The Force Unleashed: Graphic Novel

You know I'm an unabashed fan of Star Wars, so you can either take this review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed graphic novel as being from an expert or hopelessly biased. Either way I won't bury the lead: this story rocked and I would love to see it as a movie.Let's clarify what that means for me. I qualify this to be an actual viable Star Wars film because:

• The story is solid.
• It creates its own mythos while adding to the existing canon.
• It does not contain any reference characters that can't be compensated for in a film (e.g., Han Solo in a prominent role).
• I was moved by the story.

Dwelling on the 'reference characters' point, you would need to borrow Ewan McGregor for a key cameo and Jimmy Smits for a week's work or more. Maybe Ian McDiarmid and James Earl for voice work. That's not hard to pull off. (I am dismissing the young Princess Leia cameo -- get some look-alike for that.) So the film is workable AND falls within and contributes to the story of Anakin and the formation of the Rebel Alliance (indeed, it describes how it was born!) in one nice package. Thus, I am impressed with the tightness (by necessity, of course) the story.

That is not to say that you cannot nit-pick the graphic novel to death. For one, as a more fully fleshed out story from a video game, you can see the queues where the player would take over. Plot, action, plot, action. Levels getting harder, predictably, but is that much different than any typical adventure story? The dialogue is pretty good and, surprisingly, at its best even great -- using series standbys like "I've got a bad feeling about this" and making it its own. I even got a chill during some of the final scenes.But let's not mince; though Lucas' team has created new characters that work well with each other, a compelling story, one of its biggest strengths is it also features Darth Vader in ACTION, something fans have been dying to see. And Vader pays off, both in presence, menace, and evil.With a little tighting up here and there, I think we can call it Episode 3.5. It's got my vote. At the very least, it's worth your sixteen bucks.