Friday, November 8, 2013

Star Wars Non-Retcons Part 5: Boba Fett Was Just a Loser Who Got Eaten


This one is touchy ground for some, including my wife who likes to do Boba Fett cosplay....

From the original movies alone we know the following about Boba Fett: he could track effectively, and he was good at getting other people to do his work for him. Also, he was a real good barfly/lounge lizard…..although in fairness we never did see where he inserted the drinking straw into his helmet, so….

Boba Fett wore cool armor bristling with weapons, sure….but he didn’t have a lot else going for him. He looked reasonably clever in the initial movie, tracking the Millennium Falcon to Cloud City, then bringing in the Empire to help cement his nabbing Han Solo without lifting a finger. So in this sense he seemed rather clever. Then we get to Return of the Jedi, and apparently he’d been slumming at Jabba’s for months, and drinking a bit too much because he was ignominiously defeated and fed to the Sarlacc in short order.

Fett has survived for decades afterward in the EU timeline after shooting his way out of the Sarlacc and then resuming life as the badass he was spiritually intended to be; that’s another tale entirely, for most of it makes assumptions about a Boba Fett who was more competent than the films actually showed….and who knows, maybe in RotJ he was having a really bad helmet hair day and had drunk too much. What matters is that for all intents and purposes he did not show his worth, and suffered one of* the more ignominious defeats of all the SW villains.

I suppose I wouldn’t be unhappy to see him get a formal return in one of the planned Star Wars movies, or maybe a chance to show off his actual worth pre-Sarlacc-digestion…..but preferably in a prequel film; let the Sarlacc enjoy its meal in peace.


*most embarassing/ironic/amusing death award can go to any number of other contestants: Jabba, that hapless gamorrean snack, the stormtroopers who are pelted to death by ewoks, any Imperial officer strangled by Vader for even mild incompetence, the stormtrooper who falls to his death on Cloud City when his buddies nudge him off the bridge....okay before you start re-watching the films I did make that last one up!

4 comments:

  1. I love the Fett, but you are spot on.

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  2. You are right. He will always be a loser who did nothing and lets people alter his deal.
    L O S E R

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    1. In fact...kinda makes one wonder if IG-88, Dengar,m Bossk and the insect dude who's name escapes me weren't the smart ones. They all thought "Crap, it's that dude who regularly strangles his own senior officers for minor miscalculations...okay then, we're all gonna go look for him....somewhere else, yeah, that's the ticket! This one's all yours Boba, make daddy proud."

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  3. That would have been an awesome EU explanation!

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