In light of that, I’m mixing it all up together, and we’re taking the work of three films as one distinct corpus. We present, then, “The Top 10 Prequel Trilogy Musical Moments” in our ongoing tribute to the maestro himself, John Williams.
A note on sources: we’re talking, of course, about the music composed by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. For source/cue division, I’m relying on the original soundtrack releases only, setting aside the “Ultimate Edition” Phantom Menace release, as it’s more of a straight film edit than an orchestral suite arrangement (put another way, it’s the same stuff, repackaged differently).
10. “The Immolation Scene”
Regardless of your feelings about the Prequel Trilogy, whether or not it did justice to the story of Anakin Skywalker, the music of John Williams deftly carries that saga to the point where, as ever, you could mute the dialogue and it still works. Case in point – the moment when the dismembered Anakin slides into the volcanoes of Mustafar. Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) wails plaintively over the fate of his apprentice, but it’s Williams’s elegiac score that strikes the mood.
9. “Main Title/The Revenge of the Sith”
The prequel trilogy has two very understated opening sequences, but Revenge of the Sith pulls out the stops for a CGI-laden space battle, replete with an action-packed track from Williams. Beginning with warlike taiko drums, Williams holds back after the opening fanfare until dropping us into the aerial combat. Weaving in General Grievous’s theme with the familiar Force theme, Williams accounts for the combatants while compelling us to feel for the characters.
7. TIE: “Panaka and the Queen’s Protectors”
7. TIE: “The Droid Invasion/The Droid Battle”
This one’s a tie because they’re two distinct cuts on the score for The Phantom Menace, but they represent two different sides of the Battle of Naboo – on one hand, the noble palace guard and their struggle to retake the throne room, and on the other, the emotionless droid army marching toward the battlefield. Williams stakes out equally compelling motifs to represent these forces, weaving them together with a theme especially for the Naboo Starfighters and with an orchestral take of “Duel of the Fates” to create an epic soundscape for the sweeping battle sequences. (There’s even a nod to “The Imperial March” in there – a special No-Prize to those who hear it!)
6. “Anakin’s Betrayal”
Anakin’s fall to the dark side ought to feel like a real punch in the gut, and Williams delivers the musical equivalent of said shot to the belly. The choral sounds on this track feel very much like a spectator falling to his knees, weeping at the doom of the Republic as the Jedi perish in Order 66. More effective than the on-the-nose funereal march Williams devised for the prequels, “Anakin’s Betrayal” feels properly solemn.
5. “The Chase Through Coruscant”
I love a good action cue more than just about anything in the realm of Star Wars music (well, maybe not as much as a power-packed motif like “The Imperial March”), and this ten minute cue from Attack of the Clones is perfect for those late-night study binges, tense drives through traffic, or just a run-of-the-mill diversion from boredom. The frenetic pace of Williams’s drums here, coupled with an electric guitar (cut from the film) also popped up in the Quidditch scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – hey, if it works, it works.
4. “Love Pledge/The Arena”
After moving through the love theme from Attack of the Clones (about which, more in a bit), Williams turns in a musical piece that was butchered in the film edits but survives in majestically sinister form on the soundtrack album as a martial march fit for the Separatist forces and the great beasts to which they attempt to feed our protagonists. It echoes “The Droid Invasion” ever so slightly, but it becomes its own piece such that I wish we’d heard more of it. When I think Attack of the Clones, this is almost always the second thing I think of.
3. “Battle of the Heroes”
It all had to come to this, the clash of two titans turning against each other, with only the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance. Even when Williams isn’t weaving in bits of “The Imperial March” or consciously echoing “Duel of the Fates,” “Battle of the Heroes” comes to a place of horrorstruck necessity, with no less respect for the grandeur of the battle. One wonders if there’s an edit of the Obi-Wan/Vader duel from A New Hope with this cut in.
2. “Across the Stars”
At the risk of this Top 10 turning into a Prequel Trilogy apologia – say what you want about the chemistry between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, “Across the Stars” is a love theme that makes you believe in this relationship (even against all visual evidence). It’s a piece so beautiful it hurts, belonging more properly to the great screen romances like Gone With the Wind than to Attack of the Clones.
1. “Duel of the Fates”
This can’t be a surprise to anyone, but here’s a piece of music that really became synonymous with Star Wars in a way that only the “Main Title” and “The Imperial March” had done before – it’s overall Top Three material, for sure. “Duel of the Fates” is astonishingly and instantly epic, dethroning “O Fortuna” for sure and governing the whole Prequel Trilogy with a sense of cosmic import married to cinematic spectacle. It’s among Williams’s best work, instantly recognizable from Note One, and it carried us back to a galaxy far, far away even before we bought our tickets.
Hit the comments section to tell me your favorite Prequel Trilogy musical moment! And be sure to subscribe up above to make sure you don’t miss future reviews or my “Top 10 Force Awakens Musical Moments”!
3 comments:
I don’t know if 2 is bad or if it’s just forever tainted because it’s wasted on such an awful romance. I’m more inclined to believe it was the fault of the movie than John Williams, but…I honestly think it’s just subpar in and of itself. It’s aiming for an old Hollywood epic romance score like Gone with the Wind, but it’s way too heavy and overwhelming. It’s more suffocating than passion-inflaming like it’s trying to be. Nobody’s perfect, I guess, not even Williams.
Other than that, I agree 1 might be the best piece from the trilogy, though it’s unfortunately wasted on an underwhelming and uninvolving fight. And 3, 6, 9, and 10 are all excellent (their corresponding scenes, however, are hit or miss). Revenge had a pretty great soundtrack.
It's very hard for me and for all of us to separate the films from the scores. I think the score does so much legwork in carrying the films that I hardly remember the dialogue but remember the feelings, the moods, the tenor the score invokes.
I wonder if "Across the Stars" is overcompensating for the weakness of the film in that respect, which might account for the heavy-handed quality you note. For me, it sweeps me away as the film never did.
I don't have trouble separating the music from the films, probably because the scores have been used so much in Star Wars video games and other media that I consumed rampantly in my youth (in fact, if anything, I'm reminded of Shadows of the Empire whenever I hear parts of the Yavin and Hoth themes in the films). Across the Stars is an exception, though, because it doesn't really fit any video games and was never used outside the films. Maybe you're right about overcompensating. Thing is, there's overcompensating by shooting a hole in the wall to kill a spider, and there's overcompensating by burning your whole house down.
Also, I believed I once queued up 3 while reading the Batman-Superman fight in Dark Knight Returns. It worked pretty well as I remember.
And I've imagined 9 and its flyby being recreated with the Millennium Falcon leading a squad of X-Wings into battle. So cool. Probably won't happen though, and if it does it won't be with the big man in the cockpit....
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