I feel like those who are being super critical of the score either haven’t experienced as many repeat viewings as we who really dug the movie or else weren’t interested enough to really live with the soundtrack for a while after Disney put it on YouTube. Now that I’m very familiar with it, I realize there’s so much more going on than one viewing can convey. There are at least five new themes that I couldn’t get out of my head if I wanted to. It’s definitely a score that rewards continued listening.
Well I only saw the film once and the only music I could remember was the original Star Wars Fanfare at the Start on the opening crawl.
Good Music just does not work in the way that you need to continually listen to something to have to appreciate it.
If it is very good you will get the hook put in to you. You’ll be hooked on it.
Basically yeah I will watch it again at some point but not in the cinema. Home viewing to absorb the film better perhaps but I honestly can’t remember any music from the film at all.
Immediately catchy music can be good music but not all good music is immediately catchy. Film scores, much like other aspects of filmmaking (lighting, editing, etc.) work to improve the film primarily on a more subconscious. It is typically not until we see the film again (and we can pay less attention to what’s happening) that we appreciate these aspects more. The score to TFA certainly supports repeat viewings and there’s a rewarding complexity to it that wasn’t there in the PT.
Sure, when you got out of a prequel you might be humming a Duel of the Fates or a Across the Stars or a Battle of the Heroes. But that’s because Williams had to compensate for what wasn’t there. Why is it that Williams most epic theme from the PT came from its most boring film? Why is it that one of the best love themes ever composed for screen came from one of film’s all time worst romances? Why does the Battle of the Heroes theme play only once in ROTS when that conflict should have been throughout the film (hint, not Williams’s fault). Williams is supporting what’s on screen in TFA and for the first time in a long time what’s on screen is simply more interesting.
But yeah, catchiness means very little to me. My favorite albums weren’t my favorite albums upon first listen. I could recognize the music was good, but I couldn’t necessarily recall the songs right away. Sometimes I listen to pop music but it doesn’t usually sustain too many repeat listens. Similarly, ROTS was probably my favorite soundtrack when I was a kid but now I realize it’s just a collection of unnecessarily “epic” cues without any sort of thematic coherence (not to mention a good 40% of the music in that movie is tracked from the TPM and AOTC scores).