Details in Novelizations that Explain Things in Films

I'm going to admit something. Every time my Dad and I watch watch Aliens and it comes to Bishop heading out to the uplink tower, my Dad tells me that there was a bit in the novelization where Bishop encountered one of the aliens and it didn't know he was there because he had no body heat and heartbeat, which the xenomorphs have the ability to detect.

Now, I know that many do not consider novelizations as a valid canon source, despite the fact that they are based off the screenplay of the film (or in some cases a previous draft of the screenplay for the film). But, I began to wonder what details from novelizations that you feel did the best job at explaining something seen on the screen. This can be small details or even background information.

For me, one of the ones I like is from the Pitch Black novelization by Frank Lauria, which talked not only about Riddick's background, but why Johns is a stim junkie. According to the novelization, Riddick was former military and was a guard on some sort of prison colony ran by a company. He witnessed a lot of terrible things occurring there, and grew a bit of a conscience. So, he started gathering evidence with the intention to expose the actions by the company. However, the company found out, manage to get rid of his evidence and framed him for a crime he didn't commit. As a result, he ended up being sent to prison, where he ended up escaping quite a few times. The company would hire bounty hunters to catch him, and for each one he killed in self-defense, the company would add it to his list of victims of his "serial killings." Eventually, he ran into Johns for the first time and shoved a shiv right into his spinal column. The medical unit removed the shiv, except for the very tip, which was pressed up against the spinal cord (which is why he became a stim junkie, because the tip still causes him pain. This is revealed in the Director's Cut of the film during the scene where Carolyn Fry finds Johns while he's injecting). From what I recall from reading (which was a long time ago), the reason why Johns was able to capture Riddick during one of their later run-ins was because Johns held a kid hostage and threatened to kill the kid if Riddick didn't give up. As a result, Riddick did, which resulted in Johns and Riddick being on the Hunter-Grazner's ill-fated flight.

So, what about you guys? Any particular novelization detail that explains something in the film that you guys happen to like?

I have always appreciated the character background stories from the beginning of the novel of The Abyss. Apparently, James Cameron also was a fan and gave these first three chapters to Michael Biehn, Ed Harris, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio to base their performances on.

I've heard that the novellization of The Phantom Menace explains a whole lot of the nonsense and bewildering illogical crap in the film. Course, I'm not about to sit down and actually read the TPM novel, so who knows...

Zuiun said:

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I have always appreciated the character background stories from the beginning of the novel of The Abyss. Apparently, James Cameron also was a fan and gave these first three chapters to Michael Biehn, Ed Harris, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio to base their performances on.

I heard that Cameron only gave the chapters to Harris and Mastrantonio, as it detailed Bud and Lindsay's relationship prior to the events of the film. I didn't know it had anything with Biehn's character in it.

CB2001 said:

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I heard that Cameron only gave the chapters to Harris and Mastrantonio, as it detailed Bud and Lindsay's relationship prior to the events of the film. I didn't know it had anything with Biehn's character in it.

There is also a whole chapter on Coffey's upbringing that helps to explain his whole "us" versus "them" attitude when he flips out. My understanding was that Biehn was given this chapter, too.

Zuiun said:

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There is also a whole chapter on Coffey's upbringing that helps to explain his whole "us" versus "them" attitude when he flips out. My understanding was that Biehn was given this chapter, too.

Cool. I'm learning something new.

Dark Star by Alan Dean Foster: Something I believe that was mentioned in the novelization (but not in the movie), and hinted at by the size of the bombs relative to the ship, is that the scoutships held only 20 bombs and that after they'd dropped Bomb 20, the crew would be allowed to return to Earth--which could account for Doolittle's rush to find something else to blow up, and also adds a whole 'nother level of bittersweet to the ending.

MFP 2020 said:

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Dark Star by Alan Dean Foster: Something I believe that was mentioned in the novelization (but not in the movie), and hinted at by the size of the bombs relative to the ship, is that the scoutships held only 20 bombs and that after they'd dropped Bomb 20, the crew would be allowed to return to Earth--which could account for Doolittle's rush to find something else to blow up, and also adds a whole 'nother level of bittersweet to the ending.

I've seen the movie a lot, and I don't recall the bomb limit being mentioned. I've actually got a copy of that novelization.

Total Recall.
Too much to even mention! ( I do mean the novelisation of the film, as opposed to the Philip K Dick story upon which the movie was based ).
Loads of stuff about the indigenous Martians and the reactor, tons of backstory.

Predator is an odd one - Since it's based on a version of the script in which the Predator can actually semi-shapeshift.
And I can't remember exactly, but was there not a bit left over in the film from this concept, where Dutch's team talk about finding weird footprints - As if left by a group of men all exactly the same size and weight?

The novelizations usually also have stuff that gets left out on the cutting room floor since they're from early drafts or source material. Waterworld was one that the book was way better as it had a lot of small stuff that explains the movie way better. Including the underwater scene, except still no explanation of how that sub got in the city. The novel of Predator 2 had a lot of info in it too.

Timmythekid said:

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I've heard that the novellization of The Phantom Menace explains a whole lot of the nonsense and bewildering illogical crap in the film. Course, I'm not about to sit down and actually read the TPM novel, so who knows...

It actually does explain several things. And ROTS does a good job of actually describing Anakin's slipping away through stress and sleep deprivation. It leads you to believe that Sidious is causing it and even more in control. It also does a much better job of explaining the duel between Sidious and the 4 masters and how Sidious records the whole thing to serve as evidence that the jedi were trying to take over.

On other books, Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger is a great book that only somewhat resembles the movie. The book does a great job of explaining several different story lines whereas the movie only concentrates on Jack Ryan.

If a movie needs a novel to make it watchable & understandable it's not a good movie...

Mullreel said:

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On other books, Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger is a great book that only somewhat resembles the movie. The book does a great job of explaining several different story lines whereas the movie only concentrates on Jack Ryan.

That's because it's not a novelization.

WarEagle said:

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That's cause it's not a novelization.

well there is that too..............lol

"Dances With Wolves" by Michael Blake answered some of the questions present in the original theatrical release of the movie, such as why the fort was deserted when Lt. Dunbar (Costner) arrived.

Technically, these same questions were answered in the "extended" and "director's cut" versions of the movie because Costner had filmed Blake's entire novel faithfully. The studio wanted a movie that was considerably shorter than Costner's original 236 minute version, so nearly an hour was removed for the original theatrical version. Costner's original full-length version was subsequently released in theaters and, of course, on DVD, and Blu-Ray.

Orange_Blend said:

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If a movie needs a novel to make it watchable & understandable it's not a good movie...

I'm not saying that novelizations should explain everything or needs to be in order to make a film understandable. What I'm asking is what's your favorite that explains something in the film.

I didn't like the Pitch Black one at all. It seemed like a pathetic attempt by the author to make Riddick into a more classic hero instead of an anti-hero (probably because he had no idea how to work an anti-hero in writing). The character was far more interesting when he was just a straight up bad guy who just happened to be in a situation where he ended up the good guy. I'm glad they ignored that backstory for the sequel.

The Aliens one was cool, but I seem to remember it slightly differently.. the aliens knew he was there, they just ignored him.

Dragonheart was another very good one. It was written by Charles Edward Pogue, who wrote the screenplay, and it kind of reads like "This is how it should have been", with a LOT of little details and backstory that never made it into the film. If you like the film, you'll love the book, it's like an extended edition/director's cut version of the script.

I really need to get another copy of The Abyss, I lost mine years ago. The backstory thing was great, as others mentioned. The book was also written in an entirely different way than any other novelization that I'm aware of. Rather than just handing a shooting script to a writer and having him adapt it with no input or back-and-forth with the other writers or the director, OSC was actually on-set a lot of the time, gathering bits and pieces of info, and discussing the characters with the actors who were portraying them, and discussing bits of the story with Cameron. He wrote the book while they were shooting the film, so he got to incorporate all of the changes that occur during shooting, something most writers don't get the chance to do. The result is perhaps the finest example of a movie tie-in novelization that I've ever read (and I've read a lot, but not many recently because most of them aren't very good anymore).

I'm almost embarrassed to say I read the Hackers novelization. VERY different from the movie. The author replaced the Apple laptops with PC laptops, made all the Hackers friends, threw in some additional cheezy lines, and actually expanded on what happened to some of the characters at the end. In the movie, two of the characters are still in jail (or so you are forced to assume). In the book, they're all sitting around talking about the punishment they got from the secret service (mostly community service and the like).

In my opinion, the movie was more about art and imagery than actual "hacking" and the book, obviously, was more about the characters and the hacking story.

It was the first, and last, novelization I read.

The X2 an X3 novels were different. Clairemont wrote the third one so it felt like his old run on the comics in the 80s and had a ton of characters in it. I heard that the guy who wrote the Abyss one (Orson Scott Card wasn't it?) wanted to do more on the history of the aliens but Cameron shot that idea down. He wanted to explain why they were there and how long which i'd have liked.

Zombie_61 said:

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"Dances With Wolves" by Michael Blake answered some of the questions present in the original theatrical release of the movie, such as why the fort was deserted when Lt. Dunbar (Costner) arrived.

Technically, these same questions were answered in the "extended" and "director's cut" versions of the movie because Costner had filmed Blake's entire novel faithfully. The studio wanted a movie that was considerably shorter than Costner's original 236 minute version, so nearly an hour was removed for the original theatrical version. Costner's original full-length version was subsequently released in theaters and, of course, on DVD, and Blu-Ray.

Yup. The directors cut is one of my favorite movies of all time.

I think mine would have to be the Ang Lee Hulk novel. There were several things I thought were mis-handled in the movie, but the novel made some of them a little better.

The main thing I remembered is that Bruce's adoptive mom was something like a government nurse/agent who was actually keeping an eye on him. They knew about the experiments his dad had done & were monitering him for those reasons. As I type that, it sounds pretty ridiculous...but I swear it was better in the book.

I read the Aliens novel back in high school so my memory may be a bit hazy here... As I remember right Bishop was crawling in the pipe heading down to remote pilot the dropship when through an opening in the side of the pipe an inner set of alien jaws shot in. They stopped before munching him and then just went back and the alien took off. Bishop assumed it was because he wasn't "alive" and would serve no purpose as either food or as a host that the Alien left him alone.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

CB: My problem with Pitch Black is that the backstory appears to be solely the creation of the book's author. I don't think Riddick was ever meant to be anything other than what he was presented as in the films. I read it as the author's attempt to completely rewrite the character's backstory, against the design of the character's creators. The fact that none of that has ever been even hinted at in either film would seem to back up my theory, that Riddick had always been a straight-up bad guy. He even implies in the second film that he's spent a good chunk of his life, including at least some of his childhood, in prison ("Pretend you're talking to someone educated in the penal system. Better yet... don't pretend.", and the statement from the first film "Think someone could spend half their life in the slam and not believe?") Given that, according to the book's so-called "backstory", Riddick would have been a child when the "hero" bit happened.