Men In Black (Steve Perry)

[**]

I often like film novelizations. Done well, they open up the interior life of the characters that is largely invisible on film. Like most things, the quality can be hit or miss. This is a miss. Rather than use the opportunity of the written words to drive deeper into the characters, revealing their thoughts and capturing their motivations (well, he does try), the author mostly attempts to capture the humor of the movie. The trouble is, much of the movie humor was visual. That does not often translate well into prose.

A few things work. I liked some of what he did with the inner life of the bug (Edgar). But much of the alien vocabulary was too obviously just throw away. He captures a little of the playful banter between Jay and Kay. Even this sometimes comes off a little forced.

It's not like I wish I had a flashy thing to erase my memories of the book. I will have to watch the movie a couple of times, though, to write over those memories with the better stuff.

King Kong (Delos W. Lovelace)

[****]

During a busy time, I managed to squeeze in a read of the original novelization of the original King Kong movie. The main attribution is to Delos W. Lovelace, but apparently there was ample input from Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace. Very fun. A few extra details and slight divergence from the film, but good to read. The best parts, though, were the Preface by Mark Cotta Vaz and the Introduction by Greg Bear. It made me go out and get Mark's book about Cooper, which I review later.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Matthew Woodring Stover)

[***]

You can see the George Lucas film of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and be totally confused about how and why Anakin gave himself over to the dark side. Or you can read the novelisation by Matthew Stover and get it. I had not previously heard of this author, but I think he's done the best job I've yet seen of translating these iconic characters into real people with real feelings and real conflicts (as much as one can think of anything in the Star Wars universe as 'real'). This is yet further evidence that George Lucas can't write.