But then once The Mandalorian became a hit and Grogu merchandise was flying off the shelves, and Solo was a dud and the sequel trilogy was in ruins, they went back to Favreau and said, "Hey, remember when you wanted to do a Boba Fett show? Why don't you do that?" And so he finally got what he wanted. And it's what a lot of fans thought they wanted for a long time. Boba Fett is back from the dead!
And yet, this show doesn't really follow through on the promise of what people had long hoped for. Instead of Boba roaring around the galaxy in his ship and blasting dudes with his flamethrower and rocket launcher, we get a sad old man with a dad bod lying around in a bacta tank in Jabba's old palace.
It's not until the fourth episode until we learn why Boba killed Bib Fortuna and took Jabba's throne. Basically he was sick of taking orders from idiots. But if he has enough credits that he can fight a war for the throne, why not just go to wherever Space Boca Raton is and retire?
Along with Boba's attempts to become the Godfather of Tatooine, we're treated to his flashbacks to when he was rescued by some Tuskens. It's basically a replay of Avatar, Dances With Wolves, and so on as first he's a prisoner and then he gains their trust and then he starts adopting their ways. Shouldn't cancel culture be calling them out for the whole appropriation thing? And for invoking the "noble savage" thing yet again?
One of my problems with the show is that other than Fennec Shand, the supporting characters are kind of lame. He keeps a couple of Jabba's green pig guys and then recruits a gang of teenage cyborgs who ride on colorful Vespa-looking speeders. Ugh. Kind of wonder if Kennedy and Disney didn't come up with the latter so it wouldn't get too dark and there would be more toys to market.
I groaned in the fourth episode when Boba and Fennec sneak into Jabba's palace and Boba comically chases around a small rat catching droid like a fucking Looney Tunes cartoon. That's some Episode I shit, like having Darth Vader as an annoying little kid--or Episode II with Boba Fett as an annoying little kid.
At the end of the fourth episode there was a musical sting to foreshadow the Mandalorian and the fifth episode is called "The Return of the The Mandalorian." It was basically a backdoor season 3 premiere as it focuses almost entirely on Mando trying to get back in his old order but getting kicked out when he admits he took off his helmet. He goes to Tatooine to get a new ship, which turns out to be an old Naboo fighter (Wizard!) which made no sense to me as there's no cargo space for bounties or anything. Fennec meets him at the end to hire him, but he wants to go visit Grogu first...so he's not going to help them right away? We don't even see Boba in this episode except for the recap. WTF? I mean it was nice knowing what Mando was up to but you could have saved that for his show and just kicked off with Fennec finding him on Tatooine to recruit him.
I assumed the sixth episode would get back to the main story and it does--a little. But the first half continues season 3 of The Mandadorian as Mando goes to whatever planet to find Grogu. There's a ton of fan service then: R2D2! Grogu! Ahsoka Tano! And deepfake Luke Skywalker! That's great and all but it doesn't really have a lot to do with what's supposed to be Boba Fett's story. Boba is at least seen in this episode during a war council, though he doesn't have any lines. Besides that, the parts relating to this show and not that other one with a Mandalorian is the Pykes are trying to move spice through Cobb Vanth's turf--him being the guy who had Boba's armor last season of The Mandalorian. As a bit more fan service, bounty hunter Cad Bane from The Clone Wars shows up to gun down the marshal. So now the marshal's town will come to Boba's side. Maybe then something is finally coming together.
Like I said on Facebook, when they give you the toy box that is the Star Wars universe, there's that temptation to want to play with all the toys. While that might be fun, it doesn't really make for the best stories. The fifth and sixth episodes really neglect the main character--and largely the main point--of the show. It does placate those infantile viewers who just want to see references and don't really care if there's an actual story to go with them--like most No Way Home viewers. (Those who didn't watch because they think Tom Holland is cute.)
The final episode almost makes up for the previous two episodes as it finally gets down to brass tacks with the war between the Pykes and their allies and Boba and his allies. First the other underworld leaders of Tatooine turn on Boba and then Cad Bane shows up to taunt Boba. Boba and the Mandalorian hold off the Pykes for a while until the rest of his people--except the green pig guys--show up. And of course the people of Freetown show up to avenge the marshal.
That's still not enough when the Pykes bring in "Scorponeks" or larger versions of those shielded Destroyer droids from the prequels. With the shields and heavy firepower, Boba and his crew have to go on the run. Boba returns to the palace, which I thought was for his ship while the Mandalorian finds Grogu, who was sent back to Tatooine by Luke's X-Wing, though I guess they didn't have the budget for deepfake Luke in this one because R2 flew the ship by himself. Which is too bad because if Luke had been there, he and Boba could have buried the hatchet over the whole thing with Han and Jabba. Maybe if there's another season they can deepfake Harrison Ford to do that.
When they brought in the rancor a few episodes earlier and Boba said he wanted to ride it, I thought to myself a few times, "He had better be riding that rancor by the end!" I mean it's a twist on that old Chekov thing that if you show a gun in act one you have to use it in act three. In this case if you're going to say you want to ride a rancor in act one (or maybe two), you had better fucking do it in act three.
So I was happy when the rancor comes stomping in like a kaiju with Boba Fett on its back. What's funny is to think that Luke killed the first rancor with a metal door, but this one takes several heavy laser blasts in the chest and is able to go on rampaging. The rancor weakens the shields of the first Scorponek enough that Mando can kill it with the darksaber and then the second one it just goes into full berserker mode and takes apart.
The problem then is there's a rampaging rancor on the loose. It nearly eats Mando until Grogu comes out of hiding to use the Force to calm it down.
As epic as that was, the best part was probably the confrontation between Boba and Cad Bane. I don't remember all the details, but they crossed paths in The Clone Wars when Boba was still a boy. They have a Western showdown that Cad is winning until Boba gets out his Tusken stick and takes him down. (Because if you show your character making a Tusken stick and learning to use it in act one, he had better use it to kill the bad guy in act three. This is just Screenwriting 101.)
Meanwhile, Fennec Shand has gone to Mos Eisley, where she assassinates the Pykes and their allies. That makes sure the Pykes don't regroup to come after Boba again.
The show ends with Boba being greeted and given a melon by his constituents as he finally has control of Mos Espa. Hooray? Mando flies off with Grogu to parts unknown. And in the cookie scene, apparently Cobb Vanth is being revived with bacta and cyborg parts by the guy who fixed Fennec when she was injured. Did the Freetown people put the marshal on ice or something? I mean it's been a while since Cad Bane shot him, wasn't it? Whatever.
I was thinking later that the problem with all this fan service is that it kind of weakens the story to have the people of Freetown save Mos Espa from the Pykes. Wouldn't it have made more sense for Boba to appeal to the people of Mos Espa and for them to join him to save their homes from the drug dealers? But then we wouldn't have need Mando to go visit Cobb Vanth and that whole thing, right?
Anyway, the whole point really seems to be to "redeem" Boba and make him an anti-hero instead of a bad guy. But sometimes people like rooting for the bad guy--like they literally did with Boba for 40 years. In the documentary on Disney+ Under the Helmet, it talks about how people went nuts for Boba after only an appearance in a parade, a brief spot on the horrible "Holiday Special," and like 3 lines in Empire Strikes Back. It turned out that less was more in his case, because people were intrigued by the mystery. By contrast, I think in this case the more they use him and try to develop him as a character, the less mysterious and awesome he is.
In the end, this is like Better Call Saul where they took a fun character people liked and ruined it by trying to make him well-rounded. In the end they just made him sad and lame. Sometimes you just need to let a bad guy be a bad guy.
Fun Facts: Besides characters from The Mandalorian, the series also introduced a live action version of the ex-gladiator Wookie from the Darth Vader/Dr. Aphra comics. As I said on Facebook, that makes my idea of a Dr. Aphra live action series a lot more plausible. Probably because Robert Rodriguez was a producer/director of the show, Danny Trejo (Machete) appears as a Rancor trainer. Veteran character actor Stephen Root (Office Space, King of the Hill, Man in the High Castle) appears as an official in Mos Espa. The servant droid in Jabba's old palace is voiced by Matt Berry, who I recognized as the second boss on The IT Crowd.
2 comments:
I've seen a few episodes of Boba Fett. First, I wondered why they would do a series on him since he was or is a bad guy. I have to agree with you as far as it being not great. It's because the plot is weak. Why should we care about Boba Fett and his problems? The Mandalorian was different. He went about helping people and trying to keep a child safe. Boba is just trying to hang onto some sort of power. That being said, I thought some of the action scenes were good, like the take down of that train. Anyway, I went back to watching Lost in Space, which is better than Boba Fett.
You have really good points here. I suppose that the show wasn't all that good as I can't really put up an intelligent argument on any of this. Yeah it was lame with Boba going after the droid in Looney Tunes fashion. It was also lame that Boba had a dad bod and lay around in his bacta tank. But as you can tell from the post on my page, I ended up liking quite a bit of it, even if some of it was in that "toy box" that had nothing to do with Boba. Ah well.
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