Star Wars Worst Show Failed, But Not For The Reason Everyone Thinks
I want every single Disney+ Star Wars series to be amazing–not just because I like amazing television, but because it makes the vocal and hateful corners of Star Wars fandom unable to function. Still, I can’t pretend everything that comes out of Disney is a home run, and for my money, the worst of the streamer’s Star Wars series so far is The Book of Boba Fett. But now, three years after it premiered, I don’t think it was bad for all the reasons I read from fans and critics–I think it was bad because bad is exactly what the show didn’t allow its protagonist to be.
It Was Supposed To Be A Crime Drama
According to all the press from The Book of Boba Fett creator Jon Favreau before the series premiered, the series was a crime drama. Temuera Morrison’s character would no longer be a bounty hunter, but a crime boss like the late Jabba the Hutt.
On paper, that’s what happened–the Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian included a post-credits scene in which Boba Fett and Ming-Na Wen’s Fennec Shand burst into Jabba’s Palace, kill the Hutt’s successor Bib Fortuna, and Fett takes the throne.
Yet in spite of The Book of Boba Fett turning the title character into a crime boss, really the story we’re told is about how he becomes a hero.
We Wanted A Villain’s Story, That Isn’t What We Got
The best organized crime dramas told from the criminals’ perspective are able to make you sympathize with the protagonists without ever being dishonest about who they are.
Michael Corleone of the Godfather movies, Henry Hill in Goodfellas, Tony Soprano in The Sopranos–these are genuinely horrible people we wouldn’t want to run into in real life. Yet, for example, when Tony Soprano runs afoul his uncle Junior–well, we sure aren’t rooting for Junior.
But at no point during The Book of Boba Fett do we look at the title character the same way we would Michael Corleone or his father.
He is portrayed not as a criminal who intends to take advantage of the people of Tattooine for his own benefit (which is what crime bosses do in the real world or in a galaxy far, far away), but as a benevolent overseer of largely victimless crimes, acting as a more palatable alternative to the Hutts and the Pikes.
The Tusken Raiders
The way The Book of Boba Fett portrays Fett’s enslavement by–and later his acceptance into–the Tusken Raider tribe does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to turning Boba Fett from villain to hero.
On one hand, we see Fett willing to risk his own neck for the Tuskens, including saving one of their children.
Let’s not forget by the time The Book of Boba Fett premiered, we’d already been prepared to take a more sympathetic look at the Tuskens than we did in the original trilogy. The way the Tuskens, Din Jarin, and Cobb Vanth work together in the Season 2 premiere of The Mandalorian makes it tough to not regard Sand People with more charity.
On the other hand, the Pikes wipe out the Tuskens–signaling that sure, Boba Fett may become a crime boss, but we didn’t see him murder an entire community. He’ll be a “good guy” crime boss.
This Is Not The Boba Fett We Were Looking For
By The Book of Boba Fett‘s finale not only does the character Temuera Morrison is playing bear no resemblance to a crime boss, he doesn’t even seem like the bounty hunter he used to be.
Could you imagine the Boba Fett of The Book of Boba Fett hanging outside Han Solo’s room in Cloud City while the smuggler is loudly tortured? Delivering a frozen Han Solo to Jabba? Trying to kill Luke and the other heroes over the sarlacc pit?
Honestly? You know how occasionally Samuel L. Jackson and/or Temuera Morrison will mention wanting to do a project that sees Mace Windu revealed to be alive just so Boba Fett can hunt him down?
By the end of The Book of Boba Fett, I can’t even see the former bounty hunter wanting to get revenge for his father’s death anymore.
Do Or Do Not
I don’t know if it was from Jon Favreau’s own concerns about getting too dark with The Book of Boba Fett or Disney interference, but regardless the Fett of the series–in spite of being in a desert the entire time–was very watered down.
And by the way, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with The Book of Boba Fett essentially being the Boba Fett redemption story–but then it has to be the Boba Fett redemption story.
You have to choose: do you want this guy to become a hero–as in not just the protagonist but an actually heroic guy–or do you want him to be an intergalactic crimelord? He can’t be both–not in a satisfying Star Wars story.
The Book of Boba Fett tried to do both, and it just doesn’t work.
Star Wars may be for kids, but Star Wars also delivers a narrative in which crime bosses are involved pretty much with what makes real world crime bosses money–drugs, smuggling, murder, and even slavery.
Which means the people who made The Book of Boba Fett tried to give us a guy who will not only make money off people suffering from drug addictions who will likely die from those addictions, but will also order the murder and enslavement of innocent people, and said, “yeah, but dude he rode that rancor for Freedom. And America.”
Dude will probably have a witness murdered if they want to testify about his ties to the slave trade, but he put Cobb Vanth in a Bacta Tank so he deserves his own tree on the Avenue of Saints?
Come on.
