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★6 (179) |
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56.6-107.4
starws (Star Wars)Who would have ever thought that Bandai Namco nabbing Disney-related animation licenses from tome to time would lead to port something in the likes of this!? Once again, we're left with an IP so famous that to spare a few words for many would just be tantamount to spell the obvious- it's a cold classic from the late 70ies, after all!
What we know today as the first of a 70ies-80ies movie trilogy with the subtitle of Episode IV – A New Hope actually made its theathrical debut just as Star Wars, releasing on this very same day 47 years ago. It's the only movie in the franchise where directing/screenplay/story credits are all owed to the one to give birth to the franchise as a whole: the currently-80-aged filmmaker George Lucas. The franchise as a whole portrays the struggle of a bygone era between the freedom-longing Rebel Alliance and the menacing Galactic Empire ruling the galaxy with an iron fist in manpower and weaponry, with the franchise-starter movie focusing on the destruction of one of their most prized armed assets -the Death Star station- as well as the journey of an humble man from a deserted planet, learning in the process more about a mysterious power that most deemed disappeared in the echoes of time, both for doing good and evil deeds.
Strong of his success with his 1971 debut flick THX 1138, Lucas has soon pursued the creation of another couple of major projects to follow from scratch, upon approval from United Artists head David Picker: a "coming-of-age story" (which would become 1973's American Graffiti) and a "soap opera in outer space", following the likes of the Flash Gordon comic run and the other space-related works inspiring its inception in return, including John Carter of Mars from the Tarzan-famed Edgar Rice Burroughs. Due to Lucas's newcomer status, finding an accepting movie studios for the latter proved to be difficult but eventually the warm reception of American Graffiti eventually lead the space opera project to be funded by Twentieth Century Fox, granting a $5M budget (and eventually going overbudget by another 3 millions) as well as the creation of a dedicated visual effects company -Industrial Light & Magic- to deliver Lucas's vision. The project's long production and overbudgeting issues for Star Wars have dampened the crew's mood prior to release, to the point of the same Lucas famously acceptiong a wager from Steven Spielberg for the exchange of 2.5% of the box office profits between Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the aftermath, it was recorded that Star Wars' initial launch has grossed 410 million dollars worldwide, with the number rising to $775M when later theathrical releleases are accounted. Once the related price inflation is accounted, the movie became America's 2nd highest-grossing movie of all time (only behind Gone With The Wind) and 4th highest-grossing worldwide, so... in the end, who do you think has won that bet with Spielberg, huh?
Music has played a gargantuan role into shaping the Star Wars franchise's identity; the first movie's main theme opening most of the theathrically-released motion pictures in the series should be enough of an example to that point! Even if it was denied by George Lucas in later years, the same Lucas originally planned for the first movie to use pre-existing music rather than featuring an original score, hiring American conductor John Williams as a consultant. Williams himself ultimately persuaded the filmmaker to opt for a unique movie soundtrack and in the span of a mere 12 days of March 1977, the same conductor and the London Symphony Orchestra have managed to give form to most of the overall franchise's defining pieces, main theme included! To meet Lucas's demands halfaway, most of the resulting creations were inspired by orchestral scores that were submitted for review to Williams by the same filmmaker during his music-consultant tenure, with the iconic Main Theme being inspired by the "Main Title" theme of 1942's Kings Row (link), scored by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
As the first online-multiplayer-donning titles, the up-and-rising Nintendo Switch games have shown the world there are a couple of dominant strategies to carve your way into the highest ranks in the face of unsuspecting opposing Donders; for one of such strategies, look no further than our own Taiko Time blog founder and ask him why today's Song of the Week is also his custom nickname on the TT Discord server! Sure, everyone can just practice to no end one of your usual 200+BPM speed demons and climb the ranks even with Kanta-Futsuu-Muzukashii settings, but for an alrernative way to throw others' accuracy off the rails... how about overplaying a song with no less than 39 different BPM changes to achieve easy Good hits on such a short song?! Being low on the notecount side also means that false Donderful Combo plays (all 'Good'/Silver hits) might end up with a failure on the Soul Gauge side!
