Padme's going to feel jealous, SI.

I want this so badly. I really shouldn't be allowed to talk about this subject b/c I bring it up too much myself. But as I've said in many threads before, I've done some amateur cutting together of tracks and put them over the end sequence in AOTC and it's much better. It's not even the fact they re-tracked, yes, it's bad to retrack, but it's the fact they so, so rarely picked relevant or appropriate music (a rare instance in which it works: the Order 666 music is retracked in the Mustafar platform scene, but it works so well that you could assume it was not a retrack, but merely a repeated theme - it very may well be, I suppose). Like I said, put Duel of the Fates into the Arena battle and Geonosis war, it's already a much, much more dramatic sequence. If you use the arena music that Williams scored, the opening stuff with Padme, Obi and Anakin is far more exciting - I'll blame Ben Burtt for that one. He loves those musicless sequences where the sound supposdely provides the emotion.

I grew to strongly, strongly dislike Ben Burtt over the course of the prequels. I'd blame him for everything, but I can't help but wonder why the hell Lucas didn't step in and say "what the hell are we doing?" when cutting the music together for TPM and AOTC. ROTS is better with the exceptions already mentioned.

The music we heard during "Padmé's Visit" (which is the name of the cue) on Mustafar with the "Lament" music...is actually a reprise, not a cut and paste job. I've heard the rear channel DVD rip of it from the German version of the movie and it's definitely a reprise... Just like the short reprise Williams uses from "Moving Things Along" (aka Enter Lord Vader) into the piece where Mace gets gets his hand cut off by Anakin's saber.

Good info. That's probably why the music works so well there - b/c JW was making the decisions, not Burtt!

I agree.

"Padmé's Visit" is just one of six major cues from ROTS, I really want to hear with out sfx or dialogue.

A lot of the music decisions for all 3 Prequels I mostly blame Ben Burtt on. AOTC has the most shitty mix for the music of all 3. A lot of times you can barely hear the music. They did a bit better job on ROTS but still, a lot of the music you could barley hear, to much Ben Burtt "music" was going on.

I really liked the music during the confrontation between Mace and Palpatine, although after listening to the unused portions of that cue from the video games, I wish more of it was in the film. When Mace kicks Palpatine, the music is sort of reminiscent of ESB's score when the AT-AT is toppled (probably completely unintentional connection there, but cool nonetheless). Also, the music that underscores Mace flying out the window was similar to when the Emperor fell into the shaft in ROTJ and definitely one of the most epic moments on the whole score. That is, if you can hear it over all the yelling and the lightning and wind.

'Twas good shit, though.

On the DVD, we see alot of how Ben throws his weight around to get what he wants...opting for more concentration on simple sfx and less music.

For God's sake...the first 10 seconds of the film he choses to subdue Williams triumphant military Force theme that's supposed to kick off the film with a bang and enhances the low screech of the fighter engines as they cruise over the SD? Nothing short of mentally retarded. I crank that part everytime I watch it just to lift the music a little more. When you listen to the ROTS soundtrack, that first track gives me goosebumps everytime and BB decided to shaft it. What a douchebag.

That's a complaint about that opening space battle I've got too. It's supposed to be a gigantic battle and that's understandable but the music is underplayed far too much in that scene. One of my favorite cues from the track is drowned out when Obi-Wan and Anakin fly through an explosion. When I saw that for the very time at the midnight showing, I wanted to punch Burtt in the face because I just knew this had to be his decision. The feeling hasn't really changed all that much in the ensuing year. In fact, it's really only intensified. I don't have as big a problem with the music issues in the PT as a lot of people seem to but this one has always bugged the hell out of me.

I'm sure most of the issues with music can be traced back to Burtt. He seems to view a musical score as just another sound effect, rather than the thematic accompaniment for which it was intended in SW films. Which would explain why he would have no problems tracking cues all over the place -- in addition to undermining its importance during action sequences.

Burtt wanted JW to be his little b***h. You can see that in interviews with the two together. I get the feeling that to Burtt it was a competition on who could have the most impact on the story telling. He is kind of like a Salieri to William's Mozart.

Don't get me wrong though--What Burtt did with sound recording manipulations and recording techniques is phenomenal.

I agree - his work in sound is stunning. Always has been. But that's exactly why it was a conflict of interests having him as sound editor too. His love is sound effects - he was always going to give his effects work more focus than the score. That's why he should never have been allowed near the editing.

I really hope one day we get an intended version of the Revenge Of The Sith score that would be set up similar to the 97 RCA/ Sony 2004 OT scores. There's definitely quite a bit of music that we don't have (besides the stuff from the games). While I'm at it I'll post the full actual recording session cues. There were a couple of cues not named at the time the "Making Of" PDF file was released on hyperspace, however the proper titles have now been released for them. I won't bother putting the recording session date, just the slate number and title cues.

I love the cue names that Williams gives for the score. I had wish the cues "I Am The Senate" and "Revisiting Padmé" were left on the OST as those early reports indicated. It pisses me off they were decided to be left off at the last moment.

1M1 Fox Fanfare (Old Recording)
1M2 Star Wars Main Title (Old Recording)
1M3 Boys Into Battle
1M4 They're Coming Around
1M4a Get 'Em, R-2!
1M5 The Elevator Scene
1M6 Count Dooku's Enterance
1M7 The Death Of Dooku

2M1 Grievous And The Droids
2M3 Another Happy Landing
2M4 Revisiting Padmé
2M5 Grievous Travels To Palpatine
2M6 Scenes And Dreams
2M7 Be Careful Of Your Friend

3M1 Council Meeting
3M2 Hold Me
3M2a Palpatine's TV Set
3M3 Palpatine's Big Pitch
3M5 Good-bye, Old Friend
3M6 Going To Utapau
3M7 Riding The Lizard
3M8 Obi-Wan Fares Droids

4M1x Drawing Swords
4M1a Good Guys Arrive
4M3 Palpatine's Seduction
4M4 Rolling With Grievous
4M4a Fighting With Grievous
4M5 Dialogue With Mace
4M5a Padmé's Ruminations
4M6 I Am The Senate

5M1 Palpatine Instructs Anakin
5M3 Lament
5M3a Bail's Escape
5M4 Swimming, Droids, Yoda Farewell
5M5 News Of The Attack
5M6 Moving Things Along
5M7 Anakin's Dark Deeds

6M1 It Can't Be
6M2 A Moody Trip
6M3 Padmé's Visit
6M4 Heroes Collide
6M5 Duel Of Yoda And Sidious (Choir Only)
6M6 Yoda Falls
6M7 The Boys Continue
6M8 Yoda To Exile
6M9 Revenge Of The Sith

7M1 The Immolation Scene
7M2 Anakin Crawling
7M3 The Birth Of The Twins
7M4 The Death Of Padmé
7M5 Plans For The Twins
7M6 Padmé's Funeral
7M7 A Home For The Twins
7M8 End Credits

I really do miss all the excitement, the hype buildup, the spoilers, everything. I still remember taking the day off just to be the first in line for the first morning showing ( since there wasn't a midnight madness here).

I miss the hype around AotC more than RotS.

i wasnt around for aotc hype so why was that better than rots's?

Because there was so much story in AotC and things were leaked slowly and dramatically. It was just fun.

Don't get me wrong, Bertok, I like Mozart, but JW has always reminded me of Beethoven. Regardless JW is a genius and a great composer. I think JW has evolved into a much more complex composer, adding so many layers to the music.

Yup. There was something about the wait for AOTC that was just so damn awesome. The GL selects, the first making ofs, the methodical spoiler leakage, leaked storyboards, etc., etc.. I guess there's no way the movie could've lived up to the anticipation, although I must say they could've done a better job even as much as I do enjoy the film.

Those were damn good times. Waiting for each film was different, and the wait in all three was a whole lot of fun, but there's no doubt the wait for AOTC was the best. It was nonstop. You could go on the net everyday and learn something new and exciting.

Manny,

I thought some of the BS rumors were as much fun as anything. I remember TFN reporting something about Dooku having a "flamesaber" and ILM were having problems with it, etc. It was easy to pick out ridiculous stuff but the excitement of learning about all this stuff was great fun. Esp learning about the lineage starting with Yoda leading directly to Luke.

Wow, where've I been? Anyway...

I agree, the AOTC hype was well done. Not over hyped like TPM, not undercooked like it was for ROTS. Everything for AOTC was done well and properly timed. That promo shot of Dooku with the two sabers had me smiling with glee. AOTC also had the best teasers/trailers, IMO.

No doubt, I too even loved those purple highlighted (or was it red) rumors that you knew were BS. All the leaked dialogue was right on though - unfortunately, a bunch of stuff that was leaked didn't make the final cut. That's the problem with rumors - they get your hopes up for one thing, and then when you don't see it on screen, it's a letdown. Oh well...the wait was worth it for sure. I feel bad for the nonspoilers!

Manny,

As far as the dialog is concerned, isn't that because someone at TFN got their hands on the AOTC script? They must have because they had stuff that nobody else seemed to know.

Whatever the case, you're right about the leaked stuff that got cut. I knew one of the characters said something like "someone's out to start a war", a line which I thought would've contributed to all of the intrigue and mysteries flying around. It basically spelled out what was going on with the assassination attempts, the clone army and all that other stuff. Oh well...

I do also. Things weren't set in stone back then. We weren't sure what direction George was taking after seeing TPM since it wasn't how we imagined the PT. We weren't sure what was important to the plot and what wasn't. I remember for a while we all thought that each select image was something important in AOTC. Boy were some of us off. Of course when we started seeing Twi'lek after Twi'lek in those pics, it did warn us.

AOTC's spoilers were given to us over a period of years. It seemed almost criminal the way Lucasfilm spoiled us with Hyperspace and Pudu with the spoilers in the fall of 2003 for ROTS. It gave us a year to speculate on very little. But then again by then we knew what direction Lucas was taking and knew what had to happen in the film. There wasn't much room for any side adventures really.

I miss the days of AOTC spoilers though. Sith Interceptor and Perfect Dark with the scripts, Hoedaack with the characters, George and his select images, web docs, and casting updates. Not to mention the fun of deciphering the domain names. Good times.

Count me in on the AOTC spoiler love. It was AOTC that lured me into the whole spoiler game. Fun times for all the reasons already mentioned. The slower distribution of spoilers in retrospect was more fun than getting it all in one splash which was what kinda happend with ROTS. The AOTC spoilers lasted pretty much up until the film was released and the script was leaked not too long before that as well. It was a nice way to cap off the whole run.



Definitely. A good example of this for me was the leaked storyboards. Those boards depicted two seemingly awesome fights so it was easy to get hyped and excited about them. But then the Mace/Jango was cut down to next to nothing and the Obi/Jango fight while good had a lot cut from it as well. But such was one of the drawbacks of being a spoiler junkie. I still kinda prefer a lot of aspects from shooting script compared to the finished film though.

Well we do know the fight between Dooku, Anakin and Obi-Wan was supposed to be a bit longer and same with the fight between Dooku and Yoda. Since after all we saw production stills of Dooku holding his own saber and the one that Obi-Wan and Anakin used. Why they didn't extend the fight for the DVD, who knows.

Maybe for the Saga DVD set next year they might put in some scenes that were ment to be in the final cut but were dropped.

Totally agree. I still believe AOTC was overedited. The shooting script was superior to what we got on screen.

I agree. Even in ROTS, there were snips at the beginning and end of scenes I wished had stayed.

The build-up to AOTC, for obvious reasons , was fucking awesome. So much info and only 2.5 yrs to discuss it.

I stayed low-key for ROTS and benefitted from it.

All up good times...

It lacked a few scenes that helped tie other scenes together. Intercutting Padme putting Threepio's coverings on probably would've broken the tension of Anakin and Obi-Wan's respective searches. I think the right decisions were made for most things.

Not to mention the shooting script for AOTC didn't have any interaction between Anakin and Palpatine. That sill amazes me to this day. I mean for TPM, the pat on the shoulder from Palpatine scene was added late in the game. In AOTC, their office meeting was added in post production. Palpatine and Anakin's relationship in the PT for the first two movies was an afterthought. Terrible.

When all is said and done, I'm glad we're back in a period where SW is something that is there for the fans, but not always in your face. The entire period between TPM and ROTS was like sharing a lover with strangers. On a positive point though, we now have six movies to watch with friends in the basement on a hot summer afternoon... And we now know exactly how it all happened.

I don't think it was an afterthought. Interaction doesn't always need to be in your face. Lucas didn't have to show any big interaction between Anakin and Palpatine in TPM. That "hand on the shoulder" bit always struck me as a wink to the fans more than serious development. As for AOTC, Anakin talks incessantly about Palpatine all the time. His influence on Anakin's character is seen constantly. Having that scene in the office was a HUGE contribution and belongs in the movie, don't get me wrong, but I don't it was mandatory for the movie to be a successful story (both unto itself and in the larger saga).

Besides, a script is only a suggestion of how a movie might turn out. If changes have to be made (as was the case with the prequels), it's not a reflection on the writer. If anything, it's a credit to Lucas as an editor/storyteller that he realized he could (or should) have more of this or that, less of this or that, etc.

well I just watched ROTS again for the first time since not having watched any SW for at least 6 months...fucken orsm man...