Season 1 of the latest Star Wars offering from Disney+ wrapped up last night and being the Star Wars geek that I am, you know I watched every minute of it. If you haven’t seen it yet but plan to, I do share some mild spoilers below but I tried to avoid spilling the best stuff. If you’re on the fence about seeing it, I’ll say up front that it isn’t as good a show as The Mandalorian, but it’s still a fun ride. Boba Fett always struck me as a galactic High Plains Drifter. I assumed this series would depict that same quiet, cruel bounty hunter who just happens to now be more interested/invested in punishing bad guys instead of good ones. That isn't what we get. Instead, Fett is an aging, softening man who just wants to settle down and get the locals to like and respect him. For me at least, this makes for an uncompelling lead. There’s no doubt that the show is an entertaining piece of nostalgia, it's just not everything I hoped it would be.
That said, here are brief summaries and my thoughts on each episode
written immediately after I watched them.
Stranger in a Strange
Land
Fett’s appeal in the original Star Wars trilogy was his quiet menace. We didn’t hear much from
him. We just knew he looked and moved like a bad ass. This new version of the
infamous galactic bounty hunter does a good bit of talking and frankly, most of
it isn’t very bad ass. I would have enjoyed seeing his sidekick Fennec Shand do
more of the talking on his behalf. Like Netflix’s The Witcher, allowing the warrior to rely on grunts and growls
would let him keep more of his air of mystery. I also think a set of hand signals
between the pair similar to the House Atreides battle language in Dune would underline the importance of
their relationship and Fett’s ability to act swiftly and mercilessly with a
minimum of words. Robert Rodriguez’s direction of the Mos Espa fight sequence
left something to be desired as well. It felt more Spy Kids than Desperado.
Improved stunt choreography and editing would have dramatically improved the
scene and our belief that Fett and Shand are forces to be reckoned with. This
first episode is fun in that it takes us back to a planet and characters that
we love, but I think it does less to set up a strong series than what we saw in
The Mandalorian.
The Tribes of
Tatooine
This second episode has some weak spots, but it’s a definite
improvement over its predecessor. The arrival of the Hutt twins and their
Wookie enforcer, Krrsantan who want to lay claim to Jabba’s former domain and
run off Fett in the process is a highlight as is the appearance of the Ithorian
mayor of Mos Espa, Mok Shaiz. However a large portion of this episode is
backstory and while interesting, it further damages our image of Fett as a bad
ass as we see him repeatedly get beat up by Tusken Raiders. Eventually he earns
their respect by saving one of their youths from a desert monster whose odd
appearance and movement wouldn’t be out of place in Clash of the Titans. Fett follows that victory with another against
a gang of ruffians in a bar brawl, cementing his place in the Tusken tribe. Our
protagonist then goes on to lead the sand people in a high-speed spice train
robbery that could have been great, but like the Mos Espa fight in Episode 1,
feels short-changed by the stunt performers and special effects. It ends up
coming off a bit like Fury Road-lite.
All-in-all still underwhelming, but the series is at least moving in the right
direction.
The Streets of Mos
Espa
Fett reflects on the tragic fate of his former Tusken tribe then
wakes from his bacta tank dream to an assassination attempt by Krrsantan. He
survives thanks to a new gang of young bikers he’s recently taken under his
wing and he soon accepts an apology from the Wookie’s Hutt twin employers. The
Hutts have decided to leave while they still can and they offer both the Wookie
and a rancor as payment for the trouble they’ve caused. I didn’t dislike the
teens and their colorful speeder bikes nearly as much as many critics on
Twitter did, but I did take exception to director Robert Rodriguez again
choosing cheap-looking Spy Kids-type
special effects in a chase scene through the busy streets of Mos Espa that
could have been a series highlight if done well. Cheers to the casting of Danny
Trejo as the rancor keeper though!
The Gathering Storm
The quality of the special effects continues to disappoint,
the most glaring example in this episode being Fennec’s cybernetic surgery
scene, but watching Fett rescue and befriend Fennec was fun as was the
mission to retrieve Fett’s ship from Bib Fortuna, and Krrsantan’s dismemberment
of an unfortunate gambler in the Sanctuary club. The highlight of this episode
is Fett and Fennec’s exploration of and subsequent battle with the Sarlacc
while inside Slave 1. I thought it was a great way to tie the show to Fett’s
last scene in Return of the Jedi and
yes, for this old-school fan, the name of his ship will never change.
Return of the
Mandalorian
Chapter 5 isn’t so much an episode of The Book of Boba Fett as it is a lost episode of The Mandalorian. We follow Din Djarin as
he stops in to show off the Darksaber to The Armorer, dukes it out with Paz
Vizsla over which of them is the rightful wielder of the legendary blade then
promptly gets booted from the Mandalorian ranks when he admits he broke their
code to remove his mask for Grogu. This leads Djarin back to Tatooine where he
commissions a small, Phantom Menace-era
ship to replace his destroyed Razor Crest. The new ship is ridiculously fast
but also completely impractical for a bounty hunter who needs to be able to
live on, sleep in, and transport prisoners in a cargo hold. The episode ends
with Fennec showing up at the shipyard to ask Djarin for his help, finally
tying the story back to Boba Fett. While out-of-place in regard to telling
Fett’s story, this episode is a blast. I don’t know if it is the superior
direction of Bryce Dallas Howard, the superior acting of Pedro Pascal, or if
writers Jon Favreau and Noah Kloor are just more in tune with Djarin than Fett,
but chapter 5 is far more satisfying than the four episodes before it.
From the Desert Comes
a Stranger
The penultimate episode of Season 1 is again mostly about
characters other than Fett and it’s even better than episode 5. Not only do we
get more Djarin, we get the return of Luke Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, R2-D2, Cobb
Vanth, and maybe coolest of all, the first live action appearance of Star Wars: The Clone Wars baddie, Cad Bane. All of this fan service and world
building seems to be leading to a big battle for control of Tatooine between
Fett and his allies against the spice-smuggling Pyke Syndicate and their hired
guns. Meanwhile Grogu faces the choice between his friendship with Djarin and
his Jedi training with Skywalker, a decision which should clear up which direction the next season of The
Mandalorian will take.
In The Name of Honor
The final episode of the season is all action and while some
of it doesn’t hit as hard as it should, quite a bit does. We get the Star Wars version of Godzilla vs. King Kong, we get Fett and Djarin fighting side by side against overwhelming
odds, we get a great showdown between Fett and Bane that’s practically lifted
straight out of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, and we finally get to see
Fennec Shand act like the deadly assassin she was built up to be. This finale
isn’t as strong as the two episodes that preceded it, but it’s a fun wrap up of
Boba Fett’s rise to power on Tatooine and a nice segue into the upcoming third
season of The Mandalorian.
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