10 Films Whose Novelisations Took On A Life Of Their Own

There is a whole myriad of Star Wars literature that only the biggest geeks appreciate; the special completionist that collects any memorabilia associated with their interest.

It would stand to reason that novelisations are the least essential when it comes to Star Wars. After all, there's a whole series of independent novels spun out of the faraway galaxy to explore, why bother with what's already onscreen?

That's not the case with the novelisations of the prequel trilogy, the long-awaited and oddly sort of forgiven part of the franchise when George Lucas finally returned to his original characters to, well, hurt them.

The resulting novels, by Mathew Stover, flesh out Anakin Skywalker's fall from grace in dialogue that doesn't read as if it were written by a robot trying to decipher human emotion. Or, for that matter, a bitter, divorced man with too much creative freedom.

All of the depth and nuance you expected to get "from the next one" only to be disappointed by a wooden performance reading off a teleprompter was apparently there all along, it was just in novel form.

According to some fans, you can ignore the cinematic trilogy entirely if you stick to Stover's books, which take on the kind of mythic hero posturing as the films, but with the writing to back it up.