Question: What were Mr. Lucas's line-edits like? Was he a tough editor?
Matthew Stover: Not tough so much as exceedingly detailed, though I suspect he would have been very tough indeed if I hadn't been quite so scrupulously faithful to the spirit of his story. I mean, he literally went over it word-by-word, even to the point of altering descriptives to adjust the characters' inflections. As I mentioned earlier, he trimmed a number of the EU references -- especially ones that harkened back to some of the older material that I'm guessing he'd rather not re-avow as part of Official Continuity, if you see what I mean. There was only one cut -- actually a series of cuts, of a continuing metaphor of which I had been particularly proud -- that surprised me (and, in fact, upset me; I don't mind telling you that this was the first time in my career that I've thrown an actual Full-Blown Diva Hissy-Fit, in a conference call with LucasBooks, howling that they go back and tell Mr. Lucas that "He just can't do this to My Book!"). The funny thing was that after I had calmed down -- and survived the migraine I'd given myself -- I realized that not only was Mr. Lucas right and I was wrong (in the sense that making this series of cuts tightened the book and cleaned up the thematic arc), but that doing it his way also brought into much clearer focus a powerful moral point... and I found I had been arguing against something I actually really agreed with. Oh, it was embarrassing!
__________________ "There is only Revan. Only he can shape this galaxy as it is meant to be shaped."
It's not intended to be an exact replica of the film. And the book was based off an early script. Lucas could have well revised the film script after his involvement with the novel; in fact, that's probably what he did.
Registered: Oct 2005
Location: Kashyyyk Shadowlands
Yeah - for example, Stover makes a fairly blatant mistake regarding Padme's backstory that Lucas apparently missed during his edits. There's also Obi-Wan seemingly knowing Dooku's Sith name when he shouldn't, which is probably just Stover being a bonehead, but could also be handwaved as an educated guess on Obi-Wan's part.
__________________ "Your focus determines your reality."
Registered: Oct 2005
Location: Kashyyyk Shadowlands
But the point was that in 2005, when the book was released, that show did not yet exist. ( The issue was the occurrence of discrepancies in a text allegedly line-edited by Lucas. ) The release of "Season 6" was nine years in the future. As far as we knew in 2005 the Jedi never learned Dooku's Sith name, so it looked kind of like a mistake at that point. But as I said, you can chalk it up to inference in the moment.
__________________ "Your focus determines your reality."
Apr 23rd, 2017 12:45 AM
