The Last Jedi: Expanded Edition (Star Wars) Hardcover – March 6, 2018

Super disappointed in this one. I have been a big defender of 'The Last Jedi' and as a long time, obsessed Star Wars fan I was hoping this novelization would add more insight into the characters motivations. It did and it didn't. It's a toss up and ultimately a tease. It barely tells anything new.There are some added scenes NOT in the movie: Luke's alternative life dream sequence, Han's funeral, Luke's third lesson to Rey, the Caretakers' thoughts after Luke vanishes (probably more I'm forgetting). They are well-written and very detailed, but not necessary. In comparison, scenes that I LOVED from the movie were pretty glossed over. Very vague. After seeing the movie eight times in theaters, I was excited to dive into the thoughts of my favorite characters during certain scenes. But a lot of those scenes, there was only a description and meager or no character thought process. Many times, I repeatedly demanded aloud, "But why??" But why did Luke do this, what is he thinking? While I'm still young, please! I want to defend 'The Last Jedi' and this won't help.Probably just a pet peeve, I thought there were some odd word choices that made serious scenes almost comical. I didn't know lightsabers went "smack" like banana-cream pies or the old Batman tv show.For me the beginning was stronger than the end. We did get some interesting thoughts from Hux. I enjoyed the Force-based mother-child reunion of Leia and Kylo. Again, I liked the extra scenes. It was nice learning more about Rose and Paige's background. There are some Snoke thoughts about Rey, Luke, Kylo, and the galaxy, for people who need more information on Snoke.But for ships, there's no help. Take Finn and Rose for instance. Pretty much from what I read, there was no reason for Rose to kiss Finn and say "saving what we love." She spends the novelization very annoyed by him. She just does it 'cause.When some of the characters do think, they think in circles. They'll think one thing and then the opposite, many times. Because it was done so quickly in each scene, this made Rey and Rose, especially, seem very wishy-washy. Disappointing.

I was a huge fan of The Last Jedi film and anxiously awaited the novelization, devouring it in less than a day. It was highly entertaining and more enjoyable than TFA novelization. That being said, it isn’t perfect. Some places felt terribly rushed, while others felt needlessly drawn out. The author seems to favor technical explanation over dives into character thoughts and emotions, which some may prefer but I do not. I would have appreciated some deeper insight into what we saw on the screen during certain portions. Also there is a huge formatting error that repeats a certain paragraph twice over the course of two pages. Fry seems very fond of “appraising” glances as he seems to use that every other page.But that’s me being nitpicky. I still loved the book, and I loved getting more development with Rose’s character. It flowed seamlessly with what we learned about her in Cobolt Squadron, and her interactions with Finn had so much more chemistry on the page than on the screen. I enjoyed the Holdo/Poe conflict more too. And by far my favorite aspect of the book was that scene with the caretaker village which Rian cut for pacing sake. It was fun and surprising. Curmudgeonly Luke is wonderful. Despite its flaws, I’d still recommend this book. Good stuff!EDIT: I had to come back and edit this after re-reading digesting a bit, and everything I wrote still stands -- though I have to warn any fellow Reylo fans out there that this book will be a huge disappointment on that front. The Rey/Ben interactions are sparse, sterile, and cold. It's bizarre, considering how warm and developed the Rose/Finn pairing is in the book, and how candid Rian has been about his intentions for the two leads. The magnetic chemistry between Ridley and Driver is absent from Fry's interpretation, and he makes no effort to dive into their thoughts about one another at all. This book is slim pickings if you're looking for more Reylo feels. It will leave you feeling annoyed. But for everything except Rey and Ben, it fully deserves its 4 stars.

It's tried and true. If the movie is based on a book, the book was better. If the book is based on a movie, the movie was better. For the most part Star Wars novelizations are workman like and uninspired retelling of the script. There is no point in reading a movie script novelization unless it gives you something new that the movie didn't. If it fleshes out the characters more, adds new POVs, content that was cut from the film, that kind of thing. That has largely been absent in Star Wars adaptations with the notable exception of Matthew Stover excellent work on Revenge of the Sith. He put the movie to shame.Finally it's happened again. Mostly. Jason Fry did an excellent job filling out the story with added scenes and dialog. He put us in the character heads and we are treated to a slightly deeper story where motivations and transitions from one scene to another make more sense. Reading his adaptation will smooth over the rough edges of the movie plot and tie several sequences together that the movie likely cut in deleted scenes. For all it's flaws Last Jedi was a beautiful movie to watch. The book does fall a little short of capturing the majesty of Ach-To's island or the salt plains of Crait. But that not withstanding it is worth your time and nicely fills in screenplay gaps and adds more "meat" to Snoke, Kylo Ren, Finn and Rose.

To my utter shock and disappointment, I didn’t enjoy ‘The Last Jedi’ (for a whole myriad of reasons now discussed and dissected thousands of times by thousands of people in the last year). In fact, my brain had such a confusion trying to compute that a Star Wars film existed that I didn’t like, that I had to go back to the cinema later that week to watch it again. However much I wanted to like it though the second viewing was to no avail. And whereas, since the release on video of the Original Trilogy Special Edition boxset onwards, I’ve rushed out and bought every Star Wars movie the day it was released, I still haven’t purchased a copy of ‘The Last Jedi’.Therefore, I’m immensely surprised at how much I enjoyed this novelisation. It’s as if the author looked at all the flaws of the original and thought about how he could improve on them. And, from that perspective, it is a sterling job.Of course, there are core elements of the story that can’t, and shouldn’t, be changed because a novelisation is after all a re-interpretation of another work. Thus, the major ‘slow speed chase’ plot that could have almost been based upon the ‘Father Ted’ episode ‘Speed 3’ is obviously still present. However, even that is blended in sufficiently by the author to mask the worst of its foibles.The cover declares the book to be an ‘expanded edition’. With all the extra and extended scenes this certainly proves to be true. The added material is hugely beneficial in understanding the motivations and reasoning of the characters as well as creating a vastly improved atmosphere and level of tension. Primarily, though, it results in the story making much more sense. The disjointed jumpiness that seemed the result of some terrible editing is negated and the storyline thus flows more naturally.The novelisation is ‘expanded’ in other ways and its greatest strength, however, is in its characterisation and character development, an element that was severely lacking or often ill-conceived in the film. This is, perhaps, best seen in Rose who onscreen seemed to be shoehorned into events merely to occupy Finn. Rose was completely lacking in depth or character and I felt quite sorry for the actor who played her as she really had nothing to work with. Here Rose is given a fully-fledged, dimensional portrayal that makes her real and believable and worthy of empathy. The loss of her sister is handled with a tenderness and meaningfulness that was wholly absent from the film or the ‘Cobalt Squadron’ novel that was preoccupied with it.An endless list of other characters from major to minor, perhaps most importantly Snoke, are given a similarly attentive and informative treatment.Although there are aspects of the story I don’t like, as a novelisation this does everything a good novelisation should do and more and, despite the film, I have no qualms about giving it full marks. Whatever your opinion of the film, definitely read this novelisation.I might just fill that gap in my Star Wars film collection now.

Well that was better than expected, especially after The Force Awakens novelisation.This is more what I was hoping for. What was really great was that though all the major battle scenes were there they weren't dwelled on in great detail, instead the author made more of the moments in between to allow the characters to grow and to show what they were going through. There are additional scenes here that really help with the characterisation. One I especially liked was the opening of Luke imagining an alternative timeline where he never went with Obi Wan Kenobi back in A New Hope. Very interesting but there were more scattered throughout.Finn and Rose's story in the film was fairly pointless and kind of annoyed me at the time. However here it really shows is what that was about was to show Finn's growth from somebody out for himself (and Rey) to truly caring about the Resistance. We didn't get too many POV's from Finn, mostly from Rose and hers was more interesting as we could feel her exasperation and gradual change of heart.The same could be said of all the characters in some ways. It has made me reappraise the movie somewhat. I did like it when I first watched it (though I did, and still do, hate some of the more obviously played for gags moments, especially the 'crank call' at the start) but this has given me a new appreciation of what the director was trying to achieve. Everybody wanted Luke to come back and we were expecting a legend, instead we got a bitter and disillusioned old man. Finn did great breaking his training but he is utterly self centered and is still basically just trying to run away. Poe is a hotshot pilot but has no idea of the big picture and his reckless disregard for orders basically destroyed the Resistance. Rey is looking for someone to show her the way but is betrayed by both Luke and Kylo. I could go on about how the whole movie is a subversion of our expectations but you get the drift.The novel isn't perfect. As usual everyone goes from strangers to best friends within a few minutes. I also wish we'd gotten more from Kylo Ren's perspective. He does feature of course but it's fairly minimal. I really hope we get a book or two from his perspective once the new movie is out, he's by far and away the most interesting character and there's a lot there to explore. Anyway I think this is exactly what I was hoping for and think it pairs well with the film in that it explores areas that the film just can't due to time and other considerations.

I have to admit to being one (of the many) who thoroughly hated the movie... And this novel proved that my initial instincts were correct... ten fold!Very, very well written. Which goes to show just how badly the transfer from 'script to screen' really was. The inner turmoil that we cannot get a feel for on screen is tremendously well expressed in the novelisation. The terrible acting (Billie Lourd, Oscar Isaac) is dismissed by the excellent delivery by Jason Fry. The additional character development of the Tico sisters is GREAT and shows that they deserved more screen time instead of the Canto Bight nonsense (which sadly this great book is unable to improve!).Putting more "meat on the bones" of the Ben/Luke backstory is great and again proves that this should have taken a more prominent part in the story that the casino (full on Disney fluff!) debacle.Bad scriptwriter/director = Bad movieGreat author = Great novel

I thought Jason Fry did an excellent job fleshing out the movie with this expanded edition. There are some really interesting additional scenes that were cut from the final movie, as well as completely new scenes added.The writing is excellent and really delves into what the characters are thinking, adding plenty of weight to the scenes. There are also a quite a few Easter eggs for fans of the current expanded universe.If you’re a fan of the movie, I highly recommend checking out the novelisation.

Being in a Star Wars mood again having watched the new Han Solo spin-off film over the bank holiday weekend, I was inspired to read this novelisation. Doing so seems to confirm a rule of thumb I've observed that the enjoyment I get from a novelisation is often in inverse proportion to that I derived from watching the film. I thought Last Jedi was an excellent and dramatic film, though this novelisation I thought was no better than workmanlike...there is some more background given to some of the characters, but nothing I found particularly memorable, and the descriptions of fight sequences and battles as usual don't make such exciting reading as they do viewing. That said, it was good to re-live the dramatic finale of Luke's self-sacrifice and Leia's final acceptance of the loss of those she has held dear.