Judd Karn
Online Editor
The Disney+ miniseries takes a different approach then its predecessor, ‘The Mandalorian’, but they couldn’t decide what they wanted different.
‘The Book of Boba Fett’, which premiered on December 29th, covers the ex-bounty hunter Boba Fett and what happened after his supposed demise in ‘Return of The Jedi’; the series also functions as a continuation of ‘The Mandalorian’ plot. Unlike ‘The Mandalorian’, which is an episodic series with a finale that brings together people from earlier in the season, ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ features an overarching plot that continues throughout all of the miniseries’ episodes.
I would recommend that you watch ‘The Mandalorian’ before this; a multitude of the plot points rely on you knowing things from the aforementioned show, and you may feel like you’re missing something throughout the entire series.
The one major problem with ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ is that most of the time it does not know what it wants to be, the overarching story and the exemplary side plot provide great entertainment but there is one episode that pivots completely from the series; the episode was good, but it did not feature Boba Fett at all. Parts of the episode felt out of place and like they should be on a different show but it did not stray too far from the main plot.
Although there are some holes in the series I think it is still competently put together: the plot is consistently entertaining and intriguing, the action is captivating, and the series maintains the space western tone that George Lucas (creator of Star Wars)emphasized in the original trilogy, especially with Boba Fett.
As for the rest of my opinions, I would not be able to go into depth with them unless I talked about key plot points, so from here on out there will be spoilers:
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
The series starts on Boba Fett escaping from a sarlacc pit, a creature which swallows its victim and slowly digests them with acid for one thousand years; he had been thrown into the pit by Han Solo This backstory side plot, which continues until Chapter 4, provides an enthralling set up for the story.
During the beginning of this backstory there are very few lines of dialogue (due to the fact that the other characters, tusken raiders, do not speak any english), yet the characters still feel well developed.
It does feel a bit mundane in the beginning of the series due to the large amount of exposition but that is reasonable as most miniseries struggle to make exposition interesting, and the dullness is supplemented by some action scenes here and there.
The series, while being true to the original trilogy, still broke out of the mold a decent amount, trying new things; some things stuck, others did not. One thing that did not stick were the pastel floating mopeds that the ‘mods’ (cyborgs) had, they felt out of place and way too vibrant for the arid world of Tatooine, especially since they had no sand to be seen on them.
Many people have stated that their favorite episode was the episode that barely featured Boba Fett, Chapter 5; the chapter centered around the mandalorian, Din Djarrin. While this was one of my favorite episodes, the reason why it is many people’s favorite or second favorite is because it loosely follows the formula of ‘The Mandalorian’ which uses episodic elements that allow for more action each episode, but ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ is not episodic, and so it is likely that you will not have that much payoff and grandiose action.
What is great about Chapter 5 is that it provides that fulfillment of gunslinger action and holds the viewer over to the finale, it just happened to be that the writers chose to focus on Din Djarrin for this episode, although they most likely chose him because he would be in a different setting, a setting where they were able to have a punch ‘em up scene with no consequences to the plot.
I thought the finale was effectively done, it gave us monumental amounts of action, featuring a 17 foot tall beast brawling a walking laser cannon with an energy shield, as well as several other fight scenes varying in size and types of skirmishes. Most plot points were filled up, and not carlessely, we also get to see Boba Fett’s series arc completed, going from a ruthless killer to a man of the ‘sand people’ (tusken raiders) to a good-willed gang leader that is the last survivor of his tribe, and avenges his tribe. By the end of the finale, everything that ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ wanted to do, it did.
So is ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ a perfect miniseries? No, but it is a fairly good one, one that I would recommend to any Star Wars fan, and one that I hope will affect the future Star Wars movies and media for the better.
Rating: 8/10
