John Williams Will Score ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’

Yes, we know, it’s beyond obvious that as long as John Williams is part of this galaxy, he will be scoring the “Star Wars” saga films. However, while his music for the franchise is undeniably iconic, it’s often forgotten how brilliant it is as well.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

The New Yorker recently went deep on Williams’ work in the franchise celebrating how, particularly in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” he interpolates familiar leifmotifs that have been established in the series, and turns them around. I’ll let the magazine do the heavy lifting on this one:

Scholars like [Frank]Lehman are exulting in “The Last Jedi” because the score is full of such echt-leitmotivic moments. Williams manipulates his library of themes with extreme dexterity, often touching on a familiar motif for just a couple of bars. (Spoilers loom ahead.) In early scenes set at a remote, ruined Jedi temple, we keep hearing an attenuated, beclouded version of the Force motto: this evokes Luke’s embittered renunciation of the Jedi project. As the young heroine Rey begins to coax him out of his funk, the Force stretches out and is unfurled at length. Sometimes, the music does all of the work of explaining what is going on. In one scene, Leia, Luke’s Force-capable sister, communicates telepathically with her son Kylo Ren, who has gone over to the dark side and is training his guns on her vessel. Leia’s theme is briefly heard against a dissonant cluster chord. Earlier in the saga, we might have been subjected to dialogue along the lines of “Don’t do this! I’m your mother!” Williams’s musical paraphrase is more elegant.

Sometimes, Williams trips us up with musical red herrings. When “The Force Awakens” came out, two years ago, I noticed a vaguely menacing reference to the harmonies of Darth Vader’s march at the end of the film. Had Luke, too, gone dark? The new film tells us otherwise, but shadowy chords surround the exiled hero for much of the film, leaving us in suspense as to his intentions. Another feint comes when we meet a rebel commander played by Laura Dern. She makes a frosty first impression, and the music around her brushes against the flamboyantly sinister theme assigned to Kylo Ren. Is she up to no good? In fact, the suspicion exists mainly in the imagination of the hotheaded flyboy Poe Dameron, who will be forced to reconsider his macho bravado. Williams also plays the straight man to Mark Hamill’s mischievous performance as Luke. When the latter makes his entrance in “The Last Jedi,” the music builds portentously and then stops, at which point Luke sardonically chucks away his long-lost lightsabre.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that Williams will also be back to score “Star Wars: Episode IX,” and he tells Variety, “I would very much like to complete that.” We want you to complete it too, John.

“Star Wars: Episode IX” opens on December 20, 2019.