Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. The first non-John Williams scored Star Wars theatrical film (live-action, so don't count that shitty Clone Wars feature length flick) is going to be Gareth Edwards' ROGUE ONE, the first spin-off flick in Lucasfilm's diabolical plan to hit us with a new Star Wars movie every year until the sun explodes and destroys us all. We knew that for a while, but what we didn't know was that announced composer Alexandre Desplat was going to drop out three months before release.
I'll always be fascinated thinking of what Desplat's score would have sounded like, but if I'm to be perfectly candid... he's not my favorite for a movie like this. His scores are layered and rich, but tend to be more background tone music than the thematic stuff you associate with something like Star Wars.
Michael Giacchino, on the other hand, seems almost built by a computer to step into this world. He's been working his whole career to get to this point and is by far the closest composer we have to John Williams. The big reshoots apparently caused a schedule shift that knocked Desplat out of composing the music for the film and Disney very quickly snatched up Giacchino, who has been near and dear to the studio for a long time now (per THR).
Giacchino is an obvious choice and someone that I feel with every fiber of my being will bring his A game to this thing.
He isn't afraid to be big, wear its heart on its sleeve and next to Williams himself there's nobody else working out there that does thematic scores like he does. It's a perfect fit and one that might be prepping him to take over the franchise should Williams retire or simply age out of Star Wars.
As of right now we still have Williams saying he's composing the score for Rian Johnson's Episode VIII, so the maestro isn't going anywhere just yet, but I'd be willing to bet just about anything Rogue One won't be the last Star Wars film Michael Giacchino scores.
What do you folks think?
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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