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ricksilva 's review for:
The Star Wars Trilogy
by Donald Glut, James Kahn, George Lucas
This is a lovely leatherbound collection of the novelizations of the original Star Wars trilogy. Star Wars by George Lucas is retitled here to Star Wars: A New Hope, and was actually originally Ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster (who is credited in the introduction) based on Lucas' script. The other two novels are The Empire Strikes Back by Donald F. Glut (based on Lucas' story) and Return of the Jedi by James Kahn (based on the screenplay by Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan, and the original story by Lucas).
You almost certainly know the stories here. I read all three of these novels in the original paperback when I was a teenager, but didn't have more than a vague memory of the novel versions at this point.
The novels do a nice job of filling in some backstory and adding perspective to characters, particularly characters like Lando Calrissian and Admiral Ackbar, who don't actually get that many lines in the films.
There are also some scenes that did not make it into the films. Among those that stand out the most are a scene in A New Hope with Luke hanging out with friends on Tatooine, which just about doubles Luke's supporting cast back home and gives a nice picture of Luke as a young man trying to have some fun while stuck out in the boondocks of the galaxy.
Another scene that impressed me is an absolutely awesome speech given by Wicket, and translated by C3PO as Wicket makes an impassioned plea to convince the Ewoks to join the Rebel Alliance. I can see why there wasn't room for this in the movie version of Return of the Jedi, but it really changes the reader's perspective on Wicket as a character.
There was a certain level of awkwardness in some of the writing. There was a lot of Earth-based terminology, especially comparisons between alien creatures and Earth animals (the Rancor was the size of an elephant, etc), that current SF writers would most likely find other ways of working around. There was also a noticeably heavy reliance on big words, to the point where some passages felt like they were written with thesaurus-in-hand.
And of course, some of the continuity here is now outdated by the more recent films.
But all in all, this was a nice bit of nostalgia, some good peeks into the heads of the characters, and a set of three stories that still hold together really well.
You almost certainly know the stories here. I read all three of these novels in the original paperback when I was a teenager, but didn't have more than a vague memory of the novel versions at this point.
The novels do a nice job of filling in some backstory and adding perspective to characters, particularly characters like Lando Calrissian and Admiral Ackbar, who don't actually get that many lines in the films.
There are also some scenes that did not make it into the films. Among those that stand out the most are a scene in A New Hope with Luke hanging out with friends on Tatooine, which just about doubles Luke's supporting cast back home and gives a nice picture of Luke as a young man trying to have some fun while stuck out in the boondocks of the galaxy.
Another scene that impressed me is an absolutely awesome speech given by Wicket, and translated by C3PO as Wicket makes an impassioned plea to convince the Ewoks to join the Rebel Alliance. I can see why there wasn't room for this in the movie version of Return of the Jedi, but it really changes the reader's perspective on Wicket as a character.
There was a certain level of awkwardness in some of the writing. There was a lot of Earth-based terminology, especially comparisons between alien creatures and Earth animals (the Rancor was the size of an elephant, etc), that current SF writers would most likely find other ways of working around. There was also a noticeably heavy reliance on big words, to the point where some passages felt like they were written with thesaurus-in-hand.
And of course, some of the continuity here is now outdated by the more recent films.
But all in all, this was a nice bit of nostalgia, some good peeks into the heads of the characters, and a set of three stories that still hold together really well.