The Mandalorian theme is the greatest Star Wars music not by John Williams |
"The Mandalorian" is a masterpiece. I'm not talking about The Mandalorian, the TV show (although it is pretty great, especially the first season). And I'm not talking about The Mandalorian and Grogu, the new film (I haven't seen that yet). I'm talking about "The Mandalorian," the musical composition by Ludwig Göransson.
Thanks to the legendary composer John Williams, Star Wars has an extremely distinctive musical signature. More than that, for generations of moviegoers, the Star Wars sound defines movie music. Brassy orchestral fanfares; sweeping, romantic strings; twinkling glissandos on a harp or celeste, evoking the starry depth of the cosmos. Williams scored all nine Skywalker saga films, and his sound has been carefully imitated by other composers working on Star Wars projects big and small.
Nothing could touch Williams — until 2019. Star Wars was making its debut in a new medium: live-action episodic television. Writer-director Jon Favreau envisioned The Mandalorian as a lone-gunslinger space Western about an armored warrior and an alien child getting into scrapes as they journeyed through the galaxy. He was influenced by samurai comics and old-school TV potboilers — exactly the kind of influences George Lucas had drawn on for the original movie, but that had been eclipsed by Star Wars' own........