Review Tuesday: THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT, Season 1 [2021-2022]

 

 

THE BOOK OF

BOBA FETT

Season 1

[2021-2022]

After the events of THE MANDALORIAN, Season 2, Boba Fett takes over what used to be Jabba's Empire.

If he was still alive, Jeremy Bulloch, the original actor who played Boba Fett would've been having a birthday tomorrow. It makes me wonder, if he was around, what would he have thought of this seven episode season named after his most character? Ever since Boba Fett was first introduced to Star Wars fans in short animated clips, despite being during the train-wreck known as the STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL, he captured the imaginations of the fandom. For years you heard fan theories about what a total bad-ass Boba Fett and other Mandalorians were. I never went along with all that. to me, Boba Fett was the dude who ratted out the good-guys in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and let the Empire capture his quarry for him. Then in RETURN OF THE JEDI he was outwitted by a blind Han and was, ultimately, defeated by a hole in the ground. Not exactly the definition of a bad-ass in my book. However, fan boys had been enamored by the mystique of Boba Fett. When Lucas re-introduced us to Jango Fett, and Boba as a child, the fandom was re-energized. When fans are foaming at the mouth for a character like that, it finally dawned on the Lucasfilm to get to work on a solo Boba Fett project. As I understand it, a treatment or a script was in the works during the time that Disney acquired Lucasfilm. At that time Disney immediately scrapped all current Lucasfilm projects to go forward with new ideas. You know, all that "The Force is Female" bullshit. 

 

More recently, Favreau and Filoni were asked to do something with this old Boba Fett script. They introduced and teased some ideas during the first season of THE MANDALORIAN. They even gave us more Mandalorians and even Boba Fett in Season 2. By the end, they teased THE BOOOK OF BOBA FETT. They allowed all sorts of rumors and leaks to get out and fans were dying to see this seven episode series for about a year. Robert Rodriguez, who was considered a driving force behind the show, and directed three episodes, made, what I considered to be a tremendous mistake, huge and repeated claims that the show was "all killer and no filler." It's a terrible idea to set such a high bar because NOTHING they put out could possibly meet expectations... AND IT DIDN'T. 

 

The show ran seven episodes. It was meant to be something of a mix of The Godfather and classic Spaghetti Westerns. The first three episodes moved pretty slowly as they were heavy with flashbacks, trying to fill in the gaps between the time that Boba Fett was swallowed up by the Sarlacc and current day, some five years later. They answered the question, how was Boba able to escape the sarlacc pit? After Boba showed up in Mando wearing Tusken garb, they also explained how that happened. To my satisfaction, they never reconciled how much time was devoted to this back story. How long DID he live and learn from the Tuskens? How long was he wandering about in the Dune Sea with only his Bantha for company? So that wasn't very coherent. Then the current day scenes were just as disjointed. Boba might've been the Star Wars equivalent of The Godfather, but he sure didn't act anything like one. Plus he rarely wore his helmet. Who is this guy? He's not a crime boss and he's not Boba! But he's supposed to be both??? Then when fans were losing faith and bailing on the show, they had two episodes of The Mandlorian for episodes five and six. Those two episodes were excellent and got the fans buzzing again with excitement peaking for the season finale. If you umplugged your brain and just watched the finale, you might have been okay, but if you used any brain energy, it started getting you angry. There were way too many WTF?! moments that left you scratching your head.  Things like, why these guys having a leisurely discussion in the middle of the streets of Mos Espa with blaster bolts raining down on them from all angels? Why does everyone run off in a big clump together, rather than disappearing in the maze of side streets to set up ambush points? This would also be a good point to bring out the massive amounts of leaks and rumors that most of never came to fruition. 

 

In the end, I would call this show OKAY. Rodriguez shot himself in the foot by getting the expectations up way too high for this show. Favreau and Filoni didn't really seem to have their heart in this series. The two episodes around the Mandalorian were outstanding, but the rest were pretty clunky, and some of the directors did a better job with their episodes than others. Ultimately the ending wasn't very satisfying. Did the series have its moments? Sure. There happened to be a lot of cool scenes, but the way the show seemed to be disjointed, as a whole, it almost seemed like they were thinking, we have all these cool ideas for scenes, how can we string them all together? Yeah, this show was okay. Fans will probably like to see some of the scenes. Most of it can be pretty entertaining, but it needed some help with the writing and more polishing.