Why the Music in The Rise of Skywalker Felt Misleading

0:00 this video is brought to you by viewers like you thanks for helping me afford to subject myself to awful films like this witch okay I don't think that's completely fair believe it or not I didn't actually hate this film at first but that's probably because I only just saw it about two weeks ago which gave everyone three months to spoil every last detail about this film on Twitter including people who were DMing any questions about specific musical moments so because I had the whole thing spoiled for me before I ever actually saw it that meant that by the time I actually got around to this armpit of a film I'd already spent several hours rocking back and forth in a shower eating a sleeve of Oreos trying to wrap my head around raping a Palpatine or why Chewie gets a medal or how everyone dies but then comes back for no reason and I'll finish for sensitive or something and how Leia

0:45 dies because she's a mother or something what's up with the mother hate in this series anyway beyond the writing this film has what I believe to be the worst soundtrack out of all nine films by a country mile but before we get to that if we're gonna talk about this film then we need to address the elephant in the room about two and a half years ago I made a video talking about the hidden secret message behind Rey's theme which I made after I had come home from seeing the last Jedi in theaters and in that video I tried to guess why John Williams decided to write race theme in the way that he did and what I got was this and I realized something Disney has no idea what they're doing I'm serious they don't have a plan for this trilogy they're making this trilogy film by film they're seeing how people react and then compensating based on the

1:32 audience's reaction to their newest film part one this is a bad film that is bad and not very good man oh man is this not a good movie it is almost impressive how much this movie just kind of completely sucks they somehow managed to upset everyone who liked the force awakens and to the last Jedi and those are people who hate each other so you somehow brought the Internet together congratulations I guess Star Wars kind of finally fulfilled its own prophecy way to go but that's a really important distinction to make people who like the last Jedi liked it because it cut ties to the original films they liked that Rey wasn't a part of some magical family and they liked that it wasn't about

2:17 midi-chlorians and it was all about picking yourself up from your own bootstraps making mistakes learning growing trying to better yourself they liked that even Luke Skywalker himself wasn't above making and learning from his mistakes which this film completely retcons Luke goes back to being the Jedi Legend he always was the only people who matter in the galaxy are the ones who are from the Skywalker and Palpatine families which if you get into the extended lore is technically just the Palpatine family and everyone else is basically just a pawn in their lives now on the other side people who really like the soft reboot with the force awakens sir Skywalker kind of just craps all over the Anakin Skywalker Darth Vader story with some really weak contrived and says Oh Palpatine was a clone or one of these Palpatine's was a clone and Vader basically died for nothing and everything that the rebels did in the original trilogy didn't really mean anything because they all just had to

3:03 band together again to defeat the Emperor again not to mention how much this film just went back and forth in the sequel trilogy kylo Ren has a helmet now he doesn't now he does again Ray's got a family no she doesn't now she does again he's got his knights of ren no he doesn't know he does again it's to be generous a lot of really strange writing decisions but there's a really great illustration of how this was a bad end to the sequel trilogy right here at the end and believe it or not I'm not talking about the race Skywalker thing indicates that she's going to stay there and that to me is absolutely depressing to the end of time but then the imagery the imagery doesn't even support that either because you know that's not her Droid first of all this is the what the force podcast with Frank layman who I've cited before as the Star Wars music Yoda who owns and operates the Star Wars

3:48 light motif catalog which he updates all the time and Christie Kaoru composer for the looking for Leia docu series along with Felicia was skee and host to Mary Clare gold and if you've got the time you should definitely check them out because they go into way more detail about a lot of the musical problems I'm gonna be talking about here it's shocking how much this film didn't like really go anywhere and had nothing really happen in it all the while completely retconning like everything race starts her journey on her own or I guess she has bb-8 and she's in the desert and she slides down sand and she's confronted by old women and at the end of her journey she is in the exact same place she's in the desert with bb-8 sliding down hills being confronted by old women the story basically went nowhere but that lack of progression of a story combined with really jarring writing simultaneously tied John Williams's hands in terms of

4:34 the score while also needing to use the music in order to have the story to make sense in some places they awkwardly took power away from Williams while also relying on him to tell a story it's difficult to explain but this film accidentally demonstrated how important a good score is in a film like okay we know that Finn's force-sensitive right but think about it how do we know that how do we know he isn't just randomly getting an idea right here like an instinctive feeling we know that he's force sensitive and that he's using the force right here because we're hearing the force theme wait the nav signals coming from that

5:20 command ship that's our drop zone this is the force theme and it's what plays whenever someone's using the force [Music] without this little piece of music it just looks like raised inappropriately touching a worm or like ray is inappropriately touching well you know I'm going with this okay it helps us understand what's happening even when it isn't completely clear or like okay listen to this moment right here it's actually genuinely really good ray I know you people keep telling me they know me I'm afraid no one does ray is telling us that she feels like no one understands her but we hear kylo ren's theme implying it at this moment she thinks that kylo Ren is the only one who truly understands her which is a great

6:06 time to bring up kylo Ren his theme is actually the end of the Emperor's theme it's this neat little connection that is conveniently validated by the Emperor randomly coming back which like I honestly don't know how to feel about that honestly because you see like if the Emperor was every voice in kylo ren's head have been [Music] and it actually makes sense for these two characters to have associated themes so with all that in mind let's look at the moment the TIE fighters attack in the opening of the film [Music] so now that we're in the groove answer me this who is sending those Tie Fighters and with that we've got a problem part two no work and all play all the

6:51 reward with no effort so at this point the film we know that kylo Ren has talked to the Emperor and is more or less teaming up with him but this is before kylo Ren confronts the first order with the Emperor's request and talks about having a spy at this point the first order is just sending out TIE fighters trying to intercept the resistance message but we hear the Emperor's theme the music is almost out of order with the story the first order doesn't know about the Emperor yet even though they're the ones sending the TIE fighters or look right here immediately following that moment when Poe and the rest are right speed skipping tell me if you can figure out what the music is it's super famous that's actually the death star being destroyed so here's already insanely

7:38 frustrating things that this film did so what they're doing here is effectively hijacking a thematic moment in one of the past films and utilizing the emotional impact of that musical moment without going through the motions of how or why that music is so meaningful they're stealing the emotional weight of the music and just plugging it into this film without earning that moment it's all the spectacle but no substance instead of earning these musical moments like you see with the original trilogy and even the prequels we're just watching the music editors pull music out of old films and it was the editors not John Williams trust me we're gonna get there oh we're gonna get there so what happens is that there's this finality to this scene it makes this last jump feel oddly lethal like we just warped into a black hole or something and died because the last time you heard this music something exploded and the film was basically over which is super

8:23 effective when you're watching this scene even if you don't know why not because this is actually a tense moment but because it sounds like the final moments before the death star explodes well let's go back to that TIE fighter attack you feel like it's coming from the Emperor as in the Emperor commanded it but he didn't it still sounds super menacing but it's fundamentally hijacking moments from the previous films by misleading the audience's ears you think these are super dangerous TIE fighters when they aren't you think these Thai fighters have intent from the Emperor when they don't and like everything it's kind of hard to explain how and why this is so damaging to the musical fabric that Williams has spent the better part of 40 years weaving like look there's this moment where Leia like goes to die I'm not entirely sure what they were doing at this moment and I'm not just talking about the music okay so there's a difference between Leia steam

9:09 and Han and Leia's love theme this is Leia steam I think John almost voyage a person of some importance as I believe our captain was at any more of this recording and we hear it here it was the last night of her training but that's different from the Han and Leia love theme hey which is what we get right here when Leia goes to communicate with kylo and then die for reasons I don't even know how okay so maybe you could argue that she's trying to reach out to her son Ben who is different from

9:54 kylo Ren and that Ben solo being the son of Han and Leia would be connected to their love theme but he isn't like yes okay so like Ben's solo quote-unquote kills kylo Ren and then goes off to rescue Rey and then we get this redeemed version of his theme and again I'm really stretching here but Ben solos redeemed theme is just kylo ren's theme with a different harmony to try and make him sound heroic and that's John Williams his own words but it worked out where his evil theme morphs brilliantly into a kind of a hero thing by a change of harmonic support and so on so I just I can't imagine why you'd have the Han

10:41 and Leia love theme play when Leia is like all right time did I outside of reminding the audience about the older films and just trying to get him on the static which is just really weak I mean maybe maybe this is supposed to be leia summoning Hans force ghost and that this is actually Han Solo's force ghost being summoned by Leia which required so much energy that it killed her just like Luke in the last film but then kylo Ren calls him a memory which is super misleading and it doesn't really make a lot of sense as to why he won't be freaking out at seeing his dad's force ghost what like honestly you can try and do mental gymnastics to try and justify why they put what music where they did but the honest truth is it really feels like they're just throwing the music out

11:26 there to try and make you feel things without earning it it's just it's so upsetting but it's not as if sitting is oh my god I don't think I can do it okay we have to go here let's look it right here when Luke lifts up the x-wing [Music] what is this why are we doing this it's this Yunus thing why are we playing Yodas theme here why are we playing notice theme right here it just doesn't make any sense but you see it's not just Yodas theme they order lifts up in the Empire Strikes Back Romero Belgard the music editor he said oh it should be exactly the music that we had for Yoda and actually changed a question and he said well this app should be doing that right and everybody

12:12 said oh yes it has to be it's green you know the fans will all know so we went back to the school the Empire Strikes Back to get those bars exactly out of them that actual little central piece have taken the ship up as exactly as we have it before for this holy part 3 thematic recontextualization there's a huge problem with not only Star Wars but scoring film franchises in general over time as composers come on to the project or as the stories in the films will take weird turns like suddenly Luke and Leia being siblings instead of like I guess into each other the musical themes are recontextualized and although I've mentioned this a lot on my channel there's really no better example of this than in Star Wars this music right here this is not the force theme this is obi-wan Kenobi's theme

13:03 don't be afraid but you and McGregor here dies in the first film so when the unexpected sequel comes around ie the Empire Strikes Back whenever something force related happens because the audiences only connection to the force was through mr. hello there there is now this recontextualized association with this music and the force instead of obi-wan Kenobi here this is no longer ob1 steam this is now the force theme not because the music itself changed but because of how and where we saw it being used if you look at the score to this film as a standalone film this is a really strange moment you could almost imply that obi-wan Kenobi is maybe even mind tricking Luke into going on an adventure with him but nowadays with decades of

13:48 hearing this is the force theme we all look back on it and see it as the force guiding Luke to go on an adventure when originally this was just music that Lucas wanted right here with no real reason for it I would argue that this is what makes this binary sunset scene so much more impactful nowadays than it might have been back in 77 similarly the Imperial March which is the theme for the Empire became associated with Darth Vader who is just the personification of the Empire's power both Vader becoming such a popular character along with the third film really exploring his relationship with Luke his Redemption and then an entire prequel trilogy dedicated explicitly to his backstory we now have a theme for a little kid from Tatooine that is directly related to the theme for the Empire [Music] and that same thing happened to Luke's

14:34 theme originally it was both the main theme for Star Wars and Luke's theme because he was the hero of this story and now we just all know it as the main theme for Star Wars and Lucas somewhat lost his musical identity just because the music kept playing at the start and end of six films where he didn't show up as the main character so a lot of themes over the years have managed to develop new meanings as they've been used in different ways so just cheaply throwing in familiar music whenever you want actually has the possibility of redefining some of these musical themes at the very least misusing these themes dilutes their original meaning it's kind of like stormtroopers like originally they were really scary and you were under the impression that they could do damage too accurate for sandpeople only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise but now

15:21 they're just a joke you can undo and separate the light motif from it's associative characterization so when we hear Yodas theme and Yoda isn't around we gotta start asking ourselves hmm is this Yodas theme or is this the x-wing lift out of the water theme who knows who cares let's just make up our own rules oh really why is this music here seriously think about it why is this music right here why did they make the choice to play this music right here it isn't telling us anything about the story that we need to know it's just referencing an older movie but it's also recontextualizing how and why that music exists during that scene or no one okay here's a better example check this out right here yes it's you any idea what musics being played right

16:09 there it's this really sentimental theme it's one of my favorites and it plays when Luke and Leia are talking about their past in Return of the Jedi and this music does not appear very frequently in the Star Wars Canon it's extremely personal to Luke and Leia's relationship the theme itself is actually constructed using elements from the melody of Luke's theme while employing harmony from Leia's theme and it comes back in this really touching moment when Leia sees Luke for the last time before he dies [Music] so you can see what makes these small personal moments so effective oh wait nope that's just a theme for when people talk very from general the goal system except no it isn't because if you order the rise of Skywalker visual dictionary

16:56 on Amazon for $12.99 right now you know that she is actually Lando Calrissian daughter because of course she is so tell me Disney tell me guys is this or is this not the Luke and Leia theme oh wait no I know I know this is the family theme no no I know because it's used when Luke and Leia discussed their background and realized that their siblings and in Luke and Leia see each other for the first time in years this is when haha and Lando reunite this is actually the family reunion theme now isn't it that's the only way to have this makes sense you can see how these themes can lose their meaning when they aren't properly used right here when Ray's looking for the Horcrux or the flux capacitor the thingy I can't remember what it is crap what was it why find her when she's looking for finding the wayfinder when she's looking for the wayfinder on the ruins of the Death Star

17:43 they're playing the music from when Vader died [Music] see back then they probably just saw this as a more sentimental version of the Imperial March for Vader's death it's in the upper register there's a little bit of harp thrown in there but nowadays with all that development from the prequel trilogy it doesn't just feel like a variation on the Imperial March anymore at least to me it feels like he's becoming Anakin again at least for me this moment now reminds me of that little boy from Tatooine it makes the fact that Williams related Anakin's theme and Vader's theme that much more powerful it actually adds to the incredible impact that this moment has when Anakin comes back

18:29 Williams retro actively improved a musical moment that he had already written 20 years before that which is a breathtakingly amazing achievement in the already restrictive art of film scoring it's like yes it's related to the Imperial March and this is in an imperial facility and yes this is literally the place where Vader died but now we went from tracing a light motif through a sixth film Redemption arc to using this music to say hey guys remember the Death Star like come on and don't even get me started on Luke's theme we hear it for Chewbacca when I guess he's not dead he's alive he must have been in a different transport you gotta go get your friends on that sky trash I guess yeah we get it for c-3po because he's the hero because of course my friend [Music] set

19:16 and we get it when like the Millennium Falcon does anything it shows up when Luke tells Rey about her destiny with Leia saber a thousand generations live in you now but this is your fight and in case you haven't picked it up the main theme basically plays whenever anything from the original trilogy happens which just okay it's like I've said a million times this is originally Luke's theme but after seeing it over all those title crawls and having the distance that theme from Luke specifically just to have appears the main theme for the Star Wars prequel films this has just become the main theme to Star Wars it plays over the title crawl the film it plays over the credits I'm just repeating myself at this point but within the context of this film it basically only plays when something or

20:03 someone from the original trilogy does something I can't believe I'm saying this but they have actually worked to strip the main theme from Star Wars I must say that again they've begun to strip the main theme for Star Wars of its unilateral meaning for all of Star Wars and just have it represent characters and things from the original trilogy [Music] it just makes it feel like the movies ending like there are just so many moments that strip the meaning from the music why do we hear the Imperial March when Palpatine lifts up the Star Destroyers why does it appear the Star Destroyer appears to blow up Cugini what do these moments have to do with Darth Vader let alone that little boy on Tatooine and yes there are plenty of moments where the force theme is used

20:50 really really well [Applause] but why does it play when lando calrissian shows up is he force sensitive to matter were we [Music] Luke and Leia me why does it play when Rose hugs Chewie that doesn't make any sense and I get that they're just trying to remake the binary sunset scene here so fine I'm gonna give you that but then why doesn't it play when Ray's communicating with every Jedi ever why not have race theme play when she's literally standing against all the Sith the whole point is that she has all that [ __ ] with her she's the last Jedi she's

21:35 the whole point maybe that's when I don't know you can maybe use her theme [Music] but she's looking up into outer space and here's all the Jedi but using the force maybe just maybe I don't know just the thought here maybe you can use the force theme huh no we can't play the first scene when all the force ghosts are talking array the last Jedi but don't you worry we'll play it when Finn's riding the horses on the surface of a Star Destroyer part four three hours on December 10th 2019 Disney

22:21 accidentally leaked the for your consideration edition of the score for the rise of Skywalker the for your consideration or fyc score is what film studios submit to the Academy for consideration for the Oscars and the leak was a huge deal in the Star Wars fan community not just because the film hadn't come out yet and the track titles have a tendency to give away the details for the story of a film but because once the film was released the fans realized that the score of the film and the for your consideration score were very very different on December 18th 2019 the digital version of the official soundtrack for the OST for the rise of Skywalker released and once again fans realized that some of the music in the OST was yet again somewhat different to the film's release in August of 2019 Don Williams John Williams's brother and a timpanist for all the Star Wars soundtracks revealed that John Williams had written a hundred and thirty-five minutes of music yet by the end of the

23:07 production process it was revealed that Williams had written over three hours of music for this film On January 15 20 20 on the JW fan forums and anonymous tipster leaked the cue list from a cut of the film that was dated for November 11th the final date of recording was November 21st ten days later these were the titles of the tracks that Williams would have recorded for that cut of the film you'll notice that the cues are either out of order from what we see in the film or just don't make any sense whatsoever the one I'm personally interested in is titled Vader's castle maybe that was in the original cut of the film and they removed it or maybe it's just what Williams nicknamed as part of EXA call who knows but with that in mind I would like to play you the most upsetting part of this score [Music]

23:56 I'm gonna play that for you one more time [Music] rumor has it that they recorded a new version of duel of fates for this film and it sounds like it was supposed to be right here instead coincidentally for the TV spot titled duel you can hear a new version of duel of fates this would be the final word I imagine that was in the original cut and instead of just abandoning all that musical material they recycled it for the commercial which might now be a good time to point out has anyone noticed up until this point that there is no music from the prequel trilogy in this film none whatsoever it all comes from the original trilogy I

24:41 mean I guess there's also no ROS theme either like she had her own theme in the last film but I guess well oh and did I mention that Mary's here anyway when you look through the for your consideration score the official soundtrack release and the leaked cue list you can see what musical ideas Williams had that without question demonstrates how much better John Williams is than this film you had all these pieces to the puzzle and you got done and just like just cram them all in there it's fine it doesn't matter where they go at least the pictures put together I don't know what happened with the film they might have had multiple versions that Williams had to try and accommodate for I mean I think it's obvious that they struggled with this film everyone hates it because they completely didn't plan it out which makes it all the more devastating that this is what they gave Williams for him to try and wrap up the biggest longest

25:26 running soundtrack of his life either way it looks like Williams might have figured out how to paint outside the lines and maybe even write his own musical story who knows what secrets those three hours of music hold and who knows what kind of thematic connections Williams tried to build we could literally be looking at something the world of film scoring has never seen before I'm sure to be worth checking out you know like if you were some kind of multi-billion dollar corporation looking at your least profitable film from this sequel trilogy and you were looking for some kind of merchandise that might boost that number a little bit mind you this would be something that you already have completely done ready to go all you'd have to do is push a button and you could release something that thousands and thousands of people would warrant and would spend a whole bunch of

26:11 money on it's up to you mr. Mouse but I think the maestro deserves to have his music be heard thanks for watching I like to make the Patriots ranking these videos possible at the very special thank you to Alex Cole Kowski Alec plank Curt always posh captain Casey Christian claritin at least some thomas constantine google it hayden elsa i want you to tell me if my fear is justified that no one will pay attention to me if i'm honest about my addiction ice cream jacob stylist Jordan Adams Caron Rosa now Kate J Kim colada Myron Jon Tatar Noah gray pray lock that up Phelan Martinez solids Rick Osborne and Who am I I'd also like to thank everybody who requested that I talk about the rise of Skywalker I feel like everybody knew that this was going to be at a video it was an inevitability at this point if you like what you saw here be sure to subscribe and check out my other videos follow me in twitter and twitch to have your musical questions answered live in human really like what I'm doing then consider supporting the channel on patreon but that's all I got for now

26:58 thanks for watching can you change the theme turn it upside down or something and I think I initially said well no ever done that and how do you do it like this in fact if you believe what Mark Richards on film music notes has to say that's how you wrote the victory theme for this film also why is Gigi Abrams coming up with all the fun musical ideas that's it I'm convinced this film is cursed