Ranking the Star Wars Soundtracks — Page 5

Lord Haseo said:

Swazzy said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41_ooqHzYGc

Once again, the single greatest track in the entire series. And it lasts less than a minute.

Empirically. I don’t care who get’s mad at that because I do not give a fuck.

“The Immolation Scene” and “The Emperor’s Death” are just below it though.

“Immolation scene” and “Yoda lifts the X-Wing” are easily tied as my favorite Star Wars compositions.

Swazzy said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41_ooqHzYGc

Once again, the single greatest track in the entire series. And it lasts less than a minute.

Can’t say I don’t agree. A very fine piece of music.

Lord Haseo said:

darthrush said:

Lord Haseo said:

Swazzy said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41_ooqHzYGc

Once again, the single greatest track in the entire series. And it lasts less than a minute.

Empirically. I don’t care who get’s mad at that because I do not give a fuck.

“The Immolation Scene” and “The Emperor’s Death” are just below it though.

“Immolation scene” and “Yoda lifts the X-Wing” are easily tied as my favorite Star Wars compositions.

I think the music when Yoda lifts the X-Wing is much more powerful when you watch the scene and in general watch the entire movie prior to that scene. The song itself is still amazing but I don’t feel as strong of an emotional response when listening to it outside of the film.

It does accompany my favorite scene of any star wars movie, so I guess it ain’t a surprise I like the piece of music so much 😉

DominicCobb said:

DominicCobb said:

SW - A+
ESB - A+
ROTJ - A
TFA - A
TPM - A-
AOTC - B+
ROTS - B

Changing this a bit. At the moment, I’m feeling Rogue One fits in between TPM and the rest of the PT, which might be mostly because I’m bored of those.

The scores are essentially (I feel) incomplete. Especially AOTC. ROTS sort of annoys me in a way because it feels quite un-Star Warsy in places (with all the epic choirs and tracks like “Padme’s Ruminations”), though I do think for the most part it’s rather consistent and a lot of great moments don’t even make it onto the OST. AOTC on the other hand tends to be boring, and though it has an amazing theme that works throughout the score (unlike ROTS), the whole climax is basically unscored which is a huge minus.

I agree with this so much.
Those scores are hard for me to compare, so my rating:
ESB
SW/ROTJ
TFA/TPM
RO/ROTS/AOTC

1. ESB
2. ROTS
3. ANH
4. TPM
5. TFA
6. ROTJ
7. RO (Rogue One)
8. AOTC

AOTC is just such a copy and paste from TPM, that it’s hard to put above Rogue One’s soundtrack, which I have really come to appreciate. “Across the Stars” is beatiful but it cannot carry an entire movie. I was also tempted to put ROTS first, it’s just so tragic and emotional, but ESB is too good haha.

There is a reconstructed AOTC soundtrack floating around out there that I occasionally use as background music. I don’t do that with any of the other prequels, so I guess that means that AOTC is my favorite of the prequel soundtracks. It also has perhaps my favorite end credits music (ANH might edge it out though).

NeverarGreat said:

There is a reconstructed AOTC soundtrack floating around out there that I occasionally use as background music. I don’t do that with any of the other prequels, so I guess that means that AOTC is my favorite of the prequel soundtracks. It also has perhaps my favorite end credits music (ANH might edge it out though).

A New Hope EASILY has my favorite end credits music. I attended a local symphony recently and they did the throne room till the end credits. It was truly incredible 😃

Chronological order. Despite he improvement in recording techniques, the original still holds out for me but ESB is nearly tied.
My favorite cues are certainly the end credit finales for each of the OT and Rebel Fleet.

I just wish they would finally do proper fully restored hires complete score releases since all we have officially is woefully inadequate.

Ryan-SWI said:

Honestly the TFA soundtrack has maybe two memorable tracks and the rest are just “homages” to earlier iconic tracks or instantly forgettable.

Unlike ROTS which you put first? I mean, I agree that TFA isn’t that great but come on.

The prequels make me sad. TPM had really quite a decent soundtrack with tons of original stuff and themes that were interwoven with themes from the OT. Great soundtrack.

But then AOTC and ROTS came along and in large part just inappropriately reused the TPM score in various places. Williams still had it because Across the Stars is one of the best pieces of Star Wars music ever written, and Battle of the Heroes is pretty decent as well, but the amount of reuse of Duel of the Fates and The Droid Invasion (and not even in thematic ways like we see the reuse of The Imperial March or The Force Theme in the OT) just annoys me. It feels less like the PT was scored after TPM and more like Lucas just said “Eh throw in that popular one from the first movie.”

That said, listening to the PT soundtracks kills me because I wish we had gotten a PT that was worthy of that music instead of what we got.

DominicCobb said:

It’s not just reusing themes from TPM in AOTC and ROTS, it’s reusing the exact same recordings. Over and over again. A lot of this had to do with Williams’s busy schedule in 02 and 05 but most of it had to do with GL’s last minute editing changes.

TPM is a truly fantastic score, though I will say I do believe I prefer a score like TFA more because, when you get down to it, JW’s working off what he has to work with. So I’ve always thought “Anakin’s Theme” was a terribly boring bit of music and really don’t care for its use throughout the score. But of course that’s because of the character Williams was writing for. I also am of two minds on Duel of the Fates. Is it an amazing piece of music? Absolutely. Is it also ridiculously over the top? Yes. Why do we need an epic choir for that lightsaber duel? Why do we even care? Well the answer is we don’t, and thus JW is compensating and trying to make us care with his awesome music. But there’s still a dissonance there.

I’ve just been going through the Prequel soundtracks on Star Wars Oxygen and it’s given me more of an appreciation for the music in TPM, but I otherwise agree.

Tyrphanax said:

It feels less like the PT was scored after TPM and more like Lucas just said “Eh throw in that popular one from the first movie.”

Like the laughable Anakin road trip montage in AOTC that uses Duel of the Fates for some reason.

suspiciouscoffee said:

Tyrphanax said:

It feels less like the PT was scored after TPM and more like Lucas just said “Eh throw in that popular one from the first movie.”

Like the laughable Anakin road trip montage in AOTC that uses Duel of the Fates for some reason.

Yeah. Ugh.

I’m not opposed to themes like that being referenced or re-scored to fit the moment, but it just felt like blatant re-use. They don’t even really defend it on Oxygen and they do a good job of defending musical choices in the PT. =P

MalàStrana said:

1. ANH
2. TESB
3. ROTJ
4. ROTS
5. TPM
6. TFA
7. AOTC
8. R1

Spot on ranking, my friend

Lord Haseo said:

You’re thinking of when Anakin goes off to find his mother.

It’s still awful.