Musical Midichlorians
If you’ve happened to be living under a rock for the last two years, there’s a new Star Wars film coming out on Friday. The hype is ridiculous, and you can’t get away from it. And just like countless others from the world over, as soon as I hear the opening fanfare and main theme as these films start, I get goosebumps.
That’s the power of an amazing film score.
It wasn’t just the characters and story—not to mention the lightsabers—that set the film apart from its contemporaries. It was John Williams’ brilliant music.
When A New Hope was first released in 1977, sweeping orchestral film scores that helped shape cinema in the 1930s and 1940s were largely seen as dated and old fashioned. That’s probably why many films from that era used modern instruments and a more modern sound (see: disco).
Before scoring Star Wars, John Williams already had an Oscar under his belt for his work adapting Jerry Bock’s and Sheldon Harnick’s songs in the film version of Fiddler on the Roof. He also scored three of the most popular big-budget disaster films that seemed to be everywhere in the 70s, but to the general populace, he was mainly known for two notes in some movie about a shark.
At the urging of George Lucas, Williams set out to create a big, sweeping orchestral score for Star Wars. Influenced by those same out-of-vogue scores, he not only created a fanfare, themes, and character motifs, he shaped the emotions of the filmgoers. It worked perfectly; what you hear often dictates the emotions of what you see on screen. Even in the opening credits, with the fanfare, audiences knew they were in for a spectacle. It’s grand, powerful, and exciting. When R2D2 and C-3PO walk in the sands of Tatooine, the score denotes a sense of anxiety and uncertainty, as if something bad can happen to them at any moment. The audience feels that and is right there with these characters as they set forth on their journey, and a lot of that is due to John Williams.
He masterfully scored all three of the original trilogy, some of his themes have become engrained parts of popular culture, referenced in countless places. The “Imperial March,” the “Force Theme,” and “Mos Eisley Cantina” are universally known. With pieces such as “Duel of the Fates" and “Battle of the Heroes,” Williams’ return to the Star Wars Universe to score all three prequels was pretty much the best thing about them (the less said about the prequels, though, the better), and I am looking forward to hearing his score for The Force Awakens almost as much as I am to seeing what takes place on screen.
So before you go to the cinema to see The Force Awakens, I highly suggest watching the original films again… and keep your ears open in the process. You don’t need midichlorians to do so.
