John Williams Has Never Seen A ‘Star Wars’ Film, Here’s Why
John Williams’ iconic work on the Star Wars franchise as its composer means that his name is as intrinsically linked to the franchise. But it turns out that despite his prestigious work John Williams still can’t bring himself to actually watch a Star Wars film, or any film that he’s composed.
That’s quite a list, too, because John Williams has scored the likes of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Jaws, Superman, and the first three Harry Potter films, too.
John Williams made this admission to the Mirror, insisting that once he’s done his work on any of his films he moves on and can’t look back at them because he’s been so ensconced in the project.
John Williams explained the following.
“I let it go. 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.'”
John Williams admitted that he’s not proud of the fact that he can’t go back and watch his films once he’s worked on them. But he also insisted that he just doesn’t have the time to do so, as he quickly moves onto his next project. John Williams explained the following.
“I’m not particularly proud of that, I have to say, but it’s also part of the fact that I finished Star Wars now and I’m already working on Spielberg’s new film and I don’t want to listen to music or see films.”
The recently released Rogue One, which was the first standalone Star Wars film that’s not part of the Skywalker saga, was also the first film from the franchise that wasn’t scored by John Williams. Instead, most of the music in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was composed by the Oscar-winning Michael Giacchino, who won this accolade for Pixar’s Up. But Michael Giacchino made sure to pay reference to John Williams’ work on Star Wars, especially when Darth Vader appeared. During these sequences The Imperial March, Imperial Motif, and Death Star Motif, all of which were composed by John Williams, each appeared.
Michael Giacchino wasn’t the original choice to compose the music for Rogue One, though. In fact, he was brought on board to replace Alexandre Desplat in September 2016, just four and a half weeks before the film was released. Desplat previously worked with director Gareth Edwards on Godzilla. But when Rogue One was reshot in the summer and additional music was required Desplat had already moved onto a new project, which is why Giacchino was brought in.
Michael Giacchino spoke to Entertainment Weekly about working on Rogue One, admitting that he couldn’t help but borrow from John Williams and the films that had originally inspired George Lucas. Talking about his inspirations while working on Rogue One Michael Giacchino explained,
It does borrow from traditions that both John Williams and George Lucas borrowed from when they made the original Star Wars, you know. George was looking at Flash Gordon, the old serials, and John was looking at Gustav Holst and different composers along the way to get a baseline for what he wanted to communicate. There is a wonderful musical language that John put together for the original films. I wanted to honor that vernacular but still do something new with it, something that was still me in a way.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has proven to be a huge success since it was released on December 16. First of all, it was met with hugely impressive reviews, amassing a score of 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critical consensus on the website surmising, “Rogue One draws deep on Star Wars mythology while breaking new narrative and aesthetic ground — and suggesting a bright blockbuster future for the franchise.”
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has also since gone on to gross $442.7 million at the box office, a total that’s set to rise exponentially over the festive period.
[Featured Image by Lucasfilm]
