"The Phantom
Menace"
Novelization by Terry Brooks
Published by Ballantine Books
Review by Shezan
5/30/99
This
review contains major spoilers of both the film itself
and content in the novel which is not in the film
There are three chapters at the beginning of Terry
Brooks’ "The Phantom Menace" novelization
that take place before the movie actually opens, and they
are easily the best thing in the entire book. They are
set on Tatooine and show us some additional scenes of the
life of young Anakin Skywalker which ground the character
far more effectively than anything we’ll see later,
either onscreen or in the novel.
We are shown Anakin’s early pod-racing; his close relationship with his mother; a prophecy from an old, down-on-his-luck pilot permanently grounded in Mos Espa; and a buying expedition from desert Jawas on which the boy is sent by his owner, Watto, and which ends with his risky rescue of a wounded Tusken Raider. I wonder if Brooks already knew the scenes would end up on the cutting-room floor, or perhaps were never shot -- his writing is freer, looser; we get into Anakin’s head, as when he spends a watchful night under the stars, guarding the masked Tusken whom he found partly buried under fallen rocks, and whom he’s freed with the help of the droids he’s just bought.
Anakin has tried to set the unconscious Tusken’s shattered leg; but he doesn’t know enough of Tusken physiology to do much more; neither is he sure what the fierce nomad’s reaction will be when he awakes. The reader knows, of course, that Anakin, too, will ultimately become a fearsome, masked character with mysterious injuries: it is a nice bit of foreshadowing, and the conclusion of the incident leaves us aware of the duality inside both Anakin and the Tusken, neither friend nor foe.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book doesn’t quite live up to this early promise. Bound by the physical reality of the movie, Brooks is pedestrian at best, purplishly ham-handed all too often. Darth Maul’s horns are a "stunted, wicked crown;" Yoda’s eyes [close] "to slits like a contented sand panther’s"; Anakin’s "uncertainty work[s] within him like a caged animal seeking to break free." Bantha horns are "massive", Qui-Gon’s movements are "wraithlike", the Queen is (what else) "regal" -- and the wildebeest menagerie makes an ill-advised return on page 275 to describe Darth Maul ("like a large sand panther") and Obi-Wan on page 298 ("he prowled... like a caged animal.") Young Anakin is first described in positively Dickensian terms ("disheveled... his clothes were ragged and thick with grime, and he had the look of someone about to take a beating") that don’t match what we have seen in the movie, where the boy argues successfully with Watto and Sebulba (and leaves carrying as cool a black leather and nylon backpack you can find in a Prada boutique.)
I’ve never read Brooks’ best-selling "Shannara" novels, so I can’t tell whether his writing is as stilted when he operates freely in his own universe; it is definitely uninspired here. Del Rey and Lucasfilm made the choice to go with a bigger "name" than the usual SW writers, and it turns out to have been a mistake in more ways than one.
For one thing, any Star Wars fan is bound to feel not so much a disturbance as a great wobbling in the Force. Brooks obviously took a crash course in the SW universe, but it doesn’t prevent him from ignoring many of the terms we are by now familiar with. "Repulsorlifts" have been replaced by awkward "antigrav"; "datapad" by "portable memory bank"; Twi’leks are described as if we’d never watched Oolah dance; a gratuitous line of background informs us that "moisture farms on Tatooine [are] operated by offworlders" -- does that include the future Owen and Beru Lars? Ric Olié, the Queen’s pilot, is described "at work preparing the ship for the jump to hyperspace." We never had such luxuries on the Millennium Falcon (or on the Executor for that matter.) The entire feeling is of watching a familiar world through the haze of an energy shield. Stackpole’s descriptions of Coruscant did far better justice to the city-planet than what we have here. And since some of the words developed in the Bantam continuity are used -- the windows of the Theed palace on Naboo are described as "transparisteel", not an expression ever used in the movies -- the feeling is more of sloppy editing than of a conscious decision by both Del Rey and Lucasfilm to ignore the SW novels altogether.
All this being said, the novelization is indeed a good help in understanding the movie -- it’s definitely worth reading. Toryn Farr has already pointed out on the Echo Boards the background Brooks gives us about Sith Lords. (Why none of this could have been explained, even in abbreviated form, by Qui-Gon to either Obi-Wan or Anakin in the movie remains a mystery to me. Lucas seems to have wanted us to take his villains on trust -- a familiar cowl here, some seriously cool red-and-black tattoos there.) There’s a little more background on how Jedi train practically since birth, having been separated from their parents, that also helps understand why he small Anakin is at first rejected as "too old." (Yoda’s famous trailer line is far better in the book: "To the dark side, fear leads. To anger and hate. To suffering.")
Surprisingly, Brooks also makes Jar Jar a far more sympathetic character -- he’s the one who gets the most added-value from the book. We often get scenes narrated from Jar Jar’s point of view, and he comes across as a kind of elfin, happy-go-lucky character, a misfit in every company, with more heart, understanding and compassion than the movie’s condescending slapstick allows him. Brooks’ Jar Jar makes friends with Artoo, Anakin and Padmé -- the smallest or weakest members of the group. He is aware of his own shortcomings, and on occasion they sadden him; but he is no fool. As the Queen stands at a window of her Coruscant temporary apartments, after the vote of no-confidence in Chancellor Valorum, Jar Jar, who is intimidated by her, volunteers sadly "Me wonder sometimes why Da Guds invent pain", and the hieratic girl in her elaborate Court makeup and embroidered gown answers: "To motivate us, I imagine."
Brooks’ book makes it clearer than the movie that Amidala decides to fly back to Naboo only after Jar Jar has mentioned the existence of a "grand [Gungan] army", something I could not catch even at a third viewing of TPM. Palpatine believes that he has craftily maneuvered her to leave after she has opened the door to his election in the Senate, and this explains later why he is surprised by the initiatives she takes against the Federation occupants. ("This is an unexpected move for her... it’s too aggressive.")
The book also shows us Obi-Wan’s hurt and resentment at being summarily dismissed by Qui-Gon as his Padawan apprentice when the older Jedi tells the Council he wants to train Anakin. A cooling between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon ensues: we never see it on film (although when they arrive back at Naboo, Obi-Wan does apologize to Qui-Gon in a rather stilted way), but it’s a good psychological detail.
Brooks fails to convey much more personality for Darth Maul, but that’s not entirely his fault - George Lucas underwrote the part from the start. (On the other hand, I could have done without the line describing his twin-bladed lightsaber as "of another make." Since each Jedi makes his own lightsaber, there can be no two alike. Where was the Lucasfilm editor?) The book also shows us that the first fight between Qui-Gon and Darth Maul continues on the hovering Naboo ship platform, until Qui-Gon manages to push Maul off and the Sith Lord falls to the desert floor. I wonder why that was cut -- we may get to see it in the TPM:SEs one day. His description of the final fight also differs several times from what we eventually got to see on screen, including an entire Force storm of objects hurled by both Obi-Wan and Darth Maul in the final stage, very much, it seems, like Vader at Bespin.
The other mystery of the book is the Queen - we never get her point of view, although there is a lot more foreshadowing about her future relationship with Anakin ("I’m going to marry you", he says at their first meeting, after being struck by her beauty; and later, in the Naboo ship en route for Coruscant, she jokes about his being [her] "future husband." Obviously Lucas cut this from the finished movie.) The separation between Anakin and his mother is also more affecting in the book.
Someone pointed on the boards that the novelization also enables us to get the entire effect from throwaway lines, such as Darth Sidious’s early "Never allow that stunted piece of slime to pass within my sight again!" (spat at the defeatist Federation envoy Daultay Dofine) that get lost in the general momentum of the film.
On the other hand, I did hope for a little enlightenment as to why Shmi Skywalker, a slave and homemaker on a frontier planet, would ever have a use for the protocol droid Anakin is building "to help my Mom." From what we saw (but Brooks doesn’t bother to explain it further, or even give us a description of a set that must have taken hours for the filmmakers to assemble), she worked at assembling mechanical parts in a home workshop. If the "human-cyborg relations" specialty of Threepio’s included talking to the chips she assembled, a line or two would have been useful.
The same irritating vagueness goes for the line "the Naboo [were] removed to detention camps" after the Federation invasion. Does this mean the entire population of Theed, à la Khmer Rouge in Phnom-Penh in 1975, or just the Naboo leaders? It grated in the movie, and it really is the kind of thing you expect the novelization to set to rights. This one doesn’t. At other places, there are bits that are thrown at us as if Brooks had barely dressed up the working screenplay. (Anakin’s friends appear: "The older boys were Kitster and Seek, the younger girl was Amee, and the Rodian was Wald." Gee, thanks, a characterization like that changes everything for me.)
Overall, the feeling is that Brooks wasn’t terribly happy writing this -- one eye on the clock and the other on his future bank statements. His book is useful; but it could have been enjoyable -- and it’s not.
(Shezan holds down the Paris bureau of Echo Station, but managed to be in the U.S. for the opening of The Phantom Menace, just so she wouldn’t have to stay away from the Echo message boards until it opened in France.)