Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Book Review: William Shakespeare's The Merry Rise of Skywalker by Ian Doescher

William Shakespeare's The Merry Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars Part the Ninth (William Shakespeare's Star Wars Book 9)William Shakespeare's The Merry Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars Part the Ninth by Ian Doescher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The First Order appears triumphant and the Resistance on it’s last legs when sudden the voice of a dead man echoes across the stars sending everyone to the Unknown Regions to either inaugurated or stop the execution of the Final Order. Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s The Merry Rise of Skywalker concludes his adaptation of the Star Wars franchise the style of the Bard while dealing with the complete catastrophe that is the sequel trilogy.

After the difficult task of adapting Jedi the Last into a coherent play, Doescher had the less difficult though challenging task of adapting the official retconning of sections of the previous film into a Shakespearean play. With better written characters and somewhat better dialogue to adapt—though that’s not saying much—Doescher was able to stick with iambic pentameter throughout the play except for those special characters like Yoda whose speech patterns are different throughout the entire franchise. To challenge himself, Doescher once again infused the play with easter eggs and secret messages (Rey’s soliloquys) along with adding special dialogues for characters that didn’t have lines in the film but were portrayed by long-time contributors to the franchise. And the illustrations of characters in Elizabethan stage attire is a delightful addition to Doescher’s words.

The Merry Rise of Skywalker is based on a film that had to repair the damage of its predecessor and Ian Doescher was able to make a very good stage adaptation with what he was given though not as difficult as before. The rating of his book is based not on the original material, but Doescher’s hard work in adapting the films for the Elizabethan stage.

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