boba fett – Trekking with Dennis

The Book of Boba Fett review

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, The Last Jedi, and other iterations of the Star Wars franchise.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Book of Boba Fett when it was unexpectedly announced at the end of The Mandalorian Season 2. I was hopeful for a new series set in the Star Wars galaxy – only the second-ever live-action TV show in this setting – but I’d also felt underwhelmed by both The Mandalorian and a slew of announcements from Disney and Lucasfilm that seemed to be relying far too heavily on Star Wars’ past at the expense of trying anything even slightly new and different.

The Book of Boba Fett was, in many ways, the nostalgia overload that I expected it would be. The show could feel, at times, like executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni were two Star Wars-loving kids playing with life-size action figures of their favourite characters. Whether it was Boba Fett riding a Rancor monster, Luke Skywalker building his Jedi Academy, the Mandalorian wielding a lightsaber, or characters from The Clone Wars making significant appearances, The Book of Boba Fett had this almost child-like tone that harkened back to the Star Wars adventures kids have enjoyed making up for decades.

Boba Fett riding a Rancor in the series finale.

A friend of mine (who is far smarter and more astute than I am) also noted, with a degree of disappointment, that The Book of Boba Fett had a “lighthearted Disneyfied edge” at times, with some of the show’s potentially dark themes of violence and criminality being blunted or just outright ignored in favour of creating something that would work for younger kids as well as teens and adults. And I can’t deny that – several sequences in The Book of Boba Fett could have been transposed into the most basic of Disney Channel comedy shows with barely any adaptation required.

In addition, The Book of Boba Fett relies very heavily on The Mandalorian, to such an extent that anyone who hasn’t watched the previous two seasons would be, I suspect, rather lost – especially in the final two or three episodes in which the titular Boba Fett scarcely features. There was the return of Grogu (Baby Yoda) at Luke Skywalker’s Academy, Din Djarin (Mandy) seeking out the survivors of his Mandalorian clique, the residents of Mos Pelgo and their sheriff, and even the Tatooine mechanic who found him a brand-new ship to replace the destroyed Razor Crest. Though the way in which Mandy was written into the story made a degree of sense – as I can believe he’d feel he owed something to Boba Fett after the way he helped out in The Mandalorian Season 2 – it made the final three episodes of what was only a short seven-episode season feel like the first part of The Mandalorian Season 3.

All of the pieces fell into place for The Book of Boba Fett to be a series I’d expect to find completely disappointing… but I didn’t. Even the incredibly weak, hand-wavy explanation for Boba’s survival after Return of the Jedi couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm for what was an enjoyable romp in the Star Wars galaxy, and when I would’ve expected to find myself sighing with disappointment at the overuse of classic characters and other nostalgic crutches, I found myself so immersed in what was a thoroughly engaging story that I just… didn’t. That isn’t to say that The Book of Boba Fett was “perfect,” not by any stretch. But it was fun – despite its imperfections.

It’s words like that that I’d use to describe The Book of Boba Fett. It was a series that had huge entertainment value, depicting a rip-roaring adventure across the sands of Tatooine. Perhaps it’s specifically because of the “Disneyfied” toned-down darker moments, but the show managed to have this incredibly positive, energetic atmosphere that cut through all of the nonsense and amplified the exciting and emotional moments in its story, making it a fun watch almost all the way through.

Boba with Fennec Shand and a Gamorrean guard.

I’m always a sucker for stories about outnumbered heroes, bad guys with “hearts of gold,” and heroic last stands, and The Book of Boba Fett gave me all of those things. Whether it was Boba Fett sneaking into Jabba the Hutt’s palace to steal back his ship, learning to fight like a Tusken raider in the Dune Sea of Tatooine, or the gang coming together to fight off the forces arrayed against them, The Book of Boba Fett packed these exciting and often emotional punches in just the right way for the story to be incredibly enjoyable for me.

If I look at The Book of Boba Fett with a more critical eye, there are absolutely things that I would have changed or chosen not to include. I don’t think, for example, that the sequences with Luke Skywalker and Grogu were especially satisfying when I think about them more deeply. The Mandalorian Season 2 spent basically its entire runtime getting Mandy and Grogu to attract Luke’s attention, and for Luke to then present Grogu with a binary choice – to go with Mandy or train as a Jedi – then to have that choice happen entirely off-screen, effectively rendering everything Mandy did in Season 2 pointless… it leaves a bit of a bad taste. It’s “The Rise of Skywalker problem” – where the next chapter in the story effectively undoes the big narrative moments from the chapter that preceded it.

Luke offered Grogu a choice, and he apparently came to his decision off-screen.

Also, as some fans far smarter than I am have already pointed out, it feels wrong for Luke Skywalker to offer Grogu such a choice to begin with. We don’t know how much time had passed since the events of The Mandalorian Season 2, but it could perhaps be a few weeks or a few months – a year at the very most. Grogu hadn’t spent much time there nor done much training, so for this choice to be presented to him while he’s at such a young age – and for Luke, whose entire arc in Return of the Jedi had centred around his own attachment to his father while simultaneously being a Jedi Knight – to be the one forcing this choice onto Grogu, are likewise things that feel wrong.

It feels like this side of the story was contrived in such a way as to get Grogu to leave Luke’s Jedi Academy – perhaps so he can have a role in The Mandalorian Season 3, perhaps because there’s something else going on with his character that we don’t yet know, or perhaps because the creators and producers realised that, as things stand, Grogu would almost certainly end up among Kylo Ren’s victims when he betrays Luke – something we saw in the sequel trilogy. As I remarked in my review of The Mandalorian Season 2, this makes Grogu’s whole story feel bittersweet, and given the cute critter’s huge popularity with Star Wars fans and a wider audience in general, maybe this decision was made to save him from that fate.

Was an executive decision taken to “save” Grogu from the fate of Luke’s other students?

When I took a look at The Mandalorian Season 2, I also said that Luke Skywalker felt like a story crutch for a series – and a franchise – that was too reliant on its own past and on nostalgia plays. The same could apply to The Book of Boba Fett, too. In a series that was already throwing Star Wars’ greatest hits at viewers, the inclusion of Luke Skywalker was pure fan-service. I think it worked better here having been set up in Season 2 of The Mandalorian, and thus didn’t come from nowhere in quite the same way, but I would question whether or not it was strictly necessary to have these sequences in a show that was already so intent on looking backwards.

As I watched the first couple of episodes of The Book of Boba Fett, I thought to myself that, although the reintroduction of this seemingly-dead character was itself a huge “hail Mary” nostalgia throw, at least the series would finally take Star Wars away from the Force, the Jedi, and the Skywalker family. It ultimately failed to do that, bringing all of those elements back into play, and again I just feel that this is indicative of a franchise that doesn’t really know what to do or how to act without the crutch of those safe, comfortable, familiar elements. Star Wars teases viewers with a massive galaxy to explore, but every film and series so far has returned in one way or another to the same handful of characters and the same absolutely minuscule slice of that vast, tantalising setting. I would love for Star Wars to try something genuinely new and different one day, and while I didn’t really expect that from a series based around Boba Fett, it would still have been a bold decision to cut Luke Skywalker and Grogu from the story altogether, and leave the Force behind.

*The Book of Boba Fett* relied very heavily on elements and characters from past iterations of Star Wars.

The Book of Boba Fett, perhaps because it was relatively short at a mere seven episodes, wasn’t great at communicating the passage of time. This is also a complaint I’d raised about The Mandalorian, specifically in its first season, but in this case it was made worse by the fact that we were seeing different parts of Boba’s story that seemingly took place months or years apart. From his escape from the Sarlacc and capture by the Tuskens to his acceptance of Tusken culture and raid on the train to his meeting with Fennec Shand, their raid on Jabba’s palace, and then Boba laying claim to the throne… it wasn’t at all clear how much time had passed from one sequence to the next.

At one point Boba mentioned something about “years,” but that felt like little more than clumsy exposition – and didn’t even make clear how long it had been between some of the scenes we saw. Presumably his escape from the Sarlacc and his initial capture by the Tuskens took place within hours of Return of the Jedi – but the rest of it was decidedly muddled and unclear.

It wasn’t at all clear how long Boba spent with the Tuskens… or how much time had passed between flashback sequences and the show’s present day.

So let’s talk about Boba Fett’s survival, because this was one point I was really interested in prior to the series. For almost forty years it seemed as though Boba Fett was dead. Maybe some works in the old Expanded Universe found fan-fiction nonsense that brought him back, but canonically speaking, Boba Fett was dead. That’s how I interpreted the very unambiguous scene of him falling into the Sarlacc’s maw in Return of the Jedi when I first saw it in the early ’90s – and on every subsequent viewing, come to that. Overcoming that hurdle was something that The Book of Boba Fett had to at least try to do.

In the end, the answer was pretty lame, the sequence raced through pretty quickly, and the answer to this almost-forty-year-old puzzle hand-waved away. Boba Fett survived by essentially shooting and exploding his way out, then collapsed on the sand near the Sarlacc pit. His armour was stolen by scavenging Jawas, and Boba was later rescued – or captured – by Tuskens. It was all over pretty quickly, and while I don’t necessarily feel there’s much to dispute in terms of the basic mechanics of his escape from the Sarlacc – he still had his armour and most of his weapons and explosives as he fell, after all – it was just a bit rushed. It felt like The Book of Boba Fett was trying to brush the details of his survival under the rug so it could race ahead to tell other stories.

Boba Fett’s escape from the Sarlacc was quite rushed.

In a series that generally got the feel and tone right, there were a couple of odd choices. The Twi’lek character played by comedian David Pasquesi largely felt out-of-place; an overtly comedic character in what was, for the most part, a series that didn’t seem to be trying too hard to be funny. The biker gang that Boba Fett recruited to his cause were perhaps the oddest-looking group, visually speaking, and their speeder bikes definitely looked out-of-place, being far too bright and colourful in a setting that was otherwise comprised of tans, browns, and other desert tones.

Putting these two together created what was perhaps the worst sequence in the entire series: a slow-speed comedy car chase that felt like it had been lifted out of a Disney Channel movie aimed at a pre-teen audience. Tonally speaking it was just wrong for The Book of Boba Fett, it dragged on far too long, and ultimately added nothing of substance to the show.

*The Book of Boba Fett* did not need a comedy car chase sequence.

But really, all of those points are glorified nitpicks, and didn’t really detract too much from what was a fun romp. Though there were things I would’ve changed or chosen not to include, taken as a whole package The Book of Boba Fett worked far better than I would have imagined. If you’d told me at the start that the climax of the series would’ve been Boba riding on a Rancor monster fighting alongside Mandy, a Wookie, and Baby Yoda I might not have even bothered to tune in… but the way it got to that point, and even the climactic fight itself, were just plain fun.

Visually, The Book of Boba Fett looked amazing. The CGI work used to create Luke Skywalker was so convincing on my 4K television that I honestly thought I was looking at a real person at first. The Star Wars franchise – and, to be fair, Disney in general – is setting an incredibly high standard for other streaming shows in terms of visuals and special effects, and I hope this high standard of competition will see others raise their game. I’m looking at you, Star Trek – at the very least it would be nice to start getting Star Trek episodes in 4K HDR!

So I think that’s about all I have to say about The Book of Boba Fett. It was a technically polished series with a combination of great practical and digital effects that made it look absolutely fantastic. And it’s set a very high bar for digital character work that other shows – and even films – will struggle to match. Acting performances were fantastic across the board, with everyone giving it their all. The show also had a great, somewhat understated musical score that was pitch-perfect.

Above all, though, The Book of Boba Fett was far more fun than I could have possibly expected. Somehow, a combination of individual elements that seemed on the surface to be weak or otherwise uninspiring came together to build a far better and more entertaining series than should have been possible! I had a hugely enjoyable time with The Book of Boba Fett, and it even succeeded at getting me interested – and, dare I say, even a little excited – for Season 3 of The Mandalorian, which is rumoured to be coming before the end of the year.

After feeling underwhelmed or even disappointed with some recent Star Wars projects, it was nice to be able to kick back and enjoy an exciting, action-packed romp across Tatooine with Boba Fett and his motley crew. At time of writing, a second season of the show hasn’t been confirmed – but it seems almost unfathomable to me that there won’t be more adventures with Boba and Fennec Shand.

The Book of Boba Fett is available to stream now on Disney+. The Star Wars franchise – including The Book of Boba Fett and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

It’s disappointing that Rangers of the New Republic has been axed

Sun 28.11.21Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for The Mandalorian and the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

I’ve made no secret here on the website over the past couple of years that I’m not exactly thrilled with the direction of the Star Wars franchise. In the aftermath of the total narrative failure of The Rise of Skywalker, Lucasfilm has doubled down hard on overplaying the nostalgia card in practically all of its upcoming projects.

There’s some kind of series or miniseries focusing on R2D2 and C-3PO in development. There’s a prequel to Rogue One focusing on Cassian Andor. There’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, which will bring back the classic character to look at his life in between the prequels and the original films. There’s The Book of Boba Fett, in which Boba Fett is inexplicably back from the dead. There’s Ahsoka, a spin-off from The Mandalorian focusing on a character from the animated shows.

Boba Fett is one of several minor characters returning to Star Wars.

All of these projects indicate to me that the higher-ups at Disney and Lucasfilm don’t really know how to handle the Star Wars franchise. They’re intent on looking backwards at Star Wars’ past, seeming to think that what the franchise was is all it can ever be in the future. The result is spin-offs from spin-offs, prequels to prequels, unimportant chapters being thrown under the microscope, and characters of decreasing importance thrust into the spotlight.

Though it was purported to be a spin-off from The Mandalorian, one of the few announced projects that seemed to have any semblance of originality was Rangers of the New Republic. The series was to have looked at the New Republic – the galactic government which was created by the Rebel Alliance following the events of Return of the Jedi – in far more detail than ever before. However, Rangers of the New Republic has now been cancelled.

The New Republic hasn’t been explored in much detail in Star Wars’ main canon, instead being relegated to a background role in both The Mandalorian and the sequel trilogy. In The Force Awakens, we see Starkiller Base deployed against the New Republic’s capital system, destroying its government institutions and much of its military. By the time of The Last Jedi, the First Order is said to be in control of much of the galaxy, and the New Republic isn’t mentioned thereafter.

The Mandalorian showed us a glimpse of the New Republic, including how it tries to police outlying star systems and enforce its laws – and how it’s relatively ineffective at doing so. There was potential to expand on this depiction, showing both the governmental side of the New Republic, hampered by legislative inefficiencies, as well as the actual Rangers themselves.

A New Republic pilot seen in *The Mandalorian*.

A lot of Star Wars projects currently in production look at morally ambiguous characters. The Mandalorian focuses on a bounty hunter – someone who primarily operates outside of the law, albeit that he has a heart of gold underneath his armour. The Book of Boba Fett will focus on another Mandalorian bounty hunter, and if it stays true to its premise will show us Star Wars’ seedy underworld in more detail.

Andor will follow Cassian Andor – a character whose moral ambiguity was on full display in Rogue One, and who will do anything to advance the Rebels’ cause. Ahsoka is going to follow the titular Ahsoka Tano, an ex-Jedi who appears to be off doing her own thing rather than helping Luke Skywalker and the Rebels. The only series following an out-and-out hero – or one of the unambiguously “good guys” – is Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Cassian Andor will be the focus of a new Disney+ series.

Rangers of the New Republic had the potential to show us a different side of Star Wars – arguably one closer thematically to the original films, yet still distinct and independent of them. While other shows would look at the underworld of the galaxy, at criminals, or at spies who’ll do anything for their cause, Rangers of the New Republic could’ve been a breath of fresh air. The series could’ve presented an optimistic cast of characters who were genuinely trying to help the new government succeed.

Characters who are too pure and excessively virtuous can be boring, and that would’ve been a pitfall that Rangers of the New Republic would’ve needed to avoid. But had the show managed to walk that line, we might’ve seen something a bit different from Star Wars’ other current and upcoming offerings: a show that would’ve happily looked at the “good guys” as they tried to shore up the New Republic and tackled everything from criminals to ex-Imperial officers.

In part, the decision to cancel Rangers of the New Republic is probably tied to the situation with Cara Dune actress Gina Carano. Though it was never officially stated that the show would star Carano, many fans and commentators assumed that she would have a significant role to play, so following her dismissal from Lucasfilm in the aftermath of some very stupid social media posts, perhaps the show was always living on borrowed time.

We won’t get into the Gina Carano situation here. Suffice to say that anyone with any kind of profile needs to be incredibly careful what they say on social media, and she wasn’t. She upset a lot of people, doubled down on some of her controversial remarks, and that ended up costing her a potential recurring gig with Lucasfilm. She only has herself to blame.

Gina Carano as Cara Dune in *The Mandalorian* Season 1.

I would argue, though, that Rangers of the New Republic didn’t need to be all about Cara Dune. We met a couple of New Republic characters in The Mandalorian, and they could’ve served as a gateway into the show, keeping it connected to The Mandalorian and potentially building up to a crossover event with one or more of the other shows that were in production at the same time.

There was potential in Rangers of the New Republic. Not only was it a series that could’ve been something different from the likes of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett by looking at the post-Return of the Jedi government, but it was also a series that could’ve left familiar characters behind to strike out on its own. All of the other Star Wars projects currently in production have this kind of backwards-looking, nostalgia-heavy focus, and Rangers of the New Republic was one of the few offerings that had the potential to be something a little different. As Star Wars continues to double down on nostalgic throwbacks, I fear we’ll come to regret the cancellation of Rangers of the New Republic.

The Star Wars franchise – including all films and series mentioned above – is the copyright of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The Book of Boba Fett: Thoughts, hopes, and expectations

Sun 03.10.21Fri 15.04.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Wars franchise, including The Mandalorian Seasons 1-2 and Return of the Jedi.

“Mixed feelings” might be the best phrase to describe my attitude toward the upcoming Disney+ Star Wars series The Book of Boba Fett. I have no doubt that the series will do a lot of things well, from visual effects to exciting action sequences. But if you recall my criticisms from 2020 when it was first rumoured that Boba Fett might be included in Season 2 of The Mandalorian, the bare premise of the series is enough to leave me underwhelmed.

Let’s be blunt for a moment. Boba Fett was a dull character whose entire popularity in the early 1980s came from his unique-looking armour. This led to sales of action figures, models, and dolls – and an oversized, undue gravitas given to a minor, one-dimensional foil for Han Solo. Boba Fett does have a unique, cool look, I won’t deny that. But his role in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi was minor, and his death in the latter film was a fittingly unspectacular end for an unspectacular character.

Boba Fett’s popularity stems from toys and action figures. By the way, does anyone else really dislike Pop Vinyl/Funko Pop? I just can’t get on board with the design of practically any of their figures…

However, Boba Fett’s popularity endured over the years, helped in no small part by his character being fleshed out in a fan-fictiony way by writers of the old Expanded Universe books and comics. So by the time of the prequels, George Lucas and others involved in the production of those films clearly felt an obligation to include backstory for him as well.

I don’t hate Boba Fett, but when I watched the Star Wars trilogy for the first time I just didn’t get the hype. Why was this character so remarkable considering he did one thing – captured Han Solo – then died in a pretty stupid way when his jetpack misfired? And he didn’t even capture Han Solo himself, he had to enlist the help of Darth Vader and a whole legion of Stormtroopers. In short: cool-looking armour, but that’s about as much as I can say about Boba Fett in his original incarnation.

Boba Fett’s first appearance in *The Empire Strikes Back*.

However, The Book of Boba Fett isn’t following the character as he appeared in the original films. As I noted in my review of Season 2 of The Mandalorian, the character introduced to us as “Boba Fett” feels a long, long way removed from the bounty hunter we met in The Empire Strikes Back. His entire demeanour was so radically different that I said in my review that the two characters feel entirely separate. The plot of The Mandalorian Season 2 wouldn’t have been any different had that character been given a different name and Boba Fett never been mentioned.

One thing I will credit The Mandalorian’s Boba Fett with is that I felt the character got a more nuanced portrayal than he ever did in the films. There was a sense that this man was a weary veteran, ready to hang up the armour and live a quiet life somewhere. He’d fought all the battles he wanted to fight and was ready to try something new – at least until we saw him in the final moments of the season seemingly intent on seizing control of Tatooine’s underworld.

Boba Fett as he initially appeared in *The Mandalorian* Season 2.

Just like The Rise of Skywalker had done before it with Palpatine, The Mandalorian Season 2 completely ignored what has to be the most important point about Boba Fett: how on earth is he still alive? If the new series can find a way to pull an answer to that question out of its backside that even makes a degree of sense, it’ll have made progress. And I think that’s my biggest single request when it comes to the storyline of The Book of Boba Fett: find some way to give us a plausible explanation for the main character’s survival.

Remember that Boba Fett fell into the gaping mouth of a giant monster in the Tatooine desert. The Sarlaac monster in the Pit of Carkoon was presented as a truly awful torturous death, supposedly taking a long time in its inescapable digestive tract. Jabba the Hutt was said to favour this method of execution, and planned to execute Luke Skywalker and Han Solo there in Return of the Jedi. Boba Fett fell into the monster’s mouth, and that seemed to be a very definitive end for him!

How did Boba Fett survive? Finding a plausible answer is key to the show’s success.

One aspect of the story of The Mandalorian Season 2 has potentially complicated any story of Boba’s escape. The fact that his armour had been lost on Tatooine, recovered by Jawas and later sold to Cobb Vanth clearly indicates that Boba didn’t simply blast his way out of the creature as soon as the battle on Jabba’s barge was over. Because he fell into the pit wearing his armour – and thus carrying at least some of his weapons – the show might’ve been able to argue that he didn’t die and simply shot his way out. But if so, he’d have kept his armour.

So the question of his survival remains, and in the aftermath of just how poorly the awful line “somehow Palpatine returned” went down in The Rise of Skywalker, I can’t imagine that The Book of Boba Fett would try to ignore this point. Even if all we get are a few lines of dialogue saying that he climbed out and was saved by roaming scavengers or Chewbacca’s great-aunt, I think we need some kind of closure before we can take seriously the fact that Boba Fett is back.

Boba Fett, moments before dying like a chump.

Then we come to the premise of the series itself, and this is perhaps what I’m most interested in. One of my biggest disappointments when it came to The Mandalorian was that the show’s basic premise remains unfulfilled despite sounding incredibly promising. I wanted to see “the adventures of a gunslinger away from the reach of the New Republic,” but instead the show brought Baby Yoda, the Force, the Empire, and even Luke Skywalker into play in a story that increasingly felt like Return of the Jedi II as Season 2 wore on.

The Book of Boba Fett promises us the following: “Legendary bounty hunter Boba Fett and mercenary Fennec Shand navigating the galaxy’s underworld when they return to the sands of Tatooine to stake their claim on the territory once ruled by Jabba the Hutt and his crime syndicate.”

Though I stand by my criticisms of the Star Wars franchise making desperate nostalgia plays for characters and settings from the original films, that premise doesn’t sound half bad. Though I don’t want to get my hopes up too high after being burned by The Mandalorian, maybe we can finally get a look at the Star Wars galaxy away from the Force and the Skywalker family.

Hopefully *The Book of Boba Fett* won’t be repeating scenes like this one…

Boba’s survival after falling into the Pit of Carkoon risks coming across as cheap, fan-servicey, and just plain dumb. But if the show can find some way to navigate that sizeable pitfall (pun intended), then Boba Fett could actually prove to be an interesting point-of-view character for exploring the darker side of the Star Wars galaxy.

As an ex-bounty hunter, Boba Fett used to inhabit this seedy underworld that the show’s official description is teasing us with. But as someone who’s been out of action for almost a decade at this point, things have moved on in his absence. The biggest change, most likely, is the fall of the Empire. Without the Empire to crack down on criminals, and with the New Republic taking a different approach, it’s possible that the criminal underworld has grown since Return of the Jedi.

What will the criminal underworld be like after the fall of the Empire?

Boba Fett will have to navigate a changed world, and that offers up a lot of potential for exposition and explanation to be dropped into the series in a way that makes sense. There’s a high probability of learning more about the Star Wars galaxy – and particularly its criminal side – than we ever have before. That idea is definitely an interesting one, and though I wouldn’t personally have chosen to bring Boba Fett back from the dead in order to tell this kind of story, as a concept it’s hard to fault.

As a character, Boba Fett is perhaps open to further exploration. As I noted above, in his original appearances he was fairly one-dimensional, and his role in The Mandalorian Season 2 came with a degree of mystery to it. There’s scope to learn more about Boba Fett the man: who is the person underneath the armour? What drives him? What are his ambitions now that he’s got his armour back and taken over Jabba’s former throne? All of these things could potentially lead to interesting moments of characterisation, and as a concept the idea of an anti-hero or a villain with a heart and understandable motivations can work exceptionally well.

Din Djarin with Boba Fett in *The Mandalorian* Season 2.

All of this could come to pass if the show stays true to its premise! And this is where my concerns kick in. As Boba Fett’s return proves in and of itself, the Star Wars franchise is completely and utterly dependant on its original films and the characters and concepts that were present there. The Mandalorian brought us Baby Yoda, the Force, Ahsoka, the Empire, and Luke Skywalker in its first two seasons – along with dozens of other throwbacks to Star Wars’ past. Some of these elements came close to working, but overall they drowned out any originality the series could’ve had. I fear that The Book of Boba Fett will meet a similar fate.

There are all manner of ways this could happen. Off the top of my head, here are a few: Boba Fett comes into conflict with Luke Skywalker and his new Jedi Order somehow, perhaps even seeking revenge for his encounter with the Sarlacc. Maybe Han Solo will be a target of Boba Fett’s over the course of the show, again looking for revenge. Some other Jedi could emerge, perhaps a character from the prequels or one of the kids’ shows. Boba Fett could encounter Jedi or Sith artefacts, which would bring the Force into the series. And so on. There are many ways that we could see the show fall back on these nostalgia plays and fail to live up to its potential.

Promotional poster for *The Book of Boba Fett*.

I’d love for The Book of Boba Fett to have more to offer than nostalgic throwbacks, good visual effects, and well-constructed moments of action and excitement. Whether it will or not… well, the jury’s still out. I’m hopeful, but cautious.

The Book of Boba Fett exists in a strange space for me. I should feel more excitement for what is only the second ever live-action Star Wars television series, especially considering the huge budget afforded to shows made for Disney+ and the platform’s excellent track record with visual effects. Star Wars has literally never looked better in terms of visuals and special effects, and with the franchise taking a different turn to perhaps visit the seedier underworld in depth for the first time, there are things that pique my interest. I’m just having a hard time jumping on the hype train.

Despite that, I will do my utmost to give The Book of Boba Fett a fair shake. It will premiere on the 29th of December – right in the middle of Star Trek: Discovery’s imminent fourth season. I can’t promise I’ll have time to review every individual episode with so much else happening in December, but I’ll certainly share my thoughts on the series at some point, so I hope you’ll stay tuned for that. I’d love to be able to come back after the show’s first season and say that my fears and doubts were unfounded.

The Book of Boba Fett will premiere on Disney+ on the 29th of December 2021. The Star Wars franchise – including The Book of Boba Fett and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

I really hope the Boba Fett rumour isn’t true…

Sun 10.05.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers ahead for Season 1 of The Mandalorian, as well as minor spoilers for other iterations of the Star Wars franchise.

The Disney+ series The Mandalorian was the first subject I wrote about here on the website after I founded it last year. Suffice to say I found the show disappointing and boring, and a lot of that disappointment stemmed from the fact that the show seemingly promised a new and different look at the Star Wars galaxy, but ended up bringing back overused tropes and sending the characters over already-trodden ground. I wanted something new, a look at the Star Wars galaxy away from the Force and familiar characters, but The Mandalorian’s producers at Disney didn’t have the confidence to make a series that stood on its own.

I spotted a rumour earlier today, which has apparently been doing the rounds over the last 24 hours or so, that Boba Fett will be included in The Mandalorian’s second season. And when I saw that I sighed with disappointment and said “really?”

Boba Fett, mere moments before his death in *Return of the Jedi*.

While it is unconfirmed at this stage and should be taken with a pinch of salt, this rumour has been picked up by a number of reputable news outlets and is at least credible. While I generally avoid rumours here, this is one that I wanted to tackle. The Mandalorian was disappointing to me personally, for the reasons I’ve already laid out. I also found Pedro Pascal’s protagonist impossible to get behind, as he was a blank slate – a helmet-wearing, seldom-speaking, monotone bag of nothing. With no personality came no motivation – why did he do any of the things he did, like turn on his client to save the child? The answer seemed to be “because a room full of TV show writers decided that’s what he was going to do.” There was also The Mandalorian’s runtime – for a flagship series, thirty-minute episodes is pretty pathetic. And when practically all of those episodes would have benefited greatly from a few extra scenes providing background, explanation, or even just to show the passage of time from one moment to the next, the show felt poorly-edited or that corners had been cut.

But the worst part was the introduction of the child – nicknamed “baby Yoda” by the internet. The revelation that the Mandalorian’s target was a child is not in itself an issue. In fact it’s a major driving force for the rest of the season’s plot. Nor is my issue with the idea that the child is a member of Yoda’s species. That’s a little unoriginal, but there were always going to be little callbacks to other aspects of the franchise present in The Mandalorian. What bugged me was that, inside of two episodes, the Force comes back into play. The Force. In a show that promised to take a look at the Star Wars galaxy away from the Jedi and Sith. The Mandalorian told us it was a show about a lone gunslinger far beyond the reach of the Republic, and that premise sounded amazing. The Jedi and Sith are a tiny minority of the denizens of the Star Wars galaxy, and seeing how the 99% live, far away from the Force, is something that appealed to me. That concept still does – but it isn’t what The Mandalorian delivered.

Recent Star Wars projects – practically all of them, in fact – have overplayed the nostalgia card. The Force Awakens and of course The Rise of Skywalker may seem the most egregious, but there’s also Solo: A Star Wars Story and the Darth Vader sequences in Rogue One. I named the latter my favourite film of the last decade, but those sequences detracted from it, at least for me.

I would have preferred to see *Rogue One* stand on its own without Darth Vader – the story was good enough.

The Mandalorian has the same issue. At a number of points in its short runtime it strayed across that invisible line which divides a nod and a wink to returning fans from boring unoriginality. The overuse of nostalgia, such as in the sequences with the Jawas and their sandcrawler and epitomised by the child being a Force-user, went a long way to spoiling the series for me. The return of Boba Fett would just be another example of how the show’s producers don’t trust any Star Wars story to succeed without the crutch of nostalgia.

I really do find that to be disappointing – and it’s apparent, too, that Disney has learnt nothing from the overwhelmingly negative response fans had to the overuse of nostalgia in The Rise of Skywalker if it really is their intention to bring Boba Fett into this series. The only reason why The Mandalorian Season 2 was something I was even considering watching was because I hoped that we might finally get to see some character development and to see Pedro Pascal shine, finally bringing the nameless, bland protagonist to life and giving him some colour. But the Mandalorian is, at best, a pale clone of Boba Fett – even down to the identical armour design – and standing him up alongside the original would not make for a good comparison.

*The Mandalorian’*s unnamed and boring protagonist.

Boba Fett was himself an uninteresting character in Star Wars – his expanded role, such as his cameo in the prequels, was due simply to the popularity of action figures and merchandise. But despite that, he’s an established character now, someone we’ve seen as a child and as an adult, and while fortunately his role in the franchise’s awful Expanded Universe has been erased, he will still stand up next to the nameless protagonist of The Mandalorian and draw positive comparisons.

The Star Wars franchise has never been able to successfully move on from its first three films. The prequels told the backstory of some of the characters in the originals. The sequels (two of them, anyway) just remade those same films. And of the two spin-offs, one was a prequel focusing solely on one of the main characters, and the other was also a prequel which led directly to the plot of the first film. There is scope within Star Wars to move away from A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. But so far, no one has tried. Every major Star Wars project has relied excessively on its first three films. The characters, themes, and storylines have been rehashed so many times that at this point they really are flogging a dead horse. I long for some genuine originality in the Star Wars universe, and to see a project which finally steps out of the shadow of those three films. As wonderful as the original trilogy is, Star Wars should be able to be more than that.

The *Knights of the Old Republic* video games told a story that didn’t rely on the original Star Was films.

Knights of the Old Republic was a duology of Star Wars video games from 2003-04. These games are among my favourites, and are also among my favourite stories told in the Star Wars galaxy. Why? Because they’re original. They take an original premise and an original setting, ignoring the first three films entirely, and tell an exciting and engaging pair of related stories. Knights of the Old Republic is basically the only property from the old Expanded Universe worth reviving, largely because of its uniqueness and originality.

Why can’t The Mandalorian be as bold as that? Why do they feel the need to rely so heavily on what we’ve already seen, bringing the Force and Boba Fett into the show? The premise sounded so interesting and genuinely different, yet what we got was bland and dripping in cheap nostalgia. The return of Boba Fett – setting aside the dumb story point of reviving yet another dead character, which is a whole issue in itself – just stinks. It’s yet another example of the higher-ups at Disney not understanding Star Wars. There’s a whole galaxy to explore with trillions of inhabitants and perhaps thousands of years of history to dig into. Yet time and again, they drag the franchise back to the same handful of characters and the same overtrodden ground. I really hope this Boba Fett rumour turns out to be untrue.

The Star Wars franchise – including The Mandalorian – is the copyright of Disney and Lucasfilm. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.