Original music for Anakin's march into the temple

I've been wondering about this for ages, what music was originally supposed to play during that scene? In the final version of the film they just recycled the unused arena music from Attack of the Clones. Seems like the perfect place to have the Imperial March but who knows. Always wanted to know this. Any ideas?

 

There's nothing to suggest there was ever an intention for anything else to be used at that point

That particular music, or at least that part of it, went unused in AOTC and was repurposed as a general Republic army/clones theme

 

I also remember reading that there was a theme created for the march on the Temple but AOTC music was reused instead. I can't find it on Wookiepedia so I must have read it on these forums somewhere.

 

I guess "Enter Lord Vader" would hav been perfect to use but was used for when Anakin goes to Mustafar

 

This is my biggest score beef with ROTS, an otherwise excellent score. It kills me that Williams was not allowed to use original music for this pivotal scene. Instead we got tracked in garbage from AOTC using a theme that had nothing to do with Anakin or Vader. Such a missed opportunity and I blame no one other than Lucas. He showed such disrespect for Williams music in the PT sometimes. Truly sad.

 

In ROTS, several scenes were left unscored, for different reasons (mainly because the effects weren't done and therefore the scenes were not locked), with the idea to use music from previous movies. That was decided beforehand by Lucas and Williams. The sequence inmediately preceding "Order 66/Lament/Anakin's Betrayal" is one of them. No original music was ever composed.

However, there is something odd here: in the making off book (if I recall correctly) it is described how Lucas and Williams are discussing the scoring for this particular scene! It is possile, but I have nothing to back this up, that Anakin's march on the Jedi temple originally came later in the sequence, in the middle of the Order 66 sequence (the original music is longer than the final version, so the sequence was definitely longer). However, it doesn't seem like the music fits the scene at all.

 

IIRC, David Collins talked about it on his Star Wars Oxygen podcast, years ago. Don't recall the specific episode though.

 

I never really thought about this but now that I do it seems this scene is not as powerful as it could have been.

 

Yeah it's not just that they used tracked music from AOTC, it's that the theme and the music itself is not a good fit.

 

The reuse of The Arena is more for the accompanying scenes of the battle of Utapau, for which it's pretty fitting.

Since the battle is largely SFX based, Williams wouldn't have been working for a locked picture, and thus fell back on (largely unused) music from AOTC, which incidentally was also used for the arrival on Kashyyyk scene. Williams probably lumped the 20 second or so march with the following scene, so the transition would be smoother.

Though even the earlier section during the march gets a new drums overlay, to underpoint the military march.

Another example of a scene where no original music was composed due to lacking a locked-in picture is Grievous' initial escape on the wheel-bike, which re-uses Anakin and the Droids from the Invisible Hand bridge scene.

 

I thought it was a pretty good fit. Dark and militaristic, very à propos.

 

It would be nice to know if the choice of music was made by Williams or by his music editor. In any case, I do think the music fits the mood of the scene (and after all, it was basically unused in AOTC, so it doesn't "feel" thematically wrong to me).
As far as I know, there is no new drum overlay to the music, however.

There are about half a dozen moments in ROTS in which no new music was writen (and the tracking was pre-planned).

As a music fan yes, it's a shame there was no music composed, but to talk about "disrespect" for Williams is going too far. The composer's job is to provide music to serve the director, not to create a symphony that the director cannot touch. When a director cuts a scene deleting lines, changing the order of the dialogue or inserting alternate dialogue, is that a disrespect for the actors?

 

The short new drum bit comes between the first two 'verses' (really just loop back to the start again), and isn't from the original AOTC composition.

 

That's why it always sounds bad to me. The loop is too obvious.

 

You don't think this was a missed opportunity to have a unique and epic statement of the themes related to him? His first major evil act as Vader and there's no Imperial March? No tragic statement of Anakin's theme? Instead, we get the droid army theme... epic fail.

 

It's not the Droid army theme, The Arena is a separate 'theme' (not really, as it's only used once).

I see the reuse of music done more to cover the battle of Utapau than just the temple steps. That first section only lasts 20 seconds anyway, meaning Williams would have had to compose a 20 second cue that had to blend seamlessly into what would almost certainly be tracked music, due to the CG nature of the battle.

We get a number of other uses of the imperial march to cover Anakin's later scene, so I don't mind this occasion too much.

 

I would think they tried that and certainly shot various things and Lucas decided against it for whatever reasons:

 

I see that we discovered another new trivial nonsense to whine about.

 

Trivial? Anakin's first act of evil after his turn to Vader is anything but trivial. And be careful characterizing our discussion as whining. That's kind of rude.

 

Indeed.

A bit unnecessary, @L110

 

Considering Williams didn't rely too heavily on on thematic material for the PT (missing a few "obvious" bits that were corrected, like the original version of the ending montague of Attack of the Clones), it's entirely possible that any original material material wouldn't be based in any previous theme. In any case, I think a huge statement of the Imperial March would not feel right with the tone of the scene.

As others have said, the Arena music is not a theme per se. And since it's been barely used in the movies until that point, it doesn't have a thematic meaning.

I think some music fans (understandably) have an inmediate distaste to any tracked music, because they can't listen to the score not knowing that the music is tracked indeed. But if you wouldn't know anything about the making of the scores, if you were just listening to the movies/music for the first time, would the music really feel out of place?

 

I do not. It's not hard to imagine how cheesy and forced it would be to place the Imperial March on that scene. Not every Darth Vader moment needs the Imperial March. ANH didn't have it at all. Subtles hints? Sure, and the PT had them already. In that scene it would feel out of place. And what ended up in the movie is not the 'droid theme'.

 

Okay, so I misremembered what was used. It's not the droid theme, it's unused Arena battle music. And yes, my issue is that it's tracked in music from something else entirely. I will ALWAYS take original John Williams music score written specifically for any given moment in a film. It's funny that all you folks are acting as if it wouldn't be way better if John had composed something specifically for this scene, whatever he chose to do.

 

How would it feel out of place though? It's Darth Vader's theme and he is literally marching. It couldn't be more fitting.

 

But with that you are admiting that you are not judging how the music works with the film based on what you see and hear, but based on what you know externally (the fact that it is tracked music). So what if you didn't know it was tracked? Would you say it works great then? (that was the case with the tracked statement of "burning homestead" in episode VII, when music fans loved it when they thought it was originally composed and hated it when they knew it was tracked!)
And of course having an original composition would always be great, just because it's great to have more original music composed by Williams. But that doesn't mean it will necessarily work better on screen.