Ah, Brian J., isn’t this a children’s book? So it is; so it is. As you might recall, gentle reader, I am not above reading the storybooks of 80s movies; I read Tron: The Storybook in 2020–that long ago already? And I can lay my hands on Star Wars: The Storybook easily–I did so last year for a LinkedIn post. And I just read the novelization of the film and watched the real three movies (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) in 2024. So the material was relatively fresh.
I mean, these storybooks: Are they for kids who haven’t seen the movie yet? Such was the case for me and Star Wars. And I read the comic book before I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or is it something to help you to remember the film, kind of like a souvenir book you pick up at House on the Rock (or later because you find one in the wild)? I would guess the former rather than the latter.
Because the storybooks are built from early editions of the scripts, and you tend to have major variations. The Star Wars Storybook, for example, has a conversation between Wedge and Luke on Tatooine with a photo that indicates that the scene was shot but did not make the final cut of the film. This book never mentions the giant boulder in the South American temple that Indiana Jones has to run from–instead the temple just collapses right after he gets out. Other scenes are excised not only for brevity but because they’re not especially child friendly. We have photos from the drinking competition at The Raven in Nepal, but the scene itself is not there. The fight at the airfield that ends when the big German gets chopped up by the propeller is not there. Et cetera.
So: A quick read, a book logged on the annual list, and something like a completion–having read the comic, the novel, watched the film, and read the storybook…. Although is it really “complete” without a complete set of the trading cards and glass set that you could have gotten from a fast food restaurant (although a quick search of Ebay indicates these might not exist).
