John Williams to Retire from STAR WARS

[AndyDursin]

Do I detect just a little bit of dry sarcasm in these comments? I just wish, really, he hadn't scored these Disney WARS films and had written for other projects to begin with...he said all he needed to with the OT and the prequels, and they've occupied too much of his precious time at this stage.

However, I certainly hope EPISODE IX isnt the last score he ever composes.

“We know J.J. Abrams is preparing [Star Wars: Episode IX] now, that I will hopefully do next year for him. I look forward to it. It will round out a series of nine [films]. That will be quite enough for me. Disney Studios probably will take it further. As you know, Disney has acquired the rights for Lucasfilm, and they will probably continue on through… decades, possibly, doing Star Wars-related attractions.”

https://screenrant.com/john-williams-re ... pisode-ix/

[Paul MacLean]

Do I detect just a little bit of dry sarcasm in these comments? I just wish, really, he hadn't scored these Disney WARS films and had written for other projects to begin with...he said all he needed to with the OT and the prequels, and they've occupied too much of his precious time at this stage.

However, I certainly hope EPISODE IX isnt the last score he ever composes.

I don't understand John Williams' interest in these new movies.

The original Star Wars was a case of a maverick studio executive (Alan Ladd, jr.) taking a chance on a young wunderkind's offbeat "personal" movie (which was expected to tank). It had heart, and was a labor of love -- and also presented challenges and opportunities to a composer were very unique in the 1970s.

These new Star Wars movies are stringently-controled "product". They are not the vision of an artist or entertainer. The actual filmmakers -- however talented -- are just tractable “yes men” fulfilling the studio’s checklist for what appeals to the widest demographic. It's fast food film making.

Why are these attractive projects for a composer of John Williams' stature -- and age? Why turn-down a solid, intelligent drama like Bridge of Spies -- especially when it is the work of his closest collaborator Steven Spielberg -- to work on a remake of A New Hope aimed at ADD millennials? Why consent to doing another movie with JJ Abrams, whose endless re-cuts made 2015 a protracted ordeal for the composer?

If John Williams prefers to work on "tent poles" I understand -- but I wish he'd done the Fantastic Beasts movie instead (it's a certainty he was asked). That picture many not have been great, but it was more imaginative than "A New Hope Awakens". I think after six movies we'd had enough Star Wars music. We could use more Harry Potter music.

[KevinEK]

John Williams has gone through many cycles in his long career. From being a dependable television composer (as "Johnny Williams") for shows like Lost in Space to his award-winning arrangements for Fiddler on the Roof to becoming the "disaster movie guy" in the early 70s for Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno and Earthquake to becoming the "blockbuster guy", etc. He even did some work with Oliver Stone - his score for JFK is one of his more interesting experiments. And at the same time, he also has done some very quiet work that I've liked just as much, as in Presumed Innocent.

I'm not surprised that he would want to contribute to the new trilogy as a way of keeping his toe in that water. I don't think he realized the direction it was all going to take - I think he was in the mode of just continuing the themes he'd already developed over the earlier 6 movies. It's just that the new stories and characters are clearly not inspiring very much from the music - and the mess of Rian Johnson's movie had to have been a disappointment to try and score. I think at this point, he'd like to just wrap up the third movie and call it a day, having done what he could with what Kennedy and Abrams have generated. I don't blame him for walking away after that.

As memory serves, he actually did write two new themes back in the day for Superman IV, and then handed those off to Alexander Courage to orchestrate into what they had hoped would be a fun movie and instead turned out to be one of the biggest wrecks I have every endured in a movie theater. But it showed that Williams was willing to stay with a movie series where he'd developed a fondness for the original material. On the other hand, it's also true that Williams walked away from Superman II after a disastrous meeting with Richard Lester. (Williams does not discuss this in more recent interviews, saying that there was probably a scheduling conflict, but one look at his roster of films for that time period shows that he could have done the sequel if he'd wanted. Lester was known for not being particularly pleasant to work with, and under the circumstances with the Salkinds, it's not a surprise that multiple parties including both Gene Hackman and Williams chose to avoid being involved with the situation.)

I'm happy that Williams does continue to write music these days, but he's understandably slowed down his output and I expect he'll slow it down even more now. After that many scores and that much output in so many directions, I wouldn't expect him to do anything further that wasn't an absolute priority for him.

[AndyDursin]

+1 Paul

It would've been nice if he could've bookended his work on HARRY POTTER and at least finished that series off properly...it's disappointing that he was there to establish the thematic sound of the series, which was then continued in nothing more than workmanlike fashion by a series of inferior composers, none of whom did a capable job living up to his standard.

I also wish there were more scores like THE BOOK THIEF for him to write too instead of DISNEY WARS -- those small-scale character-driven works he excelled at (but the public doesn't pay nearly as much attention to). Not that BOOK THIEF was a great score, but it was appealing and had some nice moments. I'd rather hear him channel his energy into projects like that (though there aren't many of them out there nowadays in terms of major studio releases).

Really there's been nothing for him to gain working on these Disney STAR WARS films -- we've said it before, but this wasn't George Lucas making these films, so why did he feel an allegiance to the series? I really wish he had just left alone, because I truly felt THE LAST JEDI was the first score that in some small way detracted from his legacy of music for the series. It was tired and predictable, it didn't have a wealth of new thematic material or even energy IMO -- which is the hallmark of his works for this franchise. As I've written, I mostly chalk it up to how film music functions today...but even so, who would blame him for having nothing else to say for this saga at this point? These films offer little opportunity for a film composer to really apply themselves now, and he's already scored 8 of them.

Hopefully EPISODE IX isn't his last score altogether. It'd be disappointing to end his illustrious, brilliant career with another of these increasingly mediocre Disney-suit-engineered projects.

That thing that also gets me is that it hasn't sounded like he really WANTS to be scoring these films anymore!!

Back in 2016, Williams admitted that he hadn’t watched any of the Star Wars movies that he scored, describing his soundtracks for the films as “not very memorable”.

“I let it go,” he told The Mirror. “‘I have not looked at the Star Wars films and that’s absolutely true. When I’m finished with a film, I’ve been living with it, we’ve been dubbing it, recording to it, and so on. You walk out of the studio and, ‘Ah, it’s finished.'”

“Now I don’t have an impulse to go to the theatre and look at it,” he added. “Maybe some people find that weird, or listen to recordings of my music very, very rarely.”

“A lot of them ​are ​not very memorable and so on​. It’s probably the most popular music that I’ve done.”

http://www.nme.com/news/film/john-willi ... ms-2254744

[KevinEK]

I don't think Williams will end his career with the Abrams Star Wars movie. (And I'm not completely sure he'll actually do it - it's still possible that "a conflict with another movie" will prevent it...)
I think Williams will end his career with a score for his friend Steven Spielberg. Probably one of the movies Spielberg is currently planning to do in the next couple of years. Hopefully not West Side Story and more along the lines of something else Spielberg will do.

[AndyDursin]

Yes, hopefully not WEST SIDE STORY. That's a remake I think Spielberg is excited about and pretty much nobody else!

[esteban miranda]

Hopefully EPISODE IX isn't his last score altogether. It'd be disappointing to end his illustrious, brilliant career with another of these increasingly mediocre Disney-suit-engineered projects.

I certainly hope it won't be his last score, but in any case, I don't find his EPISODE IX score disappointing...

[Paul MacLean]

It would've been nice if he could've bookended his work on HARRY POTTER and at least finished that series off properly...it's disappointing that he was there to establish the thematic sound of the series, which was then continued in nothing more than workmanlike fashion by a series of inferior composers, none of whom did a capable job living up to his standard.

That was the single greatest disappointment ever for me as a film music fan. To be honest, I actually didn't mind the idea of other composers scoring the "middle" sequels -- I'd have just preferred people like Elfman or Broughton or one of the Newmans scoring them instead of Doyle and Hooper.

But the final story was such a magnificent climax and resolution, and Williams really should have been there -- he wanted to be (unfortunately he was tied-up on Tin-Tin). But were that not disappointing enough, Desplat's score was utterly underwhelming (and presumably the filmmakers weren't thrilled with it either -- given that they used Hooper's and Williams' music in some scenes).

I really wish he had just left alone, because I truly felt THE LAST JEDI was the first score that in some small way detracted from his legacy of music for the series. It was tired and predictable, it didn't have a wealth of new thematic material or even energy IMO -- which is the hallmark of his works for this franchise.

I have to admit -- while I wasn't particularly enthralled by the music from The Force Awakens, I have been listening to The Last Jedi quite a bit. It does draw heavily on themes (and even excerpts) from previous scores, but I feel he ties it all together in a wonderful way. Ok, maybe it's not Jaws, or Raiders or Sorcerer's Stone -- but it's honestly my favorite Williams score since Prisoner of Azkaban (and the final bars of the end title are among Williams' most touching music in over a decade).

Full disclosure -- I did have to pare the score down to 46 minutes, but for me that 46 minutes is immensely enjoyable...

1. Main Title and Escape
2. Ahch-To Island
3. The Rebellion Is Reborn
4. Lesson One
5. Canto Bight
6. The Fathiers
7. The Sacred Jedi Texts
8. The Battle of Crait
9. Peace and Purpose
10. Finale

[mkaroly]

I have not seen THE LAST JEDI, but I do agree that the music is much better than THE FORCE AWAKENS. Don't know if it helps or hurts the film though.

[Paul MacLean]

I have not seen THE LAST JEDI, but I do agree that the music is much better than THE FORCE AWAKENS. Don't know if it helps or hurts the film though.

As it was the only good thing in the film, I reckon it helps!