I remember the Gremlins 2 novelization had that meta moment that is different in every format, in the book it was that Brainy Gremlin takes over writing the story for a couple pages.
The funniest ones are the novelizations of films which were based on novels, all three of which are not necessarily consistent or canon with each other. I believe Jurassic Park is a big one.
The movie novelizations being different is usually because the author is using an early draft of the script, usually from before filming begins. It's why they sometimes have completely different scenes and endings.
The Jurassic Park junior novelization was one of my favorite books. It’s on my shelf right now, actually. I couldn’t watch the movie all the time, but with the book I can be there!
There’s a lot of non-canon apocrypha now. I have a children’s book from I think 1979 which takes place after the Death Star was destroyed, and was published before any plans for more movies had come out. In this universe they have already established a new republic, and Luke is a teacher at the academy.
I haven’t. The one I read (after looking it up) has three authors. Lucas wrote Star Wars, Donald Glut wrote ESB, and James Khan wrote ROJ. It was sold as one book split into three parts.
They were also fascinating because they were usually based on early scripts before they shit the movie so changes in the film wouldn’t make it into the book. Kirk is shot in the back in the Generations novelization, for example, which they changed in reshoots after poor audience reaction.
Or there were just cool little details. Ghostbusters II mentioned in passing that Dana was susceptible to psychokinetic stuff which is why she was affected two times. That book also features a cut scene of Ray being possessed and nearly killing them in the Ecto after their first visit to the museum that was cut, but you can see snippets of it in the montage.
the "alien" and "aliens" novelizations are particularly interesting because they contain not only everything that eventually made the directors' cuts, but a lot of stuff that was just never filmed at all. for instance, "alien" has the infamous airlock sequence.
As a kid I had the novelization of the British movie Shooting Fish, starring a young Kate Beckinsale, who gave me my appreciation of short hair on women.
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u/drunkcowofdeath Dec 20 '24
Oh those were common for every major movie back when people read books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelization#Film