Tag: Book of Boba Fett

By: “The Watchman”

Surprise, surprise – we made it to the final episode! I wasn’t sure I could hold on after the bantha fodder that was the start of this series, but after the refreshment of what was essentially “The Mandalorian” Season 3 taking up Episodes 5 and 6, we made it to the ninth inning, ready to see if Boba knocks one out of the park to turn things around for the home team. How’d he do? Was the Force strong with this episode?

[MOSTLY SPOILER FREE REVIEW]

This is a “Mostly Spoiler Free Review”, so I will talk about different elements of the show without discussing almost any specific plot points. This is a review for Episode 7, however, so there WILL be spoilers for previous episodes as we set the stage for what happened this week. If you are not caught up through Episode 6 before reading this review, you might want to do that first.

If you’ve read my other reviews of this series, you know that I basically hated everything about Episodes 1 through 4 with few exceptions. I felt that the show was stupidly written, with characters doing things that made no sense and convenience being used to drive the plot more than anything realistic or believable. Boba Fett seemed very “Disneyfied”, not even allowed to fire a gun half the time, and scolding Fennec Shand for using the mere appearance of her pistol in its holster to strongarm her way through the Mayor’s obnoxious assistant.

Episode 1 was mostly Boba Fett standing around smiling with his helmet off while nothing interesting happened. Episode 2 was a little better, having a satisfying training arc between Boba Fett and some Tusken Raiders that ended in a fun and interesting battle against a train that made me much more optimistic for the future of the show, even if the whole premise of the Tusken vs. train battle was nonsensical if you stopped to think about it for more than two seconds.

Episode 3 was awful, with cartoonish characters doing cartoonish things. (The introduction of the Mods as major characters was definitely a low point for the series.) Episode 4 tried to, at last, explain some of Boba Fett’s motivations and thoughts behind his actions, which were mostly a mystery up to this point despite us now being halfway through the season, but it was a very boring episode, and Boba was shown up repeatedly by Fennec Shand in-between explaining his very generic character motivations, making him look basically useless (as usual) in his own show.

Episode 5 did not even have Boba Fett in it and, unsurprisingly, turned out to be amazing as a result. The Episode started with the Mandalorian cutting people apart with the Darksaber before reuniting and then splitting up again with his old Mandalorian crew after an awesome traditional duel for his new Kyber crystal weapon. He gets a new ship, a heavily souped up Naboo starfighter, before Fennec Shand shows up to recruit him at the end, Din Djarin actually refusing her money and agreeing to help his friend Boba Fett for free.

Episode 6 was even better than Episode 5, if you can believe that, featuring a very well written Luke Skywalker that felt exactly like Luke Skywalker should feel, training Grogu in the way of the Force. The Mandalorian comes to see Grogu only to be turned away, not by Luke directly, but by the reappearance of Ahsoka Tano. She questions Mando about his reasons for wanting to see Grogu, warning him that his very presence there could disrupt the Child’s training. This outing also reintroduced Marshall Cobb Vanth and an interesting side character I am told is from other good Star Wars shows (the blue bug-faced outlaw), featuring a wild west style shootout between them that was satisfying, while once again treating Boba Fett himself as nothing more than the most minor of side characters in his own show.

Episode 7 was a mix of all these things, the good and the bad, thoroughly shaken up and poured out together into a single not quite 100% cohesive Smoothie King smoothie. It had plot points that made me shake my head and say “Really?” out loud, as well as moments that made me genuinely cheer at the screen with excitement. It did a very good job of tying all the different concepts and characters introduced throughout the star-studded run of Boba Fett’s little Disney+ outing into a single narrative arrangement that, more or less, worked to create a decent end to the series. Unlike the Star Wars sequel trilogy, which started out so-so but ended horribly, “The Book of Boba Fett” has played out much more like George Lucas’ earlier Prequels, beginning very rough, but, in the end, eeking out a minor overall win after some rather well-crafted fight scenes.

I was really hoping Han Solo would show up at the end, as that was the rumor flying around since his name appeared on the IMDB cast list for the episode, but, alas, that was just a rumor. Either that, or he was removed following the last minute changes and reshoots also rumored to have been taking place on Episode 7 over the last few days to try and salvage the show’s reputation. (If that’s what happened, they worked. Of the five ‘Book of Boba Fett’ episodes that were actually about Boba Fett, this is, by far, my favorite.) I’m also a little disappointed that we see Grogu’s choice between a Beskar shirt Mando acquired for him (representing Grogu’s desire to return to the Mandalorian at the cost of abandoning his Jedi training) and Yoda’s old lightsaber that Luke was offering him (representing a chance for Grogu to set aside his past and remain as Luke’s student until he became a great Jedi Master), with Baby Yoda choosing the Beskar shirt, forcing Luke to send him back to his buddy Mando via an empty X-Wing flown to Tatooine by R2-D2.

Choosing the lightsaber would have erased the Disney trilogy by making Grogu into Luke’s first student instead of Ben Solo (“Kylo Ren”), which would be a big plus for all true Star Wars fans in my book, but Grogu choosing the Beskar shirt and returning to Mando is what I was expecting for a couple of big reasons. Mainly, it would be a little financially silly for Disney, even if they are planning to retcon the Sequel Trilogy someday (which is very possible), to remove the money-making mascot, Grogu, at the heart of The Mandalorian from his own show, and risk hurting the bottom dollar of their merchandise sales going into Season 3. Even worse, such a decision would risk damage to The Mandalorian show itself, which is the life support keeping Star Wars alive at this point. (Clearly, “The Book of Boba Fett” isn’t exactly going to be winning awards any time soon for its storyline.)

Reluctantly returning to “The Book of Boba Fett”, there’s really not a whole lot more I can say about the final episode without going into spoilers, so I’ll have to keep the rest of my review a little brief. I am currently planning to do a spoiler-filled “Season 1 Retrospective” in the next week, in which I will breakdown the whole series with a little more specificity, but, for tonight, I think the most telling thing I can say about ‘The Book of Boba Fett” is that, even after watching and mostly enjoying this week’s episode, the biggest thing on my mind immediately afterwards is “The Mandalorian” and the future of Star Wars as effected by “The Mandalorian”. What Grogu and Din Djarin do is a hundred times more interesting to me than anything Boba Fett does, even if Boba mustered up a literal army of rancors and ex-Wookie gladiators to rush to his side and help him kick criminal butt across half the galaxy.

Din feels much more like Star Wars than the literal character he’s based off from the original Star Wars trilogy. Let that sink in before you keep reading. Din feels much more like Star Wars than this version of Boba Fett does. Again, Episode 7 is definitely worth watching if you’ve kept up with the series up to this point. It is a decent episode in my opinion, with some fun moments, including several epic fight scenes that have to be seen to be believed. It also has some stupid moments, too, though, mostly featuring the Mods, or Boba Fett being shown up by Fennec and/or the Mods. Overall, I am glad to have seen it, and, with the addition of Episodes 5 and 6 to help me make it all the way to the end, this “satisfying enough” conclusion to the whole affair makes me glad that I watched “The Book of Boba Fett”, even if some episodes (Episodes 1 and 3 especially) were just painful to get through. Let’s just say I hope there’s not a second season of this, and wrap things up for the night on a mostly positive note, shall we?

Final Score for Episode 7, the Season Finale: 7/10

“A mixed bag conclusion to ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ that wraps up the show in a ‘satisfying enough’ way as to justify all of the plot threads woven together throughout the mostly long and boring episodes that came before it, excluding those focused entirely on The Mandalorian which were anomalies. Worth watching if you stayed committed to the series, but nothing you’ll be ranting and raving about with your friends a week from now. At best, this episode reveals ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ to be a well-crafted plug for Season 3 of ‘The Mandalorian’. At worst, it confirms it to be a pale imitation with far less imagination and energy than the latest adventures of Grogu and Din Djarin, which you are left immediately wanting to see more of.”

Overall Series Rating (The Average of My Scores for All Seven Episodes of Season 1): 6.5/10

“Mostly boring and stupid, ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ is not a fun Star Wars adventure until the Mandalorian arrives to interject some real character and personality into the ‘bland as sand’ universe that Disney is attempting to create around their new, neutered version of Boba Fett. While it has some interesting characters and moments, contrivance dictates many of the show’s major plot points, and the conclusion has just as many of the cringeworthy moments from the series’ early episodes as it does the ‘winner takes all’ action of the Mandalorian – Season 3 insert episodes. Overall, worth watching for Star Wars fans, even if just to see Episodes 5 and 6 and nothing else. It may be hard to get through Episodes 1-3, however.”

By: “The Watchman”

It’s that time again! Boba Fett aired this Wednesday, and I… couldn’t bring myself to talk about it for a few days. Clearly, I was stunned by this episode’s greatness. Let’s break it down. May the Force be with me, I’m going to put this episode on in the background while writing my review to get it fresh in my mind again.

[MOSTLY SPOILER FREE REVIEW]

This is a “Mostly Spoiler Free Review”, so I will talk about different elements of the show without discussing almost any specific plot points. This is a review for Episode 3, however, so there WILL be spoilers for previous episodes as we set the stage for what happened this week. If you are not caught up through Episode 2 before reading this review, you might want to do that first.

Episode 2 ended with Boba Fett celebrating with his band of Tusken Raiders after taking out the random sand train that was shooting them for no reason. It never made any sense that the train was going out of its way to attack local Tuskens who didn’t even seem to have noticed the train before being pelted with unprovoked blaster fire from a distance, since the Raiders didn’t seem to have any way to keep up with or fight back against the train without Boba’s help. (The Tuskens could shoot the aliens in the train, but only after the aliens opened the windows of the train to shoot at the Tuskens first.) It was fun and satisfying to watch the Raiders take out the train, but it never really made sense why any of this was happening in the first place. Tibanna gas for blasters isn’t free, nor are the lives of train personnel exposed to hostile fire for no reason.

Episode 3 starts out with Milton from “Office Space” (or Bill from “King of the Hill”, if you prefer) telling Boba Fett, “Well, with apologies, sir… no one respects you. […] It’s true.” Yes, it IS true, unfortunately. Everyone seems to blatantly insult and disrespect Boba Fett constantly in this show, and he just shrugs it off with a mild-mannered “Watch your tongue.” before doing literally nothing threatening to back up his half-hearted complaint. (Remember, that this man is supposed to be the shady king of a massive, planetary criminal empire.)

Like we saw in Episode 1 with the Gamorrean Guards, Boba Fett again recruits allies of questionable loyalty and talent in the beginning of this episode, which, like the Gamorreans, prove insanely useful and absolutely invaluable to his survival within a few scenes of him hiring them. Well, that’s convenient. Good thing they were much more useful than they seemed, and also completely 100% trustworthy. Otherwise, the series would be over, because Boba Fett nearly dies constantly in this show. He seems to lose a lot more one-on-one fights than he wins. A LOT more. (I guess the same could be said for his appearance in the original Star Wars movie trilogy, but he wasn’t a main character in the original trilogy like he is here…)

Without spoiling the plot of this episode any further, I’d really like to just say that this show, at least in Episode 3, has a LOT of good ideas. A lot of characters and situations they introduce are really interesting (on paper), with a lot of potential, but are just written and executed so poorly as to drain all excitement out of them. So many things happen which are unpredictable, but which make literally no sense at all if you stop to think about them. At the same time, many other plot beats occur which do make sense, but which are bland, boring, and telegraphed a mile away, robbing them of any sense of anticipation or joy.

This show is really establishing itself to be a bland show that wants so much to do cool things, but literally has no idea how to make them happen. It’s like a writer with writer’s block that knows that he wants to create a novel about something, has a great starting idea for it, but blanks out every time he puts pen to paper and just writes whatever. You may be able to get away with that in “The Mandalorian”, when you just can point at “The Child” doing something cute to distract the audience that your plot is sometimes a little shallow, but there is not a single character as genuinely heartwarming and sweet as Baby Yoda for this show to lean on in this way. As a result, the show just tries to do more, and everything it does is cliché.

This week’s episode is not as bad as the show’s premier, but not as good as last week’s episode, either. I honestly don’t know how much longer I can even continue to watch this show. I don’t look forward to it, and it is genuinely painful sometimes to watch. I paused this week’s episode several times to shout at the TV “What? Are you kidding me? That is so stupid!”, usually when some idiot kid with a motorcycle proved to be a loyal, experienced fighter on the tier of some of the best assassins and bounty hunters in the known galaxy. Is this really the best that Boba Fett can find to assemble a criminal empire with? If all his opponents are non-threats like the mayor’s secretary (Oh no! He might reschedule your meeting with the mayor this week! Such inconvenience! The monster!) and the do-nothing Hutt twins, then I guess street thugs, failed pig guards, and whoever else he adds to his little rejects menagerie next week might really be good enough to build an empire with.

The Mandalorian would not take half the crap that Boba Fett puts up with, and the Mandalorian is an honorable fighter living by a strict code. Whereas, again, Boba Fett is supposed to be a heartless bounty hunter only beginning to live by any real morality after nearly dying following his servitude to the repulsive Jabba the Hutt which included teaming up with the wicked Darth Vader and turning Han Solo into an ugly modern art piece. This version of Boba Fett wouldn’t freeze a mouse in carbonite without first giving it fifty chances first to say it was sorry for eating his cheese sandwich. Who wrote this crap? Oh, right, according to the credits, Jon Favreau wrote it himself.

That explains… so much.

Final Score: 5/10

“Another bland outing with lots of good ideas executed in the worst ways possible to rob them of all intelligence and emotion. Terrible writing continues to turn the most badass bounty hunter in the galaxy into a Mandalorian-armored Dr. Phil. I hope it doesn’t get a Season 2…”

Sorry if this review is really negative. Like I said in Episode 1’s review, I really wanted this show to be good, and I am very frustrated to have basically given up on it at this point. Now, I just want the show to be over so maybe a better The Mandalorian spinoff can take its place. (Bring back Kara Dune!) Still, I will try my best to be fair next week.

By: “The Watchman”

“Fate sometimes steps in to save the wretched.” – a fitting first line for the second episode of a show that had such a bad opening. If you read last week’s review, you know I didn’t think much of the show’s premier, but hoped things would turn themselves around. Good news: The episode was, overall, much better than last week’s, and I actually enjoyed it! Bad news: The show still has a long way to go to be worth watching outside of hardcore fans like me.

[MOSTLY SPOILER FREE REVIEW]

This is what I call a “Mostly Spoiler Free Review”, so I will try to talk about elements of the show without discussing any specific plot points. Now that we are in Episode 2, though, you may encounter spoilers for Episode 1 as I set the stage for this week’s episode. If you have not watched last week’s premier yet, you may want to do that before reading this review. You have been warned!

Last week, the show left off with Boba Fett standing triumphantly on the outskirts of a Tusken Raider camp with a big crap-eating grin on his face like he had accomplished something of value. (He had not.) This week, we jump back to the present day, and continue to follow Boba Fett’s efforts to establish himself as the new Jabba the Hutt. This starts with an interrogation scene where, of course, no one is really interrogated.

As we saw with Episode 1, the first half of this week’s outing is very boring and predictable, with watered down Disneyfied ideas of criminality and cheesy, unintimidating “tough guy” lines that make the entire affair feel like a kid’s show. The “twists” are visible a mile away, and Boba Fett is still refusing to kill anyone ever. I am happy to report that one person is allowed to fire a gun (once) during this sequence, however, which is a 100% improvement from last week’s Taekwondo lessons. Still, I found myself saying over and over, “Why doesn’t he just shoot him?” “Why doesn’t he just shoot her?’ and seeing Boba Fett as kind of a whitewashed (cowardly?) copy of himself for constantly letting people push him around and put him down when he is supposed to be some kind of shadowy criminal overlord. (Compare this to a show like “The Blacklist”.) Why would anyone follow such a leader?

When the show shifts back to Boba Fett’s memories of the past, I nearly lost it. I hated almost every aspect of the whole Tusken Raider affair last week. None of it made any sense, nor did it have any real dialogue to help explain it. It was mostly just Boba Fett walking silently on sand and it was horrible. That is how I felt this week, too, until… things suddenly took a turn for the interesting a few minutes into the flashback. Before I knew it, different characters were, at last, communicating with each other, interesting goals and stakes were being established, guns were now allowed to be fired, Boba Fett was doing something other than standing around stiffly like he got Botox on his whole body last month, and I was enjoying myself!

When he’s not getting constantly attacked, beaten up, and tied up by his enemies, this version of Boba Fett is a surprisingly interesting character! (Who knew?) Without getting into significant spoilers of what happens next, let me simply say that events in the past (“the dreams”) finally have some non-laughable action in them and the relationship build-up between Boba and the Tuskens begins to pay off for him. Even so, the plot still has a lot of coincidence, nonsensical motives, and cheesy dialogue that keeps even this interesting second half of the episode from being something truly special. If this were not a Star Wars show, I would not have cared enough to get invested in the story.

This is Star Wars, however, and the lead character is the amazing Boba Fett (more or less). As a result, I ended up liking this week’s episode more than I disliked it. The first half of the episode I would only give a 5/10 to, but the latter half is a solid 7/10. I must say I am surprised that the part of this week’s episode I liked the most (“the dreams”) was the part of last week’s episode that I hated the most. Overall, the episode was not terrible. Let’s hope it keeps improving!

Final Score: 6/10

“A divided episode, starting out boring like Episode 1, but ending on a high note that leaves a pleasant taste in the mouth, despite having more than a few lingering flaws.”

By: “The Watchman”

Boba Fett is back, as the Mandalorian’s first official spin-off begins. Expectations are high among Star Wars fans, including myself, as the Mandalorian and its legacy remain the only legitimate remnant of Star Wars to be born in this new age of haphazard sequel trilogies and “High Republic” nonsense. So, how did it do? How is the first series to focus on one of the biggest bad asses in all of science fiction? Well… in a word? Boring.

[MOSTLY SPOILER FREE REVIEW]

Starting out promising as we literally watch Boba Fett tear his way out of the innards of the Sarlacc following the events of “Return of the Jedi”, the story really goes nowhere after that for the entirety of the show’s first episode. Most of the show is just people walking around, standing around, and other time wasters. This walking and standing around is usually accompanied with no dialogue whatsoever, or with small bursts of untranslated alien mumblings. This air of silence works well with the Mandalorian because he’s usually doing something badass and crazy every couple of minutes. Boba Fett, however… is mostly just being silent. At one point, the episode replaces the characters standing and walking around in the sand with them quietly digging in the sand, and I got so bored that I literally took out my cell phone and started texting my friends asking if they had seen the episode yet (and asking them if it gets any better). And this is coming from a guy who made a Star Wars website when he was 12 that is still on the web if you know where to look for it.

What really irritated me the most about the episode, though, was the total lack of blasters. For some reason, no one uses a blaster in this episode. At all. Not one time. Boba Fett uses a missile or two, but the biggest, meanest, toughest bounty hunter in the entire Star Wars galaxy is apparently not allowed to use guns anymore, or, so it seems, as every battle sequence was just people swinging at each other with swords and sticks, or, worse, doing Power Rangers style kung fu kicks and flips. I think I literally said out loud “What is this shit?” when I started watching a trained sniper assassin (Fennec) start flipping and jumping around like a bad 90’s comic book supervillain to deal with people trying to kill her, instead of… I don’t know… just shooting them? It was utterly absurd.

Boba Fett looks really badass in his armor, I’ll give him that. If he’d keep his helmet on and actually use his blaster once in a while, he’d be pretty intimidating. I want this show to be good, and it still has time to improve. Nothing in the episode ruined the character or the story in a way that can’t recover 100% if things are different starting in Episode 2. However, there is one other issue with the show that’s going to need to change for me to really get on board with it, and that’s the fact that, well… Boba Fett is just way too nice. Like super nice. Nicer than the Mandalorian. Yet he’s supposed to be, in his own words, a “crime lord”. He’s supposed to be a fearless antihero that wants to turn a new leaf, but still sits on the throne of the corrupt and vile criminal underground of Hutt-stamped Tatooine. Instead, he spends the entire episode sparing people who blatantly insult him, unconditionally trusting people that he literally just met and hired, being humble, talking endlessly about loyalty and respect, taking off his protective helmet, and avoiding killing people around him at all costs, even assassins. Oh, and being beaten up, tied up, weak, and wounded. That happens to Boba a lot in this episode, too.

Overall, like I said, the show has a LOT of flaws. Nothing in the show was so bad as to ruin the character of Boba Fett, or stop the potential for the show to completely turn things around. That said, I didn’t enjoy Episode 1 AT ALL. I didn’t completely hate it, but I was both bored and irritated from the very start, and, by the end of the episode, I had almost completely tuned out. I hated the final sequence, and the only real enemy of consequence that Boba Fett encounters in the whole thing is a creature that looked, again, like a monster out of Power Rangers conjured up by Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd. I was almost shocked at the end of the episode to not see Jason David Frank step out from behind a sand dune and shout “It’s Morphin’ Time” as a cliffhanger for Episode 2.

I am still looking forward to the next episode as I honestly and truly hope that The Book of Boba Fett will improve. (I might be a little heartbroken if it doesn’t.) There is absolutely no reason that a show about a badass bounty hunter crime lord who rules over the underworld of a major Star Wars hub of shadiness can’t be anything short of excellent. I am frankly surprised to have had to write such a review, as material like this should be really hard to mess up. Yet, mess it up, they did. A LOT. My final score for Episode 1 is 4/10.

SCORE: 4/10
“Boring and neutered, Boba Fett is not the badass he needs to be for this show to be enjoyable, but there is still plenty of time for that to change completely starting next episode. Here’s hoping.”