Star Wars: The Dark Side of the Moon Awakens

From my point of view, there is no dark side of the Force, really. Matter of fact it's all dark (image via Consequences of Sound).

Much as I am loath to remove the carbonite-clad case for why I should be Han Solo (originally posted here, and now permanently ensconced atop my blog as a page tab, linked here) from its privileged perch at the top of my blog, I think it is time to talk about something else.

I would have liked that something else not to be Star Wars-related, given how much I've written about all that since The Force Awakens came out last December. As I wrote here in anticipation of its release, I never really thought of myself as a huge Star Wars fan; I would say my incessant writing about the new movie since its release reflects more my reaction to the cultural moment it produced than my own fandom. At any rate, I would like to write about something else.

But like a skilled Force-user, or perhaps a large tractor beam, Star Wars keeps dragging me back. Indeed, how could I not say something about the recent revelation that The Force Awakens syncs eerily well with Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, one of my favorite albums? Here are some of the purported syncs, via Consequences of Sound:

– When Poe (Oscar Isaac) wakes up in Kylo Ren’s (Adam Driver) torture chamber, the lyrics of “The Great Gig in the Sky” go, “I’m not afraid of dying/ Anytime will do,” and the song’s scream happens right as Poe opens his own mouth.

– “Time” plays while we witness the repetitive mundanity of Rey’s (Daisy Ridley) life making a living by scavenging old electronics.

– The “Us and Them” lyric “And after all, we’re only ordinary men” is sung right as Finn (John Boyega) tells Rey that Resistance fighters look like him. “Some of us,” he says. “Others look different.”

– Twice during the “Keep your hands of my stack” line in “Money”, someone grabs a lightsaber: First it’s Rey taking hold of Luke Skywalker’s (Mark Hamill), then Han Solo (Harrison Ford) grabbing Kylo’s.

– “Us and Them” again syncs with the battle of Battle of Takodana. As Finn surveys the battleground, the lyrics go, “God only knows/ It’s not what we would choose to do.” Then, as David Gilmour says, “Black,” the camera focuses on Finn receiving Luke’s lightsaber (oof). Just as Gilmour says, “Blue,” Finn ignites the blue blade.

– In what turns out to be his final scene, the camera focuses right on Han Solo as the lyrics, “I never said I was afraid of dying” are heard.

– During Kylo and Rey’s final fight, the “Us and Them” lyrics go, “Black and blue/ Who knows which is which and who is who,” echoing the fight between going to the Dark Side or staying with the Light Side of the Force.

– “Brain Damage” in almost its entirety seems to fit up with the movie’s final scene as Rey makes her way towards Luke: “The lunatic is on the grass/ Remembering games, and daisy chains and laughs/ Got to keep the loonies on the path.”

Longtime readers of my blog (if there are any) know that I've written about Pink Floyd syncs before. In that post, I discussed the most famous purported sync: that between Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. Most of that sync is dubious, but some parts align eerily well:



But I maintain as I did in that prior post that the best Pink Floyd/cinema sync is that between "Echoes," the 23-minute epic that takes up the entire second side of their album Meddle, and "Beyond the Infinite," the final segment of 2001: A Space Odyssey, both of which also happen to be about humans transcendence:


Pink Floyd: Echoes - 2001: A space odyssey [720p HD] from Davide on Vimeo.

Having not yet experienced the Pink Floyd/Force Awakens sync, I cannot say how it measures up to these two. But now I'm pretty determined to find out.