I am going to warn you my fair readers, today’s post is going to contain spoilery discussion about the latest Disney Plus series The Book of Boba Fett. At this point two episodes have been released, and I have to admit I have some serious doubts about this show. I find myself vacillating wildly between “I am just not feeling this” and thoughts of “Does this actually sucks?”. This morning I am going to talk through my feelings and thoughts, and since I often times use this blog as therapy… will maybe come to some grand conclusion or at least acceptance after writing all of it.
Firstly I feel like we need to talk about how important of a character Boba Fett has been to me throughout the years. My first action figure of Boba Fett was obtained through collecting Kenner purchase seals and mailing away… then waiting what felt like an insane amount of time before finally getting it into my hands. So my fear going into Book of Fett is that I might be a little too close to the source material. While I realize we are in this weird place of Disney officially exiling all of the content that came from before as “Legends”, Dave Filoni is two years older than I am so very much a child of this era and has been cherry picking the best bits. I rabidly consumed everything that I could get my hands on that was Boba Fett related from the Dark Horse comics to Tales of the Bounty Hunters collection of short stories.
I loved seeing Boba Fett return through the Mandalorian series, but also felt no shock in seeing him. In fact from the onset of that series and the moment that we arrived on Tatooine I assumed sooner or later we would see him. Boba Fett escaping from the Sarlacc Pitt is a well trodden story at this point for me, and while I was uncertain exactly HOW they would portray it… I knew that effectively Boba was still active somewhere. I have this very hard time cloistering everything I “know” from the Legends universe and not just expecting the “Saga” universe to play out in the same manner. So far the parts of the extended universe that worked… are starting to make their way into what is ultimately becoming this new Disney Star Wars Canon.
Seeing Boba Fett with the Tusken Raiders really was not a shocking revelation either. Again because of the vast archives of expanded universe… I know a shocking amount about the civilization of the Tusken Raiders through comics, games, and books and there is a big part of me that has just sorta had this “well duh” moment play out as I am watching Fett so far. It made perfect sense that Fett who always seemed like an honor bound bounty hunter… would fit in perfectly with a society of nomadic people who are also extremely honor bound. In the movies I guess up to this point we have had the Tusken’s portrayed as this roaming band of monsters, but they were always more to me personally. The Tusken’s are just the native race of Tatooine and survived the ecological fallout of the world by adapting to living under extreme conditions.
I think the core problem I am having right now with Book of Fett, is it feels like one of those catch up reels that plays at the beginning of a new season of a Netflix series. Everything that is being shown to me is either well trodden legends content or something that completely makes sense and is a logical sequence of events knowing the characters that are so far involved. What I don’t understand however… is why in the hell Boba Fett has decided that suddenly he wants to be a Crime Lord and thinks that he alone can take on the Hutts. We are spending so much time with flashbacks and covering content that I was more than happy to have hand waved away because it “just made sense” and spending little time so far dealing with what is happening in the here and now. I had hoped that we had dealt with most of the flashbacks in the first episode… but the second episode also largely was comprised with Boba Fett and the Tuskens.
The other core issue I have with Book of Fett is it is missing something that The Mandalorian had. There is this emotional fabric that the Mandalorian had that is just completely gone with Fett. Sure there is a buddy cop sort of relationship going on between he and Fennec Shand, and that is delightful when it is actually allowed to play out. What we instead get is Boba Fett being super confused why no one seems to fear him or respect his authority when he has done nothing really to earn that place of respect. Maybe that is the tale that we are setting up… Fett being overwhelmed and then having to earn his place as the Daimyo. I get the distinct feeling that Fett wants to effectively Unionize the crime syndicate and create this mutually beneficial relationship between him and his vassals. So I can see a redemption arc working if in the next episode he is knocked down hard by the Hutt Twins who arrived at the end of episode two.
I would be lying if I said I was not going to at least finish out this season. Having the appearance of Black Krrsantan was some serious fan service that I did not expect, and I think on some level a lot of this show is just supposed to be Boba Fett looking badass while we drift along on the fumes of “member berries“. I think the problem for me at least is I know Disney is capable of producing great short run series that help flesh out these worlds. Loki and Hawkeye for example were freaking pure brilliance. Similarly I have loved The Mandalorian because it was telling a fresh story in this universe that I love. The problem is so far Boba Fett is not really telling a fresh story but instead reliving bits and pieces of past stories that I already knew. I think Fett should be a lesson to Disney going forward, since they plan on resurrecting pretty much any character that is even vaguely capable of supporting a limited run show. The show has to stand on its own in order to actually be good, and can’t just be the television equivalent of a really cool looking action figure.
I will say Book of Boba Fett gives me serious concerns about how it is going to feel to experience some of these other shows that are coming soon. The Cassian Andor and Obi-Wan Kenobi solo shows are slotted to release at some point during this year for example. I think the core problem with Star Wars has been that unlike Marvel… they don’t have nearly as much source material to mine. For example if you point at any character in the Marvel Universe… and you can find literally thousands of unique story lines from the comics that expand upon that character. For Star Wars you have a few movies and then a string of books… a good number of which were read by old farts like me who were desperate for ANY Star Wars anything during the dark times. With Marvel they could mix and match and lean heavily on the multiverse theory to craft something that while assembled out of bits and pieces of existing story material… felt fresh and new. With Star Wars… my fear is that these solo projects are all going to feel like this one… with a certain measure of rehash required to catch everyone else up before actually crafting new additional stories.
If you have made it to this point in my post… what are your thoughts about Book of Boba Fett so far? Are you also having issues with it, or is this just a “you are too close to the source material” issue. Drop me a line below.
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