Keeping an open mind is why I loved Solo (other than how dark most shots were). My main (likely only) concern for IX is John Williams’ score. I thought he did great in TFA, but I noticed a lot of repeating in TLJ that got me slightly annoyed by the music. I can’t think of a track in TLJ that originated there other than Luke walking out on Crait, but that was already used in the trailer, so I was already a little numb to it. But I’m down to discuss more once some IX stuff starts coming out.
I did a little analysis of the TLJ score album and counted how many minutes of old themes are on the album (so it’s not the entire score, but I assume the full score has a similar old/new ratio).
What I found was that there was less than 11 minutes of themes carried over from TFA, and just over 10 minutes of themes from the older movies. I didn’t count the title theme and the start of the end title music that are the same in all movies. That leaves over 1 hour of entirely new music, or about 74%. If the full score has a similar amount there might be about 1 hour and 45 minutes of new music.
I think that’s pretty impressive considering that the score should use old themes for characters and things from earlier movies. Personally I’m a big fan of the TLJ score and the balance between old and new music works for me. I’m very excited to hear the score for IX.