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It’s the last breath they get to take before the most dashing on-screen pirate since Errol Flynn strapped on a pair of tights makes his entrance: Han Solo. This is where the audience – thanks to the golden hues of the picture, the look on the actor’s face, and the artful touch of a master composer – takes a pause and breathes. Not just in the soundtrack itself, but in the story, the galaxy, and the adventures of Star Wars. It’s come to be known as “Luke’s Theme” but it was first dubbed “Binary Sunset” and later referred to as “The Skywalker Theme.” It’s a beautiful, lonesome, and haunting section of the score that’s the calm in the eye of the storm. It’s the swelling piece of music that plays behind Mark Hamill’s naive, wondering gaze as he stares off toward the sunset of his home planet Tatooine’s twin suns. If forced to choose a favorite piece from, not just A New Hope, but all of the Star Wars films, it would be difficult to not choose “Luke’s Theme.” This didn’t originally feature on the soundtrack.
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One thing that didn’t need to be touched one bit, however, is the score. The scene is one of the major reasons George went back to “fix” the original trilogy once his company ILM had mastered computer graphics special effects works. Close your eyes and imagine what sort of music a gin-soaked dive bar on the far reaches of the universe would feature and what do you hear? Not the synthy disco-tinged music that underscored many futuristic visions of 70s filmmaking, but instead the uptempo, jazzy tune Williams composed for A New Hope called simply called “Cantina Band,” a natural choice for the former jazz pianist turned film composer.Īpparently, Williams wrote the song after Lucas told him to “imagine several creatures in a future century finding some 30s Benny Goodman swing band music in a time capsule or under a rock someplace… how they might attempt to interpret it.” Speaking of disco, music producer Meco became obsessed with Star Wars and proposed the idea of doing a disco version of the film’s score to Casablanca Records, resulting in “Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band” a disco mash-up cover of the two tracks, which appeared on the collection Mercury Inspired By Star Wars And Other Galactic Funk and went platinum.Įmploying the same exercise as before and watching the cantina scene sans music, this bit of film history is reduced to what appears to be a rollicking Halloween party. One of the true strokes of unexpected genius is Williams’ choice for the famous galactic bar scene.