Star Wars The Phantom Menace Novelization VS Film

[Cli-Fi]

The opening scene of the movie has the Jedis coming in strong and fighting with the viceroy and the droids. It's a really cool action packed scene which laid down some mythology that drew me in the first time I saw it.

However, I just read the phantom menace book and it didn't start that way. It started on Tatooine, with Anakin daydreaming about being the most powerful Jedi and working on his pod racer.

What is the reason why a novel might choose to open up differently than the movie. I didn't feel like the novelization drew me in with the action at first, but it did make me care about Anakin more than the movie ever did probably.

 

[paranoid marvin]

The first 3 Star Wars films started with action sequences, so I guess Phantom Menace just followed suit The whole point of the first three movies was to see the rise of Anakin and his transformation into Darth, and one of the biggest failings was that there's not much point in having a movie about someone if you don't feel any empathy towards them. It sounds like the novelisation fixed that.

Personally I would have been happier if the whole trade embargo storyline had been scrapped, and the movie had started much like the book; perhaps with a pod-race (probably the best thing about the movie).