At this point, it’s rare to find someone who hasn’t watched Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, let alone the original Star Wars films, let alone never ventured into a galaxy far, far away at least once. It’s doubly rare, however, to find out that someone who worked on the films themselves hasn’t seen them, either. Yet, if we’re to take the word of John Williams, that’s the case with the legendary film composer.
Indeed, even though Williams’ music is as iconic to the franchise as Darth Vader, lightsabers and, well, stars, the man claims he’s never seen any of the films that, in part, made him into a household name. He confesses as much during a recent interview with The Mirror:
I have not looked at the Star Wars films and that’s absolutely true. When I’m finished with a film, I’ve been living with it, we’ve been dubbing it, recording to it, and so on. You walk out of the studio and, ‘Ah, it’s finished.’ Now I don’t have an impulse to go to the theater and look at it. Maybe some people find that weird, or listen to recordings of my music very, very rarely.
While it is strange, in the sense that someone could live under the Star Wars rock for this long, Williams’ logic does make sense. Who wants to spend hours and hours, months and months, years and years on working on the same project, then turn around and see it in the theatre, especially when they could spend their time exploring elsewhere? That said, this means that Williams also likely hasn’t seen any of the Indiana Jones films, nor E.T., nor Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and so on and so forth. It’s not impossible, of course, but it’s still, nevertheless, quite peculiar.
To be clear, Williams has seen footage from these films. He would have to, of course, if he scored them. How else would he get the mood and tone, let alone capture them so masterfully? But he hasn’t sat down in a theatre and enjoyed the fruit of his labors. Evidentially, when he’s done with a film, he’s done. No looking back. Only moving forward. And what’s in the future for Williams? Star Wars: Episode VIII, of course, which he’s currently working on ahead of its December 15th, 2017 release.