Via Theatlantic.com:

Star Wars was already deeply embedded in American pop culture by the time I was a kid. There were numerous video games, toys, comics, spin-offs, and an entire new trilogy of films by my twelfth birthday, and characters like Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and Han Solo had long been cultural icons. The villains of my youth were imitating shadows of the Dark Side, clad in capes and cybernetics, and the heroes were paler imitations of the didactic duos of Obi-Wan and Luke.

In the 39 years the franchise has been in existence, creator George Lucas has had a lot of help in its success and integration into popular culture. Of course, there are the actors themselves, and the legions of mimics in science fiction and fantasy. But for me, perhaps the most singular contribution has come from the legendary composer John Williams, of Jaws, Indiana Jones, and Jurassic Park fame. Williams’s music has been as vital to my love of Star Wars as have light sabers and giant weapons with rather conspicuous weaknesses. So when I found out that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story would be the franchise’s first live-action film without Williams at its center, I was apprehensive.

What’s a Star Wars film without John Williams? It’s a hard question to answer when you consider the careful, virtuoso work he’s done to flesh out and develop a universe of figures and knotted allegiances. Williams’s composing hand and the London Symphony Orchestra’s strings, for instance, turn a wordless moment in the original Star Wars film into a profound contemplation of power and self-realization. The leitmotif has come to symbolize Luke and the Force, and is arguably one of the most recognizable seven-note sequences in American music. Luke’s father Darth Vader and the Empire he represents, on the other hand, are driven by timpani, staccato strings, and boisterous brass, in a theme that has become so associated with power that sports antiheroes and would-be villains use it.

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