine).

IMO the ST so far hasn't really had any classic, universal stand out themes like that besides perhaps...Rey's Theme? And definitely nothing from TLJ that reaches the heights of such pieces as...Duel of the Fates, or the Imperial March. For the record that's not to say I don't like the TLJ score-as I mentioned, I loved it.

But I think there can be some agreeance of the fact that there was little this time around in the way of NEW, memorable, iconic themes that were introduced here. And although both the PT AND the OT have also reused cues throughout, both those trilogies have at least offered some truly iconic and memorable SW score which remain many fans' favorites-which has not really occurred (yet) with the ST score.



Speaking of reusing cues, did it seem odd to anyone else that they re-used that little piccolo intro melody as ANH for the pan-down after the crawl? I wondered why they wouldn't have just composed something new. Like doing something like that is a conscious decision-I'd wonder what their reasoning was for that. I'm not particularly against it, but IMO it kind of gives an impression that we're supposed to think back to ANH, and gives an impression of what we're about to see-but then as we know what follows over the next two hours is completely NOT what we may have expected....That also makes it the only SW film that has the same pan-down score as another film. Anyone else kind of taken by surprise by this???????

 

Actually, there was music for the final battle, Lucas just didn't end up using it. And yes, the score that made it into the movie is the actual score. The whole reason a soundtrack exist is to accompany a movie. Whether other music was made as well that didn't end up in the actual movie is entirely irrelevant when discussing the soundtrack of the actual movie.

The whole point wasn't that AOTC was a huge copycat, but that both AOTC and TLJ relied quite a bit on already established music by the preceeding movie. Yes, AOTC had very noticeable new themes, while TLJ didn't have a ton of stuff that springs out right away, but again, that wasn't the point. Sequels simply tend to follow up on the music that came before, and that's all what was really said by Darkslayer. No idea why you tried to turn that comment into something entirely different.

 

No, there wasn't any music composed for the Battle of Geonosis. Why do you say there was?

Right, but when discussing the merits (or lack of) of the score as composed by the composer, you have to take that into account. I mean, you can't blame Williams for reusing music from TPM for the Battle of Geonosis because it wasn't his choice.

Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. That's the whole point of my argument. There are scores that rely heavily on previous themes (Williams' own Harry Potter 2 for example, or Home Alone 2) and scores that go in quite a different direction with minimal references to previous material (Harry Potter 3 or The Lost World for example).

Star Wars scores tend to be somewhere in the middle, but they normally include enough new significant themes and a restrained amount of references to previous themes. TESB for example had a very different soundtrack from the original movie, which relied heavily on new themes and only had small references to previous themes. ROTJ on the contrary, frequently uses previous themes, but it did include a few new prominent ones as well.

Some people feel that The Last Jedi score relies too heavily on previous Star Wars themes/material and doesn't bring enough new elements to the table. Darkslayer argued that it's been the same with the other sequels. I disagree. I think all the other SW scores have been more original and unique, with prominent new themes that were noticeable in the movie.

 

John Williams nails the score every single movie. Each movie has its great pieces. I am glad he is up for nomination. He deserves it.

 

Again, you are completely ignoring what this is all about. You are trying to force a huge debate over absolutely nothing, in complete disregard of what others are actually talking about.

 

I don't think I'm trying to "force" anything. I though this was a discussion forum. Anyway, sorry if I'm talking nonesense.

 

Precisely. I don't think either were huge copycats - I just think they had similar styles.

 

So how about that Last Jedi score? lol

 

It was the only thing that kept me from walking out of the theater

 

One of my top 3 scores of the year. The others being Wonder Woman and Thor: Ragnarok. Not sure what order I'd rank them.

 

I haven't listened in a while. Been on a Spielberg marathon of all the films he has directed. That has me listening to a bunch of Williams' non-Star Wars work.