Star Wars Episodes IV-VI Music in the Films Versus the Soundtracks

Star Wars is of course some of John Williams' most imaginative music for the movies and he's about to compose and conduct the score for Episode VII-The Force Awakens. In honor and commemoration of his classic, epic Star Wars scores for Episodes IV-A New Hope, Episode V-The Empire Strikes Back and Episode VI-Return of the Jedi, I'm revisiting these scores.

Have you noticed, in Star Wars Episodes IV-VI, just how different the music is in the films versus how it is in the soundtrack CDs? George Lucas, who was of course the director of Episode IV and was Executive Producer of Episodes V & VI and thus as editor had final cut, clearly had fun editing John's music. Perhaps George did this to conform John's music to the ever-changing last-minute visual edits George was doing to the films. Perhaps George did this because he liked a different piece of music for a particular cue than the music John originally wrote.

I sure have noticed this, and have always found it frustrating, when listening to the soundtracks trying to recall scenes from the movies in my head, hearing some glaring major differences.

I've just completed mixing and editing my own custom "film versions" of the Episodes IV-VI soundtracks, from the Special Edition 2-CD soundtracks which were released over a decade ago, on 2-CD sets of each film soundtrack, for my own personal enjoyment, not for distribution, to get the music in the soundtrack to sound exactly like it does in the film. To do this, I played the movie in the background while playing the same music ripped from CD to be edited on my computer for synchronization reference. When the movie suddenly shifted drastically out of sync with the music played on the computer, I knew George made an alteration to John's notes there. Then I'd go back and re-listen to the same segment of the film and music again and again until I figured out exactly what note to cut on, then, within each track, make either a hard cut or cross-fade, whichever sounded more organic, on the note.

Sometimes just a note or two here and there was trimmed. Other times, whole sections of music were rearranged or simply not used.

1) New Hope's music had its share of trims, most notably in the first appearances of both the Jawas and the Tusken Raiders.

2) Empire's music had many, many more alterations, most notably George Lucas dropping whole sections of music on Hoth entirely in the film in the interest of being minimalist, going for realism in the cold frozen wasteland of that icy planet and telling that portion of the story only with dialogue and sound-effects.

3) Jedi's music was a virtual cornucopia of trims, repetitions of notes and rearrangements of entire sections of notes, most notably in the Pit of Carkoon Sarlacc Jabba's Sail Barge Assault sequence. I think George went a little overboard with the scissors there, but I can understand why he made the alterations.

John Williams' music was clearly just another tool in George Lucas' enormous technological toolkit, to be manipulated and tinkered with like any other element to perfectly fit George's grand, operatic and yet highly technically complex vision for the films.

Anyway, discuss if you like.