Why One of many Biggest ‘Star Wars’ Novels Ever Made Was Written Like a Greek Tragedy

When it got here to penning the novelization of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the planning all got here earlier than the aftermath of the movie’s eventual polarizing launch. And by probability, Matthew Stover’s model of the occasions of the movie ended up being one of many saving graces of George Lucas’ closing chapter in his saga, at the least to the previous guard of fanboys. We all know that the generation who grew up on it and the animated shows ended up being extra embracing of the maker’s last contributions to the Star Wars universe.

In an unique with Entertainment Weekly, Stover shared his new writer’s word, now added to the guide’s twentieth anniversary re-release. In it he discusses his distinctive method to writing the movie as a novel with George’s Lucas’ blessing and inspiration from Greek myths.

What units the guide aside from the movie is that it allowed Stover to increase on Anakin’s perspective throughout his fall from the sunshine facet. And it’s one thing that made him nervous from the beginning. “It had come to me in the course of the panic assault I’d suffered after signing the contract to jot down this novelization, which had ignited as a result of I’d foolishly dedicated to jot down the keystone within the arch of the Skywalker saga for the largest viewers of my profession—and your complete Star Wars-loving universe can be hoping for an exhilarating area opera, regardless of the plain truth that each fundamental plot level had been spoiled for many years.”

Stover continued, “Add the problem of writing a novelization with out ever seeing the ultimate film, as a result of the film wasn’t completed and wouldn’t be out earlier than the guide went to the printer. I might be armed with solely the script and the collective Lucasfilm information of Star Wars. What saved me then was my early coaching,” he defined, describing how the guardrails of traditional theater mythology got here in useful for the author.

“Greater than 20 years earlier than I signed that contract, I’d had the nice fortune to review theater historical past underneath a professor who was an authority on historic Greek drama. Each single one of many nice Greek tragedians had confronted precisely my hassle—their viewers knew the story entering into—and so they had some tips they’d pull to make their performs dramatic anyway. I figured I may steal a few these for this guide.”

“The extra I thought of Greek tragedy, the higher it appeared to suit. The classical tragedies have been drawn from Greek mythology and legend, proper? Additionally—if I wanted any additional excuse—historic Greek tragedies have been historically carried out as single acts with out intermissions, like fashionable motion pictures, and so they have been often introduced in precise, no kidding, look forward to it . . . trilogies.”

“I hoped to current the story explicitly as a tragic fable, with language and magnificence extra formalized and darker in tone than individuals usually count on from Star Wars fiction. In any case, I meant to argue that this story is particular. It’s totally different from another Star Wars story—not solely as a result of it’s the ultimate movie (or so we thought on the time), however as a result of this story is the true basis that underlies all the remainder, and it ought to really feel totally different from the very first web page.”

Moreover, his method would learn by how fable served as a template for a lot Star Wars media to start with inside its Expanded Universe (earlier than getting decanonized). “However evoking the Greek tragedies was solely a part of my concept, and I anticipated that half to be a straightforward elevate, for the explanations I sketched above. The remainder, nonetheless, was gnawing holes in my abdomen lining, as a result of I wished to fold in parts of the bigger Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU).”

“I desperately wanted EU materials to make this story work. Not as a result of the EU had been a part of my life ever since Splinter of the Thoughts’s Eye, and undoubtedly not as a result of it’d be extraordinarily cool to include parts of these tales into this novelization … I genuinely believed that I wanted the EU to make this story work as a novel. It might give the story heft and texture. It might let me contact on the place these individuals come from and the place most of them are going to finish up, and it will let me weave this particular narrative and its implications into the broader ‘historic’ context of the entire galaxy far, far-off.”

The very best anecdote of the word was how all of this work, how he’d gone out of his strategy to plan and pitch to George Lucas, was met with a stunning reply when he requested the residing legend how a lot he ought to stick with the script. Lucas liberated him from perceiving the film script as a constraint. “Don’t fear about that stuff. So long as you don’t violate the story, do no matter you need,” Lucas mentioned to Stover. “Simply make it good.”

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