…Luke’s rescue by the Millenium Falcon is a lot more daring and risky! I always wondered if those ugly dwarfish aliens had some kind of deathwish, looking for a fight with a wookie! …The Ugnaughts are wiser in the novelization and they didn’t argue with Chewie. …Han and Leia could kiss alright at the Millenium Falcon! Oh, yeah! BUT there isn’t “I know” at Cloud City, aaaaah bummer (but I knew that it wouldn’t be since that iconic quote was Harrison Ford’s brilliant improvisation while filming the scene). And by the way, on Dagobah, it’s mentioned that Vader’s lightsaber is blue, instead of iconic red! I guess that blue is favorite color of George Lucas and it must be a bummer (for him) having to change the blue stuff in his films due fx limitations of the time. …believe it or not, Yoda is blue!!! I guess that if X-Wings’ blue stripes on A New Hope couldn’t work with the blue screens, the same colorful trouble risen again with the muppet of the old Jedi Master, so at the film they had to changed it to green. …a big difference is that Hobbie (one Rogue Squadron fighter pilot) crashes his snowspeeder against General Veers’ AT-AT, killing all there. And there are A LOT of more wampas in the novelization than the just one in the film, actually Echo Base is attacked by wampas! …the novelization started already on Hoth with Luke and Han, instead on space with the Imperial Starfleet. …once again, if you passed the last 40 years or so, frozen in carbonite, and you hadn’t watched the film, please be warned that you may find some spoilers ahead… However, certainly there are some changes here and there in the novelization, since it’s normal that during actually making the film, there are last minute modifications or special effects troubles and the assigned writer isn’t informed on time to make the adjustment on the prose novelization as well.

It wasn’t a surprise that there are few relevant additions to this novelization, since you have to admit that Empire Strikes Back is Star Wars at its best and even good ol’ Georgie couldn’t add much to the Special Edition of the film, just a couple of CGI brief scenes, to justify the existence of a special edition of that superb film. I have bought the Omnibus edition with the three original “Star Wars” movie novelizations but I’ve chosen this edition to make a better focused review of each single book.

Star Wars by Donald F. Glut