Reaction to The Book of Boba Fett

 My boys and I have watched The Book of Boba Fett, Disney+'s latest Star Wars property. 

There will probably be spoilers in this reaction post (not quite a review) so be warned. I'll try to keep them as light as possible for those that may not have seen it yet. Definite spoilers for the original Star Wars trilogy! And Mandalorian season 2.

The Book of Boba Fett (TBBF) is both a spin-off of The Mandalorian, and also a sequel of sorts to Return of the Jedi. Boba returned in Season 2 of Mando, and this show was teased as the mid-credit scene in Mando season 2's finale. And this leads to several of the problems with the show that I want to talk about. But I'll get into that a bit later.

Boba Fett is/was, for many fans, one of the coolest characters in the original trilogy. I'm one of those fans. In Empire Strikes Back, he barely speaks, but he makes a big impression. Vader singles him out of the bounty hunter line-up to warn him not to disintegrate the target (implying this is something he's either known for, or at least has done to one high-profile target). He's the only bounty hunter not fooled by Han Solo's 'drift away with the garbage' trick, and follows him to Cloud City, alerting Vader. After Solo is frozen in carbonite, Fett manages to get the carbonite slab onto his ship and leave, despite having the main characters shooting at him. He seems like quite the bad-ass, and it's the space given to the audience to fill in just how bad-ass he is (along with the cool armor he wears) that made him so popular, IMO. 

In Return of the Jedi, I don't think he had any lines of dialogue (Wilhelm scream doesn't count). He's more of a threat than the rest of Jabba's goons on the sail barges, and Han Solo and Chewbacca are really worried that he's in the fight, but Luke's Force training and a bit of luck on Han's part take him out pretty quickly, and he ends up in the Sarlacc Pit. Not so bad-ass, but oh well. Dante Hicks was right, Empire is the better movie.

Books, comics, video games in the nearly 40 years since have built on that. 

So, when Boba Fett re-appears 5 years after the Sarlacc Pit in Mando (technically in Season 1 but they only hinted that it was him) looking for his armor, we were left wondering how he escaped, how he lost his armor, why it's taken him 5 years to get it back. And in the Mando S2 mid-credit scene, why he's now trying to take over Jabba's criminal empire.

OK, all that prefaced, on to the show.

I really did enjoy watching it. There was a lot of good action, some interesting politics, and some wrapping up of loose ends. The Star Wars canon universe has been expanded in some cool ways (Mods, more info on Pyke and Hutt criminal syndicates, Tusken culture), and the show, along with The Mandalorian, does a bit of work to tie events in Episodes 7 to 9 more closely to the original trilogy. Or at least make some of the dumb choices of the sequel trilogy a bit less dumb? Trying, anyway. That's a big job, but also off topic. 

But the show fails in a couple of key ways. First, it's trying to tell two stories, then three! We have the story of Boba Fett 'now' (after episodes 6-8 of Mando season 2), except Fett seems like almost a different person from those Mando episodes. We have the story of how he escaped the Sarlacc Pit and eventually gets his armor back. Then (spoiler) we get the narrative interrupted by two episodes of The Mandalorian season 3. Juggling three different narratives is something a 7 episode season of a series could do, but it's just clunky here. 

Spoilers, but we only see the events pre-Mando season 2 as flashbacks when Boba's taking bacta baths. Not only is the pacing of these two narratives uneven and clunky, but while I understand someone thought it would be a cool framing device, having Boba in bacta all the time really makes "present" Boba seem weak. If he's so weakened by his return to the Sarlacc pit, how did he kick so much stormtrooper ass on planet Tython? Not only that, but as the formerly most competent bounty hunter in the galaxy who apparently worked often for Jabba the Hutt, he sure knows little about Tattooine or Hutt politics. Why is Fennec Shand suddenly Basil Exposition? The info dumps Ming-Na Wen had to deliver are painful. 

THEN we get an entire very cool episode centered on Din Djarin, The Mandalorian. We get a lot more info about the darksaber. About the Children of the Watch. About what's probably going to be the main plotline of Mando season 3. And THEN we get another episode where we continue to set up Mando season 3 for most of the run time. 

The split nature of the narrative surrounding Boba Fett was already sort of off-putting. The stuff filling in the missing pieces (Boba with Sand People, mostly) was really cool, but didn't seem to directly tie into the stuff happening "now" in Mos Espa. The Mos Espa crime drama was fairly interesting, as well, but so broken up by the flashbacks that it was hard to keep up the interest. And really, the stuff with the Tuskens was more interesting. But just when the Mos Espa storyline was getting good, it breaks off for two episodes of Mando. 

I think the series needs a good fan edit. Some people online have suggested giving us two or three episodes of just the backstory stuff, then transition to the "present" Mos Espa stuff. That might work, but I think just a re-balancing of the two narratives would be better. Also, I think all of episode 5 should be cut up into chunks and delivered as a side story throughout the season. That way, we're mostly seeing Boba's story (stories really) but getting bits of Mando teaser each episode. Then when episode 6 focuses on Mando & Grogu, it serves as both anticipation builder for the climactic showdown, and to tie the two threads together. 

So that's the big structural weakness of the narrative. But there's a bigger problem with the show. 

Boba Fett is passive, and his motives are unclear. 

He's trying to take over Jabba's empire for reasons that aren't clear. He seems to know next to nothing about what he's trying to accomplish -- yet Fennec Shand, who doesn't as far as we know have as close ties to Tattooine as we know Boba Fett does, has to constantly give him info dumps. 

Enemies threaten him, he ignores them. They attack him, he negotiates. He dithers. He waits for others to take action on his behalf. I realize that the writers wanted to show that Boba's time post Sarlacc Pit had changed him. But is this really changing him for the better? He's less ruthless, but also less cunning. He has a noble goal, but we don't really understand why (even after the flashbacks have played out). 

There are hints of angst about his father Jango. There are hints of regret for his former ruthless bounty hunting. But they are only hints. We never really see Boba's thoughts or feelings expressed. We're finally seeing the man behind the mask, but he seems even more shallow with the mask off. 

So I was entertained by the show, and found a lot of fun stuff that I can crib for my d6 Star Wars game, but I was let down by the writing and the editing of the series. It was garbled, incoherent, and seemed to miss at what it was shooting for, which was Boba Fett's Unforgiven. What we got was Boba Fett Dazed and Confused.