Every single Star Wars film from the original trilogy to the modern sequels has prominently featured a soundtrack orchestrated by John Williams, perhaps the most famous film score composer ever. Though Williams conducted the score for all nine main series films, when the hit series The Mandalorian needed an original score, the franchise adopted a new composer who may have paved a new path for the franchise’s music.
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Make no mistake, Star Wars would not be the cultural powerhouse it is today without the genre-defining work of John Williams. Williams composed for Star Wars, E.T., Jaws, Superman, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, and countless other film and TV projects. His is the kind of career that defines a medium, ask anyone to hum an iconic piece from a film and they’ll almost always be humming something by John Williams. The franchise has branched out a couple times, like when Michael Giacchino composed the score for Rogue One. Giacchino, the master composer behind films like Up and The Incredibles, literally inserted some of Williams’s work into his own. That’s how key he is to the franchise.
The only work that has found a way to stay inextricably linked to the Star Wars franchise while being undeniably its own project is The Mandalorian. This hit series found a way to remain fresh and feel brand new when the franchise was in difficult times, announcing to the world that the universe still has life in it after all these years. Even as old concepts are brought back into the series, it remains the most well-loved piece of recent media in the franchise. Much like the series as a whole, The Mandalorian has a score that uses elements of the old to create something new, and the master composer behind this bold new direction is Ludwig Göransson.
Ludwig Göransson is a Swedish composer who has been in the business since the late 2000s and is recognized as outstanding in his field. His first big break came in Dan Harmon’s 2009 comedy series Community, which Göransson scored with countless pieces of memorable background music. On that set, he met Donald Glover AKA Childish Gambino, and he went on to produce all four of his studio albums. Göransson met director Ryan Coogler in college and went on to score several of his films, including Black Panther, for which he won both a Grammy and an Academy Award. Göransson also won a Primetime Emmy for his composition work on The Mandalorian.
The reason Ludwig Göransson found the perfect direction for The Mandalorian while other Star Wars directors simply recreated the past is simple; recontextualization. Göransson never uses any of the original score in his own, but he does call back to some unique aspects to maintain the all-important feeling of the galaxy fans know and love. For example, the massive fanfares in the otherwise understated score are almost always used to herald in the Razor’s Crest, using the powerful brass instruments to better frame space travel. The lower register and marching drum beat as Mando walks through the desert feels reminiscent of “The Imperial March” of earlier entries. The theme is heavily inspired by Westerns and Samurai films, much like the franchise as a whole. It’s reverent of its source, but unmistakably new.
John Williams’s score is so iconic because it perfectly fits the galaxy it was written for and Ludwig Göransson’s achieves the same standard for a completely different work. When working with a master like Williams, it is hard to imagine anything going wrong, but the awful truth is, anything can get stale. Williams has publically announced that he will be moving on from Star Wars after Episode IX, meaning that if another film is ever released, it will likely be the first without his work on the soundtrack. Ludwig Göransson might be the solution to that problem before it becomes one.
The Mandalorian demands an entirely different musical tone, the dark space-western needed an appropriate tone which Göransson’s score provided excellently. But if another main series entry makes it to screen, or another trilogy is devised in the coming years, a return to classic form may be necessary. Perhaps the perfect person to recontextualize the old score, carry the torch from the old master, and craft new art to suit the new stories is the person who has best excelled at those very tasks in the most universally beloved Star Wars project in years.
Ultimately, it doesn’t have to be Ludwig Göransson to create a great score for future Star Wars media, he’s already set a perfect example. Music is important, and in a series with such iconic compositions, the franchise must continue to evolve sonically without leaving the past behind and ensure that the galaxy far far away sounds as beautiful as it always has.
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