Nothing brings people together quite like Star Wars. This past weekend at Wolf Trap did not disappoint. Fans young and old came out for a night of watching the very first Star Wars with an orchestra.
It’s mind blowing to me that this is the first time I have seen “A New Hope” on the big screen since 1997. I was excited to see this again with an orchestral accompaniment. I took my cousin along and what made me happy as seeing how stunned he was that there were fans everywhere. Many of them in various Star Wars T-shirts, the occasional cosplay for those who could brave the heat, and of course, lightsabers everywhere.
As I stated before, similar to seeing “Return of the Jedi”, soundtrack nerds are looking and listening for certain musical cues when we see these movies. The idea is that the orchestra won’t deviate from how the music was originally written and this was the case here. From the opening crawl down to the final battle, the orchestra was pitch perfect. As they played, fans quoted lines, they cheered, and we all held our collective breath as Luke went down that trench to do the inevitable. Spoiler: he destroys the Death Star!
I only had maybe two down points. The first is that for whatever reason, the Cantina Band was not played live. Part of my guess is that part of it was also played in the background and the orchestra probably would have overpowered the dialogue, which brings me to my second point. Because this was more orchestral, there were some points in which you could not hear all of the sound effects. As one who has watched this movie hundreds of times since 1977, I was ok with it. What you are coming for is the live orchestra.
Overall, it was a good experience, everyone around me seemed to really enjoy the music as did I. I would highly recommend this experience for anyone that has not done this. It really makes a difference hearing the music played live.
FINAL GRADE: A-
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