Star Wars, Episode I - The Phantom Menace
by Terry Brooks

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Book Reviews of Star Wars, Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Book Review: Not bad but pedestrian, and not terribly well-written
Summary: 3 Stars

Among those is 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. The scenes either ended up on the movie's cutting-room floor, or perhaps were never shot: Brooks's writing here is freer, looser; we get into Anakin's head, as when he spends a watchful night under the stars, guarding the masked Tusken 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 screenplay, 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 as you can find in any Prada boutique.) 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 reader 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", etc. The entire feeling is of watching a familiar world through a haze. Michael Stackpole's descriptions of Coruscant in the X-Wung series did far better justice to the city-planet.

Surprisingly, Jar Jar a far more sympathetic character here -- he's the one who gets the most added-value from the book. We often get scenes narrated from his 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 allowed him. This 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."

The 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, while Palpatine believes that he has craftily maneuvered her to leave after she has opened the door to his election in the Senate. 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 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," lines cut from the movie.)

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.

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 could have been enjoyable, and it's not.

Summary of Star Wars, Episode I - The Phantom Menace

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, an evil legacy long believed dead is stirring. Now the dark side of the Force threatens to overwhelm the light, and only an ancient Jedi prophecy stands between hope and doom for the entire galaxy.
 
On the green, unspoiled world of Naboo, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, arrive to protect the realm?s young queen as she seeks a diplomatic solution to end the siege of her planet by Trade Federation warships. At the same time, on desert-swept Tatooine, a slave boy named Anakin Skywalker, who possesses a strange ability for understanding the ?rightness? of things, toils by day and dreams by night?of becoming  a Jedi Knight and finding a way to win freedom for himself and his beloved mother. It will be the unexpected meeting of Jedi, Queen, and a gifted boy that will mark the start of a drama that will become legend.

This special edition features a brand-new Darth Maul short story by New York Times bestselling author James Luceno!

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• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure
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