John Williams is Leaving Star Wars

How's it going my five faithful companions. Haven't posted on here in a while. Figured I'd beat a dead horse and talk about Star Wars real quick. Basically, I didn't want to take up a lot of your time. I just wanted to say it recently came across my Facebook feed that John Williams, renowned composer of many notable film scores, including:

• Jurassic Park
• Superman
• The Indiana Jones films
• E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
• and a hell of a lot of Spielberg movies

...is recording the score for what he is calling his "final Star Wars" film in Star Wars: Episode IX due out in December of 2019. The final entry in the most overhyped manufactured trilogy the saga has to offer will also contain the final bit of Star Wars music written and composed by Williams, who has composed the previous eight episodes to date. Williams wrote the iconic Star Wars main title march, he wrote the even more iconic "Obi-Wan's Theme" which later was rechristened "Theme of the Force" or "The Force's Theme". His theme for Darth Vader was dubbed "The Imperial March" and has become synonymous with evil-doers and baddies across the galaxy. Yoda's theme along with the "Parade of the Ewoks" round out the original trilogy's set of popular motifs that graced the soundtrack recordings.

Perhaps the biggest impact that Williams' Star Wars scores brought us was that from the unlikeliest of places in Episode I, when he composed and wrote a theme for the final lightsaber battle called "Duel of the Fates", which has become just as synonymous with the Star Wars brand as any other piece of music he's written for it. His love theme for Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala "Across the Stars" remains stunningly beautiful to this day, and even his epic grandiose opera powerhouse for Obi-Wan and Anakin's final battle dubbed "Battle of the Heroes" is memorable in its own way.

I feel like Williams fell out of love doing the Star Wars scores after the prequels were done, because George Lucas knew what Williams liked to do and gave Williams free reign to do what he does best which is compose and conduct orchestras for his movies as if they were mighty operas. Lucas knew this even more in the prequels by making sure each movie had its own theme and motif, much like a singer's album would have a lead single. In the newer movies, starting with The Force Awakens and continuing into The Last Jedi, I feel as though Disney simply gave Lucas the blank sheet music and just basically left him alone. Williams had no one to bounce his legendary intellect off of, as he had with George Lucas. For Awakens he had J.J Abrams, who really was more a fanboy than a collaborating director, and for Last Jedi he had Rian Johnson, who was and still is some guy. He probably thought either by choice or fate that for his final Star Wars trilogy, he'd just phone it in and get it over with it. Sure, Awakens had Rey's theme, which is a beautiful piece that sort of pays homage to Hedwig's theme that he wrote for Harry Potter that became the overlay for the entire franchise, but when you listen to it all its triumphant and grand, but there's no signature piece and it all gets overwritten/edited/cut/spliced/replaced in the movies anyway. Even in The Force Awakens, when you listen to the soundtrack and then watch the movies, Williams' work is being overwritten. When Kylo and Rey are fighting for the lightsaber, two very different renditions of the Force theme, the one in the movie is pulled from Star Wars when Luke sees his aunt and uncle's burned corpses. The one that Williams recorded for the scene is on the soundtrack, intact. Such a shame.

Anywho, just thought I'd ramble for a bit. Basically, Episode IX will be the final for a lot of things. It'll be the final film in the sequel trilogy, the final film in the complete episode saga, and really the final film that I give a shit for (lol). I'll go more into that in another post, but for now, thank you Mr. Williams for all the brilliant music you've given us not just for Star Wars, but for other movies and for really becoming the guy when it comes to scoring motion pictures. Congratulations on a historic career and good luck.