Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to one of my favorite cues of this score, 10m2 Luke Pursues the Captives.
This cue is 86 bars long and was orchestrated by Angela Morley.
Here are the tops of the sketch and the orchestrated score:
Now let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 the cue begins with Luke sneaking around Cloud City, accompanied by low strings playing an extremely memorable funeral procession march, what Frank Lehman calls the "Bespin Dirge 1".
This is quickly joined by a second funeral motif on the brass when we cut to Han at 0:07, "Bespin Dirge 2". Both play in harmony until the shot where Luke sees Han at 0:18, where the string melody fades and the brass takes over.
Bespin Dirge 2 ends as the procession walks off, and we get one last hint of Bespin Dirge 1 for the shot of Luke at 0:34.
Suddenly some action music at 0:43, as Boba Fett surprise attacks Luke. Curiously enough, starting at the shot of Leia at 0:45, this morphs into an action rendition of Yoda's theme. This theme continues to play as Luke fires back, Lando wakes Lobot, Luke follows the group, and continues to shootout with the stormtroopers until the climax at 1:35.
This is one of the most interesting scoring decisions made out of the entire film. On the surface it doesn't make much sense here. Obviously Yoda is not in the scene, and Luke is not really channeling Yoda's teachings here either. There are many possible interpretations as to what it might mean or why it was chosen. Perhaps Yoda is sending Luke one final warning through the Force before he falls into Vader's trap. Perhaps Luke is imagining himself as a heroic Jedi Master like Yoda. Or perhaps it's meant to call back to Luke's failures at the cave, rushing into situations unprepared without listening.
Whatever the case, the heroic action music is followed by a softer more mysterious rendition of Yoda's theme as Luke cautiously runs forward through the hall, straight into the trap.
A percussion hit for the scene change at 1:58, as Luke rides the elevator straight into the Carbon Freezing chamber. Some very dark atonal music plays here as Luke looks around and the lights come on. Another crash for Vader's appearance at 2:20, followed by a subtle hint of the Imperial March.
Some brass for Luke climbing the steps at 2:29, and then Bespin Dirge 2 makes a return as Vader draws his lightsaber at 2:41. This is another bit of brilliant scoring, playing the funeral march as Luke and Vader begin their battle. It's almost like the music is saying "it's too late, Luke fell into the trap and now he'll be lucky to survive." He had multiple chances to turn around when Yoda's theme was playing, and now it's too late.
The funeral march ends with one final crash at 3:17 for the cut back to the prisoner convoy. Thus the cue ends....
This cue went half unused in the final cut. As far as I can tell no visual alterations were made, the filmmakers simply didn't like the second half of the cue and chose not to use it.
In the final cut:
0:00-1:59 = 10m2 Luke Pursues the Captives 0:00-1:59
1:59-end = silence
I think this change is really unfortunate. The music here is some of my favorite in the entire score, I love the funeral march and I think it fits very well for Luke fitting into the trap. The atonal music before it is also very ominous. I do see the appeal of the silence for when Luke first enters the chamber but I think I prefer the music.
Since I don't have a recording log I'm unsure what day this cue was recorded, but based on the take numbers written in the sketch it was likely recorded in early January. I'm also unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses takes 132 and 134.
This cue has been officially released on two different albums:
2) In 1993 on Arista Records' 4-CD Anthology box set
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
More specifically, 10m2 Luke Pursues the Captives can be heard:
From 4:12-7:33 of disc 4 track 17 "Carbon Freeze/Luke Pursues the Captives/Departure of Boba Fett" on the 1993 album
From 4:52-8:12 of disc 2 track 7 "Carbon Freeze/Darth Vader's Trap/Departure of Boba Fett" on the 1997 album.
Neither release has a clean opening or ending, but thankfully they both have the correct mix. The 1997 release is slightly less brickwalled. For some reason with this cue in particular, both albums are substantially louder in the right channel than the left. The 1993 album has slightly more of the clean opening as it times the transition differently. A totally clean opening can be found at 7:15 of episode 9 of the radio drama (buried under dialogue and sfx, retrievable with AI). A clean ending can be found at 36:37 of part 2 of the Crimson Empire audio drama (again under sfx and dialogue, retrievable with AI).
The album sources also both play at wrong speeds:
The 1993 set needs to be sped up by 0.9
The 1997 set needs to be sped up by 0.9
For my edit, I used the 1997 album for the bulk of the cue (volume corrected so the right channel isn't ridiculously louder than the left), with the 1993 used for slightly more of the clean opening. Then the complete clean opening was taken from the radio drama, and the complete clean ending from Crimson Empire. All sources were volume and speed matched. Unfortunately the transition from the clean opening to the real cue is a little obvious but there wasn't much I could do about it. I tried using mvsep's new matchering tool to get it to blend better but it wasn't able to improve it much.
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 10m3 Chewie Chokes Lando. See you then!
