Movie novels can be a strange beast, I love them but they are sometimes the most mixed of bags.
In some cases, movie novels put lip stick on a pig and give you the false impression that a terrible movie is watchable.
In most cases, a solid movie novelization can make a good movie slightly better by giving each scene more depth, impact, and context.
In the best cases, a great movie novelization gets you inside the characters heads in most scenes, elevates what is there and then gives you great shit that’s not in the movie but fits in so well that you wish it was.
Which category does this fall into?
Let’s find out!
This is as good a time as any to give the obligatory ***SPOILER ALERT***
Let’s start off with my only real complaint, there’s not much new content here.
By my count, there are about 6 new scenes in this novel that weren’t in the movie.
And, sadly, all of them are super short and zip by too damn fast.
This is really one of the stand out things about movie novels that I love, even if they’re spectacularly non-canonical.
The Star Wars Episode III novel notably had a ton of them, including the Dooku/Sidious scene before Obi-Wan & Anakin come in to battle Dooku.
Now, like I said, that’s pretty much my only complaint.
The rest of this novel is, appropriately, golden.
Waggoner, unlike some folks who get tasked with adapting a film/script into a novel, handles this with ease.
Perfectly describing and embellishing what I know and love from the movie while still somehow making it feel fresh and not like he just added “said Eggsy” type of stuff to the script…which happens painfully too often in this line of work.
His prose flows in an incredibly easy to breeze through fashion as well.
I was thoroughly impressed with his abilities here.
His skill at getting into the characters’ heads is refreshing, especially his grasp on Poppy (the leader of The Golden Circle drug empire) and the President’s Chief Of Staff Fox.
We get background on Poppy and how her militaristic parents raised her to be the batshit cornball loon that she gleefully is.
In Fox’s regard, besides what we see in the movie, we learn how it is to work for a man baby world leader that has his staff so on edge that they self medicate to the point they are doped to the gills on illegal pills in their off hours.
Also, as you may glean from the description of Fox’s situation, the political subtext is easy to spot in here, made more obvious by checking when it was written…if ya know what I mean…***WINK WINK***!!!
Bottom line, not only are these movies great, this Novelization is rock solid, gang.
I really can’t thank @MemeEmSteveDave enough for talking these movies up a few years back when I talked to him and getting me interested, because I feel deeply in love with both of them when I saw them and this novel is a beautiful extension of the 2nd movie.
If you haven’t watched them, get on it.
Then check this out and wallow in the universe for a bit longer while we wait for the next one and, with any luck, Waggoner’s return to adapt it.
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Special thanks to @ACFerrell1976 for her editorial assistance.
