Sensational novelization of Matt Reeve’s heartbreaking, epic
masterpiece “War for the Planet of the Apes”, based on the outstanding
screenplay by Mark Bomback and Matt Reeves.
There are three things that make a novelization work.
Number one, extra scenes and possibly even plot threads not
in the movie. Most novelizations have this because the writer often works from
an early draft of the screenplay, or even if it was written late in the
process, a very rough cut of the film before the final edit. Author Greg Cox gives us plenty of these extra
goodies, and a few of them are very significant to the plot.
Two, a novelization has to be a novel. And by that I mean it
must read like a novel and feel like a novel, not a re-typing of the screenplay
in a different format. This book does indeed read like an epic novel, full of
wonderful visual descriptions that present a strong sense of time and place.
And finally—and most importantly—a truly great novelization has
to give us a lot of strong, insightful, revealing character interior monologues
with precise and clear narrative viewpoints. This is where Greg Cox really excels,
taking us into the mind of the characters and their thoughts, especially
Caesar. All of those harrowing, intense emotions that we felt when watching the
film, we feel them here too. On top of that there is a wonderful sense of what
came before as characters muse about the people no longer with us such as Will,
and we find out what happened to Malcolm.
Bottom line: “War for the Planet of the Apes” is the best
film of the year and this novelization does it justice. A must own for any fan.
Also recommended are the two prequel novels by Greg Keyes. “War for the Planet
of the Apes: Revelations” and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm”, as
well as Alex Irvine’s novelization of “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.”
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