Is this Star Wars nerd-rage worthy?

[curses]

'Star Wars' composer John Williams in vintage...

[BrotherMan]

Originally Posted by curses

What does this have to do with the music?

Disney must know what they doing. They've already released a music only version.

The Force Awakens Trailer #3 - Music Only Edit...

[curses]

You know, I just reread my post and realized I put John Carpenter and not John Williams. WTF, curses?

[BrotherMan]

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by curses

You know, I just reread my post and realized I put John Carpenter and not John Williams. WTF, curses?

Prolly that Blood and Roses binge you went on recently.

[curses]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

Prolly that Blood and Roses binge you went on recently.

Now on to Killing Joke, what social gaffes will THEY cause me?

[The Lone Ranger]

To my mind, John Williams' music is Star Wars.

I'm convinced that if they'd gotten someone less talented to do the score, there would have been only the original movie, and it would be remembered today only as an unusually ambitious B movie with a completely unoriginal, paper-thin plot, sub-par acting* (for the most part), and ridiculous dialogue -- notable only for its exceptionally good (for the time) special effects.

*Which may not have been the actors' faults. Say what you will about Lucas, but the man can't write dialogue to save his life, and he can't direct. (Mark Hamill once claimed that the only two "directions" George Lucas could manage to give were "Faster!" and "More intense!".) Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor and even Hayden Christensen have all proved that they can act in other movies -- but you'd never guess it from seeing their performances in the Star Wars movies.

[Ymir's blood]

To some degree, I think the time was simply right for Star Wars. The Sci-Fi of the sixties and early seventies tended to be quite dystopian IIRC. SW called back to the old space operas and the serials, and generally was more heroic and hopeful than what audiences had had with films about social breakdowns and Cold War analogies. The aggressive marketing campaign and merchandise didn't hurt either. I still remember to this day going to a department store and seeing actors dressed as Vader and a Stormtrooper, just days after the movie released.

Just my

[curses]

To sort of piggyback off TLR's post, and I think it was mentioned in that John Williams video above, but a good soundtrack should act as both a background actor as well as part of the effects. It should clue you in to emotion without being overly obvious (unless it absolutely needs to be) and it also helps set a timing in a scene. A good composer recognizes when and where music should be, but also where it isn't necessary. They also feel the rhythm of the dialog and the action and weave the two together. I'm sitting here trying to think of a good example of scores done badly but all I'm coming up with is current movies. A lot of current action flicks fall into this category only because it's become score-by-number.

Also if you're musically inclined, a nice Redditor has transcribed the score for the Star Wars trailer.
http://imgur.com/a/kfrD3#Ade1cTG

[BrotherMan]

Newer thriller/horror/slasher movies are p bad about using the music too hard. A lot of times I'm more startled by the sudden burst of music and sound than I am by whatever the jump scare actually is. But for a more common poor usage you can't do worst than television. For no good reason my roommate recorded an episode of the new Hawaii 5-0 and the accompaniment was just so terrible. I mean, the music by itself wasn't bad but how it was used was just wrong. It was too loud for what it was supposed to be, for one, overshadowing any and all dialog. It was also entirely too much, as in, you didn't even have to look at the screen or hear what the actors were saying to know what was going on.

[curses]

Yes. Dynamic range. That's what most of the music is missing.

[Ymir's blood]

Lol. Get off Bort and curses lawns u gais.

[Crumb]

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

To my mind, John Williams' music is Star Wars.

I'm convinced that if they'd gotten someone less talented to do the score, there would have been only the original movie, and it would be remembered today only as an unusually ambitious B movie with a completely unoriginal, paper-thin plot, sub-par acting* (for the most part), and ridiculous dialogue -- notable only for its exceptionally good (for the time) special effects.

Williams was very talented. But he didn't come up with those arrangements single handedly...

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Kings Row (1941): Suite of 1968 - YouTube

Culture draws on older culture, despite what copyright law would have us all believe!

I seem to recall some of the Imperial music was based on some old British military tunes.

[BrotherMan]

Star Wars: The Binks Awakens - Trailer # 2 -...

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by Dragar

Williams was very talented. But he didn't come up with those arrangements single handedly...

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Kings Row (1941): Suite of 1968 - YouTube

Culture draws on older culture, despite what copyright law would have us all believe!

I seem to recall some of the Imperial music was based on some old British military tunes.

True. And if you listen to the music that's playing when the Millennium Falcon is being drawn into the Death Star's hangar bay, it's pretty clearly inspired by Holst's "Mars, The Bringer of War." (And by "inspired by," I mean "almost indistinguishable from at times".)


By the same token, many of the great Classical composers freely drew from the works of earlier composers. How's the old quote go?: "Good artists copy; great artists steal".

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

By the same token, many of the great Classical composers freely drew from the works of earlier composers. How's the old quote go?: "Good artists copy; great artists steal".

It wasn't meant as a criticism. I find a great deal of modern pop-music terribly dull in comparison to older stuff - as the years have gone by, I've developed a suspeciciou that this is because modern writers have very little they're able to 'steal' from the previous generation without the copyright hammer coming down hard on them. I think we've lost a lot of potential works there, and it's sad.

(No, this isn't me ranting about 'music these days'. As a teenager I loved 50s/60s stuff versus the 90s music I was faced with, and these days a lot of my favourite songs and dance tunes were popular in the 1800s...).

[The Lone Ranger]

I didn't think it was meant as a criticism: no worries.

I've heard and read a lot of criticisms of modern pop music which make the point that they tend to reliably and consistently "borrow" *cough* steal *cough* a few particularly "catchy" motifs -- to the point that there are a few motifs that you hear over and over and over again, with surprisingly little variation.

True, artists have copied from each other forever, but I've heard more than a few music critics lament that it has become such a widespread practice nowadays to rely on just a relatively few motifs that there's really very little musical variety in most modern pop music.



Part of the reason that I don't much care for most "pop" music nowadays.

[The Lone Ranger]

Somebody cut together the so-far released footage to produce a "supercut" trailer for The Force Awakens.

Edited together like this, they tell a pretty interesting story, actually.

Star Wars: THE FORCE AWAKENS - Supercut of ALL trailers - YouTube

[erimir]

I am tentatively excited for this movie.

I mean... if it's at least as good as the Abrams Star Trek films, it will at least be an entertaining diversion, and still better than the prequels.

But it looks like it might be a bit better than that.

[The Lone Ranger]

I did not care for the Abrams Trek movies -- in large part because I thought they had far more in common with Star Wars than Star Trek. As such, I think that Abrams might be a good fit for Star Wars.

And let's face it, the new movies will almost have to be better than the prequels.

[The Lone Ranger]

By the way, is it just me or is there something kind of disturbing about the lightsaber handoff scene? I'm probably reading too much into it (I mean, I know it's just a movie), but seriously: you never hand a weapon to someone business-end first -- EVER.

What the heck is going on with that? That actually bothers me more than the stupid cross-hilted lightsaber.

[Ymir's blood]

Non-canon-700x637.jpg

[Ymir's blood]

Barkeep, another frothy mug of tears!

So long, Slave Leia. It's 'Slayer Leia' now

[BrotherMan]

It's an uncomfortable dichotomy to be sure. On one hand, there's the literal objectification at work - both real world and the pretend universe of the Star Wars. That's all bad. Sure, Jabba is a gangster and a creep so of course he treats his slaves like things. Then there's the fanboy reactions to seeing a woman's skin. To some shame, I do include myself in that group. But what I do like is that despite how the character was treated is that she was allowed do defy the Hutt and was the one who got to put him down. I've never really researched how Carrie Fisher herself felt or thought about it at the time or over the last billion years.

I think this is a good move for family friendly Disney to make.