Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The Force Unleashed is about a young man with Force powers so immense he can whip Vader and the Emperor simultaneously. Based on a video game in which you get to play this Force-wielding giant, the conceptual emphasis is on action and playability, rather than character or drama. Consequently the graphic novel reads like a series of set pieces, big fight scenes with a bit of exposition to tie them together. Ostensibly the plot concerns the inception of the Rebellion, but as with the beginnings of most things in the Star Wars universe, the origin of the Alliance is more than it seems.
Thematically, TFU cleaves closely to the SW universe formula - young man spends his life doing bad and redeems himself in the end with a tiny act of good. The orphaned Starkiller is raised as Darth Vader's secret apprentice, an amoral assassin who dispatches with equal skill characters on both sides of the war. Somewhere along the way he switches to being a good guy with a conscience and a love interest, though it's not really clear how either develops. Neither is why the leaders of the Rebellion trust anyone who shows up at their door expressing an interest in sacking the Empire.
The artwork is a mixed bag, with Brain Ching opening and closing the story with some finely illustrated chapters. Unfortunately, as with his stint on Knights of the Old Republic, he seems unable to work fast enough to complete an entire project - or takes assignments with impossible deadlines - and so we get a couple of less skilled artists working on the middle sections.
There is a novel of the same name covering the exact same story. I haven't yet read it, but given author Sean Williams' track record (as coauthor of one of the worst chapters of the New Jedi Order), and given that the graphic novel isn't anything worth bragging about, I'd wager the novel is as limp, or with more extraneous material, even limper. My suggestion would be to unleash your own force on the game. That is, if you have a console. PC users will have to settle for the graphic novel.
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