A friend of mine gave this to me the other day, hte classic "scholastic" version of the Star Wars story- this was the book that featured the cut-out Biggs scene, the pictures of which baffled the fuck out of me and my friends back in the day.
The story is really "pared down", with heavy editing for both brevity and content. I was bored and falling asleep yesterday when I decided to leaf through it and check out the actual story, and it fucking delivered. The absolute funniest thing is the dialogue- whoever wrote/edited it obviously knew what the big lines were, but decided to alter them pretty much every time. It's mostly funny thanks to SW being so "canonical" I guess, seeing hilarious renditions of scenes and lines that are technically "canon" alongside everything else is kind of awesome.
First quote, selected at random...
From the scene where R2 and 3PO are still onboard the Tantiive 4 arguing about taking the escape pod
"Well, Artoo," Threepio asked, "what are we going to do now? The Imperials will think we know something. They'll take us apart and use us for spare parts for other robots."
I didn't know any of the books were out before the movie back in the 70s. In the late 80s, or 90s, I'd expect it.
Interesting that C-3PO knew that they were in deep shit if the Imperials found them. In the movie, I never took it that he knew what kind of danger they were truly in.
It would make sense that 3PO wouldn't know anything, he has a big mouth, so never letting him in on the deal would make plausible deniability easier for him to project. The highly condensed nature of the storybook version forces a lot of things to be quickly explained with dialogue (maybe the next quote I shall put up will feature one of the several times Vader says something about "the tapes"). Funny thing tho, the one piece of dialogue which was pretty much exactly as it was in the film is a few lines Biggs says to Luke on Tattooine.
Oddly enough, during the cantina bit, there is a pic of Han vs Greedo, but it doesn't even get a mention in the text besides Han suggesting that he needs money for something.
The two friends were joined by an older man known as Gold Leader. "Aren't you Luke Skywalker?" he asked. "I met your father once when I was just a boy. He was a great pilot."
There was no more time to talk. The pilots had to board their planes.
Glad you like them, roughly 50 % of the actual text is solid, ridiculous gold. Back in the late 70's/early 80's the "sunday funnies" (the weekly colour comics) used to run a Star Wars story as the front page. I lived in a small town up north and we didn't get them, so my Nan (grandmother) would save them up and send them to me every 2 months or so, and I remember being totally confused by every single episode, it was mostly the droids doing this or that but the "one page a month" format made it about as hard to follow as the "3 panel a day" Spiderman strip.
I am trying to arrange the presentation of these quotes with a sort of pacing, saving some of the absolute best ones for last (tho I've posted "spoilers" on my facebox)
mabudon wrote:Quote for today is a mix of dialogue and narrative. I WISH this would have been in the film, it would fit seamlessly into the FU at least.
The two friends were joined by an older man known as Gold Leader. "Aren't you Luke Skywalker?" he asked. "I met your father once when I was just a boy. He was a great pilot."
There was no more time to talk. The pilots had to board their planes.
Really doesn't need any elaboration
After thinking about it, I'm surprised Lucas or one of the EU writers didn't make someone like Gold Leader one of the pilots from the battle of Naboo. Especially with all of the other coincidences from the prequels.
Well, that scene was missing from the 1977 version. In the special edition, they put it back in, cut out the dialogue referencing Anakin, and added a guy walking in front of Luke, Biggs, and Red Leader to try to hide the cut (though R2-D2, who's being lifted into the X-wing, kind of jumps in that time). However, some EU guy did indeed make mention of it:
During the pan-galactic conflict known as the Clone Wars, which broke out in 22 BBY and raged for three years, Garven "Dave" Dreis served with the planet Virujansi's Rarefied Air Cavalry. When Virujansi was occupied by the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the Rarefied Air Cavalry fought alongside the Republic Navy to liberate the planet. Much of the air-based combat was done in giant borecrawler caves, where Dreis was given the opportunity to fly alongside the heralded "Hero With No Fear," Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, who was leading the Republic air forces in the battle. Thanks to the efforts of the Rarefied Air Cavalry and the Republic, Virujansi was successfully liberated. In his later life, Dreis would hold Skywalker in great esteem.