![]() ![]() John Williams’ score plays a crucial role in making Star Wars work. At the end of the day, film scores are a little like voiceovers in the sense that they are supposed to add something to the visuals: music can set the emotional tone of a scene, or add structure-providing the basis of the timing in a montage, for example. You’re welcome.)īut the reason the music of Star Wars remains so iconic isn’t just about it being epic, or catchy, but because it is astoundingly good at its job. As Kathryn Marie Kalinak addresses in her book Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film, “hrough Williams’ example, the epic sound established in the thirties once again became a viable choice for composers in contemporary Hollywood.” The soundtrack to A New Hope took home the Oscar for Best Original Score, and has since been voted the greatest American film score of all time by the American Film Institute in addition to being selected for preservation in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”ĭun. With the original trilogy, John Williams is credited with more or less singlehandedly saving the film score from falling into the clutches of the synthesizer by revitalizing the orchestral score. It’s the exemplar to which all other space adventures will forever and always be compared. ![]() From space cantina jazz to villain themes, Star Wars remains the gold standard for out-of-this-world music. Okay, so maybe the music of Star Wars just makes me gleefully nostalgic, but I really don’t think I’m alone in that. “The Imperial March,” which also sounds like your childhood. That main theme that sounds like your childhood. When it comes to film scores, there’s iconic, and then there’s Star Wars. Ok, admittedly even I’m not convinced by this last argument, but I do think it’s an interesting coincidence.Īnyway, the following are nine of the greatest scores from films that are, quite literally, out of this world. For the sake of my sanity, series and franchises have been grouped together.īest Tracks: “Main Title” ( A New Hope), “The Imperial March” ( The Empire Strikes Back), “Duel of the Fates” ( The Phantom Menace), “Across the Stars” ( Attack of the Clones) Or maybe it all has something to do with how Aristotle referred to the ear, that thing that hears music, as a “void,” and outer space is the biggest void of all. Or maybe since no filmmaker or composer has ever actually been to space, the final frontier represents a blank slate allowing for maximum creativity. Maybe since space is this seemingly infinite silence-a vast emptiness occasionally punctuated by mind-bendingly huge visuals-filmmakers and composers feel compelled to come up with the biggest and best sounds they can to fill it. And yet, in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, space films have featured some of the most iconic and influential scores in movie history. ![]() This is why Alien proclaims “In space, no one can hear you scream.” It is also why astrophysicists are physically incapable of watching the pew! pew! pew! of Star Wars space battles without breaking out into hives. As space is a void, no sound travels there. ![]()
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