This book contains the novelizations of the original three Star Wars movies, A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. They do, for the most part, track what you see in the movies almost exactly. Especially the first two books. Some of the dialogue is changed a bit (and most times what ended up onscreen in the films was better than what was in the books), but they pretty much just stuck to the story and did not add anything. A couple things in Return of the Jedi differed, such as the Emporer guessing it was Yoda who trained Luke after Obi-Wan's death and the scene where the Ewoks agreed to help the Rebels played out a bit differently than it did in the movie. There was one detail, however, that, if they had kept it in the movie, would have changed the prequels significantly and would have eliminated a continuity error that existed once the prequel series came to be.
I was struck by just how short all the novels are. I had read them before as a kid and could get through them quickly, but as an adult who reads much faster these days, I could get through them in a couple of hours each. All three novels, plus the page-or-so-long introduction to each novel that was written by George Lucas, clocks in at exactly 500 pages. The novels themselves are all under 200 pages. This is far shorter than the novelizations of the other movies (some of which have ended up at over 400 pages for a single book). But as I said above, there was really not much in any of the novelizations for these that did not end up in the movies, whereas each of the prequel novels added a substantial amount that never made it into the movies (either because it was cut from the screenplay, or added when the novel was written after the films came out). This book trilogy was put out in 1995 as Lucas was working on the Phantom Menace screenplay (and making the much-debated edits to the original films, which would become the Special Editions). He wrote a short introduction to each novel basically just giving some detail about that part of the story.
All in all, the books are a very quick and enjoyable read. Yes, some of the weak and/or cheesy dialogue from the movies is in the book(s), and in some cases, it is even worse than what was in the movies, but overall, they are enjoyable, especially for those of us who were kids when the original movies came out.
I was struck by just how short all the novels are. I had read them before as a kid and could get through them quickly, but as an adult who reads much faster these days, I could get through them in a couple of hours each. All three novels, plus the page-or-so-long introduction to each novel that was written by George Lucas, clocks in at exactly 500 pages. The novels themselves are all under 200 pages. This is far shorter than the novelizations of the other movies (some of which have ended up at over 400 pages for a single book). But as I said above, there was really not much in any of the novelizations for these that did not end up in the movies, whereas each of the prequel novels added a substantial amount that never made it into the movies (either because it was cut from the screenplay, or added when the novel was written after the films came out). This book trilogy was put out in 1995 as Lucas was working on the Phantom Menace screenplay (and making the much-debated edits to the original films, which would become the Special Editions). He wrote a short introduction to each novel basically just giving some detail about that part of the story.
All in all, the books are a very quick and enjoyable read. Yes, some of the weak and/or cheesy dialogue from the movies is in the book(s), and in some cases, it is even worse than what was in the movies, but overall, they are enjoyable, especially for those of us who were kids when the original movies came out.
