After an extended absence from the big screen, the Star Wars franchise finally returns to it with a distinctly small screen adventure, with Jon Favreau directing The Mandalorian and Grogu. Quite why this was selected to go into cinemas is a bit of a mystery (it never seemed that likely that this would provide the box office shot in the arm Disney were hoping the saga would receive) but I’m sure it will get a million hours of streaming once available.
The Mandalorian was the first live-action Star Wars tv show and it seemed quite controversial to me at the time that with all the effort put into literally every single other aspect of the show to make it feel like part of the familiar Star Wars universe from the movies, the one exception was the music, with Ludwig Göransson deliberately charting a course as far from John Williams as possible. In the years since it has been apparent that this must have been a conscious direction from the studio because all the other shows have done the same thing – despite many of them being big nostalgia trips. I’ve said it before but it’s like Lucasfilm see Star Wars as having succeeded despite the contribution of Williams rather than it being a pivotal part of it. Still, who am I?
It’s a little more interesting to talk about what the music is rather than what it isn’t however, and for the big-screen version it comes as no surprise that Göransson has taken what is an undeniably very distinctive palette of colours developed for the tv show and basically made it a bit bigger. That palette with its mix of Bill Conti / Rocky and Morricone spaghetti western stylings really shouldn’t work and yet I guess for the newest generation of Star Wars fans it probably sounds as natural a fit as Williams’s classical romanticism did to us older ones.
The opening “This is the Way” is a lengthy piece which spends some time with the main theme, alternating it with some pretty dynamic action material and, controversially, a few sound effects. They’re musically integrated into the score so I don’t find it as abrasive as seems to have been the general reaction. (And his isn’t the only place on the album you’ll find them.) Then in “The Mandalorian and Grogu” Göransson presents all the different aspects of the familiar theme in full, very satisfying fashion.
The bulk of the score is pretty satisfying action/adventure music with perhaps a greater proportion of it being a little more traditionally orchestral than in the tv show, but there are still plenty of electronics and other less orthodox sounds. The different elements of the main theme are rarely too far away (there’s even a European jazz version of it in “Hugo Durant’s Snack Shack” which sounds like it could be playing in a café on the French Riviera).
What is a little surprising is that there aren’t really any particularly well-developed new themes on show, at least none of any prominence: while Göransson isn’t that sort of composer particularly, and I’ve already noted the deliberate anti-Williams nature of it, it does seem quite weird hearing a Star Wars score for a theatrical movie which doesn’t have more of a thematic base. (In fairness, the “theme” from the tv show which I’ve already noted is all over the place does have multiple distinct elements.)
Perhaps the closest we do come to a theme is “Rotta” (son of Jabba), perhaps more of an “identity” than a theme as such, with a typical Göransson blend of disparate bits and bobs that somehow come together – guttural chanting (a bit like in his Boba Fett score), ominous horns, EDM, jazz fusion – it’s pretty entertaining. There’s also the lullaby-ish “Grogu’s World”, with some lovely impressionistic writing for winds, which never really breaks into any sort of hummable melody but which is certainly nice (and squeeze your eyes closed really hard at the 3’46” mark and you can hear the album’s one and only Williams-ish moment).
Of the various action cues, perhaps my favourite (thanks to how unorthodox it is) is “The Pit Fight” which highlights some of that Rotta material, throwing it in with frenzied percussion (quite Morricone-like) and crowd noises, along with some more traditional heroic orchestra; right after it comes the more straightforward “Rotta Chase”, which is pure dynamite, and “Tracking Lord Janu”, which is just brilliant fun. Later, there’s an epic sweep to “The Helmet” that I find irresistible.
I have to say that while the album runs a little long for my taste, I find it all really very enjoyable, far more so than any of the tv series scores – the music is the one aspect of the film that really does seem to have been adjusted upwards in scope. Is it what I want Star Wars music to sound like? Well no, not really, but that’s hardly Ludwig Göransson’s fault – he was hired to be him and that’s what he’s done. And actually I think this is one of the most flat-out entertaining albums of music he’s ever put out – this is the way now (we’re not going to go back) so let’s enjoy the ride.
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