For 20 years now, Matthew Stover’s novelization of Revenge of the Sith has become almost as beloved as the movie itself. Going above and beyond what you would usually expect out of a standard movie-to-book process, Stover bet big on amplifying Star Wars‘ mytho-poetic legacy to create a retelling that cast the downfall of Anakin Skywalker and the Galactic Republic as a Greek tragedy in slow motion, imbuing its characters with a compelling pathos and an interiority the film itself could never provide, taking us in their heads to explore how this grand tragedy was tearing them all apart.
In some cases, that involved having to make characters reckon with moments of their own weaknesses, making it more clear to readers than even necessarily the movie could the layers of systemic failure that led to the Jedi Order’s destruction at the machinations of Palpatine. Perhaps no other character in Revenge of the Sith, not even Obi-Wan himself with his personal bond with Anakin, reflects that exploration of failure better than the Grand Master of the Order himself, Yoda—and as you can see from our exclusive excerpt from the new 20th anniversary deluxe edition of the novel, Stover knew exactly why it was important to have one of Star Wars‘ most iconic characters take a moment to realize just how many mistakes he had made.
That moment comes in the climax of the story, as Yoda battles the newly revealed Darth Sidious inside the Senate chamber in a last-ditch attempt to defeat the Sith and at least undo some of the horrendous damage done in the aftermath of Order 66. In the movie, this is of course remembered for the action—Palpatine whipping senate pods at Yoda like they’re frisbee discs, Yoda ping-ponging about, spinning his lightsaber, deflecting storms of Force Lightning. He fails to defeat Palaptine, of course, but the moment is still all about Yoda as the face of the Jedi Order’s most powerful and revered figure, building on the warrior-monk vision that Attack of the Clones teased in his brief duel with Count Dooku.
Stover’s novelization instead depicts that moment, again, as a tragedy—his prose abstracting the clash into a fable-esque struggle of light and dark, but almost more importantly, stepping aside from the action to go inside Yoda’s head and have him recognize that he cannot put a stop to what has been set in motion.
“My idea was to link Yoda’s sudden departure with his crucial epiphany here,” Stover explains in an annotation of the scene, one of many insights that have been added to this new deluxe edition of the novelization, releasing this month to mark 20 years of both Revenge of the Sith the movie, and Revenge of the Sith, the novelization. “Sudden epiphanies—when something shatters your whole concept of yourself and reorganizes how you think about your place in the world—are exceptionally tricky to pull off in prose, which is why a lot of writers fall back on the ‘road to Damascus blinding light that knocks you flat’ kind of thing.”
It’s perhaps a perfect little slice of why Stover’s book has been held up as one of the all-time greats of Star Wars novels: the prose is grand and deliciously high-drama, but also wonderfully and deeply human in the perspective it grants to these characters, and it adds so much depth and introspection that fans have come to embrace and see in the prequel trilogy in the decades since its release.
Check out our exclusive excerpt, including some of Stover’s newly added annotations—two of over 170 added in this new release—below.
There came a turning point in the clash of the light against the dark. It did not come from a flash of lightning or slash of energy blade, though there were these in plenty; it did not come from a flying kick or a surgically precise punch, though these were traded, too. It came as the battle shifted from the holding office to the great Chancellor’s Podium; it came as the hydraulic lift beneath the Podium raised it on its tower of durasteel a hundred meters and more, so that it became a laserpoint of battle flaring at the focus of the vast emptiness of the Senate Arena; it came as the Force and the podium’s controls ripped delegation pods free of the curving walls and made of them hammers, battering rams, catapult stones crashing and crushing against each other in a rolling thunder- roar that echoed the Senate’s cheers for the galaxy’s new Emperor. It came when the avatar of light resolved into the lineage of the Jedi; when the lineage of the Jedi refined into one single Jedi. It came when Yoda found himself alone against the dark. In that lightning- speared tornado of feet and fists and blades and bashing machines, his vision finally pierced the darkness that had clouded the Force. Finally, he saw the truth. This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most implacable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known . . . just— didn’t— have it. He’d never had it. He had lost before he started. He had lost before he was born.[6] [6] This whole segment is about why Yoda—in the midst of a battle he started and one he has literally been preparing to fight for almost nine centuries—sneaks off to hide for twenty years. My idea was to link Yoda’s sudden departure with his crucial epiphany here. Sudden epiphanies— when something shatters your whole concept of yourself and reorganizes how you think about your place in the world—are exceptionally tricky to pull off in prose, which is why a lot of writers fall back on the “road to Damascus blinding light that knocks you flat” kind of thing. My idea here was to take advantage of all the fun I’d been having with different narrative voices. The shift from old- fashioned operatic romanticism to dry, straightforward reportage is supposed to evoke the feeling of waking up from a wonderful dream into the cold light of an unhappy day. The Sith had changed. The Sith had grown, had adapted, had invested a thousand years’ intensive study into every aspect of not only the Force but Jedi lore itself, in preparation for exactly this day. The Sith had remade themselves. They had become new. While the Jedi— The Jedi had spent that same millennium training to refight the last war. The new Sith could not be destroyed with a lightsaber; they could not be burned away by any torch of the Force. The brighter his light, the darker their shadow. How could one win a war against the dark, when war itself had become the dark’s own weapon? He knew, at that instant, that this insight held the hope of the galaxy. But if he fell here, that hope would die with him. Hmmm, Yoda thought. A problem this is . . . Blade-to-blade,[7] they were identical. After thousands of hours in lightsaber sparring, they knew each other better than brothers, more intimately than lovers; they were complementary halves of a single warrior. In every exchange, Obi-Wan gave ground. It was his way. And he knew that to strike Anakin down would burn his own heart to ash. Exchanges flashed. Leaps were sideslipped or met with flying kicks; ankle sweeps skipped over and punches parried. The door of the control center fell in pieces, and then they were inside among the bodies. Consoles exploded in fountains of white- hot sparks as they ripped free of their moorings and hurtled through the air. Dead hands spasmed on triggers and blaster bolts sizzled through impossibly intricate lattices of ricochet. Obi-Wan barely caught some and flipped them at Anakin: a desperation move. Anything to distract him; anything to slow him down. Easily, contemptuously, Anakin sent them back, and the bolts flared between their blades until their galvening faded and the particles of the packeted beams dispersed into radioactive fog. “Don’t make me destroy you, Obi-Wan.” Anakin’s voice had gone deeper than a well and bleak as the obsidian cliffs. “You’re no match for the power of the dark side.” “I’ve heard that before,” Obi-Wan said through his teeth, parrying madly, “but I never thought I’d hear it from you.” [7] Epic events, in my opinion, call for either elevated imagery or bone-dry understatement. To employ a bit of the latter, I openly acknowledge that understated is not a word most people would use to describe my writing.
The 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Revenge of the Sith, which includes a new introduction from Stover, as well as a sumptuous full-sized poster jacket of the silhouette of Darth Vader framing artwork of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s duel on Mustafar and plenty of other deluxe details, will release on October 14, and is available to pre-order now.