Count me among the majority on the most recent STAR WARS film, the concluding chapter in the nine-movie story arc. I loved it. Hands-down, loved it. But I will concede to the haters one tiny point: there are things that could have been better explained in the script. This is an especially annoying mini-gaffe on the part of the writers since it would have been so easy to fix it. Just a few altered lines is all it would have taken. Shame on them for overlooking these pinprick plotholes instead of plugging them during the writing process.
The novelization of STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, due out by the time you will be seeing this article, does what the screenplay for the movie should have done in that it clarifies some things. Chief among them, how the Emperor managed to return from the dead. When you understand the process, it makes his plot to take over the body of his “granddaughter” even more sensible and more of a threat, since it’s something he’s done once already. In the novel we learn that the body he inhabits in the film is not his original; it is a cloned body, only kept alive by the machines he is plugged into, into which he was able to send his spirit. That body is dying, already decomposing, even, and he needs a new one to possess.
And I’ve just explained that in two measly sentences. Two sentences that, if they’d been included in some form in the screenplay, would have left the bitchers with one less thing to bitch about. It would also have made the Emperor an even creepier villain.
I’ve never read any STAR WARS books. To me, the story is what is in the movies, period. But I plan to buy this book. I think of it not so much as a novelization of the film as a supplement.
