After watching Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith for the first time (you can see my thoughts here), I did what everyone and their dog recommended and read the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover – thank you, local library. To everyone who informed me, multiple times, before I started on either movie or book, that I must consume them in that specific order:
Good advice!
Matthew Stover is a writer who truly understands the strengths of the novel as a storytelling medium and uses those strengths to the fullest. Even after watching Revenge of the Sith for the first time, the book felt new and fresh, putting me in the heads of Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and even Mace Windu.
While the movie showed the zany action of getting to Chancellor Palpatine, the book focused on Count Dooku’s misinformed goals. Despite knowing exactly what was going to happen, I still found myself wrapped up in everyone’s temporary triumphs and deep failures, their secret fears and horrors. Stover kept the action exciting even without the movie’s amazing choreography and eye-popping scenery.
He even manages to make something good out of the worst lines of dialogue. That there takes talent.
Of course, he digs deeply into Anakin's character. Revenge of the Sith is really laser-focused on two things: How democracies become dictatorships and how a good person can turn evil. They're interlinked in the movie, and in his book, Stover runs with the theme. We see through Anakin's point of view exactly how personality traits, circumstances, and Palpatine lead our hero - torn between good and evil - to choose evil. And how this leads to his utter ruin and the entire galaxy along with him!
Mathew Stover's Revenge of the Sith is the promise the movie didn’t quite manage to deliver. What else can I say? Well...
Movies can leave more to audience interpretation than a book can. Actors act, but a book spells things out in black and white. Which I like, because I would rather read a book than watch a movie. However, in Revenge of the Sith novelization, I think it makes Anakin look a bit more foolish. In the movie, how much does Anakin know about prophecies? He might not be aware of the whole "preventing a prophecy totally makes it happen by your hand." Here it's spelled out that he is, and he's certain he can defeat this one. Why not? He did the impossible landing on that ship. He's always done the impossible. Anakin also buys into Palpatine's "the Jedi have been plotting against me since before you joined," which at that point I was thinking "Okay, I can see how Anakin would buy everything else this guy says," from his point of view. But that? Come on, that sounds like Facebook levels of conspiracy theory.
Then there's Padme Amidala. I wasn't blown away by her characterization in the movie, especially with most of her best scenes cut, but I also wasn't blown away by Stover's take on her. In a book where I have been in awe of Stover's take on everyone from Count Dooku to Boga the Vactryl, I felt let down by the way he wrote Padme.
Her characterization was alright, but it just doesn't stand out the way the others did. Compared to the insight with which Stover approached almost everyone else in his novel, I just didn't get much more from Padme than what the movie gave. She's done everything from serving as an elected Queen to starting a rebellion to marrying a man after he confessed to a massacre! Surely someone with Stover's incredible talent can dig a little deeper into that?
I'll add my voice to the countless others: watch the movie, then read the novel. Matthew Stover knows his craft, and it shows in everything from his point of view choices to his character decisions to the way he can somehow turn garbage dialogue into gold. He vividly shows Anakin going from the hero who made an impossible landing to the villainous Darth Vader without changing the person he is. What criticisms I can offer are minor, and while I think he only scratched the surface of Padme's fascinating character, he delivered a brilliant novel worthy of the Revenge of the Sith.