The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
Here's my rant:
The biggest problem with the music editing in the prequels is thanks to mordern technology, its now possible to tweak and edit a film right up until you ship it to theatres. Which of course is shit for John Williams, since a composer needs a locked edit so they can get the timing and cues, etc.
What happens now then is that the music is written, but the film then gets edited (by BEN BURTT ARG) after that so the music no longer fits the picture. Which means you either trim the music along wit hthe picture, or you ditch that cue and get another peice (usually the temp track, the music you edited the scene to originally).
You can see a lot of the first method in The Phantom Menace. Cues are edited together sometimes reall bizarrley, especially in the final battle sequence which was reedited so many times. If you have the Ultimate Edition of the soundtrack, you have the version of the music as it was edited in the film, which means there's still a bit of Williams' music that was not released as it was never in the film.
Now Attack of the Clones is mooossstttllyyy okay, mostly. Up until the arena battle, where it all goes to shit. As you can hear on the soundtrack, a longer cue for the arena battle was written but, surprise surpise, the sequence was still edited afterwards (FUCK YOU BEN) meaning that a lot of the arena battle music are cues tracked directly from Episode I (as those cues would've been used for the temp track). Which, for me at least, really takes you out of the film as you're hearing the exact same music from the last film and it doesn't really work here. Same for the droid factory sequence - Williams wrote a cue, edited afterwards, cue didn't work, other music used instead.
But then we have Episode III. Okay, so, I can live with the ship-crashing sequence at the start being tracked with music from Episode I (the same music that was used in Episode II), I can almost live with them using the exact same recording of Duel of the Fates from Episode I for the Palpatine/Yoda fight (despite the fact that we could've heard awesome versions of the Yoda and Emperor themes instead and really by then we're all a bit sick of Duel of the Fates), but it's the scene where Anakin - now Darth Vader - leads the Stormtroopers into the Jedi temple that's the worst part.
So Anakin has finally become Darth Vader and the Empire is being formed. What would be a really really good theme to be played over this moment? The Imperial March? Like, a big rendition of the Imperial March? Well no, apparently, we get the Seperatist theme. You know, the theme for the other guys. Not only that, but it's in a cue that's taked from Episode II, not only that but that cue didn't fit the scene so it's horribly horribly looped. BUT WAIT, the sound effects of the 'troopers marching is in time with the music. Hmmm, it's almost as if the guy in charge of the sound effects (Ben Burtt) said to the editor (Ben Burtt) "Hey so even though it totally doesn't work musically, I spent like all night making these footsteps go in time so we should totally put it in the film.". Of course if you actually look at the Stormtrooper's feet they're not even remotly marching in time so not only is it a bad musical choice the sound effects don't even sync!
Long story short: Fuck Ben Burtt as an editor.
The biggest problem with the music editing in the prequels is thanks to mordern technology, its now possible to tweak and edit a film right up until you ship it to theatres. Which of course is shit for John Williams, since a composer needs a locked edit so they can get the timing and cues, etc.
What happens now then is that the music is written, but the film then gets edited (by BEN BURTT ARG) after that so the music no longer fits the picture. Which means you either trim the music along wit hthe picture, or you ditch that cue and get another peice (usually the temp track, the music you edited the scene to originally).
You can see a lot of the first method in The Phantom Menace. Cues are edited together sometimes reall bizarrley, especially in the final battle sequence which was reedited so many times. If you have the Ultimate Edition of the soundtrack, you have the version of the music as it was edited in the film, which means there's still a bit of Williams' music that was not released as it was never in the film.
Now Attack of the Clones is mooossstttllyyy okay, mostly. Up until the arena battle, where it all goes to shit. As you can hear on the soundtrack, a longer cue for the arena battle was written but, surprise surpise, the sequence was still edited afterwards (FUCK YOU BEN) meaning that a lot of the arena battle music are cues tracked directly from Episode I (as those cues would've been used for the temp track). Which, for me at least, really takes you out of the film as you're hearing the exact same music from the last film and it doesn't really work here. Same for the droid factory sequence - Williams wrote a cue, edited afterwards, cue didn't work, other music used instead.
But then we have Episode III. Okay, so, I can live with the ship-crashing sequence at the start being tracked with music from Episode I (the same music that was used in Episode II), I can almost live with them using the exact same recording of Duel of the Fates from Episode I for the Palpatine/Yoda fight (despite the fact that we could've heard awesome versions of the Yoda and Emperor themes instead and really by then we're all a bit sick of Duel of the Fates), but it's the scene where Anakin - now Darth Vader - leads the Stormtroopers into the Jedi temple that's the worst part.
So Anakin has finally become Darth Vader and the Empire is being formed. What would be a really really good theme to be played over this moment? The Imperial March? Like, a big rendition of the Imperial March? Well no, apparently, we get the Seperatist theme. You know, the theme for the other guys. Not only that, but it's in a cue that's taked from Episode II, not only that but that cue didn't fit the scene so it's horribly horribly looped. BUT WAIT, the sound effects of the 'troopers marching is in time with the music. Hmmm, it's almost as if the guy in charge of the sound effects (Ben Burtt) said to the editor (Ben Burtt) "Hey so even though it totally doesn't work musically, I spent like all night making these footsteps go in time so we should totally put it in the film.". Of course if you actually look at the Stormtrooper's feet they're not even remotly marching in time so not only is it a bad musical choice the sound effects don't even sync!
Long story short: Fuck Ben Burtt as an editor.
