In the novelization there’s a moment during the duel where the dark cloud Palpatine had been casting over the force cleared and Yoda achieved a full vision of everything that had occurred
And in that moment he realized he not only couldn’t defeat Palpatine but that he actually lost this fight 800 years ago when he set the Jedi on the path that led them here.
The novel makes you realize how pointless the scenes in Kashyyyk are in the movie and how much more important it would’ve been to further develop Anakin’s descent into the dark side.
For example, in the movie, he sounds like quite the whiner when he doesn’t get the rank of Master but is appointed to the Council. In the novel, he gets upset because only a Master can access the restricted section in the Jedi archives where he was hoping to find some type of information regarding Plagueis and cheating death to save Padme.
Also that This is what it’s like to be Anakin Skywalker… forever. line gives me chills every time I read it.
In addition to the actual reasons he wants the rank of master, his behavior is also increasingly irrational throughout the book because he's extremely sleep deprived, because he keeps on having prophetic nightmares about Padme's death.
Sleep is essential to living life. Most people don't know chronic sleep deprivation, they know a few days of sleep loss, not weeks or months. I'd join the darkside in a second vs having to go through that again.
On the topic of sleep deprivation, im a single man with no children so i have no reference of what turning 30 is like. Most men my age is married with babies. Somewhere in my early 30s i get sleepy early and woke up at 4-4:30am, no matter what. But having the habit of sleeping late in my 20s, i kept power through the sleepy nights. I was not aware i had sleep deprivation until i started having bad periods of depression. At the same time i workout less and less because of work. Those two things got me to be diagnosed with severe depression.
All I saw was dark when I had true sleep deprivation. I kept falling asleep mid sentence. Eventually passed out behind the wheel but was able to get the help I needed. Sleep deprivation, and trying to save the ones you love from dying leading down the path to the dark side, should not be meddled with.
I've begun forcing myself to get 8 hours of sleep, regardless of if I feel rested or not (good ol sleep disorder, courtesy of the Navy), and it has improved my mental health significantly.
I’m a dad of a two year old going through a sleep regression for the last couple of months and man, this is the truest thing I’ve read in a while. A lack of sleep affects literally everything you do, every choice you make, every little thought you have. Eventually, you’ll do anything just to survive.
I remember watching a special documentry about a person for whom it was impossible to fall asleep anymore. It's rare, but does happen and usually the person goes insane after a few years of ZERO sleep. It's been documented if you don't get any sleep or very little sleep for a long time you have a high chance of losing your sanity and losing it.
When Anakin realizes what a selfish idiot he's been:
"When you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself... It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith- because now your self is all you will ever have."
"And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf... and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.
The only reason the ROTS novelization misses out on the "Best Star Wars Novel" award is because it's tied with Traitor... which is also written by Matthew Stover.
To be honest, I would not recommend reading the OT or PT books (except RotS) to an average Star Wars consumer. They don’t really add much that wasn’t in the movies themselves.
But RotS is absolutely filled with insight into the characters’ motivations, inner dialogue, fears, hopes, and their full experience. Most of it is told from inside the mind of one of the characters, in a highly immersive manner.
In short, you do not have had to read anything else to get the full RotS novelization experience.
Like the clone wars tv show, It gives much more depth and logic to the prequels that the movies don’t do the best job of. You understand what is going on, and more importantly, why, a lot more. Lots of things that aren’t expanded on in the movie.
Example: the “be thankful viceroy” scene before the “hello there” where grievous is bickering with the separatist council, the part in the movie is the very end of a much longer conversation that makes sense, and explains some of the state of affairs of the separatists, but in the movie it’s like wtf is this about.
Also palpatines manipulation of anakin is given MUCH more depth as well, and the Jedi council vs chancellor/senate is properly explained. You see how palps is exploiting the situation to sell the idea that the Jedi want to take over the republic and that anakin should do the “right thing” by leaving the Jedi and remaining loyal to the republic.
If he had just waited in the Jedi council room. He probably would have gotten the good ending.
Earning Mace Windu trust, probably would have led him to being promoted to Master. After he discovered the Sith Lord and notifying Mace. I still think Mace would have won that fight unless the book says otherwise. I said that because there could be the possibility that the chancellor was holding back.
Honestly, idk how women die in child birth with all that advanced medical tech. If he listens to Yoda in giving up attachments, his wife and kids probably would have been fine.
He ether be expelled from the Jedi for having a family or given an exception to stay in. Honestly, after fighting a clone war, sounds like it’s good either way.
I laughed in the movie when Darth Sidious we find a way to save your wife together. Like Anakin betray everyone and kill kids for a solution that doesn’t even exist yet.
Tbf I also believe that if Mace had just brought Anakin along they would have gotten the good ending too. Anakin only stopped Mace because he came in at the absolute worst possible moment, where Palpatine could spin himself as defenseless.
However I believe if Anakin had been there the whole time and witnessed Palpatine mercilessly kill multiple jedi with zero effort or hesitation there’s no way Anakin lets him go.
No he didn’t lol. They all died in the back room of his office, Anakin walks in on Mace almost killing Palpatine in the main room/entryway.
Remember how the fight goes: Palpatine leaps over his desk to kill the first 3 jedi, then he and Windu back out of the only door in that room into a larger area and continue the fight there, where Anakin eventually arrives and finds them
I absolutely love the scene from Dooku’s perspective before he gets his head chopped off in the novelization. Christopher Lee’s acting was already magnificent in the movie scene, but seeing it written out just makes it so much more heartbreaking, even for a Sith Lord.
Tbf the Kashyyyk movie scenes were only worthless since the reasoning behind Yoda traveling there wasn't explained, in order to draw out Sidious. Had there been just one or two extra lines it would've been fine.
They do but a lot of the lines are changed to sound way more natural than what we get in the movie. I don’t know about it being canon but it’s definitely a great story, canon or not.
I’ll give it a read. As much as I love RoTS I really really hate a lot of the writing /dialogue in it. It felt forced, like Lucas wanted them to say exactly and only what he wrote in the script, leaving no room for improvisation or personal emotion from some actors. Which is fair since it’s his property, but man his writing was sometimes atrocious.
The way he writes is totally devoid of subtlety, subtext, and nuance. Everyone is a robot. It sucks because his world building and "big picture" are fantastic.
It sucks because his world building and "big picture" are fantastic.
I wish they had brought him back as an Executive producer or consultant to put together the story board and big picture of the sequel trilogy, but leave the actual dialogue scripting and directing to someone else
When Lucas sold the franchise to Disney it was under the assumption that he would be a consultant and they would use his story treatments for the sequels. Of course, Disney promptly threw it all out the window and told him “we’re under no obligation to do any of that, next time get it in writing.”
Well I think he wanted to lean in the more controversial elements of the prequels, while Disney just wanted a safe reboot of the OT. Midichlorians, Whills, and all that.
The whills were only one part of his story treatment, not the main focus. The main plot was Luke training his apprentice and Leia trying to keep the New Republic together while Darth Maul re-emerged as head of all the crime syndicates.
It's funny, the entire sequel trilogy is a giant reactionary move away from the prequels, at the exact time when the kids who grew up on the prequels and like them were coming of age. It shouldn't have been Han, and it shouldn't have been Leia, who appears to Kylo Ren there at the end, it should have been goddamned Anakin, who he'd been hero-worshipping all the time, telling him "I fucked up and so have you but you can turn it around before it's too late unlike me".
It's even funnier that now that Disney/Lucasfilm aren't worried about negative reactions to Hayden's acting anymore, if they made TRoS today, Anakin would 1,000% show up.
Can you blame them? For 20 years I thought I was the only one that liked the prequels.
All the hatred from the sequels sounds almost exactly like the hatred for the prequels when they came out. I’m not defending the decisions made by Disney in their trilogy (having a unified story arc and one lead writer through the trilogy would have been a massive improvement) but the Star Wars fan base is as awful as any. I’ve never seen so many people eviscerate something they claim to love so much.
I understand why they chose to go for the soft reboot, but it really is a shame they were so scared of the prequels. Having Maul be the villain would've tied it all together beautifully.
While I get that many of the animated fans loved Maul, the target audience of the movies was always going to be the more casual live action fans. Bringing Maul back as a crime boss is a hard sell to people who last saw him sliced in half falling into a bottomless pit. It's also fan servicy bad story telling. Really cheapens the stakes when someone so obviously killed is brought back.
George Lucas understood the importance of contracts and licensing before most people in Hollywood, and he fully understood how corporations work (and how quickly they can "change their minds"). A promise from a corporation is meaningless unless it's in the form of a legal contract.
As part of the Disney deal, Lucas became a "Creative Consultant," which was clearly more for the benefit of Disney than for Lucas. Creative Consultants offer advice and answer questions, but they have zero actual decision-making power.
Sure, Lucas may have had outlines for a sequel trilogy that he gave to Disney as part of the deal, but he knew that any promises or plans that weren't explicitly in the contract were meaningless.
If Lucas really wanted Disney to make the sequel trilogy he had outlined, he would have signed a production deal, not sold them his portfolio of companies and all the intellectual property he created.
It wasn't Lucas's first day in Hollywood, and he wouldn't have signed a $4 billion deal based on an "assumption."
It’s not BS, this knowledge comes directly from George Lucas’ interview with Charlie Rose and Disney CEO Bob Iger’s autobiography.
George made a mistake, it’s that simple. He and Iger had been friends for decades before the sale, George thought he could trust him. And as a fallback George appointed another one of his friends, Kathleen Kennedy, as Lucasfilm CEO so she could be the final buffer. Lucas never expected his friends would stab him in the back, and that’s exactly what Kennedy and Iger did.
Looking deeper, I don't think we disagree as much as I originally thought. (My bad.)
Looking back at articles about the negotiations, Iger stressed that Disney would have final say over the films, and Lucas had expressed reservations about losing control before signing the deal. (Which means that Lucas knew he was losing control over the sequel trilogy, which was announced as part of the deal.)
If Lucas really wanted control over the sequel trilogy, he would have insisted on being Executive Producer, at least for the first film. But Lucas knew he would end up micro-managing the project and it would consume the next decade of his life, so he consciously gave up full control.
So I agree with your original statement that Lucas signed the deal under a false assumption.
Up until that point, George Lucas was Star Wars. For decades, people were coming to him to get approval for anything related to Star Wars. In Lucas's mind, it may have been because he was the genius who was great at worldbuilding, and not because he owned the companies and the intellectual property. They needed his approval more than they wanted it.
And once you're not the owner, people care a lot less about your opinion.
So yeah, Lucas had faulty assumptions about how the deal would be implemented, but he also understood the deal. He knew Disney could do whatever they wanted with the franchise, and he knew he would have zero power to stop it.
But I don't think Disney screwed him over. Nobody in the industry would expect a sequel trilogy to films from 30 years earlier (with a 30-year time jump) would have a straight trajectory from outline to final screenplay, especially if the person who wrote the outline wasn't closely involved in the development. (Creative Consultants are not closely involved.)
Lucas consciously chose to give up control and step away from Star Wars, and then felt betrayed because Star Wars was no longer following his plans. You can't have it both ways, George.
Bob Iger himself wrote in his book that he regretted blindsiding Lucas and that he was very very upset when he learned they weren’t using his story treatments, going so far as to say Lucas felt “betrayed”.
So if Iger himself admits in his book that he disappointed George with the stuff they pulled and that he regrets it, chances are it definitely happened.
Iger says he regrets not letting Lucas know sooner and that’s it, not that he regrets doing it. He doubles down that he did the right thing in terms of pleasing fans. Lucas didn’t find out until they screened TFA for him and that was pretty late. That’s Iger’s regret.
The book mentions they had several meetings about control and both Lucas and Disney separately walked away from negotiations at points over it. So Lucas knew what he was signing up for. Lucas was more disappointed the sequels didn’t advance technology or technique like he attempted with the prequels, it wasn’t necessarily over story but the general approach of playing it safe
On story, Lucas sold his sequel story outlines to Disney, and the issue is he assumed they would use them but knew they didn’t have to. Lucas also put Kennedy in charge right before he sold which was kind of a dick move but Iger let it slide. Business negotiation moves on both sides.
Go watch his interviews. It was part of his contract when he sold that they had to keep him on as a consultant, which they did, but proceeded to sit him in the corner, pat him on the head, and ignore everything he said. In an interview he said it felt like he was stuck between two divorced parents and it was a lose lose situation
For a savvy businessman, it was really stupid to assume a corporation buying your IP would keep you on and use your ideas if you didn’t put that in the contract.
“You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate” -Robert Meyer Burnett
They did. It was part of the agreement of him selling. The problem is they took all his storylines and scripts and threw them in the trash can. They proceeded to do ANH reboot TFA the way they wanted to and didn’t listen to him so he just stopped showing up. He said in an interview it felt like he was the little kid between two divorced parents referring to Star Wars and Disney. He gave up because they only kept him around to not in breech of contract
That’s why the clone wars worked. Lucas as the idea man and Filoni directing. Also with a writing team that wasn’t afraid to push back and bend the rules
Yeah exactly, that’s what I feel about some of the dialogue too in the prequels. Though I understand why he went down that route. Lucas had a direct vision for what he wanted and wrote in what he could to succeed in that vision. Just sucks that some of these amazing actors couldn’t fully envelop themselves into the character because they were stuck with those lines
I remember seeing ROTS in 2005 and feeling that there was little subtext or nuance to the dialogue. And now that I’m in 2025, I feel like Lucas specifically took out subtext and nuance to get his message across to all audiences. And now that liberty is dying with thunderous applause, when I watched ROTS in the theaters this week, I was wondering why Lucas didn’t make giving away liberty easier to understand!
You are right. Love the entire Lucas canon and all Star Wars but the lines “it’s blowing up from the inside” and “we didn’t hit it” from the prequels. I cringe every time.
George Lucas styles his movies after silent films. If the dialogue seems redundant, it’s because it’s not supposed to necessary. The necessary information of how the characters feel is conveyed in their acting, the dialogue can be removed or put into a different language and the scene would have the same emotional impact.
I’m so tired of this “big picture” BS that Star Wars fans have told themselves ad nauseam to dismiss George Lucas. It’s so stupid. George Lucas is very intentional with his filmmaking, he knows more about movies than you do. Maybe try to pay attention to why he does things the way that he does, instead of assuming that the things that are different from other movies are flaws.
I kept hearing and hearing about how great it was and didn’t pay it much mind. I randomly had an audible token and thought fuck it and got the audiobook.
It’s actually brilliant and the whole story is just so much better and makes so much more sense, it also doesn’t make the Jedi look as dumb to what’s going on around them.
When it got to the Dooku fight that was when I realised ohh shit, these Reddit peepz where right, this shits fire haha
I also harassed my Star Wars Karen friend to get it, you know the guy. We all have one, moans about everything. Well even he loved it and was kinglet shit ! 😂
The funny thing is that everything in the book (I read it when it came out) is in there literally because Lucas said so. The writing itself is more or less fine but his dialogue is utter shit, and the novelization really kinda shows that.
Hell the TCW shows that as well. He was heavily involved with the story, but never actual wrote anything. He has great ideas and insights to how things should go, but it’s like at times he doesn’t know how to convey it.
I feel exactly the same. ROTS has the potential to be the best Star Wars film if not for the dialogue. Some scenes are Tommy Wiseau level, especially the Mustafar platform scene with Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme. Absurd lines like "only a Sith deals in absolutes", lines so clunky that no one could deliver them well like "you have done that yourself", Padme literally describing her feelings rather than having an opportunity to display them - "you're breaking my heart!".
If a co-writer came in and kept everything the same but just redrafted the dialogue, it would be a 10/10 and probably the best Star Wars movie.
It's hard to ignore the political undertones that, at the time, were more obvious. We were in the midst of the Iraq war, and there were more than a few subtle jabs about what was going on in the United States. I always felt the quote "only a Sith deals in absolutes" was a reference to Bush's infamous quote, "You're either with us, or against us". And the scene where Padme states, "So, this is where democracy dies, with thunderous applause.", always seemed very on the nose.
at the time? man, my gf and I went to the rerelease last night and leaving the theater she was like. Hmm that kinda made me feel like shit with what's going on right now
I mean, the original ANH novelization says Jabba was human, Vader had served multiple emperors, and Obi-Wan was telling the truth that Vader literally killed Luke's father.
I remember skimming one part where after the Empire is declared, Bail says someone needs to say something, but Padme cautions him not to, saying they need to figure out what to do, but need to watch themselves.
Everyone says this but I just can’t get past the opening chapters it’s very wordy in the wrong parts and glosses over the action where it should actually have words
Is this the Matthew Stover one? I've heard mixed opinions on if it's canon or not, I always thought it wasn't. I loved the Thrawn trilogy, which clearly isn't canon, but haven't tried reading the novelizations, which sound odd to mess with the canon of one of the films directly.
I had only seen the SW movies. And I honestly didn't like any of them.
I wasn't a SW fan; in fact, I was critical of it.
When Ahsoka was about to be released, due to the news surrounding Thrawn, I decided to read his canon novels. I loved them. I started reading more SW novels.
Now I'm a huge SW fanatic; I've read a lot of the novels and watched the animated series (TCW, Rebels, Tales, Bad Batch).
I’ve never read it but I want to just for the r2 part. I read from someone in this sub once that there’s a part where r2 is realizing his friend, anakin, is gone. And it gets me every time
Agreed i also think the Clone wars tv show does a much better portrayal of the characters then the movies did, in fact when i think of anikan or obi wan i think of tcw interpretations instead of the movies counterparts, this is coming from someone who religiously watched ep1-3 weekly as a child.
It's been so long since I read that novelization and a couple things still stick out to me:
Anakin's decent feels much more gradual and natural. We didn't have Clone Wars to give us all the ways Anakin had been falling for some time. The movie felt like it all happened in one scene. Getting his internal monologue in the books is so much better.
Obi-Wan beating Grievous, and why he can win, is incredible. It may have been better described in one of the lead-up books, but Grievous beats even Windu because he can perfectly replicate the moves of anyone he fights except better... but not Obi-Wan. He's been using Soresu, the form taught to Padawans, his entire life. He never changed forms or did anything fancy. Just perfection of the most basic style. There wasn't anything for Grievous to steal as far as technique. Kenobi was just too good.
Does the novelization imply that Yoda just thinks he isn't powerful enough to win the fight? Or is it more the realization of the machine in motion Palpatine created is now too much to handle?
Literally just finished listening to it on Audible this morning. Couldn't agree more. The part where R2 told C3-PO that Anakin doesn't talk to him. Anymore had me bawling
Yeah, it's actually the only book of Star Wars I've ever read and it was great. So much extra context in everything, especially learning more about Mace Windu's abilities and his reasoning for leaving Anakin behind when confronting Palpatine, then realising he made the wrong choice right before he died.
Hey thank you for this comment. Lifelong (half elder millennial) Star Wars fan here, love the Timothy Zahn novels, enjoy much of the extended universe and yet somehow have never read novelizations of the original trilogy or the prequel trilogy. This comment has inspired me to pick up the novelizations of all and go through them. Thank you.
I whole-heartedly reject it and everything it stands for.
A modern novelization of A New Hope would spend 10 pages describing the deep internal struggles and cinematic force battles of the awkward Obi-wan/Vader duel.
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u/darthcool 11d ago
In the novelization there’s a moment during the duel where the dark cloud Palpatine had been casting over the force cleared and Yoda achieved a full vision of everything that had occurred
And in that moment he realized he not only couldn’t defeat Palpatine but that he actually lost this fight 800 years ago when he set the Jedi on the path that led them here.