This was the series everyone wantedā¦ until they actually got it.
God, that was genuinely awful, wasn't it? I almost think I owe the Prequel Trilogy an apology for laughing at the Plinkett reviews. Disney has done what it does best, ruin something you like by "Disneyfying" it.
The biggest problem is with the protagonist. Boba Fett, the guy who had 25 words of dialog in The Empire Strikes Back before he was taken out like a chump in Return of the Jedi, remained an inexplicable fan favorite for decades. So, they come up with a convoluted reason why he wasnāt digested by the Sarlac to launch this series where he goes from villain to anti-hero to hero with no plausible explanation. The closest we get to this is he and Ferrec Shand talking about how they are so much smarter than the people who hire them, so they should be in charge. That COULD have been interesting if either of them had been developed as characters.
If you wanted a series about the "Bounty Hunter With A Heart," you had that with the Mandalorian.
The Disney Factor
I am not a fan of Disney. It takes kind of grim stories and tries to give them happy endings. The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Jungle Book come to mind. Victor Hugo and Rudyard Kipling would be horrified by the sweetness. So they take this character, who was one of the bad guys of the Original Trilogy and turn him into a good guy. One who cares about the cybernetic street urchins of Mos Epsa. Someone who forms a bond with the Tusken Raiders, which even the series heroes saw as sub-human.
Fan Service, fan Service everywhere!!!
A sign this was going too much for fan service, we paid a visit to Tochi Station, the place where Luke wanted to get some power converters to hang out with his friends who ended up on the cutting room floor. Well, heck, we got his friends back, still hanging out at Tochi station three years later, but played by different actors because it's actually 45 years later. We got all sorts of characters shoehorned in from other SW media. Black Kryshtan, Cad Bane, most of the cast of the Mandalorian.
Temura Morrison canāt act- and heās too old. (61 opposed to 36)
Okay, I'm going to go total nerd here. In Attack of the Clones, it was established that Boba was a 10-year-old clone of Jango Fett. The events of Return of the Jedi happen 26 years after the events of Clones. This means that Boba should only be about 36. But the actor playing him is 61, and overweight. I guess we can call him "Boba Fat ."I mean, it makes sense to use that actor because he's the actor who played Jango (and all the Clone Troopers). This is a case where continuity is not your friend.
The problem is that Morrison is just not that good of an actor. He's okay to play a minor background character, but less so to lead a series with a complex protagonist. Seriously, I never got a feeling for what he was going through in what could be called a character arc. Why did a ruthless Bounty Hunter become a Benevolent Dictator of the ass-end of the galaxy? Well, keep guessing because this series won't tell you.
Ming-Na Wen can act but wasn't well used, and her character made no sense.
Morrisonās costar in this show is Ming-Na Wen playing Ferrrec Shand. Wen actually can act, and despite being only three years younger, she's in really great shape. Then they give her a character who makes no sense. Boba saves her life by replacing her vital organs with mechanical parts, and she follows him around like a loyal puppy. You think she'd be upset that he made her life a living hell. I mean, she has pistons where her intestines should be, and it just looks painful.
She seems to be the one with a clear plan, makes sound decisions and takes decisive action, so why isnāt she the leader of this benevolent crime organization?
Lack of a clear villain
Star Wars is famous for its villains! Heck, it's Space Wizards vs. Space Nazis. How could that not be awesome? Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine are cultural icons, and many other antagonists are just as well knownā¦ Darth Maul, Count Dooku, Grand Moff Tarkin, Kylo Ren, and Boba Fett himself.
And who was the main antagonist in this series? The Pikes? They were boring. Cad Bane? He didn't show up until the end, and if you didnāt watch the clone wars series, youād have no idea who he was. (It really didnāt help is that he still looked like a CGI character).
I was watching the Book of Boba Fett, and Mando broke out.
This kind of annoyed me. About Episode V, we suddenly got Season 2.5 of The Mandalorian. And he brought back all the characters from that showā¦ the Marshall, the Mechanic Lady, Deep Fake Luke, and of course, their most marketable character, Baby Yoda. ("Merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made!!!")
If you wanted to make Season3 of Mando, do that. Sticking it in the middle of this makes no sense. Did we really need 10 minutes of Mando checking his luggage at the spaceport?
āIf thereās a bright spot in the universe, you are on the planet itās farthest fromā ā Luke Skywalker,
I canāt just fault BOBF for this, as the entire franchise places too much importance on the planet Tatooine. It gets visited in 6 of the 11 movies. That said, in terms of stakes, "who gets to be the crime boss of Tatooineā just doesnāt seem to be that important as part of your multi-generational, galaxy-spanning epic.
On a related note, where are our heroes from the Original Trilogy? You think that if word got back to the New Republic that Boba Fett was alive and well and trying to establish a crime empire, they'd send someone to do something about that. Maybe someone who remembers when this jerk froze him in carbonite. Then heās teaming up with a notorious assassin who also has a bounty on her head?
And then the finale.
Then we get to the finale, which just brought to mind one image. A five-year-old on a sugar rush, banging his action figures together. "And then Boba Fett comes out riding a Rancor, and it breaks the Droideka! Bash, Bash, Bash!ā (His nerd parents look on in horror as any resale value is lost!)
I am reminded of the great admonition of Russian author Anton Chekhov, who said that if you introduce a Rancor in your third episode, someone better be riding it in your last episode. Or something like that.
Me, I just have so many questions, like did Boba have this Rancor hidden somewhere, or did he go all the way back to Jabba's Castle to get it and then get back really fast.
But after the mind-numbing action, we get to the Disney Happy Endingā¢. Everyone is happy and Boba is beloved by the people of Tantooine! I guess that makes up for all the people he killed or hunted down for the Empire or Crime Lords.
God, that was genuinely awful, wasn't it? I almost think I owe the Prequel Trilogy an apology for laughing at the Plinkett reviews. Disney has done what it does best, ruin something you like by "Disneyfying" it.
The biggest problem is with the protagonist. Boba Fett, the guy who had 25 words of dialog in The Empire Strikes Back before he was taken out like a chump in Return of the Jedi, remained an inexplicable fan favorite for decades. So, they come up with a convoluted reason why he wasnāt digested by the Sarlac to launch this series where he goes from villain to anti-hero to hero with no plausible explanation. The closest we get to this is he and Ferrec Shand talking about how they are so much smarter than the people who hire them, so they should be in charge. That COULD have been interesting if either of them had been developed as characters.
If you wanted a series about the "Bounty Hunter With A Heart," you had that with the Mandalorian.
The Disney Factor
I am not a fan of Disney. It takes kind of grim stories and tries to give them happy endings. The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Jungle Book come to mind. Victor Hugo and Rudyard Kipling would be horrified by the sweetness. So they take this character, who was one of the bad guys of the Original Trilogy and turn him into a good guy. One who cares about the cybernetic street urchins of Mos Epsa. Someone who forms a bond with the Tusken Raiders, which even the series heroes saw as sub-human.
Fan Service, fan Service everywhere!!!
A sign this was going too much for fan service, we paid a visit to Tochi Station, the place where Luke wanted to get some power converters to hang out with his friends who ended up on the cutting room floor. Well, heck, we got his friends back, still hanging out at Tochi station three years later, but played by different actors because it's actually 45 years later. We got all sorts of characters shoehorned in from other SW media. Black Kryshtan, Cad Bane, most of the cast of the Mandalorian.
Temura Morrison canāt act- and heās too old. (61 opposed to 36)
Okay, I'm going to go total nerd here. In Attack of the Clones, it was established that Boba was a 10-year-old clone of Jango Fett. The events of Return of the Jedi happen 26 years after the events of Clones. This means that Boba should only be about 36. But the actor playing him is 61, and overweight. I guess we can call him "Boba Fat ."I mean, it makes sense to use that actor because he's the actor who played Jango (and all the Clone Troopers). This is a case where continuity is not your friend.
The problem is that Morrison is just not that good of an actor. He's okay to play a minor background character, but less so to lead a series with a complex protagonist. Seriously, I never got a feeling for what he was going through in what could be called a character arc. Why did a ruthless Bounty Hunter become a Benevolent Dictator of the ass-end of the galaxy? Well, keep guessing because this series won't tell you.
Ming-Na Wen can act but wasn't well used, and her character made no sense.
Morrisonās costar in this show is Ming-Na Wen playing Ferrrec Shand. Wen actually can act, and despite being only three years younger, she's in really great shape. Then they give her a character who makes no sense. Boba saves her life by replacing her vital organs with mechanical parts, and she follows him around like a loyal puppy. You think she'd be upset that he made her life a living hell. I mean, she has pistons where her intestines should be, and it just looks painful.
She seems to be the one with a clear plan, makes sound decisions and takes decisive action, so why isnāt she the leader of this benevolent crime organization?
Lack of a clear villain
Star Wars is famous for its villains! Heck, it's Space Wizards vs. Space Nazis. How could that not be awesome? Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine are cultural icons, and many other antagonists are just as well knownā¦ Darth Maul, Count Dooku, Grand Moff Tarkin, Kylo Ren, and Boba Fett himself.
And who was the main antagonist in this series? The Pikes? They were boring. Cad Bane? He didn't show up until the end, and if you didnāt watch the clone wars series, youād have no idea who he was. (It really didnāt help is that he still looked like a CGI character).
I was watching the Book of Boba Fett, and Mando broke out.
This kind of annoyed me. About Episode V, we suddenly got Season 2.5 of The Mandalorian. And he brought back all the characters from that showā¦ the Marshall, the Mechanic Lady, Deep Fake Luke, and of course, their most marketable character, Baby Yoda. ("Merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made!!!")
If you wanted to make Season3 of Mando, do that. Sticking it in the middle of this makes no sense. Did we really need 10 minutes of Mando checking his luggage at the spaceport?
āIf thereās a bright spot in the universe, you are on the planet itās farthest fromā ā Luke Skywalker,
I canāt just fault BOBF for this, as the entire franchise places too much importance on the planet Tatooine. It gets visited in 6 of the 11 movies. That said, in terms of stakes, "who gets to be the crime boss of Tatooineā just doesnāt seem to be that important as part of your multi-generational, galaxy-spanning epic.
On a related note, where are our heroes from the Original Trilogy? You think that if word got back to the New Republic that Boba Fett was alive and well and trying to establish a crime empire, they'd send someone to do something about that. Maybe someone who remembers when this jerk froze him in carbonite. Then heās teaming up with a notorious assassin who also has a bounty on her head?
And then the finale.
Then we get to the finale, which just brought to mind one image. A five-year-old on a sugar rush, banging his action figures together. "And then Boba Fett comes out riding a Rancor, and it breaks the Droideka! Bash, Bash, Bash!ā (His nerd parents look on in horror as any resale value is lost!)
I am reminded of the great admonition of Russian author Anton Chekhov, who said that if you introduce a Rancor in your third episode, someone better be riding it in your last episode. Or something like that.
Me, I just have so many questions, like did Boba have this Rancor hidden somewhere, or did he go all the way back to Jabba's Castle to get it and then get back really fast.
But after the mind-numbing action, we get to the Disney Happy Endingā¢. Everyone is happy and Boba is beloved by the people of Tantooine! I guess that makes up for all the people he killed or hunted down for the Empire or Crime Lords.
