Compare & Review: Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith

In this series, I typically go over the differences between two or more versions of the same IP and give a list of pros and cons of each and then give my opinion on which version I think is best. I’m not doing that with this one, because the book, written by Matthew Stover is better in every way except for the built-in soundtrack the movie comes with. You could just download the OST and boom, there’s the one advantage the film had over the book, gone. That’s hyperbole, of course, but it being a visual/audio experience is the only thing it could have over book. I’m not even going to cover the whole book/movie here. I think I’ll be able to make my case without doing so.

The movie starts with the classic Star Wars scrawl. Long ago in a galaxy far away: a few scant paragraphs that skim over the fact that the bad guys invaded the home capital of the republic and kidnapped the Republic’s leader. Like, that could have been a movie in if itself. Such a crazy thing to happen and it’s completely glossed over.

Then it does the other classic Star Wars thing; show something small, zoomed in, close, only to reveal the true scale of what you’re looking at to mind-blowing effect. Revenge of the Sith starts with two small, seemingly insignificant aircrafts flying through empty space, only to have the camera move slightly and reveal a massive space battle. It’s a good opening, I’m not going to lie.

The book doesn’t really do the word scrawl even though it would have been the easiest thing in the world to just copy/paste. No, the book starts with this:

“This story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it”

For a story that was promoted and sold as a prequel, advertised as showing the downfall of Anakin and the Jedi order and the rise of the Galactic Empire, this is amazing. And it goes on, until ending the little prologue with:

“This is the twilight of the Jedi. The end starts now.”

It’s a hundred times better than the bland words that kick off the final movie of the prequel trilogy.

In the movie, a space battle is certainly going on. Massive ships, tiny ships, all sorts of ships exchanging lasers and blowing each other up with the planet Curosant in the background. Pew pews, boom booms, and quick and light banter between Anakin Skywalker and Obiwan Kenobi as they make their way to the ship where General Grevious is holding Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

What does the book do with this scene? It starts with the narrator talking about the people of the Republic. Not the Jedi, not the Seperatists, or the clones or the droids. The small, insignificant people, the public of the Republic. They are watching the battle happening above their planet. They are watching the chaos unfold. The fear for their way of life being upended. Sure, there’s been war, but they’ve always had the Supreme Chancellor Palpatine to lead them, and now he’s been taken.  There’s still one hope though: Obiwan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, the two greatest heroes of the Republic. Whenever they’re around, any struggle, and trouble, suddenly seems solvable. But the inseparable team have been busy in the Outer Rim. Worse, there are rumors they could have died out there.

And only then, after going into all of that, does the book begin to cover the very start of the movie: two ships entering the combat zone. The scene then continues from there, and like I said earlier, everything that happened in the movie happens in the book, but with so much more. Sure, the purely visual aspects of the movie medium are lost, like when the movie shows Palpatine tied to the captain’s chair, with the film’s lighting making his appearance very similar to his appearance as the Emperor in the original trilogy sitting on his throne, but the book does more to make up for this visual cues that nudge the audience and say “hehe we both know he’s actually an evil guy.” The earliest example being during the narrated perspective of the planet’s feelings, one being specifically stated that the general consensus was that without Palpatine, the Republic would fall. nudge nudge how ironic!

The biggest strength of the books- of generally any book version- is the ability to be inside a person’s head.  In the movie, you see Obiwan and Anakin fly through a war zone, dodging enemy fire and droids while they make- in retrospect- very MCUesque quips before the MCU was even a thing. While in the book, you get to live inside Anakin and Obiwan’s head for a little bit. You get some beeps and boops translated into actual words thanks to Anakin’s POV, and you get to learn that Obiwan thinks that R2D2 is a bad influence on his R4 droid.

Bigger Star Wars fans might nerd out a bit at some other name inclusions, because the book does like to name drop a lot of character names. I’m personally not in that camp, and while it can superficially deepen worldbuilding, sometimes the book name drops a few too many things.

The books adds a lot of things to make certain things not just seem to come out of nowhere, like Anakin forseeing Padme’s death, which in the movie, that’s the only vision we ever see him get. In the book, he gets a vision of Count Dooku’s death. Now, as far as I know, a lot of the “extra content” the books have could have originally been in the script or in George Lucas’ mind to be included, but had to be chopped due to length and budget. But regardless of circumstances that led to it, the book has more than the film. Even the stuff the film did do, the book chose a more interesting way to handle things, such as both Count Dooku and General Grievous getting POVs early on, which make for great characterization and increases world building dramatically. Even things like Grevious’ MagnaGuard droids are fleshed out a bit more, which was a huge positive considering even though the MagneGuards were a surprising threat to Kenobi, the movie barely made them seem any more difficult to deal with than a basic droid. The book even brings up more in regards to droids as a whole, mentioning on several occasions how it seems droids continue to get smarter and more dangerous. A shame nothing ever comes of that in the universe. Did Legends ever do that? I know they did zombies and clones and extragalactic and extradimensional creatures, but was there ever a droid uprising?

It’s at this point in my note taking that I realize I’m almost a 4th of the way through the book and I still haven’t even gotten past the saving of Palpatine. I started thinking that this must be a two-parter book, but then realized that this is the longest most action filled section of the entire movie- aside from maybe the fight at the end, and a lot of it from this point on is just two characters talking to each other in static rooms.

In my first draft of this script, I gave a few examples of how characters were more developed. I erased all that because it could all be summed up with this: Everyone gets more development. You get more insight into every character. You learn more about each character. You get more Anakin/Kenobi friendship instead of just blankly stated words about something they did at some place. You get more into why Dooku did what he did, how he went from Jedi, to leaving the order, to joining the separatists and becoming a Sith. Every single important character benefits from the book’s added material.

The fights are more fleshed out. Grievous is shown to be a chump in the movie. He’s just kind of there, then he runs away. There’s not even musical fanfare in the movie while the droids are easily dispatched by the Jedi. The book spends more time here. Grievous still runs away in the book- the book still follows the movie bits to a T, but he’s fleshed out more. He’s made more menacing. He doesn’t just flee because he’s outnumbered. He flees because him escaping is part of the plan. His job was to kill Kenobi and run away- which he (thought he had) successfully done. He’s also responsible for one of the more sudden and violent acts in the book, when one of his people didn’t obey an order quick enough, Grievous bashed the person’s head in and had to “[shake] the pilot’s brains of his fist.” Granted, killing your own henchmen is nowadays seen as a bad cliche.

In the end, the droids are beaten, Grievous escapes and Anakin has Dooku captured and alone with Palpatine while Kenobi is unconscious.

Anakin beheads Dooku after Palpatine orders his death. In the movie, we get a few seconds of Dooku looking a bit shocked about it all, but in the book, we get Dooku’s POV when he realizes that his dark lord never intended for him to be his apprentice. He was simply a pawn. His master used Dooku for his money and political standing and his life was just one more resource for the soon-to-be-Emperor. All his struggles and dreams of a better government had been for naught. No, not for nothing. His death at Anakin’s hands was a nudge toward the dark side. A step toward Anakin becoming Palpatine’s real apprentice.

This big set piece ends with another banger of a one-liner:

“The dark’s patience is infinite. Even stars burn out.”

I have one more scene I want to cover in detail before I speak in more generalities, and it just demonstrates just how much better the book is at finding the right way to tell the story. The movie, famously, has a lot of static one on one dialogue scenes in front of a green screen. The scene I’m about to talk about happens shortly after Palpatine is rescued.

In the movie the camera is very focused on Anakin and Organa as they talk about the events that just happened and what that all means. It’s basically a recap of what just happened and a bit of exposition to get the story where it needs to next. Very dry, very boring. That scene ends with Anakin splitting off from Organa to talk to Padme who’s basically hiding behind a pillar waiting to talk with Anakin.

The book focuses on Padme with her own POV. Her own feelings and anxiety about if Anakin is alright and where he is, and when she finally sees him and he’s talking to Organa, she almost literally “blah blah blah’s” Organa’s dialog because it’s Anakin’s voice she wants to hear. Anakin’s voice she’s thrilled to hear. So not only did the book make an extremely boring barely-needed exposition scene more interesting by injecting some emotion into it, the book also shows us some real emotion that Padme has for Anakin, you know, instead of where the movie just says “you know I love you. Isn’t all that love stuff we did at that one place a great reminder of how much I love you?“

I’ve pretty much said all that I need to. I’ve already made up my mind far beyond this that the book is far superior, after all. But while Im here, I’ve got a couple other things I want to talk about. And this next one isn’t really a book v movie thing, because this specific part is pretty much the same, but…

There’s a scene with Anakin and Yoda talking. Anakin came out and told Yoda he’s having visions about a person dying. Yoda accurately guesses that the person is very close to Anakin. Anakin goes to Yoda for some guidance. For some help. Yoda’s advice is to basically just forget about that person. Dying is natural and you shouldn’t be that strongly attached to anyone. If any one person and any one thing could have stopped Anakin from turning to the dark side, it was at this very moment. Instead of trying to impart some wisdom, he drops a “screw ‘em. They’re going to die eventually. It’s only natural.” Granted, Yoda didn’t know about Padme and probably thought his visions were about Kenobi, but still, “grow some balls and let them die” is not what the unstable 22 year old needed to hear. And all because of that, Yoda spends 20 years in a swamp until he dies.

And then another scene… Anakin… he gets told he can’t be on the council and throws a massive toddler temper tantrum. Does he not see why maybe they weren’t so willing to put him in the upper echelon of their cult known for emotional disconnect?

By the way, another difference here, between the books and film, and why Anakin wasn’t so willfully accepted into the council and why the Jedi council was so distrustful of him and Palpatine is kinda just glossed over in the movie, but in the book there is mention of a special Force power Mace Windu has: he can sense connections in the Force. To him, it’s a certainty that he can sense both Palpatine and Anakin have threads of fate connected to them and the mysterious Sith Lord. Mace may not suspect Palpatine of directly being a Sith Lord, but he believes someone close to Palpatine is and that he is using Palpatine. This is actually what kicked off the Palpatine kidnapping that the movie starts with: Palpatine was being investigated. The Jedi were getting very close to discovering who the Sith was, when all of a sudden the bad guys come into the capitol of the republic in a massive show of force to capture Palpatine. Not because it would further the separatists plans, but because Palpatine needed to divert attention away from himself further.

Mace isn’t the only one who has a special Force power in the book, either. Obi Wan Kenobi can, in certain circumstances, basically become possessed by the force. The Force is in everything and so Kenobi is everything. This ability is the way he’s able to defeat Grievious, the Jedi Killer who’s robotic parts allow him to move with immensely quick speed- because as part of the Force, Obi Wan knows what Grievous is about to do. It’s not an ability he has active most of the time, just in combat it seems, and only in dire circumstances. This is also why Kenobi is the one that just HAS to go to confront Grievous one last time, because despite Mace Windu being considered one of the Jedi’s best swordmasters, Kenobi might just be the only one who is able to beat him.

The book feels like it’s the source material, honestly, and the movie was a film adaptation that had to gut so much out of it to fit the screen. Maybe this truly is the case. Maybe the author just had to work really hard to make the story better. If so, he did a damn good job.

Read the book. I can’t speak for the other movie/book adaptations as I’ve only read this one, and the only other Star Wars books I’ve read were the highly acclaimed Thrawn Trilogy(also great), but I’ll tell you that if you like Star Wars and want a better version of Episode III, this is it.