The Force was strong with this one.
The second installment in our retrospective of the “Star Wars” scores will focus exclusively on music for the first of the sequels, “The Empire Strikes Back,” released in 1980. For many, this is the best in the series so far, the “Godfather Part II” of space fantasy movies.
Both George Lucas and composer John Williams succeeded in developing and deepening material from the first film, yet managed to avoid becoming too heavy-handed by ramping up the creativity and maintaining a spirit of adventure.
You could ignore the jargon, let the back story glide over you, and still have fantastic time. Beloved characters from the original film, fun and familiar, were joined by instant “Star Wars” pop cultural icons, Lando Calrissian, Boba Fett, Emperor Palpatine, and of course Yoda.
How could you take an invasion by elephantine Imperial Walkers, or riding patrol atop stop motion tauntauns too seriously anyway? One of the leads was played by a Muppet with the voice of Miss Piggy, for crying out loud.
Williams came up with themes or motives for all of these, alongside the first appearance of “The Imperial March” and a love theme for Han and the Princess, arguably managing to top the achievement of his seemingly untoppable original score. His work on “The Empire Strikes Back” earned him his 15th Academy Award nomination.
Last week, I discussed the merits of the original soundtrack albums, with their re-edited material providing a satisfying home listening experience, versus the current trend of releasing the music note-complete and chronological, as it’s heard in the film.
With “The Empire Strikes Back,” it’s a very tough call, since of all the scores, this one perhaps holds up the best when heard complete from beginning to end. That said, with less than an hour to touch on the highlights, it’s much easier to accomplish when sampling from the original two-LP set.
This is a challenge, since only material from one of the two records has ever made it to compact disc, at least in this country (on Polydor 825 298-2, released in 1985). Selections from the other are reconstructed on this week’s show, using the film mix, as it appears on the 4-CD “Star Wars Anthology” (issued as a box set on 20th Century Fox Film Scores 07822-11012-2, released in 1993).
How fanboy is that? I even tossed on the 20th Century Fox fanfare, for good measure.
I hope you’ll JOIN ME* for this week’s “Picture Perfect,” tonight at 6 ET, with a repeat tomorrow morning at 6, or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.
