It’s one thing to come into a movie late in the game, it’s a whole other thing when that film happens to be the first ever “Star Wars” spinoff. So you can imagine that Michael Giacchino felt no shortage of pressure when tasked to score “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” and follow in the footsteps of the great John Williams, who hasn’t hit a bum note across six films in the series. And the composer wisely balanced the enormity of the job at hand with appreciating how lucky he was to be working on it.
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“…it was really fun to do. It was really fun to come in every morning and just look up at the screen and see Stormtroopers running around. And I thought, ‘This is pretty cool actually…’ Part of me was stressing out about the timeline. But the other part of me was just like, ‘This is the greatest thing ever! This is so much fun!’ So I really tried to just keep all the negativity, whatever, or be away from it, just so I could look at it and enjoy it,” Giacchino told EW. “I wanted to make something that I would be happy with – even though I’m usually not happy with anything I do. [Laughs] But, you know, always at least to try and shoot for it.”
And when it came to the music he put together for ‘Rogue One,’ the composer tipped his hat to the past, while putting his own touch on things.
“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,” Giacchino said.
The resulting work is a success, aiding Gareth Edwards in delivering his distinct, gritty “Star Wars” film, that is also dotted with the touches fans expect from the franchise. Listen to Giacchino’s full score below.