My Faith in the Star Wars Universe is Restored!
Dear Mr. Lucas,
For the love of all that's holy..., please leave the continuation of the Star Wars Universe to people like James Luceno, Matthew Stover, Timothy Zahn, etc. While I appreciate that you are the creator of the source of my first and most beloved fandom, the universe has grown beyond you and your writing abilities.
Thank you!
Yes, I just finished reading Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, by Matthew Stover and oh. my. GODS!!! Wow!! That's the only word that ran through my mind for a good twenty minutes. That was then proceeded by my becoming totally annoyed that the movie wasn't even half that good.
I actually found myself no longer thinking of Anakin Skywalker as a whiny little bitch. More than that, I found myself actually being sorry for him!! It's actually rather sad! Here's a guy - a kid - who is exhausted, can't be left alone for two seconds and there's Palpatine playing him (and everyone else) like he's conducting the LA Phil!!
Stover gets into the heads of every character (with the exception of the Emperor) in a way that just... doesn't happen, in the movie. Granted, Anakin... err... Vader still sounds like a complete megalomaniac, towards the end, but until he actually crosses over... I actually feel sorry for him.
Oh yes! And the dialog! SO much better! Stover even goes so far as to actually translate Artoo's side of a convo with Threepio - at one point - which would have been hilarious, had it not come at a point where everything was falling to shit... Actually, even then, it's still pretty funny...
Vader's screaming, at the end, is even justifiable, as Anakin awakens to the full weight of everything he's done and the realization of how he was played... Of course, unlike the movie, the screaming isn't just a lame "NOOOO!!" and is accompanied by the kind of destruction that, before reading the book, I could only get out of the LEGO Star Wars Game... THAT'S the Vader I wanted to see, at the end. Not some whiny bitch, in the guise of my favorite villain for all time!
At the moment, I find myself wondering if Lucas's writing really has gotten so bad that it takes someone else to save his script, or if it was always mediocre and he's just somehow managed to find writers that are just that much better than he is, at expanding his own story. ::sigh:: In my quest to read all of the Star Wars novels, in chronological order (why? because I can... and I'm just geeky that way), I'm no where near getting back around to reading A New Hope, yet, which is the only novelization Lucas actually wrote himself... So I guess I'll just have to wait and see...