Star Wars composer John Williams “mistakenly” wrote an extremely awkward love theme for Luke and Leia
“George never told us there was going to be a second film!”
Star Wars composer John Williams didn't know Luke and Leia were siblings when he was scoring the first movie – and to be fair, we're pretty sure George Lucas didn't know either.
"I mistakenly wrote a love theme for Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker," Williams told Variety. "I learned later that they were brother and sister, so it was an incestuous idea to have a love theme for them. But George never told us there was going to be a second film!"
Considering that Leia quite literally kisses Luke on the lips at one point in the flagship film, we understand the confusion. George Lucas later revealed in the book Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays that making them siblings would be motivation enough for Luke to battle Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi's infamous 'Throne Room' scene (H/T ScreenRant).
Williams rewrote the score – resulting in an Academy Award win for Best Score and arguably some of the most important music in pop culture history. He would go on to score The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and returned to the franchise in 2015 with The Force Awakens. He went on to provide the music for The Last Jedi, Solo: A Star Wars Story, The Rise of Skywalker, and Disney Plus's Obi-Wan Kenobi series.
For more news from a galaxy far, far away, check out our list of all the upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows you need to know about.
Sign up for the Total Film Newsletter
Bringing all the latest movie news, features, and reviews to your inbox
Lauren Milici is a Senior Entertainment Writer for 12DOVE currently based in the Midwest. She previously reported on breaking news for The Independent's Indy100 and created TV and film listicles for Ranker. Her work has been published in Fandom, Nerdist, Paste Magazine, Vulture, PopSugar, Fangoria, and more.