Some of the best Star Wars literary tie-ins

-
(C) 2015 Quirk Books
Since the late 1970s, so many Star Wars movie tie-ins have been published that they’d fill a Star Destroyer’s cargo hold. From novelizations of the screenplays to comic books, radio dramatizations, and even parodies, the publishing industry has given Star Wars fans different means to explore George Lucas’s original six-film space fantasy saga and Star Wars: The Force Awakens over the past 39 years.
With less than five months to go before the premiere of Disney/Lucasfilm’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, let’s explore the brightest shining stars of the Star Wars literary tie-in universe:


  1. Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, George Lucas (ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster. Published by Del Rey in December 1976 with cover art by conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie, Foster’s adaptation of Lucas’s fourth draft of the Star Wars screenplay gave the world its first peek of that galaxy far, far away. The novel sold moderately well before the film opened in May 1977. After Star Wars became a box office hit, the novel (with a new cover by John Berkey) was a runaway best-seller and has been reissued in various editions
  1. The Art of Star Wars, Carol Titleman (editor): Originally published in 1979, this trade paperback was the first book to contain Lucas’s complete screenplay for Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope. As the title implies, The Art of Star Wars is a treasure trove of poster art, production paintings, poster art, publicity photos, and costume designs from the first film of the Star Wars saga
  1. Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays, Laurent Bouzerau: Ballantine’s Del Rey Books imprint published the screenplays to Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi in a single volume to coincide with the trilogy’s 1997 Special Edition theatrical re-release. Bouzerau, a filmmaker who specializes in “making of” documentaries for laser discs, DVDs, and Blu-rays, dissects each script and describes how the movies evolved from story treatments to final shooting drafts.
  1. The Complete Star Wars Trilogy - The Original Radio Dramas, Brian Daley: Produced between 1981 and 1996, National Public Radio and Highbridge Audio’s audio adaptations of Star Wars; A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi are among the most popular (and unusual) tie-ins to Lucas’s classic film trilogy. The late Brian Daley’s scripts delved deeper into the films’ backstories and gave the characters more depth and subtle nuances.
  1. William Shakespeare’s Star Wars Trilogy: Star Wars - Verily, A New Hope, The Empire Striketh Back, and The Jedi Doth Return, Ian Doescher: Between 2013 and 2014, Star Wars fan and Shakespeare lover Ian Doescher took a page from the parody novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and created a mashup of the works of George Lucas and the legendary Bard of Avon. Written in iambic pentameter and following the conventions of Shakespearean drama, William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series is a unique and worthy tie-in. A year later, Doescher  completed his reimagined version of Lucas’s universe with a Shakespearean version of  the Prequel Trilogy; Quirk Books published William Shakespeare’s The Phantom Menace: Star Wars Part the First in April 2015, The Clone Army Attacketh: Star Wars Part the Second in July, and The Tragedy of the Sith’s Revenge in November.

  1.  Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy, Terry Brooks, R.A. Salvatore, and Matthew Stover: This omnibus edition collects all three novelizations of Star Wars: Episodes I-III. Published in time for Star Wars’ 30th Anniversary in May 2007, The Prequel Trilogy chronicles the tragic rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker, a slave boy from Tatooine who trains to be a Jedi Knight, only to be seduced by the dark side of the Force and transformed into the Sith Lord known as Darth Vader.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's 'It'?

-
Image
How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's It ? It  has been adapted twice for filmed audio-visual media. The first filmed version of  It was a TV limited series; the second was a duology of theatrically-released movies.  The first adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 doorstop of a novel was a 1990 adaptation made as a two-part ABC miniseries for television. Among the cast members: Tim Reid, Harry Anderson, Annette O’Toole, John Ritter, and Richard Thomas. The miniseries also featured Tim Curry as the evil Pennywise the Clown. Adapted for television by director Tommy Lee Wallace and Lawrence D. Cohen (who also adapted King’s  Carrie  for director Brian De Palma in 1976),  It  was okay but a watered-down take on the scary novel about a group of friends who must face off against a monstrous entity known as “It” twice. Once as kids in 1960, then again as adults in 1990. (Like  11,22.63,  the TV version of It avoids the year 1958, which is where parts of  11/22/63 
Read more

Talking About Tom Clancy's 'Ryanverse': Was Jack Ryan a Republican or a Democrat?

-
Image
Harrison Ford starred in two Jack Ryan films. © 1992 Paramount Pictures On Quora, member Maya Lachman asks: Was Jack Ryan a Republican or a Democrat? My reply: If you’re talking about Tom Clancy’s iconic character John Patrick Ryan, Sr., he is depicted in the novels as being Republican, especially in most of the books that follow 1991’s  The Sum of All Fears. In the early Jack Ryan novels ( The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, The Cardinal of the Cardinal, Clear and Present Danger,  and  The Sum of All Fears ), Ryan works his way up the ranks in the Central Intelligence Agency, starting out as a recently-recruited analyst and rising all the way to Deputy Director (Intelligence), or DDI. During his time at CIA, Ryan doesn’t have much to say about politics (except in the context of U.S.-Soviet relations, in which case he is obviously a Cold War Republican), but his pre-CIA resume includes a stint as a Marine Corps lieutenant, a successful stockbroker who, despite
Read more

Movie Review: 'PT-109'

-
Image
In June of 1963, five months before the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Warner Bros. released director Leslie Martinson’s  PT-109 , an adaptation of Robert J. Donovan’s non-fiction book  PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II.   Starring Cliff Robertson ( Charly, Spider-Man ) as Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy and co-starring Ty Hardin, James Gregory, Robert Culp, Robert Blake, Norman Fell and even an uncredited George Takei (Hikaru Sulu of  Star Trek: The Original Series ), the film is a fairly accurate depiction of JFK’s naval service in the South Pacific as the commander of a motor torpedo boat given the Navy pennant number PT-109 (the PT standing for the Navy ship designator “Patrol Torpedo”).  Although Hollywood had made movies in which former Presidents (either living or dead) were depicted, producer Bryan Foy, under the direct guidance of Warner Bros.' head of production Jack Warner (who, in turn, was influenced by Joseph P. Kennedy, a f
Read more