My Bookcase - Filmed Books

Well, here they are, the books that have been made into a film, and which I have read as well. In all honesty, I haven't always seen the film, but that's not important right now. As you'll notice, Shakespeare isn't among them, even though all his plays have been turned into films a million times, but I'd rather classify him as historical. Actually, I'd rather not classify him at all, and refer you to the various Shakespeare pages on the web. So click on the titles and read the brief commentary.

If you can't find the book you're looking for here, try Contemporary Books, Academic Books or Literature.

Julian Barnes' Metroland

Terry Brooks The Phantom Menace

Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange

William S. Burrough Naked Lunch

A.S. Byatt Angels and Insects

Peter Carry Oscar and Lucinda

Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep

Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

Michael Crighton Jurassic Park

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

E.M. Forster Maurice

Frederick Forsyth The Day of the Jackal

John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman

Judith Guest Ordinary People

Patricia Highsmith The Talented Mr Ripley

John Irving The World According to Garp

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Ken Kesey One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Ira Levin A Kiss Before Dying

George Lucas Star Wars, A New Hope

George Lucas The Phantom Menace - the Illustrated Screenplay

Herman Melville Moby Dick

Vladimir Nabokov Lolita

Michael Ondaatje The English Patient

Dennis Potter Blue Remembered Hills

Gerard Reve De Avonden

Mary Shelley Frankenstein

Bram Stoker Dracula

Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Billy Bob Thornton Sling Blade screenplay

Irvine Welsh Trainspotting

Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray

Jeanette Winterson Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

Jan Wolkers Turks Fruit

The 'Reviews'

Would I be Maurice if I didn't mention Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient here? Of course not! I think it is the best book I have ever read, and I have read a few in my time (believe you me). The story is at first glance rather simple, a heavily burnt man is taken care of by a shell-shocked nurse in a ruined Italian monastery during the aftermath of World War II. The beauty of the book is more than just the story, it is the way in which the story is told which is so phenomenal, as Ondaatje uses a deeply poetical style of writing with some of the most peculiar metaphors I have ever seen. The beauty of the whole thing is not only the poetic way the story is told and the story itself, but lies also in the ways that all loose ends are tied up one way or another which sometimes don't surface until another reading of the book.
Have you read this book? Did you like this book? Try these: Michael Ondaatje In the Skin of a Lion, Julian Barnes Flaubert's Parrot, Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca.
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Julian Barnes' Metroland is actually Barnes' debut novel, for which he won the Somerset Waughn prize. Interestingly, all the typical Barnes-things are already present here: his inclination towards writing about France (or in French), characters with interesting ideas which remain somewhat flat nonetheless, the opening chapter which has a sideways, though still subatantial, influence on the rest of the novel, love, betrayal & the lot.
Metroland is about a guy, Chris, who's friends with a schoolmate of his, Toni, and the first half of the novel takes place during their youth, establishing their likes and dislikes and especially the bond that exists between the two which is basically cemented by their mutual disgust of the bourgoisie.
Indeed, you probably guessed it, one of the two (Chris) becomes bourgois himself while Toni more or less remains true to his old self (or does he really?). About a third of the novel takes place in Paris, although (unlike later Barnes novels) the scenery descriptions remain minimal. A plus if you ask me.
This novel has also been filmed with Christian Bale as the main character. I haven't seen it and I doubt that I ever will, but the novel is fun enough. Not for its story really (which is nothing special), but (as with every Barnes novel) because of the ideas that are represented by the characters - ideals or thoughts which are not provoking, but do provide something to think about, or to make you see something from a different angle.
If you don't like Barnes' work, this will certainly not convince you to think otherwise, but if you do, and you haven't read this one yet, I'd surely recommend it.
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Some time ago I heard that some of Burrough's books were banned in Canada. How peculiar. I've always liked most of his books (with the possible exception of Cities of the Red Night) and Naked Lunch is probably second favourite next to Junky. In any case, this book is one big trip without the after effects of any real drugs and probably requires a couple of readings before you fully understand what is happening, as Burrough's was the Founding Father of the Cut & Paste technique, later deployed by, for example, David Bowie. The story is about a man who's addicted to bugspray and during one of his trips he kills his wife which results in him staying in a permanent state of intoxication called the Zone, inhabited with the people who, although strange, somehow don't even appear so far-fetched.
Have you read this book? Did you like this book? Try these: William Burroughs's Junky and The Exterminator, Iain Banks The Bridge.
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I've read the book, but haven't seen the film, though Ralph Fiennes always seems to deliver, like in English Patient and Schindler's List. Makes you wonder what book he'll act in next... Anyway, the book itself looks at first glance to be quite big, but it reads very quickly and although the story is very predictable, it was done largely intentionally and the story is captivating. Unfortunately, the factors which should be deemed unpredictable, are predictable as well. I mean, if a defrocked priest with a water phobia sits inside a glass church floating in the middle of a river, it's not that difficult to guess how the story will end, now is it? Then again, maybe it doesn't matter all that much, the focus is on the story more than the plot.
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Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep was filmed starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and the film is as much a tangled knot of intrigues and double layers and plot twists as the book is. Recommend it? I read it twice, and saw the film three times, but still I wouldn't be able to tell you what it is about exactly if my life depended on it.
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I don't think the film version of the book actually made it into the cinema's. I don't mean Apocalypse Now, but the film with the same name as the book. I saw the film on TNT and it isn't anything special, in contrary to the book, which is nothing short of enchanting. Even though it is a story within a story you are swept up within it as it takes you downstream to inland Africa, into a land which is as wonderful as it is dangerous. On the down side, no Marlon Brando; on the plus side, no Martin Sheen.
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Why I read the book I don't know, but I do know that the film was the first film since ET which gave me the 'ET-feeling'. The book is slightly more macabre, but that's not too difficult to achieve. It's also a lot more academic and detailed, which can be dead boring when you're waiting for the dinos to rip someone's insides out and Crighton goes off an theory of chaos. Hello?
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Don't tell me you didn't know this book was filmed, because I know you didn't. The film is almost as old as the book (give or take a century), but is by far not as good. The book allows you to sympathise with 'Madame Bovary' and you (sort of) understand her escapades (at least better than the idea this book caused a fuss when it was first published), and her suicide is dramatic (and don't tell me this spoils the book for you, because I'd wonder what planet you're from). None of those things in the film, it just lacks the feel which made the book beautiful (and a good read when the days are getting shorter).
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Ha! A book with the same name as me, and turned into a film with (of all people) Hugh Grant, though luckily not as the sexually confused (because gay) Maurice. The only reason I read this book was because of the name, and I don't think I liked it a great deal back then, having already read the far superior A Passage to India. Read the film, watch the book. Entertain yourself (and don't fret).
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The Day of the Jackal has been filmed twice; once with the fantastic Edward Fox, the second with that Terrible Being from the Netherworld, Bruce Willis. Even though you suppose you know how the book is going to end (I mean, DeGaulle will not get killed), it's still an interesting enough laundrette book. You know, the kind that you read because you don't want to think too much about it. If you liked it, try a John Grisham or Tom Clancy novel.
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Why was the film so... uninteresting? It had a great cast (yay! Jeremy Irons! Meryl Streep! I like 'em both) and a good story (I read the book eons ago, but I think it was really quite good) and still it never really seems to amount to all that much. However, the book is an interesting enough read and has been proclaimed as the first Post-Modern English novel because of its self-conscious way of telling the story.
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The problem with reading the book after I saw the film was that I kept seeing Robin Williams all the time, which is not a pretty sight when you do it for too long. However, I'm a great fan of John Irving novels (I don't know why, really, maybe it's the physical imperfection of the main characters, like being overly hariy, or very short, or missing an eye or an arm) and I think this is also one of his better ones, together with The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany.
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Oh! Sir Anthony Hopkins! Great actor who can lift any film to a higher plane, and this one is no exception. Of course Emma Thompson plays a not altogether unimportant role herself. It's a shame that Christopher Reeve plays in it as well, though I suppose it could have been worse (like Armand Assante or Perry King playing the part). Ishiguro's book is set in the days after World War two and tells the story of a butler in a large mansion, focusing on the uselessness of his life - the things he didn't do and all the opportunities he let slip. It's not a cheerful book, but it's a good book (which is more important).
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I thought the book was great, but then again, several people told me that I have a 'shite taste in books'. Right. The film, however, is a totally different matter altogether. Despite Daniel Day Lewis and Juliette Binoche it just doesn't amount to much at all, especially when comparing the two.
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Laundrette-book & video-film. You cannot seriously read this book, and you cannot seriously watch the film. Entertaining enough, but only after midnight.
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'Call me Ishmael.' Call me stupid, because I read the book for fun. You know, Melville could have skipped � of the 'story' if he had wanted to and instead have focused on the fight with the white whale & do more with the 'hints' that are given throughout the book about the prophecy. I know, you're supposed to infer all that, but given that he describes in detail how to catch, kill & fillet a whale, I don't see why we should infer the prophecy and be bored with the whaling. Oh yeah, and he misspelled 'specksnyder', making it 'specksynder'. Doh!
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The book bored me at the end, so I never finished reading it, and the films that were made about the story all used Lolita's who are way too old. Nabokov go home! (etc.)
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Not really made into a film, since it was a tv-production, but I'll count it anyway since it was a good short play & the tv-adaptation was remarkable as well, indeed using the adults that Potter prescribes without being dumb as a result. It's been years since I read the play & saw the tv-version, so I can't reall comment on it in anyway, excpet to say that I remember I liked both.
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Reve's autobiographical debut was made into a film with Thom Hoffman playing the leading role. I believe the film was also released abroad under the title 'The Evenings' (inspired), but it never really caught on. I think it's one of the best Dutch films ever made (mind you, the book is one of the best Dutch books ever written, and even though it's over 50 years old, it's still actual). The film doesn't adhere to the book all too closely, but it does capture the feel of the book remarkably well.
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Rarely have I seen a more misunderstood book giving rise to such a weird array of films and spin-off films. And Brannagh's version, claming to adhere more to the book, sucks as well. What I noticed in the book was how eloquently the 'monster' talked and how he wasn't born evil, was made evil. The book isn't about some evil monster, but about the value people place on looks and the effect that being ugly has on the people you meet.
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Another ancient book, but this one has been made into a good enough film by Coppola. Other versions and spin-offs all are of abominable quality and just run off with the idea of a blood-sucking human with a fear of crucifixes. Shame, shame. I think the book is still better than the film, although the book does tend to be a tad long-winded and the action is very cramped and short-lived. It's all 'Oh! how awful!' and 'Oh how terrible!' most of the time.
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Woa! A film which really only has the title in common with the book - they're just so different it's unbelievable. Both are very good in their own right, though. If you haven't read the book, I think you should, and if you haven't seen the film, welcome back from Mars.
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The book is really tops, apart from one paragraph, which really stands out as a quick-quick explanation of why on of the characters happens to enter the house where Dorian hides the painting, and thus seriously sucks (excusez le mot). The first time I saw the film I thought it was alright - the picture being in colour while the rest of the film is in black and white, but Angela Lansbury as an object of desire? And I thought a painting which changes as the character changes was far-fetched.
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Hm, this wasn't really a film, I believe, but either a tv movie or a tv serial based on the book. The first time I read it I thought that the book was terrible, but the second attempt I made changed my views and I thought it was quite alright. However, I don't care all too much for religiously surpressed deviant sexual preferences and all that stuff. I'm sure J.W. had a hard time growing up and coming to grips with her femininity & her lesbianity, and later books by her show that she's gone somewhat off her rocker, but I am more interested in ideas than in truth or any such concept.
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Hm, the book never once mentions the main character's name, but in the film he's called Erik (meaning, of course, 'Eer ik' ('Honour I')). I saw the film before I read the book and I'm still not sure which one I actually prefer, as the film (made in 1974) manages so well to capture the contemporary spirit of the times, but doesn't stick all that closely to the book (almost like Trainspotting). It's been almost a decade since I read the book or saw the film, so really, I can't say anything sensible about it without having to refer to the fact that the concepts were formed when I was still young (and didn't change since).
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I only read Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade screenplay because neither the film nor the video is currently available in Holland and I was really curious about what the film was about. Not that I really believe a screenplay can replace a film (no way!), but it at least gives some impression of what the film's like, especially when you can picture the right face with the right character.
So what's it about? Well, Billy Bob Thornton plays a retarded (whoops! I mean mentally challenged) man who, when he was still a kid, killed his mother and her lover with the titular weapon. Now, at the start of the film/play, he is set free from the mental hospital he was in for 25 years. Of course, he's still mentally challenged, can barely read and has no idea what the world is all about. Once released, he befriends a kid (played by Lucas Black, the kid from American Gothic) and his mother, but her abusive boyfriend and his backward pals hate him.
I won't tell you anymore in case you haven't seen the film, but given the strength of the Academy Award winning screenplay (adapted from the short film Some Call It a Sling Blade) it should be a good film. 'Quietly powerful' is a term that comes to mind. Well, at least I can't wait till I see it.
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A.S. Byatt's Angels and Insects. I'm on page 21 and hope the story will pick up. God this is boring!

Page 44. . . . Yawn!

Page 83. Hmm, things are looking up a bit now, although I'm halfway through the first story already and I just had to skip through some truly terrible writing 'by one of the story's characters'. Pfff! It's just Byatt showing how clever it (yeah, it. "A.S." is sexless, so 'it') is. Highly annoying. Also annoying: the margins are too small and it's hard to read the left page at times. Dumb book. Screw Vintage. Screw Byatt. Damn!

The end of the first story. Oh boy! This was bad. Really, really, really bad. The story was as thin as the paper it was printed on, useless and rather obstrusive (because useless) analogies were forced upon you through not-so-subtle 'hints', which, I guess, were supposed to make you think. Well, it made me yawn and skip through all those passages (and the first half has a lot of those) where the so-called characters write about: a) religion using insect analogies; b) insects using human analogies. Oh golly how clever. Yawn! If I ever meet A.S. it's dead meat. How DARE it publish this, this, this... TOILETPAPER!

And I won't even bother to tell you what I thought of the second part, which was even worse.
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Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Ha! I really needed to read this after the A.S. Byatt-crapola! This short novel (204 pages, including blank pages and drawings by Ralph Steadman) was just pure fun to read and, indeed, didn't take me more than half a day to finish, which was good.
I'm reading the 'cinematically enhanced' version (i.e. with Johnny Depp on the cover), which also includes a picture of Hunter himself who, in all honesty, looks more like Tommy Lee Jones than anyone who'd ever touch an acid tab. But I don't doubt that the story told is 'true' (i.e. believable).
The story, to come to that, is simple: two people (Hunter and his 'attorney') drive to Las Vegas on some vague assignment to cover the 'Mint 400' - a motor race in the desert, but throughout the entire story (well, 98% of it at least) they're totally bombed out on all kinds of drugs, so the story never gets anywhere. In the second part they're still (or, in the case of the attorney, again) in Las Vegas, but this time to 'cover' some convention on dangerous drugs. A convention crawling with cops and DAs, and in which they move loaded with all kinds of, erm, dangerous drugs, telling fibs, getting themselves in and out of trouble (by fucking up and telling lies) and generally make a complete mess of 'things'. Not really in a Burroughs kind of way (i.e. totally hallucinating, and representing things from within that hallucinatory state of mind), but more descriptive of what's actually happening in the 'outside world' while they're on uppers, downers, whatevers (ether!). This means that things get strange, but never really strange - it is at all times possible to follow what's going on, what stunts are being pulled, how people are reacting, etc.
Anyway, this book was fun to read (have I said that? Ah yes, I have, well it's true), which is really all there's to it. Well, for me at least.
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Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, is according to my copy a 'Crime/Mystery' novel. Well, there's crime, that's for sure, but no mystery, though I suppose the slash indicates either/or, so let's not fuss.
So, what's the novel about? Well, in short, it's about Tom Ripley, who gets recruited (more or less) by some Herbert Greenleaf to convince his son, Richard 'Dickie' Greenleaf, to leave Italy, where he's living, and come back to America. Tom accepts, travels to Italy, meets Dickie and things take off (albeit a little) from there: murder, another murder, plans & schemes - the works, really. Does Tom escape? Yes, Tom escapes. This is painfully obvious to anyone who'll read this novel as Patricia wrote quite a few other novels which have as their main character Ripley. No surprises in that department then. Besides, in the section 'By the Same Author' it says, 'Ripley [...] does what he wants and gets away with it. That's why we like him.' Ah yes, I have to say I would have hated it if he'd gone to jail, and there had been justice like that, although the sheer stupidity of a number of the characters (including, at times, Ripley) was rather annoying.
What was also annoying at times was Highsmith's style of writing. It's so.. decent! So unremarkable. Either that or she believes her readers to be slightly retarded. I'll give an example:

For three or four days they saw very little of Marge except down at the beach, and she was noticeably cooler towards both of them on the beach. She smiled and talked just as much or maybe more, but there was an element of politeness now, which made for the coolness. Tom noticed that Dickie was concerned, though not concerned enough to talk to Marge alone, apparantly, because she hadn't seen her alone since Tom had moved into the house. Tom had been with Dickie every moment since he had moved into Dickie's house. (p.62)

I hope you get the idea. Moreover, the book is littered with typos! Hundreds of them! 'felt' instead of 'left'; 'signaure' instead of 'signature'; 'collee' instead of 'coffee', it goes on & on. Annoying, rather. Though I have to say, in all honesty, that the margines were excellently done: big & wide.
'So what did you think of the novel?' Erm... I'm not entirely sure what I thought of it, although 'enjoyable' comes to mind, just as 'unremarkable' and 'it's going to be made into a film by Anthony 'The English Patient' Minghella' (though that's not an opinion). 'Old' was another word. It was published in 1959, and it shows. I suppose readers wanted something else back then.
Anyway, let's stick to 'enjoyable, though unremarkable' as a description of what I thought of the novel by the same author as Strangers on a Train, which was filmed by... (you guessed it!) Hitchcock.
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Judith Guest's Ordinary People. Another novel about losing a kid. This time the son and brother of the two main characters (who are, indeed, father and son). The latter went cuckoo and is just back from the hospital when the novel starts. And after that, nothing much ever happens. There're some minor changes in his life, some small decisions, a predictable ending and that's pretty much that. And so it is for me.
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Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. I saw the film before I read the novel, so I pretty much knew what was going to happen and therefor there were few surprises for me. Still, this book is highly entertaining stuff and answers some questions the film left open for interpretation. Also, McMurphy, the main character, was great fun to watch (as it were), even though the narrator (the big indian 'Chief' Bromden) talks nonsense about fogs and machinery every once in a while, interrupting the flow of the story.

Ah whatever, I recommend it anyway.
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Completing the cycle of 'From childloss to madness', a book which doesn't really fit either category, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Standard secondary school stuff, really, but since I'm now a secondary school teacher, what am I to do? ;)
Okay, so never mind my reasons for reading it, the question is, what did I think of it? Well, bearing in mind that the film of the novel was banned in the UK by the recently deceased Stanley Kubrick I wondered very much about its contents. Was it so violent? Is it fair to compare the novel with the film? I wouldn't know - I've never seen the film, resulting from self-imposed ban on films from the seventies, with the exception of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, but I'm digressing.
Oh yeah, before I start, you should know that the novel uses, erm, an alternative kind of language which is described as anglo-slavic, if I'm not mistaken. (Well, it's something like that anyway.) They name it as well, but as my memory fails me here, I can't tell you (and I'm too lazy to look it up now - the book is two flights of stairs away from me, that's 28 steps, times two makes 56 steps to go up and down - too much for me).
Fine then, so what's the novel about? Well, I believe pretty much everyone knows what it's about, more or less. It's sometime in the future (or an alternative reality, it doesn't matter all that much) and society has become cruel, tough and suffers from an almost complete lack of law enforcement (here and there I thought I even read some Communism, but I might be mistaken). This lawlessness is especially taken up by groups of young people, gangs, if you like, among whom are Alex, the narrator of the story, and his droogs, Pete, George and Dim, the latter of whom is thick as sh*te.
Anyway, they beat some people, rape some people, destroy property and go home to their parents pretty much every night until one day, poor old Alex is caught by the police and sent off to jail. There he continues his game of playing innocent but being very violent till he's carted off to an experimental unit where they try to cure Alex of his violent tendencies. When everyone is satisfied he's cured he's sent off into the real world again and he has to pick up the remnants of his life once more.
What happens then I won't tell, in case you've wanted to read the novel, but I thought it interesting enough. Nothing earth-shattering or anything, just, you know, 'fine'. La-dee-dah!

My G-d! I've written lame stuff, but this takes the cake. Ah, whatever, on a scale of 'recommended' to 'not recommended', this falls in the category 'secondary school English reading list'. You know what I mean.
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George Lucas' Star Wars, A New Hope is, of course, not a filmed book as such, but more a novelisation of the film, although the book was first released in 1976 (a year before the film), and written by the famous director himself.
The story should be familiar to all, a farmboy without a future, but with a lot of dreams, is caught up in an intergalactic battle between good (the Rebellion) and evil (the Empire, personified by Darth Vader). No, the interesting point here is probably where the book and film are different, and the truth is that they are not that different, really. Of course the main story is kept exactly the same and otherwise it's mainly details and small bits of information of interest only to Star Wars fans that have been changed. If you're not a Star Wars fan at all, you'll quit reading now. If you're a Star Wars fan, you probably already know this anyway, so there's no point, really.
Question remains, is it worth reading? Well, let's just say George is a director more than he is a writer. That should answer the questions. Besides, this is the first piece of sf I've read. Ever. So what can I say?
On the scale of Recommended to Not-recommended I'd give this a 'short holiday' rating.
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Well, since George Lucas' The Phantom Menace - the Illustrated Screenplay was available now I couldn't resist and just had to read this one, if only to see if my suspicions held any truth. And the answer, unfortunately, is that they did. Of course I can't judge the film as a whole, but you can't have form without content, and the screenplay is one important aspect of the content.
In essence, what this story amounted to was a rewrite of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. There's the wizened old Jedi (Qui-Gonn Jinn), the brass youngster who still has much to learn (Obi-Wan Kenobi), the alien who owes a life-debt to one of the main characters (Jar Jar Binks, who, in this case, also functions as the 'comic relief'). There's the promising young apprentice found on Tatooine (Anakin Skywalker), the sinister baddie (Darth Maul) and his master (Darth Sidious), the royalty figure in distress (Queen Amidala). There's the obligatory duel-over-a-deep-pit, just like the obligatory torpedo-into-the-reaction-chamber and last but not least, the happy ending combined with the funeral of a Jedi.

No way is this some kind of pre-echo, this is blatantly plagiarising your own work in a rather lame way.

But it gets worse. In the 'not seen before in Star Wars' department there're some dreadful things. All of a sudden, Jedi have some kind of midi-chlorian count which determines how Force sensitive they are. How come none of this was mentioned in ep. IV, V or VI, which, after all, are supposed to be after this one? Is it possible Yoda and Obi-Wan could see the future, but not the past? (Stephen Hawking, eat your heart out) Also, it turns out that Anakin doesn't have a father, which makes his some kind of virgin birth. Haven't we heard that somewhere before?
Nonetheless, this is, in itself, entertaining stuff, and probably aimed at people who were too young to have seen any of the other Star Wars films (hence the comic relief, which, to me, comes across as a burden to the story). But that is also it's main problem: it fails to appeal to a more adult audience, an audience who'd like to see an epic arc expanded beyond what was already known, not a reptition of what we have all seen before.

The Phantom Menace appeals to the child in you, but only to the child in you. but I guess the rather infantile title has given as much away.
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Terry Brooks' The Phantom Menace is the novelization of the film with the same name, and while everybody in the civilised world knows when it'll be released in the US, poor Holland is holding the whole event off until the end of September. This means that reading the story is, for now, the only way I can get to know anything about it. But let's start with a question:

How is it possible that two different ways (1 screenplay, 1 novelization) of telling the exact same story can lead to two different opinions?

Is it:
a) The reader lacks the cinematic imagination to project a screenplay in his mind.
b) George Lucas is a filmmaker, not a writer.
c) Novels appeal to the reader on a different level, forcing him to focus on different aspects rather than the 'pure' story the way a screenplay does.

Write your answer on a postcard and send it to...

Why I was wondering this is because now that I've read the novelization I suddenly see things a little differently and the horror of the bad quality of the screenplay has been diluted up to the point where there's a shimmer of hope in me. Seriously, the novel's better than the play. Things are less 'humorous' for a start. Then there's the level, which is higher than the level at which the screenplay was aimed (if you remember what I said about the screenplay being aimed at children). The novel is more along the lines of young adult literature, if you ask me.
Still, there are some things wrong with the novel. Most noticeably, the characters are always either chagrined (the word appears at least 20 times) or sweaty (again, at least 20 times of being sweaty, wiping sweat off a brow, sweat dripping down, etc.).

BUT WHAT'S THE STORY????

Okay, I'll tell you, though I should keep in the spirit of the unofficial websites and say that the following bit contains SPOILERS. There's a boy called Anakin Skywalker, who is nine years old and has some strangeish powers, like being able to sense things, having a weird affinity with machinery and having visionary dreams. Not that it does him a lot of good - he's a slave on a desert planet really quite far away from anywhere, Tatooine.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the universe, the universal baddies (commercialism/capitalism embodied by a cowardly race of aliens and under the banner of something called the Trade Federation) occupy a peacefuil planet and two Jedi Knights (for those who have no idea what Jedi Knights are I'll quote one of them: "guardians of peace and justice through the universe" - they also have telepathic, telekinetic and other peculiar powers, collectively called the Force) try to help the queen of the planet. While trying to help Queen Amidala by shipping her to the Galactic centre of the Universe, Coruscant, they crash land on Tatooine where they meet up with Anakin.
One of the Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn, finds out that Anakin isn't just any old slave kid, but that he's really really powerful in the aforementioned Force. Anakin falls in love with Amidala immediately and prophesies, 'I'm going to marry you.' So, after a number of events, they head for Coruscant, taking Anakin with them to present him to the Jedi Council in order to obtain approval to train him in the ways of the Jedi. The council disapprove as Anakin is too old and too angry (and we all know that anger leads to the dark side of the Force. You see, the Force is divided in two, the light and the dark side. No points for guessing what side would contain what emotions. Anyway, Qui-Gon is pissed off at this and to vent his anger the whole party moves back to the besieged planet and kill and/or capture all the evil-doers. In the process Qui-Gon gets killed by the really really evil Darth Maul, who is a Sith Lord (which means he's adept in the dark side of the Force instead of the light side, 'cos then you're called a Jedi), and forces his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, to train Anakin in the ways of the Jedi.

The end.

Recommended? Not recommended? I'll give this a 'better than the screenplay', as well as a 'recommended in comparison to the other works of science fiction I've read'.
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