How John Williams made a Space Opera way cooler than it was.

The first Star Wars movie came out on May 25, 1977. Coming from the mind of George Lucas, Star Wars: A New Hope starts with a blaring hit of trumpets and a very confident scroll of text. During this stretch of cleanly cut exposition, we hear the melody for which billions of people across the globe would be singing to this day: the main theme. It’s a very simple four measure melody accompanied by percussive lower brass, strings, and drums. The question is, what makes this so effective? Other revered songs with classical instrumentation like “Flight of The Bumblebee” or “Flight of The Valkyries” seem to never be associated with Star Wars despite both of their apparent similarities. That’s a good point. Except no, no it’s not. 

Whenever you hear a Star Wars song, you can instantly tell it is Star Wars. There’s a lot of distinct choices in the music of Star Wars that make it so. A good place to start is what it was originally intended to do, which was to accompany one of the weirdest things put on film in 1977. A New Hope sets up a world with fully armored space marines with laser guns, wizards who duel with swords of pure energy that weigh nothing, wacky-looking aliens with their own established cultures and identities, and a giant furry bigfoot thing with sentience. It shows the light and the darkness within every scene, and the true good and evil. You hear the infamous tune of the Imperial March as Darth Vader steps out as one of the most iconic villains to ever enter theaters. Not only are the classic sounds we know amazing, but the simple ways they are slightly altered to fit different moments are so perfectly thought out. 

Choosing tracks and naming them after individual characters was another simple but important way of making the character’s development even more perfect. We’ve got Anakin’s Theme, Anakin and Padme, The Adventures of Han, Princess Leia’s Theme, Yoda’s Theme, Han Solo and the Princess, Luke and Leia, Rey’s Theme and even Jar Jar Binks has a song (even though most people don’t even think he should’ve existed.) If you were to listen to all of the soundtracks to every Star Wars movie you would pick up on how frequently parts of tracks are mixed together. In arguably the biggest battle ever, while Anakin vs. Obi-Wan is playing, you begin to hear bits of the Imperial March mixed in with the intense strings and trumpets playing. John Williams ability to intermix notes and small parts of things we know into new sounds is unmatchable. He has been nominated for 341 awards and won 197 of them. If that doesn’t prove he’s amazing, what else will? The soundtracks of these timeless movies will forever be special and powerful for anyone who watches them thanks to his amazing work and imagination.