Lit Thoughts on the novelizations?

Is this...a joke? Do these things really have novelizations? Even the Holiday Special?!

Edit: Ok, this MUST be a joke. I hope it is.

 

Yes, it's a joke, as is the novelization of Lucas's appearance on Conan. The novelization of Celebration VI, however, is absolutely real,* a tour-de-force of storytelling that has to be read to be believed. The chapter detailing the Star Wars Detours panel will have you on the edge of your seat.

*Novelization of Celebration VI may not be absolutely real

 

Was that the one where you had sweet dance moves?

 

I understand why the OT novelizations aren't Canon but the PT Novelizations don't contradict the films, they only add extra scenes, some which were filmed but ultimately cut. You can find these scenes online.

 

Devil's always going to be in the details. I think if most people read the PT novelizations they won't notice anything, but there's surely small details and references to EU events or characters that are no longer canon now. There's nothing as blatant as Uncle Owen being Obi-Wan's brother in the RotJ novelization, but the things are there. Most people won't notice, but those people probably aren't worried about "canon" anyway.

 

Read the ROTS novelization. It'll bring you to tears. Its so good!!!

 

My dear Jeff, I always have sweet dance moves.

 

I used to read novelizations a lot more, because I didn't have those movies as easily accessible on home video. I buy them less often, and struggle reading through books of movies I've already seen. I don't even watch movies that I really like multiple times anymore, including SW movies. The death knell for it is the new trend of releasing SW movie novelizations after the movie comes out, and particularly in the case of TLJ, where the novelization is coming out months after the movie has been out, and I will have seen the movie enough times to lock it in to my head. I kept putting off reading TFA novelization, and now we're already past that, with the sequel out. Reviews for Alan Dean Foster's work on TFA put me off, as well as the fact that it was easy to see the movie in the theater as many times as I felt like I wanted to. I kind of like ADF's work, but his writing flaws are exasperating, and I'm really tired of him these days. I feel like there's no motivation to read TLJ either, except maybe for a deleted scene about Luke giving Rey a final lesson or something.

As for a topic that was brought up in the OP, I'm really not keen on seeing the original Del Rey novelizations for the original three movies altered. They altered the newer Junior novelizations for their even newer newer reprint, but those Del Rey novelizations are a window into alternative backstory ideas the GL had for SW history. "Correcting" them would be to destroy something that is worth keeping. They provided inspiration to imagine alternatives that happened before the movies started, and before the Prequels were made (not trying to dis the Prequels, I'm fine with them, but I liked imagining an alternative story from those alternative backstory ideas). I'm fascinated by GL's development of SW, even though I don't agree with all of his decisions. But to destroy those alternatives is to lose something valuable, and I'm revolted by the impulse to erase those alternative possibilities just to force everything to fit together in a fictional universe. The premise of trying making a fictional universe more "real" by destroying it's tangential possibilities feels like a needless and empty pursuit. I'm sorry to sound so critical of this recurring impulse; I'm trying to be polite about a fannish tendency that I really hate.

 

Okay, I don't remember any of the Caravan of Courage and stuff like that. I thought I was already in stage 2 of Alzheimer's and was about to call eddie out for info on those. Wheeeew, so my pocket won't be light.

But, the movie novelizations...the OT ones weren't bad per say but they were not from the actual movie. In fact they are from I think third and fourth draft's. You would literally have to get an obscure script book that came in the late 90's that is the actual movie in a script with side notes on the special edition scenes added and certain scenes that were cut. That book is the treasure trove to the OT. Later on you had the new super making of books for the OT that made things even better. While the OT was and felt more compact, the PT was a different story.

The PT novelization's were damn pretty good and actually added more to the movies. In fact, you could read the three novelizations and not have to worry about the movies themselves. I've said it before, with the PT movie novelizations, you have the entire Skywalker story. You don't need to worry about TCW and any of its stories because the main stuff is there. At least 90% of the cut scenes are in the novels. Whats not in there for example, in AOTC is the Droid Control Ship scene that was deleted, and the scene that Dooku uses two lightsabers. That was seen in the comics adaption and several magazines that covered the movie and/or trading card. AOTC does cover a small section that had a space battle between the Republic and Trade Federation. It was just a one to two line sentence, but in an article on the internet there was an animatic (not seen nor shown) that covered a space battle. I think that would have been awesome to see, in fact of all the star wars movies, the one movie that should have been around 2 hours and 45 minutes was AOTC. If they would have kept the Droid Control Ship scene, used the Dooku two lightsabers and a bit of space battle between the republic and trade federation the movie would have been better. In ROTS the only scene it needed was Yoda landing on Dagobah.

That's the difference between star wars under GL, where you could see all this stuff either in print or in a documentary or deleted section, or book and make you wonder how big star wars was as compared with Disney star wars, that in my opinion being a corporate company that is mindful of its stock (public trading) they are never going to release these details that would make the experience rich. They might afraid that some of the information may not be perceived well with the fanbase and affect future earning potential.

 

I used to think that I was in a small minority who didn't like the ROTS novelization *at all*; I've slowly discovered that I may literally be the only person alive who doesn't.

To be fair, from ESB through ROTS, I *literally read the novels for the spoilers*. By the time ROTS came out, I wasn't interested in the EU at all any more -- I just wanted the story of the film laid out for me, like back in 1980. Instead I felt like I was getting EU lore kinda shoved down my throat in various forms: the descriptions of Windu's lightsaber fighting techniques by EU-derived names really bugged me for some reason, they added nothing to the narrative or character and just felt like little plugs for books I'd already decided not to read. I kept thinking, ugh, at least the big Obi-Wan/Anakin duel is coming, but then I kept seeing the pages dwindle, and suddenly the duel, birth of the twins, and Jedi exile-- pretty much everything we'd been waiting for since 1977 -- happened so quickly and perfunctorily as to barely register. (To be fair, the film was a mess too, but the novel had me worried that the duel was going to be basically one scene and done).

Strangely I even remember an e-mail I sent to a friend about how much the novel irritated me, and then I never thought much of it again until I slowly became aware that, in fandom, it was considered not only not bad, but a sort of hallowed classic. So I must admit that I'm probably just wrong, or a bad fan, or both.

Oddly, the novels of TPM and AOTC both gave the impressions that the films would be substantially better than they were, if you read them before seeing the movies. It was possible to imagine performances and direction being better than they would turn out to be, or to invent your own way of hearing Gungan patois that was less grating. ROTS on the other hand, while disappointing, at least pleased me by being a better experience than I'd expected based on the book

 

RotS is a novelization I like, but it has to be one of the most overrated SW novels out there.

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While I don't think it would be a particularly strong decision on Lucasfilm's part for them to go ahead with new novelizations, nothing would be destroyed. The old novels on people's shelves wouldn't burst into flame if they published new ones, and even if Lucasfilm did stop reprinting the old versions, there would be no shortage of used copies floating around for those who want to explore those alternative possibilities.

 

Almost completely contrary to my last post about only ever reading the novelizations for spoilers, and not seeing much point in months-later novelizations or comics adaptations... I was sort of intrigued by Jason Fry doing the TLJ novel, and now that they've previewed what it's going to contain... I think I'm totally down!

 

No! Stand up for your divergent opinion! Disagreeing with the majority of fandom on something doesn't render you wrong or a bad fan. It makes you unique. Celebrate going against the grain and flaunt your unpopular opinions with pride. Don't think ROTS is a masterpiece? Great! Didn't find Plagueis to be the epic everyone says it is? Wonderful! Think Traviss wasn't given a fair shake? Excellent! Thought Fate of the Jedi was a great and underrated series? ... ... OK you'd be wrong on that one. But check out this thread that's chock full of unpopular EU opinions.

 

This. I’m not saying it’s a necessity for new OT/PT novels. I was just interested in whether or not they might do it for the sake of completion.

That said.. new novelizations wouldn’t eliminate the original publications. There won’t be a massive book burning to destroy all traces of those stories. People say they like having an alternative imagining of the events shown in the movies. That is what non canon entries are in a nutshell now. An alternative collection of works that aren’t necessarily dependent on each other when it comes to story arc restraints.

I disagree that things don’t need to fit together in canon though. I understand many dedicated fans prefer the old EU, and obviously it has its merits. But the new canon is here for awhile, and the best way to embrace (for me at least) is to view it as an intertwining universe that all connects. I and by connects I mean it doesn’t have blatant discrepancies. While legends obviously has the better individual stories, personally I’m a fan of clean/smooth connection between franchise entries. Some one said it’s frustrating trying to make everything fit in a fake universe. I’d argue it’s just good storytelling. Back to my original point though, there’s no reason there can’t be both. New novelations would no more diminish the alternative story lines than the movies do.


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There are a few errors in there, such as the ROTS novel saying Padme was the youngest Naboo queen ever elected.

 

Has anyone compiled a list of differences between both editions?

 

I forget if it was on this forum or on Reddit, but I do recall seeing a comprehensive list of changes. From what I remember, it's almost all deletion of EU-related references, there are only minor additions - Scarif and the battle there does get referenced in the ANH one, though.

 

That was an impressive effort by @Iron_lord -- here's the TFN thread and here's the Reddit wiki.