Last Minute Episode III Cuts
I caught this on darkhorse's website:
Post by Randy Stradley, VP for Publishing
"With any comics adaptation, lots of "stuff" (character bits, miscellaneous action, sometimes even sub-plots) have to be cut inorder to fit the story into the space (and time) available.
One interesting thing about RotS: Miles Lane went through and culled out the part (action, dialogue, plot) that he thought we had room for. I then went through his scripts and made further cuts (mainly in the interest of allowing some of the action room to "breathe"😉. In a couple of places we made further cuts when we would find out that a certain scene had been cut from the film, or that scenes had been moved from one point in the film to another.
As we were coming down to print time, Lucasfilm let me see a copy of the the screenplay with all of the scenes, bits of action, and lines of dialogue that George had cut from the film highlighted in red. It turns out that about seventy percent of the dialogue that we picked as "important" and included in the adaptation, is stuff that George cut. Ditto for some of the other scenes. More than any other adaptation we've done, the RotS adaptation features material that you will (to the best of my knowledge) not see in the film. It's all materail that George wrote for the screenplay, but it won't all make it to the big screen. And, before anybody starts asking if that material is going to show up in some DVD "special edition," let me just say that I have no idea. I have not heard, and I will not speculate. Anyway, it seems like a good argument to me for going out and buying the comics adaptation. There are scenes in it that you'll never see onscreen!"
I thought the novel and graphic novel were nothing short of brilliant. 70% material cut can't be a good thing, I hope we dont end up with a hacked up mess like the Episode II duels (minus yoda).