Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Novel Review
This article is part of a three-part series about Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Last week, I reviewed the film. Today, I will evaluate the film’s novelization and discuss the concept of novelization in general. Next week, I will conclude the series by discussing my hopes for the Clone Wars subfranchise.
The novelization is a curious beast, especially in today’s world. It no longer fulfills the role it was meant to play. Years ago, if you enjoyed a film or television show and wanted to relive the experience, you needed to wait until it was offered to you again by the folks at the movie theater or television station. There were no DVDs or even VHSs to watch whenever you wanted, and so the only way to revisit the stories was through novelizations. With the advent of home video, the novelization has become almost entirely obsolete. Sometimes there’s a gap to fill, as in the case of the Doctor Who novelizations, some of which record adventures of the Doctor that were once televised but no longer exist in video form. But for most people, the novelization is little more than the butt of a joke.
If you discuss adaptations with almost anyone, you’re likely to find that the common opinion is that films are usually inferior to the novels they adapt, but that novels adapted from films are absolutely always garbage. While this is a gross generalization, it is often true. These days, the novelization exists in many cases to help advertise the movie while simultaneously making a quick buck off of a third-rate book never intended to be much of a success. But this doesn’t have to be the case at all. After all, Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere is an adaptation of a television serial of the same name, to say nothing of the international phenomenon that is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a novel adapted from a series of radio plays. Of course, these novels were written by the same people that wrote the original, but if the original author can produce a product that meets or exceeds the original, why should it be impossible for another author to create a product that is better than absolute crap?
In fact, it seems to me that the novelization gains a new level of potential when written by someone uninvolved in the movie’s production. The novel can offer a different perspective on the same events seen in the movie. A novelization can be an impressive work of fiction in its own right, and may even be better as a companion piece to the original. Sadly, this is not very often the case, but in a world where various franchises are branching out into different media with tie-in video games, webisodes, comics, and viral alternate reality games, a novelization seems like it could be another powerful tool to satisfy fans and enrich the experience of the film.
And a different take on the story of the film is exactly what you’ll find in the novelization of The Clone Wars, by Karen Traviss. At first, Traviss seems like an odd choice to write this novel among the wealth of authors that LucasBooks has at their disposal. It’s a fact that she has experience writing about Clone Troopers, and she’s recently been the go-to gal for clones, Madalorians, or Fetts. However, the novels she writes are grittier tales of the harsh reality of war, the death and the camaraderie of the battlefield. The Clone Wars film is certainly anything but gritty, and little screen time is spent considering the harsh reality of war. It’s largely for this reason that Traviss’s novel is worthwhile. Those looking for a more literal retelling of the movie would be better reading the junior novelization by Tracey West (though why anyone over the age of eight would want to do so is beyond me). This novel instead provides a different perspective that goes beyond the film and shifts the focus from action to drama.
While characters in the movie are singularly focused on their mission and move from fight to fight without much thought, this novel examines their thoughts, revealing motivations and doubts, making the story far more complex and satisfying on an emotional and intellectual level. Anakin’s disdain both for the Hutts and for his former home of Tatooine are hinted at in the film, but in the novel Anakin dwells on these matters, and it rings true to the character. After all, Anakin spent much of his youth on Tatooine as a slave, owned by a Hutt and then sold with his mother to another owner. Not to mention the fact that, very recently, Anakin returned to Tatooine and watched his mother die in his arms, then proceeded to slaughter an entire tribe of sapient beings. These and other parts of Anakin’s character arc are all but ignored in the movie, and if the Clone Wars subfranchise intends to “bridge the gap” between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, then Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side must be given more attention. Anakin’s relationship with Ahsoka, the central relationship of the movie, is unimportant unless it can be seen in the context of that arc. For that purpose, the novelization serves as a great supplement to the movie. It similarly fleshes out the characters of Ventress, who appears in the film with no explanation of who she is, and the clone Rex, who has a very small role in the film but is a central character of the novel and one of its most interesting figures.
By fleshing out the characters in this way, Traviss not only makes them seem more real but also gives the story a sense of cohesion that is lacking from the film. Because the movie is really just a few episodes stuck together, it seems as though characters’ arcs begin and end in odd places, but Traviss keeps the characters more or less constant throughout. Ventress in particular benefits from this treatment, as does Ziro the Hutt. Ziro’s abrupt and somewhat jarring appearance a cople of "episodes" into the film is replaced by a more gradual build in the novel, establishing him at the beginning and hinting at his involvement throughout the story.
I would be lying if I said that this was the best Star Wars novel ever (that honor probably goes to Matthew Stover’s novelization of Revenge of the Sith), or even that it was in the top tier. It is merely a very good novel, never great. As a standalone story, it would have been received with unenthusiastic acceptance. However, it is not a standalone, it is a companion to the movie, and in that regard it excels. It enriches the experience of the movie by fixing some of the problems, considering some things that the filmmakers did not, and offering an alternative point of view to the events of the film. Perhaps the best thing it does is tie the story more closely to the story arc of the prequel. By fleshing out all of the characters, particularly in relation to Anakin, the novel makes it easier to see how this quest to find a lost Huttlet ties into the fall of the Republic and its champion Anakin, and the rise of the Empire and its enforcer, Darth Vader. Simply put, it's a deeper experience that will further satisfy Star Wars fans.
