First teaser is out.



I'm not entirely onboard with the idea that Boba could just casually assume control of the Hutt Cartel simply because he offed Bib Fortuna, but meh. Hoping this will be the Underworld show they promised us way back when.

 

Honestly I can't tell if this is good or not. Looks great, but who knows.

 

I wonder how much Mando and co will be in this

 

meh, I am not impressed

 

I like the trailer, but I'm not super hyped for it like I was for Mandalorian. I'm almost certainly gonna watch this either way, and it looks like it's right up my alley, but I'm not sure how good it'll be.

 

God the Star Wars universe has so much potential for so many good story lines.

Makes the shit show of the sequels all the more tragic.

 

It was awesome to see the B'omarr Monks show up. As well as the menagerie of aliens - the ithorians, a handful of trandoshan, the two aqualish, and the klatoonian. It's dope.

I'm more excited for this than Mando.

 

First episode dropped btw.

Too early to really say anything definitive other than they need a better fight choreographer.

 

I quite liked it actually. The Gamoreans are currently my favourite part of the ensemble though, ngl.

Watching Boba collecting his 'taxes' reminded me of Tony Soprano doing his rounds, so there's that. I think that it'll be fun to see Star Wars from a (legal) crimelord's perspective, at least until they turn him into a generic good guy protagonist.

I thought that the fight scenes were actually alright, especially the little scrap Boba had with the Tuskan Raider. It showed us that while Boba may be good in a fist fight, he's probably a lot more comfortable with a gun... aka he isn't the Mandalorian. On the other hand, the whole 'ring of energy shields' thing was a bit silly imo, especially since Boba has a jet pack and a rocket launcher. I don't know why a crime lord wouldn't openly parade a gun around on Tatooine, especially if he has open dealings with the Mayor.

Either way, I was hooked and I'm going to watch the next episode.

 

Just watched episode 2.

It had fewer glaring issues than 1 (like the super rocky fight choreography, and absence of logic with Boba and Fennec going out on a show of power style thing without any weapons) but I'm still really puzzled.

I don't have any real indication as to the character motivations of either Boba or Fennec. Why is Boba suddenly the Tuskens' best friend in his flashback? Why not just leave them when he had the chance? If I squint a bit I can see that past events are likely to be important to his current motivations, so his decision to take over from Jabba may well be an attempt to help the Tuskens but there's really not much indication of it from his actual character. Why he suddenly took a liking to the Tuskens is still entirely unexplained. All we have is him staring stoically at different things and growling occasionally. Is that meant to imply respect for a fellow warrior people, and a feeling of kinship? Cos I ain't really getting it.

Is Fennec's whole motivation literally Chewbacca? As in, 'you saved my life, so now it's yours'? Does she have anything more going on?

At this point I don't doubt that the writers probably do have some plans for these motivations but it's really hard to care when we're just left guessing. Why should I care about these characters when I have no idea what they're trying to achieve, or why? At the moment, everything seems incredibly straight forward for a crime lord. He wants to take over because Honourable Warrior Man. He has his second, who follows him because Honourable Warrior Woman. The two Gamorreans follow because, again, he spared their lives and... Honourable Warrior Gamorreans, apparently.

If these people are all as instantly loyal as they seem, then that's pretty boring for a show about an intergalactic crime lord. If they're not as instantly loyal as they seem then Boba will just end up looking stupid for extending them so much trust out of nowhere.

 

Motivation is definitely an issue.

But for me the most glaring issue is just a complete lack of believability. Boba Fett establishing himself as a crime lord with Jabba the Hutt's territory on basis of... a crew of 4 people? How is anyone taking him seriously? How is he expecting to actually exert control over the area without any actual organisation or manpower behind him? Why hasn't he just been straight up murdered, with only 3 people to protect him? Hell, with the resources the Hutts have, they could just blow up Jabba's Palace from orbit while Fett was sleeping.

The entire way they have executed the core premise of the show is just bonkers.

 

Given the short length of these D+ series, the first two episodes do feel rather aimless. There needs to be some driving story element beyond Boba climbing the power structures of Tatooine and the cartels.

Like... why is he doing all this and why does he care? Why doesn't he just go back to bounty hunting? They need to establish character motivations and an interesting conflict within the next episode or two or they are going to lose lots of viewers.

 

They're not gonna lose viewers. Jon Favreau's name is attached to this show, that's enough to rationalize away and convince oneself this is good. I'm seeing plenty of positive feedback on this show. I haven't seen it myself and I'm not planning to for a while. I was late to the Mandalorian and there wasn't much in there really worth my time. I suspect this show will be much the same. Some good bits, lots of boring runtime.

At the end of the day, it's all Disney Star Wars. "Okay" seems to be the ceiling for the SW brand now.

 

Man, I knew I recognized that scenery where Boba beats up those dudebro aliens to get their speeders.

It's Tosche Station from ANH deleted scenes, and those two peeps are supposed to be Luke's childhood friends Camie and Fixer. They've basically got the same haircuts/outfits and everything.

That is some deep callback stuff right there.

.....

Also, I've been reading some of the stuff on the Star Wars reddit, and I'm a little more optimistic about the plot now. Apparently Maul's Crimson Dawn theme from Solo works its way into the music pretty frequently and it's in the credits as well. The aliens on the train were supposed to be Pyke Syndicate.

This is basically lining up a return of Crimson Dawn as the hidden power behind all the syndicates in the Underworld scene, and we might even get to see an older Qi'ra as the series' main villain.

 

Pretty much, for the most part. Oh, The Mandalorian and BoBF both have some great character-focused bits, but the writing aside from those parts is... iffy. It's just that after the rest of Disney's foray into the franchise, an overall rating of "Okay" feels like a masterpiece to a lot of fans. It's the same phenomenon that leads so many fans to gloss over a lot of the glaring problems with Revenge of the Sith simply because it was noticeably better than Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones (which is, obviously, not exactly the highest of bars to judge by).

It doesn't help that Filoni and Favreau are both big fans of the "Idiot Ball" as a cheap, easy way to railroad the story just the way they want. I almost called it quits on BoBF after the first episode, when Boba and Fennec go into town unarmed, conveniently just in time to get ambushed in a fight Boba was meant to lose. It's literally the only time either character has ever, in all their appearances prior to that point, been without their full armament, and there was no explanation offered for the sudden change. In context, considering what they were doing and where they were doing it, the decision makes even less sense. Plus, there's the annoying way Boba seemed to forget that his jetpack, flamethrower, and cable-launcher existed, right when any one of those things would have been super useful against the guys kicking his ass.

At this point, I trust Filoni and Favreau to give us reasonably satisfying character arcs - and plenty of fan service callbacks - but not much more than that.

 

I had hope after episode 2 but the latest episode was complete trash. I'll give it a 1/10, and that's only because Black Krrsantan showed out.

They killed off the Tusken Raiders off-screen, and Boba Fett is a joke in this series. What is supposed to be a glorious comeback for the man is literally destroying his character.

 

I wouldn't go quite that far. It has its moments, but yeah, not great overall. Now it looks like, instead of diving into the characters and setting we already have, we're just going to get more characters and more "fan service" crammed down our throats. Too many novel characters? That's okay, have them do an about-face and disappear (like the mayor and the Hutt twins), or be randomly killed off (like the Tuskens) to make room for more.

It's starting to feel like the television equivalent of a fanfic where the author clearly never had a plan beyond the current chapter, and they just sort of wing it as they go, throwing in new stuff as the idea strikes them. It's just chaos at this point, which is rarely all that compelling. I'll probably continue watching for lack of anything better to do, but yeah, I'm pretty much done expecting much out of this.

 

Yeah, it's not good.

Honestly, if you look past the tone and character of the series, the actual 'plot' (for want of a better term) feels like it's been lifted from a 90s sitcom about an incompetent granddad trying to set himself up as a crime boss, with wacky shenanigans of the week when he makes stupid choices like trying to flex his power without any weapons, or literally only having three mooks, or recruiting the local moped 'gang' as his muscle, or completely failing to understand that you don't look powerful when you have to go and knock politely on your enemy's door to tell them to stop messing with you, pretty please with a cherry on top. Except they've taken those plots and played them completely straight. There have been times when I feel like the plot wanted there to be a laugh track. 'Did he just lock the door?' cue canned laughter.

Fett is completely lacking in presence as a supposed bad-ass. He still has no real motivation. Oh, sure, they've connected the new syndicate to his past, but that couldn't have been his original reason for doing what he's doing as they've only just turned up. The Hutts were similarly pointless, completely lacking in threat, then being shuffled off stage left immediately after being introduced. The 'gang' that Boba has employed do not look like muscle. They're the 'bike gang' from fucking Larry Crown. They ride brightly coloured mopeds for fucks sake.

The action this week was shocking. It looked like everyone was carefully observing a nice and safe twenty mile and hour speed limit for the entire chase. Attempts to make it look more impressive by having them drive slowly through things fell hilariously flat.

The past plot is just an utter fucking mess. Why did he join the group which enslaved him? The desert of Tatooine seems to be pretty fucking benign at this point with people wandering across it on foot for a jolly, never in danger of running out of water because all you need to do to find it is dig a bit and hey presto, weird cactus thing with water in it. Why didn't he just fuck off after getting free?

The Tuskens last week said something about surviving by hiding rather than raiding, but at this point I fail to see how any groups of Tuskens have survived. This one 'hid' next to a regularly used land-train route (I assume they stayed there regularly because they actually go with the plan of taking down the train rather than just going somewhere else. If they know the desert so well, why even stop there?) which went super well for them. Oh, and then some random fucking biker gang (a proper biker gang at least, not whatever shit Fett found on the bottom of his shoe) is able to murder the whole lot of them.

Oh, and then everyone completely fails to fight the Wookiee guy. I figured when Fett got thrown into his gear that he'd pick up a fucking gun or something, but no. He just gets ragged on. Great protagonist you've got here guys.

Honestly, I've been pretty negative about a lot of the Disney+ series, whether Marvel or Star Wars, but most of them had something going for them.

Literally the only thing I'm non-ironically enjoying about Boba Fett is the credits music and art (and the visuals are pretty good in places). The rest vacillates between boring, pointless, cringe, or just plain lacking in basic logic. This season is meant to be seven episodes long, and they've spent the first three doing literally fuck all. Well, maybe that's not true, they've managed to turn Boba Fett, who I was informed was meant to be a bad-ass into a 'comedy of errors' granddad (who still plays it completely straight), and the similarly supposed-to-be-bad-ass Fennec Shand into his community care worker.

Oh, and why does he live in a bacta tank, again? Is that why he's so shit at everything? Is he dying, but made some kind of oath that he'd do... I dunno, something before he passed, and is now trying to do that while his mind, body, and skills rapidly fail him? I somehow doubt it.

Fucking hell, what a waste.

 

What character?

 

If the sequel trilogy was a lesson in how to screw up a franchise by failing to respect its worldbuilding and continuity, Book of Boba Fett is the opposite: an object lesson in how to screw up a franchise by being too faithful.

In a way I think this failure was inevitable after The Mandalorian. That show was merely OK from a character and plot standpoint, but it had traditional (read: toxic, misogynistic and overwhelmingly negative towards any innovation or change) SW fans raving about it because (i) it was beautifully made and (ii) the creators made all the right noises to convince angry fans that they were on the fans' side. All that praise has led to Disney doubling down on the idea of giving the toxic fanbase what they want as a path to success.

Well, this is what happens when you make fan service your guiding principle (and not the fun kind of fan service). A pile of nothing.