Fellow nerfherders!
You knew I had to review this episode, right?
Like Watto’s ascension to junk yard magistrate in Mos Eisley, you knew it had to be done.
Boba Ep 3 had to be the single most inconsistent Star Wars TV episode to date. We got some great. We got some awful. And we got everything in between.
I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll give a quick plot breakdown for those who didn’t see it. There will be spoilers.
We start off with Boba Fett learning that nobody in the city respects him. So he goes into town to lay down some order and meets a gang of teenagers who outfit themselves with droid parts. He likes what he sees and asks them to work for him.
Boba then goes to the mayor as he suspects he’s up to no good but the mayor sneaks away. That night, while Boba is sleeping, Black K the Wookie rips him out of his bacta tank and fights him. Boba and his security somehow subdue Black K and, the next morning, get a visit from the Hutt twins who apologize for sending him.
They offer Boba a make-up gift – a new rancor monster – and tell Boba they’re heading back to Hutta, their home planet. Before they leave, they warn him of a much worse enemy than them. Boba then falls in love with his new rancor monster and prepares for war with this new unseen enemy.
One of the issues the Boba Fett show is running up against is that it had to emasculate the character to provide a path for growth. As I pointed out, nobody respects Boba Fett. The reason they’re doing this is because they believe if Boba Fett is already a badass, there’s nowhere to go with the character. He can’t become a badass because he’s already a badass.
I don’t subscribe to that logic since there are ways around it. Take The Godfather, for example. He was doing fine when we met him and they were still able to build a story around him. You can always throw obstacles at the crime boss which is going to provide a steady stream of plotlines. So I don’t know why they’re so insistent on making Boba a bottom feeder considering it erases the reason we fell in love with him in the first place – because he was a badass.
I mean you’ve got Dwablee The Water Mumbler telling Boba to his face that he sucks at his job and Boba just shrugging his shoulders. What do you think Jabba would’ve done to Dwablee? The writers are so focused on the character journeys here that they’re overlooking the impact an emasculated Boba Fett has on the show.
That’s a constant battle I have while watching Book of Boba. I’m annoyed at what a pushover the main character is.
But let’s talk about the real issue with the episode – the fact that Robert Rodriquez ported Shark Boy and Lava Girl along with Biff’s gang from Back to the Future 2 into the Star Wars universe. I’ve seen some bad Star Wars miscalculations before. Rose Tico. Canto Bite. Jar Jar Binks. But I don’t think anyone has come close to the characters that Rodriquez dropped into this episode. What was he even thinking??? These are not Star Wars characters. Why are they driving around in lollipop colored Vespas? These characters are too cheesy for even a Star Trek show, let alone Star Wars. Who okay’d this?? Why didn’t someone put their foot down and say, “We can’t include this. This is bad enough to damage the Star Wars brand.”
But nothing could prepare us for the now infamous “chase.” I call it a chase although I’m not sure I’ve ever watched a chase where both chaser and chassee were going 6 miles per hour.
I’m sure a lot of viewers wondered how such a terrible chase scene could’ve made it into a 200 million dollar show. And I already know the answer. I knew the answer the second I heard the director’s name. Robert Rodriquez’s “thing” is that he likes to do everything himself. I think on one of his movies he directed, photographed, lit, stunt-coordinated, did the special effects, edited, and scored the movie. He wants to do EVERYTHING. And the problem is that he does this even when he doesn’t know what he’s doing, which was clearly the case here. He didn’t know how to put together a complex chase with practical and digital effects through a make-believe city. But he’s Robert Rodriquez and he must do EVERYTHING so that’s what he did.
What happened to Kathleen “The Axe” Kennedy when we needed her? She’s around whenever a director needs to be fired for a feature. Why does she disappear when the single worst chase scene ever put to film needs to be axed?
What makes the scene so bad is that Rodriquez already created these terrible characters. He’d already created these ugly vehicles. And now he was directing a big set piece that featured both. Even if he hadn’t run into the ‘too slow’ problem, it still would’ve been bad. But the ‘too slow’ problem put it over the top and made it one of the worst Star Wars scenes ever.
Maybe Rodriquez’s biggest achievement is the fact that he salvaged the episode after that. We get a fun unexpected fight scene between Black K, the wookie, and a naked Boba Fett. I would’ve preferred the battle be on equal ground but maybe we’ll get that later.
We then get to see my two favorite new characters in the Star Wars universe, the Hutt Twins. I absolutely love these two. Everything about them works. From their voices to their interplay to the special effects to the design behind their walking platform. They’re just awesome. Needless to say, I was devastated when they said they were leaving the planet. Why are you getting rid of your best characters?? I’m hoping they’re lying and we’ll see them again. Cause they’re the only characters that truly scare me.
Then we get the coolest part of the episode, the introduction of a new Rancor. I was gobsmacked by this. I thought it was so neat. I loved the way it was sort of brought in on this hover-platform and that it seems to be drugged, like King Kong. But it didn’t stop there. We get one of the best scenes in the series where Boba Fett falls in love with this thing. He’s fascinated by it. We start learning all this new information about rancors, like the fact that they’re very sensitive and get depressed easily. And I’m thinking to myself, “This poor rancor! I want to give him a hug!”
The majority of the time Star Wars tries to rewrite history, they fail. So it was nice to see them get one right. This makes the rancor so much more interesting in my eyes. And I have no doubt him and Boba are going to tear some sh*t up.
As for the rest of the show, I’m still all over the place on it. I feel like they don’t quite know what they’re doing. For example, there’s nobody around in the palace! Some viewers may argue that that’s because Boba is new to the job and hasn’t put together a staff. I contend it’s more that the writers don’t understand the inner workings of this place. For example, we see Boba and Fenec with this giant spread of food for dinner. But who cooked it?? I haven’t seen any chefs around here. I haven’t seen *anybody* around here. I just don’t think they know how to populate this place. They need to figure that out because, until they do, it’s not going to quite feel like Star Wars. It feels like fan fiction. There’s a reason fans aren’t real authors. They don’t think as deeply. They don’t know the inner workings like authors do.
Somehow, amongst all this turbulence, the show still has me. I’m still interested to see what happens in episode 4. But dude, new rule. Robert Rodriquez does not get to create new characters anymore. He can bring back old ones. But if I want to watch Shark Boy and the Dolphin Whisperer 7, I’ll head over to Netflix. Keep your YA novel nonsense out of the Star Wars universe.
And keep the Hutts on Tatooine!
