Novel Adaptations That Fixed/Improved the Movie

[VashVet]

I remember before Ridley Scott’s director’s cut of Alien, the Alan Dean Foster novelization gave us all that juicy background and cut sequences including Dallas’ fate along with a new origin for the alien eggs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The first example that comes to mind is one that's been discussed on other threads here extensively, Revenge of the Sith. I won't go over it again here, but I appreciate the YouTube video by OSP that introduced me to it.


Another that comes to mind is Orson Scott Card's novelisation of The Abyss, which adds a lot of depth to the aliens, as well as to many of the characters, particularly Lt. Coffey - he feels much more like a tragic antagonist in the novel.

The aliens subplot in The Abyss was cut for time. Still a good film, but notably choppy and uneven toward the back half IMO.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The Return of the Jedi novelization explained where Luke's new green lightsaber came from (deleted scene from the movie), and had a short explanation from Obi-Wan about how Anakin became Vader after falling into a molten pit (dialog either not filmed or cut from the movie).

 

[jian]

The Return of the Jedi novelization explained where Luke's new green lightsaber came from (deleted scene from the movie), and had a short explanation from Obi-Wan about how Anakin became Vader after falling into a molten pit (dialog either not filmed or cut from the movie).

Yes, I remember that.

“How did you beat him, if he was so powerful?”

“I had the high ground.”

“That’s it?”

“Look, I was a lot more spry and dashing in those days, all right? Age hasn’t been kind to me, I regenerated into Alec Guinness while Jimmy bloody Smits got to regenerate into Benjamin Bratt.”

 

[jdrakeh]

As I recall, Alan Dean Foster's novelization of John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) slightly improved upon the film by explaining Nauls's death and including a small number of other elaborations.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Pretty much all the Star Wars novelisations improve on the movies.

Surprisingly, so does the Aliens novelisation.

(Same author responsible for quite a few of these! Might add The Black Hole, Krull, etc to the list.)

 

[sevenbastard]

I don't rember much more about it but the Goonies novel explained one of the reasons Mouth was called Mouth was because he was an expert at languages and thats why he could translate the Spanish on the map to rhyming English.

I mean its a small detail, but it stuck with me all these years latter because it explained that the spanish didn't rhyme Mouth was just a showman and extremely good at Spanish.

 

[GreyLord]

Pretty much all the Star Wars novelisations improve on the movies.

Surprisingly, so does the Aliens novelisation.

(Same author responsible for quite a few of these! Might add The Black Hole, Krull, etc to the list.)

The aliens novelization is better than the Movie!!!

Really?

I haven't read it so I haven't the foggiest, but what reasons would you list that it is better than that masterpiece of cinema?

 

[beta-ray]

I remember Vonda McIntyre added a lot of stuff to her novelizations of Star Trek II - IV. Was a bit Star Trek fan at the time and remembered enjoying the fleshing out of things.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The aliens novelization is better than the Movie!!!

Really?

I haven't read it so I haven't the foggiest, but what reasons would you list that it is better than that masterpiece of cinema?

It restores cut scenes from the movie, covering Ripley’s attempt to pick up her life on Earth, and events in the colony leading up to discovering the aliens. It also develops the characters of the marines more than the movie does.

It has more Jones.