Michael Giacchino's Full 'Rogue One' Score Is Streaming Right Now

It's Friday morning, which means that a lot of you went and saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story last night. I was one of you and I liked it quite a bit. We'll have more to talk about in the days ahead after everyone has had the chance to check it out. And if Star Wars does matter to you, I recommend checking it out as soon as possible – there are surprises and turns and moments in this movie that you don't want spoiled.

But if you have seen the film, or if you don't consider movie soundtracks to be a spoiler, composer Michael Giacchino's complete soundtrack is now streaming online.

Although he was a last-minute replacement for Alexandre Desplat, Giacchino's work in the film certainly doesn't feel like it was rushed in any way. Like the rest of Rogue One, it's deeply in love with the original Star Wars trilogy but isn't too precious about breaking from the usual formula. It diverges as often as it quotes, capturing John Williams' unique blend of beauty, triumph, and menace while also doing its own thing. When the score does bring in a familiar theme, it feels like a welcome guest appearance rather than a crutch.

Although Giacchino wasn't present at the Rogue One press conference a few weeks ago, director Gareth Edwards did speak about his work and his love of Williams' iconic work (especially The Empire Strikes Back):

Michael did an amazing score for us. He's a massive, massive, massive, massive Star Wars fan. I think a lot of us compete for who's the biggest Star Wars fan working on the film and you go around his house and walk in the door and in his main front room is a 13-foot framed poster of A New Hope. So we'd joke "You didn't have to do that for us" and he'd be like "No, this has been up for like thirteen years." He said he listened to the Empire Strikes Back soundtrack to death as a kid and I think the vocabulary of that music is in him. It just poured out. There's particular moments in the film, musically, especially toward the end, that are truly stunning and very emotional. I think he just knocked it out of the park. We're very lucky.

The music of Michael Giacchino, who won an Oscar a few years ago for Up, can be still be heard in Doctor Strange, which has been presumably been moved to the smaller theaters now that Rogue One is here. He'll also be writing the music for next year's Spider-Man: Homecoming.