Star Wars: From The Adventures of Luke Skywalker - Differences From The Film

Differences From The Film

There are several portions of the novel that deviate from the film, such as scenes that were filmed but not included in the final cut of the movie. Most notable are scenes with Luke Skywalker and his friends at Tosche Station on Tatooine. Various small details, such as the callsigns used by the Rebels in the Death Star assault, are different (e.g. Luke is "Blue Five" instead of "Red Five").

At one point, Han Solo mentions a Corellian friend named Toccnepil (Lippincot backwards). This is a reference to Charles Lippincott, the mastermind of the Star Wars marketing campaign. "Droid" is spelled with an apostrophe in the front, as the term was used as a contraction of the word "android". The references to Rebels are listed as rebels. The Imperial Stormtroopers board the Tantive IV through the ceiling rather than blasting apart a door. The callsign of the stormtroopers guarding the Millennium Falcon is THX-1138 as opposed to TK-421 in the film. The destruction of Alderaan is not described in the book, nor does Obi-Wan sense the planet's destruction.

The prologue says that after Emperor Palpatine rose to power, he was "controlled" by the "boot-lickers he had appointed to high office", implying that he is merely a victim of manipulation by Imperial bureaucrats rather than the true string puller. However, all subsequent media sources revise this, so that he is in fact the true commanding force behind the Galactic Empire.

The death of Obi-Wan Kenobi is different in the book in that Darth Vader succeeds in defeating him during their lightsaber duel, while in the film Obi-Wan allows Vader to strike him down, in order to provide Luke and the others a diversion to escape the Death Star. The novel refers to Darth Vader as a Sith Lord. Although he was referred to as this in various merchandising tie-ins at the time of the original film, he is not referenced as such in the movie. In fact, the term Sith Lord is not actually mentioned in the films until the first prequel, 1999's Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

In the film the order of events in the final dogfight over the Death Star is also somewhat different. In the novel, Blue Leader makes two bombing runs down the trench toward the exhaust port. In the film, he only manages to make one before being shot down. In the film, Wedge's X-Wing is damaged by Darth Vader and his wingmen, thus forcing him to leave the battle since he can't stay with Luke, and then Biggs is killed outright by the pursuing Darth Vader and his fighters. In the novelization, Biggs is killed first by his ship being destroyed, and then Wedge must retreat due to a malfunction caused in the battle with the enemy fighters.