The Acolyte Composer Michael Abels On John Williams, Key Themes, And Star Wars’ First Pop Song
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Summary The Star Wars universe expands once more with The Acolyte, a prequel series set 100 years before the events of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Led by Russian Doll co-creator Leslye Headland, The Acolyte is the first live-action exploration of Star Wars’ High Republic era, which was launched in 2021 with the release of the novel Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi.
Abels Was Tasked With Creating A Score “Both Traditional And Fresh” Screen Rant: I'd love to talk about how, with this show, you’ve managed to capture the John Williams vibe incredibly well while still doing a lot that feels new to this universe. The Acolyte’s Musical Themes Reflect Emotions More Than Characters You wrote themes tailored more to emotions than to specific characters . Did the amount of gray area in this show make it more difficult to score than other projects?
If people ask, “What are those themes?”, well, listen to the music behind Sol in the first half of the series, or the music when Mae is fighting. There’s a character who's about to show himself, and that theme rises up from the deep. It starts on a low C and rises in a very menacing way because he literally is coming out of an unseen place. And yet, all those themes can occur under different characters if their feelings match the emotion of whatever that theme represents.
I think to play the death of a Jedi as anything less than a tragedy, especially at the beginning of a story, wouldn't make sense to me as a fan of Star Wars. Leslye certainly never said anything different, and to me, that was always clearly a tragedy. Then, just to add on to that, that Jedi is played by Carrie-Anne Moss, and to see her die in the first five minutes is a huge ask.
There is a motive of a main title, but it's four notes because that's the amount of time we have. So, each episode has those same four notes, but it’s always scored very differently. It’s always scored according to what we've just seen and what feels right coming out of the scene. When he really uses the Force and all the Jedi are flattened with a Force push that's really powerful, there's a giant brass cluster. A cluster is a chord that has all sorts of other nasty notes in it, and the sound of brass instruments comes from air being pushed through these tubes. So, you see the Jedi being blown back, and the music literally is people blowing. I think that's part of why it viscerally works so well. You just feel the push of the air pushing them back.
You can't be precious about it, because you have no idea the journey a scene is going to go on before it's shot. Every scene, even if it appears in the final exactly as it was in the script, goes on a journey of how to tell the story. I knew that this scene would be no different. The song is a single called “Power of Two”, and I'm really proud of how it turned out. In the series, it’s the end title of episode 7, and for that, I did an extension, so the song would be a full end title. That was a great experience.
I met her at the premiere, and my first words to her were, “Nice violin playing.” Anyone who's in a show I work on, I have to watch for hours and hours and hours, so I feel like I know them. They've never seen me—they’ve been off doing other things—so I say, “Hey,” and they're not sure if they should ask their publicist to escort them away or not, because I act like I know them.
Michael Abels: I have been reading, and I'm going to continue reading, because it's really important for me to know about the reaction. Jordan Peele movies have a huge fan base, and people dissect every aspect of the trailers when they come out. It’s remarkable. Also, not everybody likes Jordan Peele movies, and they have a lot to say about that. That's not new to me.
But I think that our show is honoring the things that are important about Star Wars for a lot of people, and I love that the show is reaching those people that can appreciate what we've done for Star Wars.
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