New Hope (Star Wars)

Novelizations are as a rule, generally pointless... The Revenge of the Sith novelization being an exception, as it flushes out the story and adds context. A New Hope doesn't really add anything of value. It's short and sticks to the film with only a few changes: a scene with Luke and Biggs to establish their friendship that might have been in the original script but did not appear in the film and the cantina fight scene plays out differently. The Han and Jabba scene from the special edition is also present, but that was definitely in the original script. The question of who shot first is not addressed, but Chewie gets a medal so that injustice is corrected.

This was actually published before the film, so they knew they had a hit, but they could not have known the scale. Classic dialogue from the film that has been quoted endlessly appears slightly different here. The book is fine, but unless you are a completionist like myself, working your way through the entire expanded universe, you would be better served simply enjoying the film.

Well, since there is no true audiobook, I'm not sure how close the radio drama is to the book, but that is what I went with. It's okay, especially with the added scenes, but it didn't feel like they understood some of the characters, even when remembering there weren't as many movies/books/etc to go by back when it came out - particularly Leia and Tarkin. But still, until there is a true audiobook based on the novel, best that there is.
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Dec 2020 - Finally actually read the book through text to speech, making it an audiobook! Okay, so the computer voice is sooooo no Mark Thompson, but hey, gotta make do with what you got. Anyway, the actual book - I've read plenty of movie/tv novelizations before, but this one was harder to get into, simply because all of those I didn't first read 43 years after the movie came out. So this one, wherever there were differences, it was pretty noticeable. But that aside - hey, it's episode 4, but in book form, and that's all I was looking for (besides a really good audio form of it to listen to while working, but I guess we have to wait for that).
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4/14/2021 - Yeah, finally found an audiobook for this one! And... of course it's a bit abridged. It's from the 90s, I think, and originally on cassette, but then went to cd which is what I think mine is, ripped from it. Anyhoo, it's a three hour revisit of the movie we know, just with the differences that were the in the novel, and it's not the full novel; the narrator's certainly better than a computer as was the first and last time I listened to this, but he's definitely not Marc Thompson.