(SPOILERS!)
For the past several months, you’ve been hearing me talk about how the Boba Fett show better have themselves a Hutt in the series or I’m out. Yesterday, the show answered my call. And they didn’t just give me one Hutt. They gave me two. Twins, in fact.
I loved this choice. It’s what every screenwriter should be trying to do. The audience wants something. It’s your job to give it to them. But, ironically, if you give them exactly what they want, they’re not satisfied. Don’t ask me how that works. It involves some deep psychological introspection about human behavior that only Freud and Pavlov would be able to explain. Needless to say, I was thrilled. The twin aspect offers a unique obstacle for our beloved bounty hunter to overcome.
The moment when the Hutt twins arrive is one of the best moments in Star Wars’ TV history. And yes, that includes two seasons of The Mandalorian. It’s a tremendous entrance. We hear the distant sounds of a pounding drum beat. There’s a small but noticeable rumble to the ground. We hear the Hutts long before we see them.
If you were like me, you were charged up in this moment. The Boba Fett show had officially arrived. This is what we’d been waiting for. So what did they do after this explosive scene? They did the unthinkable. They played out the rest of the episode in a flashback.
Sigh.
I could go on a 1500 word rant about how worthless flashbacks are but I’ve already done that so I’ll just say this: I guarantee 99% of your audience would rather watch this present day storyline than the past one. So how are you the one person who thinks people would rather watch a flashback storyline?
Yes, Star Wars flashbacks are better than most due to the fact that you have so much mythology to play with. But a flashback is still a flashback. It is stopping the present storyline – the one that actually matters – to show us something that is over and done. It is an inherently flawed approach to telling a story, especially when you’ve just set up a way more compelling story minutes prior.
Let me put it to you another way. Have you ever been telling someone a story about your day and then said, “Oh, and I forgot to tell you. Earlier in the day, when I first woke up, I put on my tennis shoes instead of my boots and…” When has anyone’s eyes ever lit up when you’ve stopped your story to set up something from earlier? It’s never happened. Flashbacks are nuclear story missiles, destined to blow up the story city you have built. They’re pointless save for the industry’s most sophisticated storytellers.
Anyway, after taking the night to think the episode over, I realized the mistake the writers had made. They were prioritizing the wrong genre. They were making a Western instead of making a crime family show when, clearly, the crime family angle is more intriguing. The Sopranos meets Star Wars. The Godfather meets Star Wars. Breaking Bad meets Star Wars. Goodfellas meets Star Wars. That’s the hook here. That’s the Star Wars we’ve never seen.
You know the Star Wars we have seen? Star Wars as a Western. We’ve seen it to death. We just saw two freaking seasons of it with The Mandalorian. If you want to remake The Mandalorian, just make a third season of The Mandalorian. If you want to justify the existence of a new bounty hunter show, make it different. Make it The Godfather meets Star Wars.
What’s the difference between the two genres? Westerns are sloooooooooowwww. They revel in long drawn out storylines. They’re not afraid to spend 30 seconds showing a character walk through a desert. It’s a strange man entering a foreign territory and not being trusted.
The crime family genre is about TENSION. It’s about placing powerful morally questionable people in the same room wanting different things and sitting there while the tension builds. Why do you think the “Am I clown, do I make you laugh” scene from Goodfellas is so powerful? It’s tension that builds and builds and builds until it finally explodes.
That’s why the Boba vs. the Twins moment is one of the best in Star Wars lore. It’s two (actually three) powerful people standing their ground as the tension builds between them. And the crazy thing about this scene is that the writers know it. They know it so well that they amp it up by introducing yet ANOTHER bad ass character stepping into the fray in Black K (the wookie). He takes things up yet another notch. For them to recognize that this scene is so good only to go into flashbacks is unforgivable.
Cause the flashbacks are the Western. They’re the man with no name being helped by the natives becoming a better man or something. It’s all drawn out insignificant nonsense and it’s coming to us specifically because the writers are thinking that Boba Fett is a Western. It is not. It’s a crime family drama. That’s the Star Wars avenue you haven’t explored yet so give us that! Even if you don’t agree with that, you’re still prioritizing backstory over present story which you should not be doing!
Is there an argument to be made that, by showing us these flashbacks, you’re fleshing out the main character so that, when he does reach those pivotal moments in the present day storyline, we’ll care more? Sure. That’s a legit argument. But here’s the problem with that. Anybody can make a character more fleshed out by showing us 20 minutes of his past, or 40, or 60, or 1000. Yeah, the more we know about a person’s past, the more we’ll care about them.
But there are diminishing returns here. We learn more about this character at the expense of being given an entertaining story that’s happening right here, right now. Good screenwriters know how to make you care for a character without having to resort to 30 minutes of flashbacks. They do it through the character’s actions. They do it through the character’s choices. They do it through carefully positioned lines that hint at what has happened in their past.
Ironically, Boba Fett is the perfect embodiment of this. He had like five minutes of screen time in Empire Strikes Back yet we loved him. You don’t have to bathe a character in backstory to make us care. You just have to be smart about what he does in the little bit of screen time he has.
For example, one of my favorite moments in Star Wars happens in Empire Strikes Back when Han and crew trick an Imperial Star Cruiser by floating out with the space junk then, after the cruiser leaves, escaping off to another planet. Mere seconds later, we see Boba’s ship ignite its engines and follow the Falcon. That tiny moment told us how clever Boba was. As ahead of the Empire that Han was, this bounty hunter had thought one move ahead of him.
Getting back to my point, the writers seem to think that the backstory, with its Western roots, is the more appealing storyline here. It isn’t. The crime family stuff is not just a little bit more interesting. It’s a LOT more interesting. I would argue that the second best scene in the Boba Fett series so far is the scene that happens right before the Hutt sequence, when Boba Fett goes to tell off the mayor. It’s another crime family moment – the local crime boss threatening the mayor of the city to let him do his thing.
That’s two scenes IN A ROW that prove the crime family genre is where your focus should be. Yet you go back to this silly rehashed Western backstory nonsense??? I’m angry. I’m baffled. I’m frustrated. Because this is the series that could save Star Wars. I know people think Mandalorian did that but let’s be honest. Mandalorian was a gimmick. It was Baby Yoda and a guy who couldn’t take off his mask. This series has some actual potential. If they’d focus on the crime boss stuff, they’d be golden. Because they’ve got one of the coolest characters in Star Wars lore and they’ve done something *really* cool in making him this underdog gangster king in a world he’s not ready to take on yet. It’s badass. And they’re ruining it right in front of our eyes.
I would implore all writers to seriously consider what they’re doing if they build a narrative around what’s already happened as opposed to what’s happening now. What’s happening now will always be more significant because the effects are immediate.
I do think I know what they’re doing with the flashbacks. Speculative spoilers ahead. The goal is to make us fall in love with the tusken raiders and then, in the final episode, kill all of them off. And it’ll probably be a genuinely sad moment. But my counter-argument to that is, was it worth ditching two hours of cool crime family drama in the present day for that? My answer would be a hard no. Whenever there is a choice between focusing on the past or the present, you should choose the present. It’s where the real story is and, therefore, where you should be.
The Hutt twins have upped the ante of this series. It is so clear to all Star Wars fans what should now happen. The final five episodes should focus on the turf war between Boba Fett and them. If they continue to prioritize these flashbacks, though, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll be so angry. The path to greatness is right there in front of you, plain as day. Please take it. I’m begging you, Boba.
