At the very least The Book of Boba Fett has made a good case for why the Disney version of this iconic bounty hunter can’t quite carry his own series. Would Boba Fett’s plodding show be more interesting if he were portrayed as the cold, ruthless villain we remember from The Empire Strikes Back and the old Expanded Universe, a true bad guy we nevertheless love to root for? It would at least help differentiate Boba from Din.
Instead, Disney has made Boba a nice guy, kind to his enemies even, forgiving, diplomatic. He’s spared the life of a bounty hunter who tried to kill him, made peace with Hutts who tried to take his throne, brushed off disrespect, and even offered to protect the other crime gangs in his city FOR FREE. In other words, this is a much softer version of the former villain that fits in better with Disney’s approach to redeemable bad guys, like the ones who often appear in the MCU.
So far this seems like a miscalculation that’s made Boba feel more like a clone of Din Djarin, a character he himself inspired, but without the benefit of Din’s captivating story of an orphan turned fatherly protector. (That Din’s adopted son is Grogu, the most talked about Star Wars character since the introduction of Darth Maul, also really helps.) Instead, this post-Return of the Jedi saga shepherded by Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Robert Rodriguez has stripped Boba of key traits that made the character legendary in the first place.
In The Book of Boba Fett, we learn everything there is to know about what happened to the bounty hunter after his demise in Return of the Jedi, and in excruciating detail, from how he escaped the sarlacc, to how he lost his armor, to how he earned his Tusken Raider robes and gaffi stick, to how he met his partner in crime Fennec Shand, to how he got his ship back, to why he decided to become a crime lord, and the list goes on. Not only are these all details that could be inferred from his return in The Mandalorian, but the overexplanation of Boba’s backstory goes against one of the fundamental rules of Star Wars: less is more.
In 1977, George Lucas didn’t need to lift the curtain on every single aspect of his huge galaxy to make it feel lived-in and full of possibilities and places to explore. Part of the fun of early Star Wars was using your imagination to fill in the gaps yourself, such as who Boba Fett was under that menacing helmet and where he’d been before Empire. Of course, it was Lucas himself who later began the trend of going back and explaining the hows and whys of things that didn’t need explaining, like who Boba Fett was before he became a killer for hire. But that didn’t work for the Prequels and it doesn’t work for The Book of Boba Fett.
Needless to say, watching The Book of Boba Fett feels like reading a Wookieepedia entry in slow motion. What once felt shocking and exciting about Boba’s return in 2020, now just feels trivial after four weeks of flashbacks covering minute details about his journey to the present.