Rogue One * Spoilers * Thread — Page 92

You need a better film if you want a better score. The composer gets his inspiration from what he watches on the screen.

I didn’t get any impression from the score, I expect the tight deadline had something to do with that over anything else. It was serviceable, not awful, but didn’t leave an impression.

shameless plug alert

hey, domcobb, I suspect you’d get a kick out of THE SUKAIWAKA FORTRESS. I was initially going to deploy only one TFA tune (rey’s theme), but found many of the TFA tracks had solid hooks and ended up using quite a few.

part of the reason the TFA soundtrack might not be memorable at first is the way the songs were edited in the movie. on a rewatch of TFA, I noticed that many of the OST tunes were sliced & diced before they could really get going and show their quality.

LexX said:
Like there isn’t bad films with great scores and vice versa.

I can’t think of any bad films with good original scores.

Of course, there are good films with bad or mediocre scores, but that might be due to the composer not being very talented, not having enough time or resources to work with, etc. There are even some great films that don’t have a score at all.

LexX said:

I know a few, those comments are just getting old.

Which ones? I’d love to hear your opinion.

LexX said:

I agree that R1’s soundtrack beats TFA’s. Only good theme was Rey’s theme in TFA, whatever marches were way too prequelish for me and not even close to the OT. And even Williams admits its similarity to PT, IIRC in some interview.

I mean, R1’s soundtrack doesn’t stand that much out either but it’s much more consistent. It would have been way better if the guy had more than 4 weeks to score it. But at least it doesn’t sound prequelish.

And I don’t necessarily mean OTish = good, PTish = bad, but they are very different and these try to tie in with the OT, not the PT. PT has a few good themes too, but they don’t have the same feeling. Nevertheless, IMHO Williams just isn’t as good as he once was, and I don’t mean anything bad with it, that’s just the way it is. R1 with 1980’s Williams score would have kicked ass.

I don’t think TFA sounds very much like the prequels at all. It sounds different from the OT, sure (and I think it should). But it doesn’t sound anymore like the PT than it does the OT.

ssj said:

shameless plug alert

hey, domcobb, I suspect you’d get a kick out of THE SUKAIWAKA FORTRESS. I was initially going to deploy only one TFA tune (rey’s theme), but found many of the TFA tracks had solid hooks and ended up using quite a few.

Dude I know, been meaning to watch that.

part of the reason the TFA soundtrack might not be memorable at first is the way the songs were edited in the movie. on a rewatch of TFA, I noticed that many of the OST tunes were sliced & diced before they could really get going and show their quality.

This is par for the course, though TFA fares far better than most, especially the PT movies. I’d say, despite the editing of other cues, the Scherzo for X-Wing is really the only one we miss out on in the film.

Mavimao said:

The prequels for one. Great soundtracks. But mediocre films.

Tron Legacy…

The TPM soundtrack is excellent. I never noticed the other two one way or the other, except for the fact that they recycle way too much of TPM.

Tron Legacy is also a great soundtrack, but I happen to think it’s a very good film as well. Superior to the original in many ways, actually.

When Jyn Erso’s mom gives her the Kyber Crystal necklace in the beginning of the film, I half expected it to come back as a functional implementation of the plot. I’m so glad they didnt use that schtick. If it were typical to Hollywood, she would have used it to restore the uplink to transmit the plans or take down the shield in some way; complete with a “I had the answer around my neck the entire time” moment.

In the end it was just a memento which is kind of nice.

Here’s my two cents on Rogue One and TFA’s soundtracks:

I think I remember one song from Rogue One’s soundtrack and that’s it. The Attack On The Jakkuu Village, Rey’s theme, On The Inside, Kylo Ren Joins The Battle, On The Inside, Torn Apart and Jedi Steps are songs that were stuck in my mind after first viewing. Rogue One’s soundtrack may have been implemented better than TFA’s but Rogue One’s soundtrack is so soulless and lacking in melodic material and consistency that you can hardly call it a Star Wars soundtrack. I can attribute this to the fact that TFA’s soundtrack is in constant rotation but there’s a reason for that…

suspiciouscoffee said:

TV’s Frink said:

Mavimao said:

The prequels for one. Great soundtracks. But mediocre films.

Tron Legacy…

Tron Legacy is also a great soundtrack, but I happen to think it’s a very good film as well.

Yeah!

Superior to the original in many ways, actually.

NOT YEAH!

Don’t get me wrong, I think Tron is good…but it also hasn’t aged very well.

Yep

Another musical moment I remember from TFA is the scene when Han, Chewie and Finn are sneaking on SKB and there’s this melody that plays right before the whole “That’s not how The Force works” bit and it’s kinda beautiful. I don’t think it’s on the actual soundtrack though.

Tyrphanax said:

canofhumdingers said:

Anchorhead said:

I agree with pointing out the lack of consistency in criticizing elements of the movies. I’ve been a vocal critic of the silliness of Imperial Walkers for decades. However, I appreciate the visual. It makes for an imposing presence and it’s cool for the audience. I thought they were interesting visually in 1980 and I think they’re interesting visually now.

To be clear, if you can do this;

You wouldn’t be bothering with this;

I’ve not been following this thread too closely (so tired of all the bickering, first with TFA, and now Rogue One). So apologies if I’m missing the point. But in ESB, the walkers were sent to take out the shield generator. We saw in R1 what happens when a ship flies into a planetary shield… And (I can’t believe I’m saying this) we saw in The Phantom Menace that walking slowly through an energy shield works. So maybe the imperial navy had every intention of sending a star destroyer down into the atmosphere on Hoth…?

As for the logicalness of walkers, they actually make a lot of sense in forrests or really steep and jagged/loose terrain. The original AT-ATs were inspired by an actual military research project.

Yeah, the initial Imperial plan was to sneak up on the system, drop out of hyperspace right on top of the planet, and orbitally-bombard the Rebels into spacedust.

The whole reason the Empire sent the AT-ATs was because Ozzel dropped out of lightspeed too close to the planet. This alerted the Rebels to the presence of the Imperial fleet, giving them time to raise their shield (“strong enough to deflect any bombardment”). It’s all right there in the movie!

But considering the planetary shield only covered a portion of the planet, couldn’t the star destroyers have descended into the atmosphere outside the reach of the shields and then approached Echo Base?

That said, the old pre-PT EU made it so that star destroyers were restricted from atmospheric travel, as were most other capital ships. I wish this was something that remained true, but obviously it has been completely cast aside. It was a logical restriction, and it did better explain the need for a land battle like that portrayed in TESB.

Tyrphanax said:

The Ultimate Edition of the score from The Phantom Menace is incredible and has a ton of fantastic unused music. I wish all the movies had gotten a soundtrack release like that.

I’d say I wish all the movies got a release like the OT special edition soundtracks. Those contain all the cues, unedited. The TPM Ultimate Edition has a lot of great stuff that wasn’t included on the OST, but it has all the music edits from the film which means, particularly in the climax, things tend to become a bit of a mess.

canofhumdingers said:

Anchorhead said:

I agree with pointing out the lack of consistency in criticizing elements of the movies. I’ve been a vocal critic of the silliness of Imperial Walkers for decades. However, I appreciate the visual. It makes for an imposing presence and it’s cool for the audience. I thought they were interesting visually in 1980 and I think they’re interesting visually now.

To be clear, if you can do this;

You wouldn’t be bothering with this;

I’ve not been following this thread too closely (so tired of all the bickering, first with TFA, and now Rogue One). So apologies if I’m missing the point. But in ESB, the walkers were sent to take out the shield generator. We saw in R1 what happens when a ship flies into a planetary shield… And (I can’t believe I’m saying this) we saw in The Phantom Menace that walking slowly through an energy shield works. So maybe the imperial navy had every intention of sending a star destroyer down into the atmosphere on Hoth…?

As for the logicalness of walkers, they actually make a lot of sense in forrests or really steep and jagged/loose terrain. The original AT-ATs were inspired by an actual military research project.

I did a little research on this because I was interested in your response. From what I can tell, yes, there have been several projects researching walker technology, including military application. Nevertheless, I still stand by my statement for the following reasons: 1) our terrestrial technology does not include the superiority of hover technology; 2) wheels remain superior in level terrain in terms of speed and stability (which the Hoth battlefield was); 3) the AT-AT limbs are relatively inflexible, with each joint capable of bending only in specific directions; in other words, there are no socket joints, making stability a greater issue (imagine climbing uneven terrain with pelvic joints that bend only forward or back); 4) the AT-ATs are extremely top-heavy, with legs twice the height of the body proper, making tipping even more likely. I still feel that the Empire possessed technology that would render walkers inferior.

That said, I still believe the walkers are extremely fun and interesting. I don’t watch Star Wars to nitpick. I don’t watch it to be impressed by its realism. I watch it to escape reality and simply enjoy the fun of it. If we wanted, we could point out that small ships should not fly like aerial craft, that laws of inertia are largely ignored, and that ships have an apparent maximum sublight speed. We could complain about the fact that sound cannot exist in space, and if it did, that it travels so slowly compared to light that from the distances we are observing many things, we would notice a delay between the action and the time the correlated sound reaches us. We could point out that ships can travel in reverse in spite of engines that only face backward, that they can slow just as quickly as they accelerate without the powerful engines required to truly do so, that wings folding and unfolding is a needless use of mechanics when it makes no difference in space (and probably serves no purpose in atmosphere either, which in turn is another opportunity for something to break down. We could argue about how in the “perfect” film The Empire Strikes Back, the Millennium Falcon can travel from system to system at sublight speeds, that Luke can apparently breathe in a previously decompressed massive chamber with only a small chamber to supply air through an even smaller broken window without any ill effects. We could even complain about how Luke gets sucked into a tube on the side of that massive chamber in a room that apparently has little to no air under normal circumstances.

But why would I complain about facts, when I’m trying to enjoy science fantasy?

(Note to canofhumdingers, I am directing most of my argument to those who criticize the use of AT-ATs and other unrealistic aspects of Rogue One, and all that is really directed at you is my reason why I believe in a realistic setting, walkers would not be advisable. Again, I am happy to watch a piece of fiction and am happy with unrealistic things as long as they fit with established suspension of disbelief.)