Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to the confusingly named 8m2 New More Rescue.
This cue is 67 bars long and was orchestrated by Al Woodbury.
Both the title and number are a little confusing. This cue was written after next week's cue despite being placed before it. As a result it's called More Rescue, while next week's cue is called The Rescue. Further, when this cue was added, next week's cue was rebalanced from 8m2 to 8m3, meaning that this cue was labelled 8m2 New in an attempt to not confuse it with next week's old placement.
This is the only cue in the score where I can actually show off scans of both the sketch and the orchestrated conductor's sheet. Here's the tops of the first pages of both:
Sketch:
Conductor score:
You can also see that on the sketch the original title was scratched out and replaced with "The Last Battle - Part I", presumably referring to its placement in the OST album.
Now let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 the cue pick's up right where the last one leaves off, starting with some loud brass for the start of the battle. This builds up to a statement of Luke's theme at 0:10, which leads into more action-y brass at 0:17.
This continues over a montage of battle footage until 0:33, when the music quiets down. and we get some hesitant music as Luke and Han talk.
At 0:45, some low strings to underscore Han's improvised conversation. It's a bit interesting that despite the humor in the scene, the music here isn't very "funny".
At 1:19, as Han yells that more troopers are coming, we get a drumroll; followed by the rebel rhythm at 1:20 and the rebel fanfare at 1:22 for Luke searching for the cell with Princess Leia.
Then at 1:26, a quick woodwinds statement of Leia's theme for the shot of her laying there, followed by some strings for her insulting his height. Then some Luke theme when he removes his helmet at 1:40, leading to some final brass as they run out into the cell hallway.
Then we get one last string note for Vader and Tarkin speaking. Thus, the cue fades out...
This cue was recorded on March 12, 1977, the sixth day of the recording sessions. It was the fourth cue recorded that day. Five takes were recorded, numbered 150-154. According to the 1997 take log, the performance edit used takes 153 and 154.
This cue has been officially released on four different albums:
1) In 1977 on 20th Century Records' OST album
2) In 1993 on Arista Records' 4-CD Anthology box set
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
4) In 2018 on Walt Disney Records' Remastered album (remastered OST rebuilt from scratch from the session masters)
More specifically, 8m2 New More Rescue can be heard:
From 0:00-1:58 of track 15 "The Last Battle" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 0:00-1:58 of disc 1 track 15 "The Last Battle" on the 1993 album
From 2:01-end of disc 2 track 5 "Wookiee Prisoner/Detention Block Ambush" on the 1997 album.
Only the 1977/2018 and 1993 sets have the clean opening, and only the 1997 set has the clean ending. The 1977 set is of course a remix and should be avoided. As far as I can tell all sets use the same takes. The 1997 set is brickwalled. For the video above I used the 2018 set for everything except for the ending, which came from the 1997 set.
That's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Next week we'll be listening to 8m3 Rev. The Rescue. See you then!