Star Warsis, at this point, entirely too big as a franchise, and its never-ending expanse is only serving to smother the best parts. Delving into every unexplored aspect of the galaxy far away has made the universe feel small and robbed formerly interesting characters of their mystery.
The Book of Boba Fettwas the kind of idea that would have been an obvious slam dunk for Star Wars fans, but in practice, it’s turnedout much less than anticipated. Somehow focusing on the eponymous bounty hunter has only made the character less complete.
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The original Star Wars trilogy featured four lines from Boba Fett, five if you count his scream immediately before his death. The single best line about the charactercomes through Darth Vader’s"No disintegrations." In two words, the character’s role, background, and mission are made clear. More importantly, it leaves a ton to the imagination. What could Fett and his cohorts have done for the Empire before their new mission? What are they capable of? Why did Vader and the Empire reach out to them for the job? The thing that made Boba Fett so interesting was the immense amount of space he left for fans to speculate about. He was nothing more than a cool voice, distinctive armor, and one or two cool action scenes. That was enough, but moreover, that may have been all Boba Fett was good for.
The Book of Boba Fettspends half its runtime explaining the new canon-approved explanation for his survival after the Sarlacc pit. The other half is the continued adventures of a character who served an extremely finite role in his original appearance. Boba Fett takes over Jabba the Hutt’s role,takes on a protege, and gets deep into the infrastructure of running a crime empire on a desert planet. Fans don’t seem thrilled to see Fett completely unmoored from his old context. It’s likely that the things he used to do, and the gaps that used to make him fascinating, were what fans wanted out of Fett. Digging deeper and learning more has only weakened the character. Especially with anewer, better model emerging from nowhere.
Din Djarin ofThe Mandalorianis everything fans like about the old Boba Fett. From the design, to the dialogue, to the action, to the mystery, Mando provided exactly what fans loved about Fett. But instead of fulfilling his purpose, vanishing for decades and then reappearing in a completely unrelatednew role, Din Djarin evolved. Through genuine and well-earned narrative growth, the cold-blooded manhunter became the unwilling grumpy dad. Boba Fett never got that opportunity, even now in the character’s first solo outing, he’s doing very little growth as a character. If Boba had gradually shifted into a crime lord through interesting stories that changed him, it’s likely that fans would still be totally invested. But, as Star Wars always does, Boba Fett is only the lead character because his name will drive viewership.
This problem is far from exclusive to Star Wars, tons of long-running franchises come down with this issue. The new trilogy was so controversial that the franchise’s solution was to continue expanding the existing timeline. The continued adventures of a handful of established hit characters can’t hope to remain exciting forever, and the success of some of the new characters proves that point. It’s also not necessarily every character. Upcoming Star Wars spin-off seriesObi-Wancould have the makingsof a great prequel. There are some figures and concepts in franchise media that could survive fans knowing every moment of their life. What kind of character does better with less information?
The awful truth when it comes to storytelling is that not every character gets to be three-dimensional. Some characters are written and designed to serve a specific purpose within the story. Not every character needs to have a backstory, some characters' stories should have endings. Boba Fett was one of those characters, designed for an extremely specific role which he filled and departed soon after. He is perfect for the role he occupies, but his ability to work outside of thatrole was always questionable. There are countless other characters who fill a specific role, but there doesn’t have to be a full-fledged series about every well-received bit player or beloved bounty hunter.
Boba Fett finally got to lead his series, and it offers a valuable lesson for franchise media going forward. It is a lesson, however, that Disney will not take now or ever. They didn’t learn whenSoloflopped, and they won’t learn now thatBook of Boba Fettis met with an intensely lukewarm reception. So long as audiences show up for anything with a suitably popular character’s name on the poster, Disney will continue to crank out pointless dives into once-beloved icons. Fans can only hope they’ll manage a good one from time to time.
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