What are some novelizations of beloved movies that are legitimately good in their own right? The gold standard for me are the late Vonda McIntrye novels for Star Trek 2, 3, & 4. Her Search For Spock novel actually fixes many of the problems with the movie.

Many people aren't aware of how hard it is to make a living as a genre novelist, to the degree that a lot of top shelf talent bang out these novelizations in a month or so to pay the bills. If we're lucky they use their talent to make them better than they strictly need to.

McIntyre's Trek movie novelizations are almost TOO good. In her hands, the Regula One scientists are these funny, eccentric characters who you realize Khan had tortured to death one by one, which makes you think of Khan not as a noble villain but an asshole you just want to die.

She also really leans into the Saavik half-Romulan heritage that was later dropped, & the Saavik-David Marcus romance, so that you really feel David's death, in a way that the film ends up rushing past.

My favorite page of any 80s movie novelization has to be the last page of the Goonies novel, which reveals that the snooty country club has become a community center and that Jason "Sloth" Cohen has indeed been adopted by Chunk's family & just had his bar mitzvah. Great stuff.