The more of John Williams' score that we can get, the better. If his work on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is truly meant to be his last on the franchise, then it makes sense this should be epic. While we don't know much about the movie itself, we at least know how much music Williams will be composing for it, and we have Williams' brother to thank for it.
Speaking with Scoring Arts, John Williams' brother Don, an renowned percussionist who has performed on tours with some of the greats, as well as in his brother's movies, gave an update on The Rise of Skywalker and how much music we can expect to hear...
“John’s started up on another Star Wars. We started on it last week. He’s got 135 minutes worth of music to write, so that kind of tells how long the film is. It is top to bottom music. We’ve done four days and we just scratched the surface. I think we’ve got something like 34 minutes in the canon at this point.”
That's 2 hours and 15 minutes of music Williams is composing, but the movie will obviously be much longer. On average, there's about an hour of footage without music, so we could be looking at a massive film, the longest of the franchise. The Last Jedi is currently the longest at 150 minutes.
While Don makes it clear there will be a ton of new material, he also says the nostalgia train will be in full effect with all of the scores we've known and loved for decades...
“But I can tell you that every theme that you’ve heard is going to be compiled into this last effort. Leia, Yoda, ‘Phantom,’ Darth, all of it is going to be in there. And in his usual style, he hides them. You gotta go look for them. ”
This being the finale to the Skywalker Saga a walk through the music that lit up our imaginations for decades is appropriate. I think we'd be disappointed if Williams didn't do something like this.
Keep in mind, none of this is final and the amount of music could change once the movie is locked. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens December 20th.
