There are few pieces of contemporary movie music as iconic as John Williams‘ title theme for “Star Wars” (a close second would be the “The Imperial March”). Scoring all eight saga films to date, Williams’ music has been part of the moviegoing experience for multiple generations, and has been some of the most stirring compositions for blockbuster movies ever created. But don’t bother asking the composer his thoughts on the films because he hasn’t actually seen them.
“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,’ ” he told The Mirror. “Now I don’t have an impulse to go to the theater and look at it. Maybe some people find that weird, or listen to recordings of my music very, very rarely.”
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It certainly is a bit surprising that after all these decades, Williams never felt the impulse to see what everyone was talking about, but I understand the logic. He probably already sees the images and scenes over and over again while working on the movie, and like he said, once the job is finished, going to watch Luke Skywalker or Rey is probably the furthest thing he actually wants to do. Not to mention there’s probably other work he needs to get cracking on.
Even more, Williams doesn’t rank his work on the “Star Wars” movies as particularly very good, saying, “I don’t know. A lot of them are not very memorable and so on. It’s probably the most popular music that I’ve done.”
But reading the interview, you get the sense of someone who is quite humble and probably happiest when he’s creating something new. We’ll hear his next “Star Wars” score when “Star Wars: Episode VIII” opens on December 15, 2017.