Geifer wrote:
The dozens of Pykes, two droids and Cad Bane are there to deal with the new guy who isn't very good at his job. They're not there to intimidate the Hutts. They don't need to. The Hutts and Pykes know each other well enough. If they want to threaten each other's operations, they're not going to do it by meeting up on a desert backwater for a brawl. Whereas Tatooine is the only place to find and hit Boba's operation.

Except, of course, Boba doesn't have an operation. He's just squatting in Jabba's house, protected only by (frankly nonsensical) plot armor, even for Star Wars. There are multiple places (at least once every episode, not counting the bonus chapters of Season 2.9 of Mando) where someone should have just killed him but either failed comically or simply chose not to and walked away, including the gakky mayor's sharpshooter guards.

And for the Hutts, Tatooine actually is a great place to threaten the Pykes' operation. They're pushing their very lucrative spice trade through the desert, which means a great way to damage their operations, salvage a pricey luxury (market value: a single box = a town) and deal no collateral damage to anything that matters.

I’ve no bother declaring some early episodes of Clone Wars as being ropey to outright crap.

And yes some of it is a proper slog to get through.

But. The whole of the thing is brilliant. Even the crap. Because none of it is, to my mind at least, really filler.

It does mature like a fine wine, to be certain. But. And the sort of but of which Sir Mixalot is terribly fond?

When you sit down and watch it all, as it was released (there are chronological timeline guides out there, but I’ve not followed them) you see the development.

Ahsoka, in the early episodes was meant to be a pain in the arse and cringe. That was precisely why she was assigned to Anakin as his Padawan.

They were a test for each other. And both were symptoms of the underlying sickness at the heart of the Jedi order.

It had become too hidebound. Too unthinking. It had knowledge, but no wisdom. Competence, but no instinct.

Anakin and Ahsoka were the opposite of that. Both were passionate in their own ways. Both were kind of arrogant, and even ignorant. But they never risked their Trooper’s lives unnecessarily. They were absolutely heroes. Lead from the front, but with their own brand of restraint.

A more flexible world view than the Jedi order as it was might’ve prevented what was to come entirely.

Sure, most of this doesn’t really become apparent until much later in the series. But the seeds of it were always there.

And ok, I’m not ruling out some latter series writing wizardry accord to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

But the whole of the thing is truly glorious.

The only thing I have the hump with is that Ventress was one of the most interesting and complex characters Star Wars has produced. Former Jedi. Once a Sith Apprentice. Then….rogue. So much potential, and they killed her off for the sake of an also-ran characters mangst. An also-ran character no one has bothered with since.

For shame!

Doc, I respect your opinions, and yes, i was trying to say that ultimately, Clone Wars taken in its entirety is much much greater than the sum of its parts.

Every star wars fan should see it.

But i can't say that its awesome on its own merits. Its more with hindsight (and being of an older, and apparently wiser or so they tell me, state of mind I can appreciate it).

This seems to be a problem with a lot of Star Wars stuff recently. the only thing that I can think of that I unashamedly loved as a story in its own right was Rogue One...still the 3rd best SW film.

Yes I overall liked the Book of Boba Fett , it DOES include a lot of really good stuff,

But i do not think that outside of the Mando episodes, this series is going to hold up the same..

Now, I fully admit, that getting "good" involves laying down a lot of groundwork characterwise and that isn't necessarily immediately obvious, unfortunately, I just don't think the payoff was good enough.

Peeps like me ( I'm in my 40's) are used to long form storytelling (mostly coz thats all we had when I was a kid..and Dr Who stories were 5 or more part serialised affairs).can put up with the odd "off" episode as long as the whole thing forms some sort of decent narrative.

Unfortunately, what we got n that last epsode was a lot of individually VERY COOL bits that just didn't add up to a satisfying story in my opinion.

p.s. i very much agree about Ventress, but I don't want to derail the thread any further.

Holy moly that was awesome. Work kept me from seeing this week's episode until today. Avoiding spoilers online for the second half of the week was the hardest thing I've done in a while, but I made it! And boy was it worth it.

I wonder if this will carry over into a S2 or if Boba will rejoin Mando in S3? It kinda seemed like they were hinting that the Augments were going to take the reigns and rule Mos Espa from Jabba's Palace!

I will say the Cobb Vanth aftercredit scene didn't do anything for me, but that's mainly because I never cared about that character to begin with. It would have been far more amazing to see Cad in the Bactatank (I still don't think he's dead) but I would have loved to have seen them flip it where Boba saved him and switched roles for another season. Building a new rivalry between he and Cad. On the other hand, if Cad is dead for good, that was a damn good way for him to go out and I can live with it in time.

That Rancor part was totally radical. I was like a kid through the whole thing, heck even seeing the Skorpenek droids was really un-expected. Loved that Grogu was able to clam the beast, buddy snuggle session was great.

I also really like how they're handling all the women in this show. They're not doing the modern thing of having them point out that they're strong and brave every two seconds to anyone with a wang. Instead they're actually building them up, letting us see what they can do without having to beat us over the head with a PC stick. It's really refreshing to see. Ming-Na Wen has just really done a bang-up job playing Fennec, and I've really come to like Drash and Skad a lot. Karisma Shanel's character really needs to get more screen time in a future show, I thought she did a great job with what little time she had.

Other than that, I did think they did the Gamorrean's really dirty. Just pushed em off and killed em.

Otherwise the usual complaints still persist. Kennedy needs to be sent to another department to manage ...something else not Star Wars. The episodes were longer this season, but we're still being drip fed only a handful. Just spend the money and time on 20 episodes for a season, and take more time to tell the story. And when do I get my CGI Leia?

Seems it’s Cobb Vanth taking over. At least that was my impression.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Seems it’s Cobb Vanth taking over. At least that was my impression.

I have some confusion there. I thought something was said towards the end by one of the Augments about "it's our city now" or something like that. I need to watch it again when I'm less sleepy!

Cobb is weird to me. He was just some dude with Boba's armor. Any other time he'd have been forgotten the second Mando left with the armor after the deal was completed. But for some reason he has grown a bit of a following. Personally I liked Miggs a lot more, he has an actual backstory, where as Cobb is just a gifter that is a decent shot and got super lucky with some Jawas.

Voss wrote:
Except, of course, Boba doesn't have an operation. He's just squatting in Jabba's house, protected only by (frankly nonsensical) plot armor, even for Star Wars. There are multiple places (at least once every episode, not counting the bonus chapters of Season 2.9 of Mando) where someone should have just killed him but either failed comically or simply chose not to and walked away, including the gakky mayor's sharpshooter guards.

Boba made his intentions clear that he intends to run Mos Espa. The Pykes made their intentions clear that they don't cut in more parties than absolutely necessary. The difference between Bib shaking down the town and Boba shaking down the town is that Boba doesn't have any connection to the Hutts. The Pykes can take him out without repercussions and they can do it before he even has the chance to grow into a serious competitor.

Voss wrote:
And for the Hutts, Tatooine actually is a great place to threaten the Pykes' operation. They're pushing their very lucrative spice trade through the desert, which means a great way to damage their operations, salvage a pricey luxury (market value: a single box = a town) and deal no collateral damage to anything that matters.

The Hutts could interrupt the Pyke operation in one small part of the galaxy and lose their competitors some money.

Or they could block the single, tiny, easily controlled space lane to and from Kessel and hit the Pykes where it hurts, while boarding freighters trying to make a run for it, appropriating the spice they're carrying and making a shiny coin selling in on.

Which one sounds more like war to you?

Tatooine is an invitation to escalation. That's what the twins fear, hostilities spilling over. There is no indication that Tatooine has any significant value in itself if they're willing to just let it go.

The desert thing is the part that perplexes me. Why you don't just offload the spice at the starport, and instead build special convoy trains to run it I do not understand. Even the authorities are either on the take, or the Republic Rangers- who could just as easily stop your second freighter taking off with spice, as your first freighter coming to Tattooine with spice.

I'm sure there's some logic or reasoning, but I do not see it.

Excellent show once Mando showed up though! I'd recommend it to friends, just telling them to skip the first three episodes. although it may do better with a binge watch.

 Geifer wrote:

Voss wrote:
Except, of course, Boba doesn't have an operation. He's just squatting in Jabba's house, protected only by (frankly nonsensical) plot armor, even for Star Wars. There are multiple places (at least once every episode, not counting the bonus chapters of Season 2.9 of Mando) where someone should have just killed him but either failed comically or simply chose not to and walked away, including the gakky mayor's sharpshooter guards.

Boba made his intentions clear that he intends to run Mos Espa. The Pykes made their intentions clear that they don't cut in more parties than absolutely necessary. The difference between Bib shaking down the town and Boba shaking down the town is that Boba doesn't have any connection to the Hutts. The Pykes can take him out without repercussions and they can do it before he even has the chance to grow into a serious competitor.'\

Uh.. yeah. That's my point. They could have taken him out multiple times without repercussions. They just... didn't. So we're stuck with the gakky B plot where he's doing everything wrong but ends up somehow winning anyway.

Voss wrote:
And for the Hutts, Tatooine actually is a great place to threaten the Pykes' operation. They're pushing their very lucrative spice trade through the desert, which means a great way to damage their operations, salvage a pricey luxury (market value: a single box = a town) and deal no collateral damage to anything that matters.

The Hutts could interrupt the Pyke operation in one small part of the galaxy and lose their competitors some money.

Or they could block the single, tiny, easily controlled space lane to and from Kessel and hit the Pykes where it hurts, while boarding freighters trying to make a run for it, appropriating the spice they're carrying and making a shiny coin selling in on.

Which one sounds more like war to you?

Tatooine is an invitation to escalation. That's what the twins fear, hostilities spilling over. There is no indication that Tatooine has any significant value in itself if they're willing to just let it go.

Obviously the second one is more like war- you cut off someone's supplies entirely and there isn't any other choice. Hence well, to avoid politics, lets say lots of real-world wars and also the basic plot of the Phanton Menace to keep it Star Wars.

On the other hand, light skirmishing over supplies and outlying territory is what fictional crime syndicates do. Its the narrative purpose for having multiple crime syndicates.
Just having a pointless red herring to throw off the audience is pretty gakky writing.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
The desert thing is the part that perplexes me. Why you don't just offload the spice at the starport, and instead build special convoy trains to run it I do not understand. Even the authorities are either on the take, or the Republic Rangers- who could just as easily stop your second freighter taking off with spice, as your first freighter coming to Tattooine with spice.

I'm sure there's some logic or reasoning, but I do not see it.

Excellent show once Mando showed up though! I'd recommend it to friends, just telling them to skip the first three episodes. although it may do better with a binge watch.

only reason i can understand for shifting the spice planetside is that the majority of the risk in transport is getting it to the planet, past the republic and its patrols (who are remote, ever changing and hard to bribe reliably), so they try and minimise that risk by going for a few big shipments rather than many small ones. then, they rely on land based transport to distribute on Tatooine, where the locals can be bought or bullied.

the real question is, where are they shipping it too? its a relitively low population desert planet, the market cant be that big, can it? this is the equivalent of two crime families having a fight over the rights to sell drugs on Whitehaven, Cumbria (go look it up). its not exactly worth much.

That's also something that confused me.

When Jabba was hanging around it seemed less like he made his money on the planet and more like it was an effectively lawless safe haven for him to run things from. It makes sense. Tatooine is on the outer rim, low population, and not a planet with any meaningful resources. People come and go all the time though, so obviously it's a place with lots of traffic passing by.

Then Boba and the Pykes come along like the place is prime real estate for wealth in itself and I'm like 'fething how? Everyone is either a mechanic, a junk dealer, or farming water.'

It's just an extension of the shows general problem that the motivations of everyone involved were really unclear or so nebulous they didn't make sense.

It would make more sense if the goal was for Tattooine to serve as a hub for the intergalactic black market, not a black market itself.

Well, the Pykes had a dingy office in Mos Eisley (Which...Boba always knew where that was. He rode there on a Bantha in the flashbacks, where they unaccountably failed to even try to kill him for trashing their Smugglin' Train).

Their main interest was clearly the Spice trade, regardless of Boba (which is why they sent Bane in response to Sheriff Freetown, not because some Mando they'd never heard of decided to recruit there five minutes before). So the non-existent 'wealth' of Tattooine doesn't seem their concern, it was just a problem that show never bothered to explain why they were shipping Spice across the planet's surface in the first place (rather than try to smuggle it onto Coruscant or Corellia or wherever to sell). They seemed to be smuggling it for the sake of being smugglers. General smugglers smuggling smuggles.

Realistically it didn't actually matter to anyone if the Hutts left, Boba ruled Mos Espa and the Pykes randomly rode trains across the desert. Apparently people were vaguely concerned abut the price of water, but you could just steal that and hang outside the water seller's office or house, so whatever. It doesn't intersect with the Spice trade at all.

Voss wrote:
Well, the Pykes had a dingy office in Mos Eisley (Which...Boba always knew where that was. He rode there on a Bantha in the flashbacks).

Their main interest was clearly the Spice trade, regardless of Boba (which is why they sent Bane in response to Sheriff Freetown). So the non-existent 'wealth' of Tattooine doesn't seem their concern, it was just a problem that show never bothered to explain why they were shipping Spice across the planet's surface in the first place (rather than try to smuggle it onto Coruscant or Corellia or wherever to sell). They seemed to be smuggling it for the sake of being smugglers. General smugglers smuggling smuggles.

Realistically it didn't actually matter to anyone if the Hutts left, Boba ruled Mos Espa and the Pykes randomly rode trains across the desert. Apparently people were vaguely concerned abut the price of water, but you could just steal that and hang outside the water seller's office or house, so whatever. It doesn't intersect with the Spice trade at all.

the big issue with Tatooine as shown is their is no primary industry or money maker to drive the local economy. everyone we meet is in service or secondary jobs (parts dealers, ship mechanics, law enforcement, etc). hell, even the moisture farmers, the closest we see to primary industry, are just supplying water.

So wheres the money coming form? whats bringing cash onto the planet? is their some unseen mining going on somewhere? is it a major rest stop on a travel route, or sat at a strategic crossroads that make it a convenient junction and "hub" for travel? for a supposed backwater planet it has quite a healthy commercial passenger service, so maybe its that, but its still hard to work out what the workers of the "workers district" did to earn a paycheck to support all the bars, mod parlors etc that are around.

 LordofHats wrote:
That's also something that confused me.

When Jabba was hanging around it seemed less like he made his money on the planet and more like it was an effectively lawless safe haven for him to run things from. It makes sense. Tatooine is on the outer rim, low population, and not a planet with any meaningful resources. People come and go all the time though, so obviously it's a place with lots of traffic passing by.

Then Boba and the Pykes come along like the place is prime real estate for wealth in itself and I'm like 'fething how? Everyone is either a mechanic, a junk dealer, or farming water.'

It's just an extension of the shows general problem that the motivations of everyone involved were really unclear or so nebulous they didn't make sense.

It would make more sense if the goal was for Tattooine to serve as a hub for the intergalactic black market, not a black market itself.

I need to check, but if memory servers, Tatooine lays on one of the major Hyperspace lanes in the Galaxy. So it's likely the ship rout that is important. I also would surmise that a lot of people in Mos Eisley and Mos Espa probably use narcotics, given how prevalent stuff like crime and slavery are on the world, combined with the harsh lifestyle.

Oh yeah the shippingroute makes sense.

But why are they moving spice across the planet surface? You don't control a port for its value as a port and then transport your spice all over the countryside. There's no reason for drugs to ever leave the major port cities, which as far as I know are the only cities on Tatooine (Mos Espa, Mos Eisly, and Anchorhead). The people of Tatooine don't seem to have any money though (despite an entire cyber gang having very shiny and chrome speed bikes :/) so how is Tatooine itself where they're selling this stuff?

Honestly, Voss kind of nails it on the head.

The story needed a bad guy and the bad guys are smugglers. Smugglers smuggle. Apparently. Even if its just for the hell of it.

I hate to say it, but zero initial thought goes into the Star Wars universe as a whole. The worldbuilding is just stage dressing. Characters operate primarily under the rule of cool. Plotlines exist to serve those characters.

That's not really much of an excuse when the plot is gak and the characters are too obtuse to be enjoyed XD

And the Star Wars universe generally isn't quite that shallow. It's not deep think as a setting, but it's usually effective enough that it makes sense without needing to defended with 'the plot and setting have always sucked this much.' Especially when it comes to serials, Star Wars has generally done better than this.

They in fact have not and don't have to. There is a very big air of apparent disinterest in this series IMO, and I think most of the criticisms that could be pointed at it come down to no one bothering to put the effort in. Not any intrinsic quality of Star Wars as a whole.

I disagree. The OT was enjoyable, but even that was extremely shallow. As you pointed out, that issue becomes worse in things like TBoBF where the characters can't carry the show because it's so bland.

trexmeyer wrote:
As you pointed out, that issue becomes worse in things like TBoBF where the characters can't carry the show because it's so bland.

I mean... That's basically my criticism?

A shallow setting isn't really a problem unless the plot tries to do more with it than it can support. And really, part of the issue with TBoBF isn't even that the Star Wars setting can't carry this kind of story. TBoBF specifically is lazily conceived. It's really like no one bothered to care to even try. We've had these stories in Star Wars before. Recently too. Nearly everything that stands out as wrong about Book of Bob could easily have been fixed.

Not every fictional setting needs to be deep and brilliantly done. They in effect only need to be deep enough to carry whatever is going on. About the best TBoBF does with its setting is the whole Tuskan raider section in the first half but I personally find the literal (right down to some of the scenes) remake of Dances with Wolves a bizarre choice so it's kind of hard to get into, especially when it detracts from all the time that could have been spent fleshing out the Mos Espa plot.

If you're going to do a serialized series than the worldbuilding needs to be reasonably strong, especially with something like Star Wars that is now canonicall y stretched across 11 feature length films, multiple TV shows, comics, and at least a couple of games.

For a one off series it is significantly less important. Star Wars is so big that it has become self contradictory.

 LordofHats wrote:
[About the best TBoBF does with its setting is the whole Tuskan raider section in the first half but I personally find the literal (right down to some of the scenes) remake of Dances with Wolves a bizarre choice so it's kind of hard to get into, especially when it detracts from all the time that could have been spent fleshing out the Mos Espa plot.

Even Dances With Tuskans makes no sense.

Boba says that the Tuskans 'saved him', and the show is clearly going with a 'Boba says native rights' narrative or something, but it's such a bungled mess that literally the first thing that the tuskans do is enslave him, then torture and beat him; when they're brought speeder bikes, their fist instinct is to start tearing them apart like savages, and when they have a gun-train-load of valuable water (that they ordinarily use slave labour to collect), they just spill it everywhere.

But Boba decides to stay with them for years (?!) for some reason after killing Machamp, even though mere moments before he was literally planning to escape his slavery... I guess now that the other slave is dead, he's the alpha-slave or something and so they'll stop letting the children beat him with sticks, and put a magic lizard up his nose (without his consent) instead?

Mos Pelgo was a mining town (Silicax oxalate & dilarium oil), so Tatooine did have some natural resources.

 LordofHats wrote:

And the Star Wars universe generally isn't quite that shallow.

Someone pointed out that they assumed Jaba used Tatooine as a base of operations because it kept him out of governing bodies reach but that his crime syndicate stretched farther off world.

But we never SAW that so much. We did know that Han lost some spice. But was he bringing spice to Tatooine or taking it someplace else? Based on BoBF it looks like he was bringing it to Jaba. The rest was just asumption by the viewer because it couldn't be that dumb. But obviously our assumptions were wrong. It is that dumb.

beast_gts wrote:
Mos Pelgo was a mining town (Silicax oxalate & dilarium oil), so Tatooine did have some natural resources.

Once upon a time, from the Star Wars RPG that was used as reference material for authors writing in the Star Wars universe if my memory serves me correctly, Tatooine was going to be a treasure trove of raw materials for the republic. Initial geological surveys were very promising and a mining cartel invested heavily in infrastructure to support its growth. Unfortunately the initial reports were fudged by corrupt bureaucrats for a quick credit and the investors were left with an underperforming asset. The response? Let's pump and dump it. This happens several times. Each time more people get enticed to come to Tatooine but the job markets fail and you end up with a desperate population what makes a good market for drugs and recruitment pool for criminal enterprises. The Jawa sand crawlers are an example of the infrastructure just abandoned by the earlier investors.

 Lance845 wrote:

Someone pointed out that they assumed Jaba used Tatooine as a base of operations because it kept him out of governing bodies reach but that his crime syndicate stretched farther off world.

That was me XD

But we never SAW that so much.

Yeah we did.

We saw multiple instances of Jabba and the Hutts having a galaxy-wide crime network. The only one that are cannon now are the ones from Clone Wars really, but *shrug* In all of that, Tatooine just seemed to be Jabba's crib. His den, as it were. Nothing ever suggested a backwater planet like Tatooine was the place he was making his money. It's not an assumption so much as in inference. Established setting details can be used to make obvious conclusions.

Whether or not it was or wasn't dumb without us knowing is kind of missing the point. However stupid the setting was or wasn't, it wasn't stupid enough to be a problem. There's a reason I keep calling BoBF lazy rather than stupid.

Even Dances With Tuskans makes no sense.

It's probably the only part of Boba Fett's story that does sort of work. It's just... I mean really? Did anyone here want a series about Boba Fett to amount to 1/3 Dances with Wolves love letter? Chronologically it doesn't fit into the rest of the story but that just goes back to my main criticism.

Laziness. No one bothered to try and string any of this stuff together in a way that made sense or was coherent. They just threw a bunch of ingredients in the pot, shrugged, and figured the fans would eat it up because feth um they love Boba Fett. They're honestly probably not entirely wrong either. I doubt Disney is losing any money on this project.

princeyg wrote:


This seems to be a problem with a lot of Star Wars stuff recently. the only thing that I can think of that I unashamedly loved as a story in its own right was Rogue One...still the 3rd best SW film.

I loved how they balanced plot armour with what actually happens when a guerrilla force fights a proper military. Hit and runs go fine - face line units though and everyone dies...

 LordofHats wrote:

It's probably the only part of Boba Fett's story that does sort of work. It's just... I mean really? Did anyone here want a series about Boba Fett to amount to 1/3 Dances with Wolves love letter? Chronologically it doesn't fit into the rest of the story but that just goes back to my main criticism.

Laziness. No one bothered to try and string any of this stuff together in a way that made sense or was coherent. They just threw a bunch of ingredients in the pot, shrugged, and figured the fans would eat it up because feth um they love Boba Fett. They're honestly probably not entirely wrong either. I doubt Disney is losing any money on this project.

I'm pretty sure it comes down to this being a film script that was stretched into a TV series. I'm pretty sure this project started during the "A Star Wars Story" era and got retooled in the wake of Solo's disappointing performance. As a film I can see it fitting together pretty well. You open with Boba storming Jabba's palace and taking over, maybe getting injured and needing to recuperate in a bacta tank where you flash back to him escaping the sarlaac and being found by the raiders, who he finds a new family with. Cut back and we have the huts arrive and warn him of the Pyke takeover and gift him the rancor. Boba prepares for war, big setpiece riding the rancor against the spider droids, with Fett eventually hunting down the Pyke leader and revealing its all been to get revenge for wiping out his Tusken family (or he finds this out mid way before the Hutts arrive to make the jump into act 3 more proactive).

It's a pretty clean film plot outline, its just the details that matter. Like had it been made in the Solo era, its likely Emilia Clarke might have been worked in. Instead, it got reworked into the Favreau/Filoni projects which meant it had to be stretched to fit a TV series and worked into the successful project they were running. There's a lot of elements of the show that wouldn't work in film. Everything with Din is completely unnecessary and honestly even Fennec is a pretty optional inclusion. There's a lot of these kinds of plot elements that feel like they're really for the greater project than this story and the core script gets very lost in the process. I think though, every question about the series can be answered assuming this started as a script where Boba is rescued by the Tuskens, they get killed by criminals, and he gets revenge for their deaths.It's just a question of what framework it was stretched around.

Ha. My podcast just bought up a really great point. Boba Fett leaves right. He goes to get his Rancor when there are big droids with shields.

Why the hell did he come riding back on a rancor when he could have flown in in his space ship and just annihilated them with the ton of weapons he has on that thing?

Boba Fett is an idiot. He has always been an idiot, and he continues to be an idiot.

 Lance845 wrote:
Ha. My podcast just bought up a really great point. Boba Fett leaves right. He goes to get his Rancor when there are big droids with shields.

Why the hell did he come riding back on a rancor when he could have flown in in his space ship and just annihilated them with the ton of weapons he has on that thing?

Boba Fett is an idiot. He has always been an idiot, and he continues to be an idiot.

I'm going to be TFG. Star Wars has always operated under the rule of cool and done nonsensical things for the sake of aesthetics to a greater degree than a lot of media. The things that have worked have been more a product of chance than directorial intent.

The Death Star was dumb for various reasons. You can argue against it based on physics, wasted resources, poor defenses, etc. It fails for multiple reasons. To me the reason it sort of works is because the Galatic Empire is obviously inspired by Nazi Germany and, to a lesser degree, late 19th/early 20 century Imperialism and militarism and doomsday weapons were in vogue. It was also released during the height of The Cold War so it does potentially serve as a nuke metaphor as well. It's impractical as hell, but at least has some thematic weight.

You're right. The Rancor is just a pointless Chekov's Gun because it "looks cool" and references Mandalorian beast riding. It's not practical. I don't think anything about Star Wars combat has ever been practical.

 Lance845 wrote:
Ha. My podcast just bought up a really great point. Boba Fett leaves right. He goes to get his Rancor when there are big droids with shields.

Why the hell did he come riding back on a rancor when he could have flown in in his space ship and just annihilated them with the ton of weapons he has on that thing?

Boba Fett is an idiot. He has always been an idiot, and he continues to be an idiot.

Because the show suffers from the bane of modern film.

An obsession with huge set pieces and cool scenes that might be epic in isolation, but when strung together without any sense make no sense. I made a similar observation about Star Trek Discovery, the JJ Trek Films, and pretty much everything by Michael Bay.

All spectacle and no plot is all well and good for spectacle, but there's no plot. Or at least not a plot that makes sense. Why do we have shiny chrome cyberpunk kids in BoBF? Because someone thought it would look cool and probably hoped to do a shiny crhome cyberpunk kids spinoff series for some reason. Why is half the start of the series a Dances with Wolves remake? Because someone thought it would look cool and apparently thought Glory was rightfully denied best film in 1989. They're not wrong exactly. It does look cool. But throw it all together with nary and care and none of it really makes sense as a whole. So of course Boba Fett leaves and comes back on a Rancor rather than a gunship.

EDIT: And as to the above, yes while people might excuse this by pointing out Star Wars has never been practical I think that's being kind of pointlessly obtuse. No one is asking for the story to be a realistic depiction of anything. They only really expect things to make sense in context which has a lot of leeway for things making no sense at all. That's what SoD is for. BoBF's problem is that it starts weird and ends weird, without a heart or a soul. It's just a bunch of mindless scenes strung together with no care. Some people have a higher tolerance for that than others and I imagine many quite enjoyed it. Others didn't because the strings tying all these nonsense together were more like split ends and pointing out that Star Wars has never been realistic is kind of pointing at fruits being sweet when someone complains their apple is mushy inside.

On the Rancor vs Gunship front, maybe the Rancor is the better bet because the Skorpanek droids are ray-shielded, meaning Slave-1's guns will be ineffective, and he doesn't really want to be using torpedoes or proton bombs in the middle of the city. Meanwhile the Rancor can get inside the shields and pull them to pieces. It's not necessarily as stupid as it might first appear.

To be fair, the Rancor wrecked the city just fine XD

pgmason wrote:
On the Rancor vs Gunship front, maybe the Rancor is the better bet because the Skorpanek droids are ray-shielded, meaning Slave-1's guns will be ineffective, and he doesn't really want to be using torpedoes or proton bombs in the middle of the city. Meanwhile the Rancor can get inside the shields and pull them to pieces. It's not necessarily as stupid as it might first appear.

The rancor is flesh and blood and gets gunned down like any other living thing. Although it is big and takes more shots. Meanwhile, Fett himself is VERY vulnerable sitting fully exposed on top of this lumbering lizard gorilla. Here is the thing, Fetts gun ship is tricked out with all kinds of stuff. We know it from canon sources like the complete guides and such. That includes a tractor beam and an ion cannon. You know, that one that disables ships and other electronics by shutting them down completely. He could have literally flown over, ion cannoned them, picked them up with the tractor beam and hurled them into space. It's got rockets (not just proton torpedoes) and guns big enough to take down star ships. So definitely big enough to break those shields if the rancors punch could do it.

The writers deciding to do a chekov's Rancor is the only explanation. There is no in universe reason why Fett did what he did besides being a completely incompetent moron.

On a Rancor-related note, just how far away is Jabba's Palace? Presumably Fett's jetpack lets him get back there fairly quickly but he still needs to get the Rancor ready and then ride it back to the city to fight the droids. Not sure that really meshes with the "these are my people" attitude when they see him fly off into the distance to allow the droids to run rampant for a good 15 minutes (at least) before coming back to...destroy more of the city in a weird mini-Godzilla battle.

Yes, these are minor details that you can gloss over in better movies/series (though I would argue one of the hallmarks of better writing is these problems not arising in the first place). But BoBF isn't good enough to earn that kind of dispensation. Even with the time-compressing magic of editing you're still left thinking the droids are completely non-threatening and Fett sure is taking a long time to return. Even if he doesn't come back in Slave I like he should, surely he's got some kind of anti-droid tech stashed away in his compound somewhere. Something that doesn't involve destroying a city block to get rid of a couple of droids.

Also, how long did the trainer say it was going to take to teach the baby rancor to be ridden? Fett gave him instruction to begin the training like... 4 days ago.

Quick note that probably doesn't change much, but Boba can cut out prep time for the Rancor by radioing ahead for Machete to take care of it.

It's lucky that Boba's rancor can just tank laser shots (the few times the droids even bother to shoot at it), while Jabba's one got creamed by a spikey gate...

pgmason wrote:
On the Rancor vs Gunship front, maybe the Rancor is the better bet because the Skorpanek droids are ray-shielded, meaning Slave-1's guns will be ineffective, and he doesn't really want to be using torpedoes or proton bombs in the middle of the city. Meanwhile the Rancor can get inside the shields and pull them to pieces. It's not necessarily as stupid as it might first appear.

Nope, its more stupid. As we saw in Mando Season 2, Slave 1 has ion weapons (the shuttle pilots explicitly mention it), so the shields wouldn't matter. Its how he disables the Imperial Shuttle when he kidnaps Doc Creepy
And we've seen ion weapons turn off a whole bloody star destroyer, so if his can disable a shuttle, they can handle a couple of second hand droids.

---
As far as the Rancor goes, It also doesn't help that the battle damage from getting shot just fades away on the CGI skin of the rancor. It vanishes both from one fight to the next and also after a few seconds during the first fight. It was poorly done.

So much unnecessary nitpicking. Can you people not just sit down and watch something and enjoy it in the moment without armchair quarterbacking or second guessing characters decisions? "Oh, if I had that jetpack I would fly around blasting everyone from the air, these guys are idiots and this show is terrible honhonhonhon". Learn to suspend your disbelief, assume they ran out of fuel at that point or their backpacks were overheating/needed to recharge (as they had already been flying around a bit), etc.

Anyway, in terms of discussions with actual substance, we don't actually know which item Grogu selected or if Luke was playing it straight with him vs testing him. We assume we know based on circumstance, but for all we know he selected differently and Lukes response was "you passed your final test, but your friends are in danger, you need to return to them, as I did when I was studying with Yoda and my friends were in trouble on Bespin" etc., or Grogu did select what we think he did and Luke was like "yes, I made the same decision when I was young. Go now and do your thing and love your friends and family, one day when you are ready return here to complete your training with me."

 warboss wrote:
I gave up on Clone Wars after that god awful duct-taped "movie" they released of the first couple of episodes. I know it got better but I still hear "Sky Guy" and "Snips" in my nightmares!

Pretty sure that movie predates the entire series, the actual series didn't air until months later IIRC, the movie was essentially a "pilot" in that regard.

Sure. It's just a nitpick that Luke was apparently too busy doing... something (not like he has any other students to be dealing with) to take Grogu back to Mandi, and instead sent him off on his own with R2, who just abandoned him with literally the first person they met.
What a jerk!

And the only reason that the baby had to leave was because Luke - I've got to leave Yoda to save my friends - Luke - I'm going to risk everything to attempt to save my father - Luke - I've recovered my master's lightsaber and held on to it - wants him to choose between being a Jedi and having attachments.
What a Jerk!

Rarely do characters get assassinated so many times within a series of works.

So much unnecessary nitpicking. Can you people not just sit down and watch something and enjoy it in the moment without armchair quarterbacking or second guessing characters decisions?

Nope. Thinking about things is how I enjoy them.

But really, 'in the moment' this series was bad. Upon reflection... the problems really stand out.

If you don't want to discuss things... I suggest not perusing a discussion thread. And 'he objectively and explicitly had this capability, but didn't use it. No reason.' doesn't strike me as a nitpick anyway, nor does 'stop thinking about it' strike me as an uplifting way to consider anything.

Suspension of disbelief already covers enemies blindly abandoning cover, mega shields and sword hilts that are super heavy because you're 'feeling about it' wrong. It doesn't need to do any more lifting than it already does.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Sure. It's just a nitpick that Luke was apparently too busy doing... something (not like he has any other students to be dealing with) to take Grogu back to Mandi, and instead sent him off on his own with R2, who just abandoned him with literally the first person they met.
What a jerk!

And the only reason that the baby had to leave was because Luke - I've got to leave Yoda to save my friends - Luke - I'm going to risk everything to attempt to save my father - Luke - I've recovered my master's lightsaber and held on to it - wants him to choose between being a Jedi and having attachments.
What a Jerk!

Rarely do characters get assassinated so many times within a series of works.

Again - you don't actually know what happened off-camera. The fact that it happened off-camera suggests theres more to the story than your reductivist point of view might otherwise imply.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

So much unnecessary nitpicking. Can you people not just sit down and watch something and enjoy it in the moment without armchair quarterbacking or second guessing characters decisions?

Nope. Thinking about things is how I enjoy them.

You sound like you're probably constantly miserable. Hope you're not also the type to say "keep politics out of my entertainment", because then you're miserably doubly so.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Anyway, in terms of discussions with actual substance, we don't actually know which item Grogu selected or if Luke was playing it straight with him vs testing him.

We literally see Grogru wearing the shirt and Mando vocally mentions that he is wearing it.

chaos0xomega wrote:
So much unnecessary nitpicking. Can you people not just sit down and watch something and enjoy it in the moment without armchair quarterbacking or second guessing characters decisions? "Oh, if I had that jetpack I would fly around blasting everyone from the air, these guys are idiots and this show is terrible honhonhonhon". Learn to suspend your disbelief, assume they ran out of fuel at that point or their backpacks were overheating/needed to recharge (as they had already been flying around a bit), etc.

Making gak up yourself to explain why the scene happens the way it does is no better than nit picking the scene in the first place. If you don't want to talk about this stuff, then don't engage. Simple as that.

 Lance845 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Anyway, in terms of discussions with actual substance, we don't actually know which item Grogu selected or if Luke was playing it straight with him vs testing him.

We literally see Grogru wearing the shirt and Mando vocally mentions that he is wearing it.

You've rather missed the point. Just because Grogu is wearing the shirt doesn't mean its actually the item Grogu selected. That is the obvious conclusion, but it would require Luke to have played matters straight. We don't know that Grogu didn't select the lightsaber, and that Luke didn't give him the shirt anyway for other reasons.

The fact of the matter is that they could have shown Grogu making his choice and the resulting interactions/consequences in relation to Luke. Instead they have him mysteriously turn up on Tatooine in Lukes X-Wing being piloted by R2 who is in some sort of a rush to get somewhere else. This is a classic tv/film setup for "things aren't quite what they seem". The fact that we don't have a clear indication of these events in relation to one another in terms of timeline also serves to muddy the waters of perception. For all we know, Grogu turning up on Tatooine occurred weeks/months, etc. after Mando dropped the shirt off/Grogu was asked to make his choice.

We don't know that Grogu didn't pick the lightsaber to continue his training, and then 3 months later something hot came up and Luke was like "Grogu, its too dangerous for you to come with me, I'm sending you to stay with your dad for a bit as he can keep you safe better than I can. I will find you when I am ready to resume your training, here take this beskar shirt in case danger comes for you, your father wanted you to have this, it will help keep you safe."

chaos0xomega wrote:


Again - you don't actually know what happened off-camera. The fact that it happened off-camera suggests theres more to the story than your reductivist point of view might otherwise imply.

respectfully, we can only mark the work we are given, and can only judge what we are shown. whatever "really happened" with Luke off screen is irrelevant to the story of the Book of Boba Fett, because it happened off screen. Regardless of the intent of Luke, his actual, on screen (or directly inferable from what we see on screen) actions were to load grogu into an x-wing, piloted by his droid and send him off to tattoine to find mando, but not call ahead or otherwise make arrangements for his care or reception, and did so wearing the armour shirt.

thats about it. anything else is pure, unsubstantiated rumour.


now, i cannot for the life of me understand a in-universe reason for him to do this. the only reason i can think of is out of universe, which is they wanted grogu back with mando, and have him in the big end fight, but didnt want to introduce Luke or Ashoka to the big end fight (so they can't shortcut things and rob fett of any meaningful victory). so they had to resort to this stupid, bordering on child endangerment plan.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
So much unnecessary nitpicking. Can you people not just sit down and watch something and enjoy it in the moment without armchair quarterbacking or second guessing characters decisions? "Oh, if I had that jetpack I would fly around blasting everyone from the air, these guys are idiots and this show is terrible honhonhonhon". Learn to suspend your disbelief, assume they ran out of fuel at that point or their backpacks were overheating/needed to recharge (as they had already been flying around a bit), etc.

Making gak up yourself to explain why the scene happens the way it does is no better than nit picking the scene in the first place. If you don't want to talk about this stuff, then don't engage. Simple as that.

Show me where the fiction hurt you. As it stands I'm not making anything up, I'm enjoying entertainment as its meant to be enjoyed without overthinking it in a manner that makes me nerd-rage about it online. The "making gak up" bit you refer to is literally something that I came up with in response to a complaint I read in this thread, rather than something I would think of in the moment of watching the show - the point was to illustrate an example of assuming that there are circumstances and events outside of your awareness that might explain why characters are acting the way they act.


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xerxeskingofking wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:


Again - you don't actually know what happened off-camera. The fact that it happened off-camera suggests theres more to the story than your reductivist point of view might otherwise imply.

respectfully, we can only mark the work we are given, and can only judge what we are shown. whatever "really happened" with Luke off screen is irrelevant to the story of the Book of Boba Fett, because it happened off screen. Regardless of the intent of Luke, his actual, on screen (or directly inferable from what we see on screen) actions were to load grogu into an x-wing, piloted by his droid and send him off to tattoine to find mando, but not call ahead or otherwise make arrangements for his care or reception, and did so wearing the armour shirt.

thats about it. anything else is pure, unsubstantiated rumour.


now, i cannot for the life of me understand a in-universe reason for him to do this. the only reason i can think of is out of universe, which is they wanted grogu back with mando, and have him in the big end fight, but didnt want to introduce Luke or Ashoka to the big end fight (so they can't shortcut things and rob fett of any meaningful victory). so they had to resort to this stupid, bordering on child endangerment plan.

I agree - you can only mark the work we are given - the work does not include Grogus decision, only circumstances which allow us to infer a possibility of what it was, nor do we know why or how Grogu ended up in an X-Wing piloted by R2 on his way to mando - that Luke "loaded Grogu in and sent him to tatooine to find mando and did not call ahead or otherwise make arrangements for his care or reception" is in and of itself a "pure unsubstantiated rumor". Therefore it would be erroneous of us to judge and criticize the decisions made, etc. without knowing fully the backstory of what occurred. What we do know is the decision not to show these events was made deliberately, which is usually a fair indicator that there is more to the story (though in fairness "more to the story" does not necessarily mean that the story is different from what we have inferred).

chaos0xomega wrote:
So much unnecessary nitpicking.

Unnecessary nitpicking is when we poke fun at Pokemon sending ten-year-olds into an untamed wilderness full of super-powered monsters, mysterious godlike beings, and criminal syndicates with nothing but a pat on the back and electric rodent that shocks them repeatedly.

It can be fun, but it's kind of being a dick because that's just missing the point of a kid's TV show about the power of friendship and the great outdoors.

What's going on here isn't unnecessary nitpicking so much as just plain old nitpicking. If you enjoy Book of Boba Fett more power to you. Some of us didn't think the story worked. Maybe Star Wars fans should stop wondering about necessity and instead ponder maturity cause I gotta say I'm tired of these stupid bitch fights over how people are wrong for not liking the latest piece of Star Wars media. People can not like gak just as much as you like it. If talking about that is unnecessary, I can't help but wonder why you're bothering to comment on it.

chaos0xomega wrote:


Show me where the fiction hurt you.

How about you show me where I said that.

As it stands I'm not making anything up

You sure about that? Because...

The "making gak up" bit you refer to is literally something that I came up with in response to a complaint I read in this thread, rather than something I would think of in the moment of watching the show

Right, so... someone pointed out an issue that you yourself did not think of while watching, and then you... made up an explanation.

I'm enjoying entertainment as its meant to be enjoyed without overthinking it in a manner that makes me nerd-rage about it online.

Good for you, now let others who enjoy talking about this stuff get on with what they enjoy.

The joy of the Jedi way is they get to do completely reckless things and when it all works out, take credit because of the Force. He's just all like, "hey, R2, I need you to save Boba Fett for me. Just drop this kid off in a garage on Tatooine; it'll sort itself out from there."

 LunarSol wrote:
The joy of the Jedi way is they get to do completely reckless things and when it all works out, take credit because of the Force. He's just all like, "hey, R2, I need you to save Boba Fett for me. Just drop this kid off in a garage on Tatooine; it'll sort itself out from there."

Now see, I'd watch a parody series that played it like this XD Just Redshirts but Star Wars. I know Spaceballs was a spoof but that was a different brand of comedy.

I gotta say, this needing to see and have everything explained bit about Luke is the absolute worst thing about the Star Wars fandom.

Starwars Street exists because of it. Nobody gave a single feth where Han got his boots and vest until people started writing books and they made a movie about it. Nobody needed to see him gamble for his ship. And I don't need a flash back, comic, or novel from Grogru's perspective to see how the conversation between Luke and Grogru ended.

He got the shirt, he was sent home to daddy Mando. Decision was made. Move forward.

No gaps need filling. If you need to make up head canon to make that more interesting than it actually is you do you. But the show showed us what we needed to see to get the information we needed to have. He was given a choice. And then we saw the consequences of the choice.

 Lance845 wrote:
I gotta say, this needing to see and have everything explained bit about Luke is the absolute worst thing about the Star Wars fandom.

It's something that I think is hard too appreciate until you see the effect I has and have something to compare it to. I didn't really appreciate how great it can be to not have answers until I played Dark Souls 3 and saw its particular brand of world-building and all the fun that comes from having mountains of pieces and no picture of how they're supposed to fit together.

Not knowing stuff can be a lot of fun if you get your head in the right place.

The deal here is that I don't feel like I ever really knew anything. Boba Fett's motivations and goals are like liquid smoke. The world around him is a pastiche of set pieces that don't seem to fit together. Halfway into the series ti really stops being the Book of Boba Fett and instead becomes a sneak peek at Mandalorian Season 3 because seriously, you could cut off the first 4 episodes of BoBF and the last 3 still work fine on their own. That last bit especially leaves me feeling pretty vindicated in itself. No one just drops a good thing to drag in something a lot more successful and better. It speaks to a complete dearth of confidence in Book of Boba Fett before it had even aired. All of the big emotional payoff at the end of the series is Mando and Grogou, not Boba. Boba ends his own series feeling like an unnecessary hanger on to a much better story.

If someone likes it I'm glad they enjoyed it. I didn't.

He got the shirt, he was sent home to daddy Mando. Decision was made. Move forward.

And I also gotta say this isn't really much of a mystery. Grogou took the shirt. He knew the lady on Tatooine, she's no stranger to him. He did a pretty basic 'Nah, I'll go back to shiny man. I miss him. Let's try that Tatooine lady. He's either there or she can call him for me. Can I get a ride?' With Moff Gideon out of the way there's no reason to think anyone is hunting for him anymore so *shrug*

There's no real mystery how this happened and no need to create any kind of complex headcanon. It's a pretty basic A + B = C.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I gotta say, this needing to see and have everything explained bit about Luke is the absolute worst thing about the Star Wars fandom.

It's something that I think is hard too appreciate until you see the effect I has and have something to compare it to. I didn't really appreciate how great it can be to not have answers until I played Dark Souls 3 and saw its particular brand of world-building and all the fun that comes from having mountains of pieces and no picture of how they're supposed to fit together.

Not knowing stuff can be a lot of fun if you get your head in the right place.

The deal here is that I don't feel like I ever really knew anything. Boba Fett's motivations and goals are like liquid smoke. The world around him is a pastiche of set pieces that don't seem to fit together. Halfway into the series ti really stops being the Book of Boba Fett and instead becomes a sneak peek at Mandalorian Season 3 because seriously, you could cut off the first 4 episodes of BoBF and the last 3 still work fine on their own. That last bit especially leaves me feeling pretty vindicated in itself. No one just drops a good thing to drag in something a lot more successful and better. It speaks to a complete dearth of confidence in Book of Boba Fett before it had even aired. All of the big emotional payoff at the end of the series is Mando and Grogou, not Boba. Boba ends his own series feeling like an unnecessary hanger on to a much better story.

If someone likes it I'm glad they enjoyed it. I didn't.

Darksouls is a good example of the opposite in extreme. But Starwars is REALLY the complete polar opposite of Darksouls. I don't think I have ever seen anything spend so much time and effort and money invested in going back to fill in gaps. Like... Tales of the Mos Eisley Cantina. Are you kidding me? Whole stories for randoms sitting in a bar? Imagine getting a book of short stories about the patrons sitting in the diner when Bruce Willis explains time travel to young Bruce Willis in Looper.

This show drags because it spends SO MUCH of it's run time doing exactly that. A full 2 episodes run time (1/2 of the first 4 episodes) is spent trying to tell us what happened to Boba after he fell into the sarlac and before he met Mando. Why? It didn't REALLY add anything to the story. We knew he was with the Tuskens already. He showed up in Mando with their robes and their signature stick. We didn't need to see him make one.

I'd say the problem's more specific than that.

At least in BoBF. They spent a lot of time on scenes that were just there to be there. Yes. The Dances with Tuskans flashback added very little to the story compared to how much of the story's time it took up.

My thought though is that it doesn't give a lot of the answers that are really needed to make it work. Stuff like Boba's motivations and the setting of Mos Espa. It's kind of weird that they felt the need to make his back story with the Tuskans so elaborate while basically throwing the present-day plotline at the screen with basically no explanations beyond Boba walking around town and saying his name.

Agreed!

And just think... If instead of the Dances with Tuskens, we got ZERO flash backs and Boba was just a ruthless Ex Bounty Hunter in impenetrable armor covered in weapons and aspirations to rule we could have watched him kill and and recruit his way through Tatooines towns. Stirring up trouble and making enemies. It would have been way more entertaining.

The irony of complaining about how Stsr Wars fills in the blanks while discussing a show that exists and is solely premised upon filling in the blanks is incredible.

I promise you your posts insisting that Grogu turning up in the beskar shirt because he picked it over the lightsaber and Luke sent him home wont age well. Its Star Wars, you already know that they are going to explore that event in detail with a 4 part tie-in comic and an entire novel dedicated to that alone. The idea that they wouldn't is just mind boggling if you've ever spent more than 5 minutes engaging with the franchise.

chaos0xomega wrote:
The irony of complaining about how Stsr Wars fills in the blanks while discussing a show that exists and is solely premised upon filling in the blanks is incredible.

Depends on what blanks we're talking about. Knowing Boba was hanging out with Tuskans wasn't much of a blank. We already knew that, and as interesting as seeing what it was like was it didn't really need as much screen time as it did. I daresay, that blank was massively overfilled and took desperately needed time away from other blanks that could have used a bit more context!

That and I still find the apparent desire to remake whole scenes from Dances with Wolves kind of bizarre >.>

I promise you your posts insisting that Grogu turning up in the beskar shirt because he picked it over the lightsaber and Luke sent him home wont age well. Its Star Wars, you already know that they are going to explore that event in detail with a 4 part tie-in comic and an entire novel dedicated to that alone. The idea that they wouldn't is just mind boggling if you've ever spent more than 5 minutes engaging with the franchise.

You've got people in this thread mocking the franchise for the fact that this idea doesn't sound that outlandish. That it's not shocking as an idea isn't really related to the opinion that such a thing is completely unnecessary. About as unnecessary as spending a whole 4 part tie in comic on something that probably only compromised a fifteen to thirty-minute conversation. They could totally do it in a 10-12 panel web comic and it would be much better!

They could do it in a 3 panel web comic. The first panel is Luke giving the choice. The second panel is Grogru's face. The 3rd panel is him walking towards the shirt. Done.

Next, this show isn't premised on filling in blanks. It was premised on seeing what happened next after Boba killed Bib Fortuna and sat in the chair at the end of Mandos post credit scene.

Finally, the fact that I know they are going to cover the event in detail is the thing I am mocking them, and the fandom, for. Again, it's the WORST thing about SW. And the people who feed it by eating up every little shred of unneeded dross backstory are mostly to blame. Them and Dave Filoni.

 Lance845 wrote:
I gotta say, this needing to see and have everything explained bit about Luke is the absolute worst thing about the Star Wars fandom.

Starwars Street exists because of it. Nobody gave a single feth where Han got his boots and vest until people started writing books and they made a movie about it. Nobody needed to see him gamble for his ship. And I don't need a flash back, comic, or novel from Grogru's perspective to see how the conversation between Luke and Grogru ended.

He got the shirt, he was sent home to daddy Mando. Decision was made. Move forward.

No gaps need filling. If you need to make up head canon to make that more interesting than it actually is you do you. But the show showed us what we needed to see to get the information we needed to have. He was given a choice. And then we saw the consequences of the choice.

The worst part is, the show telegraphed the choice before hand, and hung a big honking lampshade on it as well.
'Here's the droid pod section, now it has breathable air because I need to inexplicably remind you that you don't like droids, so find someone small to carry around in your new sports car, rather than the winnebago gunship I should have scavenged for you.'

As boring as the Boba Fett section of the Book of Boba Fett was, we didn't need any part of the sequence where Mando went to see Grogu but didn't see Grogu so we could see Grogu learn to force crush a lightsaber dueling remote, because otherwise we wouldn't possibly know how he learned to level up his Force Pull power after a day of training. All while fake-Luke constantly dribbles 'memberberries about Yoda. I fething remember Empire, OK? Anyone who didn't see it won't understand why Luke is babbling about all this crap anyway. We could have had, I don't know, Fennec and B pull up to a cantina and hire some fething mercenaries and find out some meaningful info on the Pykes. Follow-up on the 'we've got treasure' line from two episodes back when this show was at least nominally about the main character.

Let's hope that bounty hunter Mando never needs to have bed to sleep in while on journeys, an armoury to store weapons in, a space for keeping cargo (or, y'know... bounties), a cryogenic freezer, or a toilet - because his Naboo Starfighter certainly doesn't have any of those!

But we got to see Anakin's ship, and that random pole from the trash compactor scene (!) and I REMEMBER THOSE

Also lucky Mando melted down that spear (beskar isn't for weapons (except the whistling birds which the very same character made out of beskar in Mando S1...)) because he'd have to strap it to the outside of the ship!

On the topic of Boba and filling gaps, did you know they recently had a ~dozen (or more, I forget how long it took) issue big crossover event in the comics of Boba trying to deliver frozen Han to Jabba?

 LordofHats wrote:
Depends on what blanks we're talking about. Knowing Boba was hanging out with Tuskans wasn't much of a blank. We already knew that, and as interesting as seeing what it was like was it didn't really need as much screen time as it did. I daresay, that blank was massively overfilled and took desperately needed time away from other blanks that could have used a bit more context!

That and I still find the apparent desire to remake whole scenes from Dances with Wolves kind of bizarre >.>

In my opinion Boba and the Tuskens was fine and they should have had another episode or two of crime lord Boba to flesh things out in the present day.

If you leave out execution, his time with the Tuskens provided the motivation for his actions in the present, as somewhat explained in the blink or you miss it campfire conversation with Fennec.

1. He wasn't thrilled that crime lords got rich while/by getting his kind (bounty hunters) killed.
2. He lost basically everything in the wake of Jabba's death but managed to secure himself a new life with the Tuskens, and was willing to move on from bounty hunting.
3. He lost his life with the Tuskens because of crime lords getting rich while/by getting his kind (Tusken tribe) killed.
4. With nowhere else to go he got the idea that he could be a better crime lord.

The thing the show failed at is to establish his vision for point 4 with anything more than hints and the merest suggestion. He's not trying to be a better crime lord by being better at crime but by establishing an order that sees arbitrary violence curtailed because he experienced first hand what straight crime lording entails, and is not on board with it. It doesn't help that he frames it as taking over as a crime lord, rather than from a crime lord, which leads to a jarring depiction of the crime lord who isn't good at his job. The whole deal with ruling through respect rather than fear and seeing the people of Mos Espa as his people makes sense if he actually works towards reestablishing law and order, albeit in an authoritarian way, and to take out crime syndicates that do nothing but destroy lives for their own gain. He collects tribute nominally as a protection racket, but in effect he's just collecting taxes to finance his reign and by extension the protection of his taxpayers.

It's all in the show, but the present day story doesn't take the time to actually show his motivation. Instead it "relies" on hints and suggestion alone. I put that in quotes because since the framework seems mostly as an excuse for the action scenes and it doesn't seem like establishing it was given much priority when it comes to allotting screen time to it. Or, really, any at all, in spite of the hints in the show suggesting that somebody actually thought Boba's motivation through.

I don't think cutting short his screen time with the Tuskens would improve anything because it is the only time when Boba actually gets to develop. In my opinion present day Boba's development should have been brought up to that level. In this regard they could have just made Book of Boba an eight episode show/season like Mandalorian. They could have packed a lot of stuff in another thirty to fifty minutes without dropping anything from the Mandalorian detour they so obviously wanted to show.

I guess I went into execution a little after all...

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Let's hope that bounty hunter Mando never needs to have bed to sleep in while on journeys, an armoury to store weapons in, a space for keeping cargo (or, y'know... bounties), a cryogenic freezer, or a toilet - because his Naboo Starfighter certainly doesn't have any of those!

But we got to see Anakin's ship, and that random pole from the trash compactor scene (!) and I REMEMBER THOSE

Also lucky Mando melted down that spear (beskar isn't for weapons (except the whistling birds which the very same character made out of beskar in Mando S1...)) because he'd have to strap it to the outside of the ship!

I’m not sure the Whistling Birds themselves are Beskar. The launcher? Absolutely. But given how often we see him using them, and how little he’s visited The Armourer, it’s hard to conceive the darts/rockets/whatever being Beskar as well.

The whole reason for the nit-picking of the show is explicitly because it's so bad IMO. The pacing is glacially slow at the start, Fett comes across as largely clueless and waits for the plot to happen to him and the only redeeming features of the series were 2 episodes that may as well be Mando season 2.9. Even those have weird issues like the impracticalities of a bounty hunter in a single-seat starfighter and the whole "Mando goes to see Grogu but doesn't see him" element of the Jedi episode. Then the final episode features even more bad decisions and terrible writing/editing with the weirdly inaccurate droids, stupid plan and bizarre decisions.

Better shows get a pass when they do something a little bit stupid or weird. Firstly, by definition, they don't do that very often. Secondly, they've often generated enough goodwill and faith in the writing that you can expect things you don't quite understand to be paid off later. BoBF doesn't get either of those benefits. Nonsensical things happen for no reason and continue to happen time after time. It's possible to write a spectacular showpiece finale and still maintain some sense of believability and consistency of narrative and character.

Speaking of believability, I do have to pick chaosxomega up on their comment about not allowing for suspension of disbelief, mainly because it annoys me every time people try to use this as an excuse not to criticise speculative fiction. Suspension of disbelief is not a get out of jail free card to do whatever the hell you want just because you're writing a sci-fi TV show. It merely refers to the requirement to accept certain conceits within the setting, such as the idea that the Force exists in SW, or FTL travel is possible in BSG. The exact reasons why these things exist don't matter, but once established it's important that the writers follow their own rules, otherwise it really does make it look like you're making it up as you go. It's not an excuse for characters (or writers) making stupid decisions.

Slipspace wrote:
The whole reason for the nit-picking of the show is explicitly because it's so bad IMO.

I've observed that just about any show can be nitpicked to death.

The thing is that indeed people tend to forgive a lot when a show is good. When it's bad and they're bored, people are more likely to start picking at things because they've been given nothing else to do while sitting down and watching. Some people are just aholes, but more often than not if people are nitpicking something to death it's because it's not very good in their eyes.

Slipspace wrote:
.

Speaking of believability, I do have to pick chaosxomega up on their comment about not allowing for suspension of disbelief, mainly because it annoys me every time people try to use this as an excuse not to criticise speculative fiction. Suspension of disbelief is not a get out of jail free card to do whatever the hell you want just because you're writing a sci-fi TV show. It merely refers to the requirement to accept certain conceits within the setting, such as the idea that the Force exists in SW, or FTL travel is possible in BSG. The exact reasons why these things exist don't matter, but once established it's important that the writers follow their own rules, otherwise it really does make it look like you're making it up as you go. It's not an excuse for characters (or writers) making stupid decisions.

It is one thing to ask that I suspend my disbelief, it is quite another to ask me to hang it by the neck until dead. This show often asks the latter

 LordofHats wrote:

That and I still find the apparent desire to remake whole scenes from Dances with Wolves kind of bizarre

But not that they used the Rancor to remake whole scenes from King Kong?

You've got people in this thread mocking the franchise for the fact that this idea doesn't sound that outlandish. That it's not shocking as an idea isn't really related to the opinion that such a thing is completely unnecessary. About as unnecessary as spending a whole 4 part tie in comic on something that probably only compromised a fifteen to thirty-minute conversation. They could totally do it in a 10-12 panel web comic and it would be much better!

Its literally the point of framing the narrative this way. Its very intentional and deliberately crafted to mislead the audience into believing something, with the intent to later subvert that belief by revealing an unexpected twist. The degree to how obvious it is in this one specific scene is astounding. The insistence by some here that its plane jane straightforward sequence of events with no other explanation, and that any further exploration of what occurred between Grogu and Luke, etc. would be unnecessary gap-filling is presupposing a lot in terms of authorial intent.

Next, this show isn't premised on filling in blanks. It was premised on seeing what happened next after Boba killed Bib Fortuna and sat in the chair at the end of Mandos post credit scene.

You mean, literally the blank of "where does he go to from here"? Which is premised on the blank of "why did mando kill Fortuna and take over Jabbas old operation"? Which is in turn premised on the blank of "what events in Bobas back story would motivate him to make this move instead of continuing on as a gun for hire?" Which is itself premised on the blank of "How did he survive the saarlac anyway?". The entire show exists to tell a story that only exists because there was a big multi-year blank between "Boba falls into the Sarl[/u]aac pit and presumably dies" and "Boba is suddenly alive but without his armor, helps out Mando in exchange for getting his armor back, and ends off sitting on Jabbas throne".

Finally, the fact that I know they are going to cover the event in detail is the thing I am mocking them, and the fandom, for. Again, it's the WORST thing about SW. And the people who fee[/u]d it by eating up every little shred of unneeded dross backstory are mostly to blame. Them and Dave Filoni.

Then stop watching and consuming Star Wars media. Clearly it isn't for you if you dislike the people making it and the manner in which it is being written and produced. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Its probably not going to ever change to your liking, but its definitely not going to change if you continue to feed it by watching/consuming it. If you legitimately dislike it as much as you claim to, then theres no sense in continuing to engage with it and the fandom, as it seems to make you fairly miserable (or, you're just a miserable person by nature, either/or).

But beyond that, to state that this would be "unneeded dross backstory" vs a deliberately crafted plot twist to be explored and expanded utimepon at a future is a pretty big miss in terms of understanding how storytelling works (and goes back to my presupposition statement previously). If narrative was always as straightforward as you insist upon it being, then there would never be any sort of plot twist and entire genres of film and literature would cease to exist.

Geifer 802684 11312016 a416a6541a6c9d2f1e wrote:

In my opinion Boba and the Tuskens was fine and they should have had another episode or two of crime lord Boba to flesh things out in the present day.

If you leave out execution, his time with the Tuskens provided the motivation for his actions in the present, as somewhat explained in the blink or you miss it campfire conversation with Fennec.

1. He wasn't thrilled that crime lords got rich while/by getting his kind (bounty hunters) killed.
2. He lost basically everything in the wake of Jabba's death but managed to secure himself a new life with the Tuskens, and was willing to move on from bounty hunting.
3. He lost his life with the Tuskens because of crime lords getting rich while/by getting his kind (Tusken tribe) killed.
4. With nowhere else to go he got the idea that he could be a better crime lord.

The thing the show failed at is to establish his vision for point 4 with anything more than hints and the merest suggestion. He's not trying to be a better crime lord by being better at crime but by establishing an order that sees arbitrary violence curtailed because he experienced first hand what straight crime lording entails, and is not on board with it. It doesn't help that he frames it as taking over as a crime lord, rather than from a crime lord, which leads to a jarring depiction of the crime lord who isn't good at his job. The whole deal with ruling through respect rather than fear and seeing the people of Mos Espa as his people makes sense if he actually works towards reestablishing law and order, albeit in an authoritarian way, and to take out crime syndicates that do nothing but destroy lives for their own gain. He collects tribute nominally as a protection racket, but in effect he's just collecting taxes to finance his reign and by extension the protection of his taxpayers.
It's all in the show, but the present day story doesn't take the time to actually show his motivation. Instead it "relies" on hints and suggestion alone. I put that in quotes because since the framework seems mostly as an excuse for the action scenes and it doesn't seem like establishing it was given much priority when it comes to allotting screen time to it. Or, really, any at all, in spite of the hints in the show suggesting that somebody actually thought Boba's motivation through.

I don't think cutting short his screen time with the Tuskens would improve anything because it is the only time when Boba actually gets to develop. In my opinion present day Boba's development should have been brought up to that level. In this regard they could have just made Book of Boba an eight episode show/season like Mandalorian. They could have packed a lot of stuff in another thirty to fifty minutes without dropping anything from the Mandalorian detour they so obviously wanted to show.

I guess I went into execution a little after all...

This guy gets it.

The whole reason for the nit-picking of the show is explicitly because it's so bad IMO.

Underlined the important bit. I would argue that your opinion of the show is that its bad because you are nit-picking. I and everyone else I know in the real world really loved and enjoyed the show and think its good - we didn't spend hours sitting around dissecting every moment and scene and line of dialogue and looking for plot holes and logical gaps.

mainly because it annoys me every time people try to use this as an excuse not to criticise speculative fiction

Star Wars isn't speculative fiction, you would do well to remember that. Speculative fiction is a very specific genre, which Star Wars most definitely is not.

chaos0xomega wrote:

The whole reason for the nit-picking of the show is explicitly because it's so bad IMO.

Underlined the important bit. I would argue that your opinion of the show is that its bad because you are nit-picking. I and everyone else I know in the real world really loved and enjoyed the show and think its good - we didn't spend hours sitting around dissecting every moment and scene and line of dialogue and looking for plot holes and logical gaps.

No, my opinion is the show is bad because it's poorly paced, lacks narrative drive and coherence, has a central character that doesn't seem to have any real purpose and is generally poorly written. I know quite a few people in the real world who's opinions echo the general feel here of BoBF being a bad show but trading anecdotes doesn't really get us anywhere. As I explained in the post you took that quote from, better shows tend to get more leeway when it comes to things like this. When a show is already making me question whether to keep watching it, it's simply more likely I'll find more to take issue with and that seems to hold true for a large number of people here.

chaos0xomega wrote:

mainly because it annoys me every time people try to use this as an excuse not to criticise speculative fiction

Star Wars isn't speculative fiction, you would do well to remember that. Speculative fiction is a very specific genre, which Star Wars most definitely is not.

I love the irony of how in a long post decrying nit-picking you pull out this one poorly worded phrase to highlight rather than engaging with the substance of the argument.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Let's hope that bounty hunter Mando never needs to have bed to sleep in while on journeys, an armoury to store weapons in, a space for keeping cargo (or, y'know... bounties), a cryogenic freezer, or a toilet - because his Naboo Starfighter certainly doesn't have any of those!

But we got to see Anakin's ship, and that random pole from the trash compactor scene (!) and I REMEMBER THOSE

Also lucky Mando melted down that spear (beskar isn't for weapons (except the whistling birds which the very same character made out of beskar in Mando S1...)) because he'd have to strap it to the outside of the ship!

I’m not sure the Whistling Birds themselves are Beskar. The launcher? Absolutely. But given how often we see him using them, and how little he’s visited The Armourer, it’s hard to conceive the darts/rockets/whatever being Beskar as well.

There's no benefit in that, however. If the projectiles are Beskar, they pierce armor better, because magic metal. If the launcher is Beskar and the projectiles are not then... feth all. It doesn't matter. Its like making a gun magazine (and action) out of depleted uranium, but it holds iron shot projectiles.


-----
So, I was thinking about Mando Season 2.5 here (and the end of Season 2), and it occurs to me that the Mando Cult of Mando Ur-Culture did a shockingly bad job of teaching Din (and by extension, other foundlings) the history and culture of the Mandolorians. I get that part of it is simply the convenience of the other characters having someone to explain things to (for the benefit of the audience); but he knew nothing absolutely nothing about his culture's equivalent of Excalibur, the fact that he lived with the heir of Merlin and/or Arthur and the woman he met in a bar was effectively Lancelot or Mordred (depending on the version of the story) who personally brought Camelot to ruin and wanted that mystical sword back.

This seems like a really bad brainwashing job by the Cult of the One True Way.
Or the directors making it up as they go along, but given how explicitly they introduced the major characters in the fall of Camelot, the holy relic itself, and the expulsion of the main character from the cult, it kind of has to be deliberate. But its jarring that he knows... none of that. And a fair chunk happened around the same time he was orphaned and rescued and indoctrinated.

 AduroT wrote:
On the topic of Boba and filling gaps, did you know they recently had a ~dozen (or more, I forget how long it took) issue big crossover event in the comics of Boba trying to deliver frozen Han to Jabba?

Yeah. And how many characters did he Starwars street along the way? Completely wasted terrible waste. Just more evidence of how broken the whole thing is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Geifer wrote:

I don't think cutting short his screen time with the Tuskens would improve anything because it is the only time when Boba actually gets to develop. In my opinion present day Boba's development should have been brought up to that level. In this regard they could have just made Book of Boba an eight episode show/season like Mandalorian. They could have packed a lot of stuff in another thirty to fifty minutes without dropping anything from the Mandalorian detour they so obviously wanted to show.

I guess I went into execution a little after all...

What you are not getting is that if they cut out all that time with the Tuskens we could have gotten that development with him in the present. You literally lost about 2 hours of story telling to it. In the modern day you could have had a 10 minute conversation between Fennec and Fett instead of the "blink and you miss it" bit. He could have really hammered home his losses that we have already seen. Talked about his struggles in the desert. All the stuff with the Tuskens could have been handled in a a bit of dialog just like "When I met your father he was a great pilot." Was that background improved by seeing little Anny accidentally blow up a space station? Boba could have said "When Jabba's barge was destroyed and I fell into the Sarlac I barely survived. I lost my armor. I was taken captive by the Tusken's. I Survived. I learned. I grew. And when I saw more people killed by the gangs I thought of a better way. I am tired of seeing our kind die for their greed. It's time they answered to us."

2 hours. 2 freakin hours could have been given back to the current day actual story of the show where Fett could have actually developed. The antagonists could have actually developed. And Bobas actual plans could have been explained at all. The development they gave us was misused and misplaced.

I'd counter that by asking what about the present day story that we did get makes you think any time cut from the Tusken part would have been meaningfully added back to the present?

I don't see an interest from the makers in what you would have liked to see. Even episode runtime is variable and not constricted by TV programming of yore. If they had wanted to add a few minutes of conversations, they wouldn't have had to cut out anything else. Similarly, Book of Boba is not a masterpiece of pacing. The end result doesn't hit the sweet spot in such a way that added material would have been detrimental.

I agree that the people in charge of making this show would have screwed it up either way.

That is a 100% fair point to make given what we got.

Voss wrote:

So, I was thinking about Mando Season 2.5 here (and the end of Season 2), and it occurs to me that the Mando Cult of Mando Ur-Culture did a shockingly bad job of teaching Din (and by extension, other foundlings) the history and culture of the Mandolorians. I get that part of it is simply the convenience of the other characters having someone to explain things to (for the benefit of the audience); but he knew nothing absolutely nothing about his culture's equivalent of Excalibur, the fact that he lived with the heir of Merlin and/or Arthur and the woman he met in a bar was effectively Lancelot or Mordred (depending on the version of the story) who personally brought Camelot to ruin and wanted that mystical sword back.

Everything about the Cult is weird. As far as I can tell there are only 2 left now that Din got kicked out, which is at least an accurate depiction of ultra-fanatical fringe groups. But I am left wondering what exactly their creed is, other than "don't take off your helmet" and what they teach. Also, what do they want and how do they plan to achieve it now? Din seems clueless about pretty much anything to do with Mandalore and its history. He even seems shocked other Mandalorians exist when Bo Katan shows up in season 2.

Voss wrote:

This seems like a really bad brainwashing job by the Cult of the One True Way.
Or the directors making it up as they go along, but given how explicitly they introduced the major characters in the fall of Camelot, the holy relic itself, and the expulsion of the main character from the cult, it kind of has to be deliberate. But its jarring that he knows... none of that. And a fair chunk happened around the same time he was orphaned and rescued and indoctrinated.

I'm pretty sure almost all the Mandalorian background in Mando was established before the show, especially the stuff not related to the Cult. Doesn't mean the writers need to stay consistent, of course.

One other issue I'm thinking they may have to deal with is we now have some really important plot and character development for Mandalorian season 3 happening in the middle of a different show. They'll probably just assume everyone will have seen BoBF, but with how bad it was at the start I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people stopped watching right before the Mandalorian episodes. I know I was in that position and only kept watching because I already knew Mando would make an appearance in the next episode.

"I've known you for a long time Boba. One thing I can't figure: What's your angle?"

"Well, I'm a bad guy character that became very popular with the fanbase. Back in the 90's I could be safely turned into an anti-hero, but now that we're all owned by Disney, I have to become a good guy, because Disney is to Star Wars what the Comics Code Authority was to the comics industry back in the day. Now I have to protect people, act nobly, protect indigenous populations for some reason, identify with the citizens here who I don't know from Adam but are apparently 'my people' now because the script says so, disallow all crime whilst saying that I'm the new 'crime lord' at the same time. It's all very confusing."

"That sounds awful. Best kill me quickly and waste my character's entire potential."

"Done!"

*stab*

Honestly, I don't think you can blame Boba's benevolent nature solely on Disney. It's the direction that they were already taking the character with Clone Wars, where he was trying to be a bad-ass and proving to not be very good at it.

It's also not that different from the treatment that Karen Traviss and co gave him in the later EU books, when he became Mandalore.

 Lance845 wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
On the topic of Boba and filling gaps, did you know they recently had a ~dozen (or more, I forget how long it took) issue big crossover event in the comics of Boba trying to deliver frozen Han to Jabba?

Yeah. And how many characters did he Starwars street along the way? Completely wasted terrible waste. Just more evidence of how broken the whole thing is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Geifer wrote:

I don't think cutting short his screen time with the Tuskens would improve anything because it is the only time when Boba actually gets to develop. In my opinion present day Boba's development should have been brought up to that level. In this regard they could have just made Book of Boba an eight episode show/season like Mandalorian. They could have packed a lot of stuff in another thirty to fifty minutes without dropping anything from the Mandalorian detour they so obviously wanted to show.

I guess I went into execution a little after all...

What you are not getting is that if they cut out all that time with the Tuskens we could have gotten that development with him in the present. You literally lost about 2 hours of story telling to it. In the modern day you could have had a 10 minute conversation between Fennec and Fett instead of the "blink and you miss it" bit. He could have really hammered home his losses that we have already seen. Talked about his struggles in the desert. All the stuff with the Tuskens could have been handled in a a bit of dialog just like "When I met your father he was a great pilot." Was that background improved by seeing little Anny accidentally blow up a space station? Boba could have said "When Jabba's barge was destroyed and I fell into the Sarlac I barely survived. I lost my armor. I was taken captive by the Tusken's. I Survived. I learned. I grew. And when I saw more people killed by the gangs I thought of a better way. I am tired of seeing our kind die for their greed. It's time they answered to us."

2 hours. 2 freakin hours could have been given back to the current day actual story of the show where Fett could have actually developed. The antagonists could have actually developed. And Bobas actual plans could have been explained at all. The development they gave us was misused and misplaced.

If you had your way, most Star Wars content essentially would not exist and there would be no worldbuilding or lore to speak of.

 Geifer wrote:
I'd counter that by asking what about the present day story that we did get makes you think any time cut from the Tusken part would have been meaningfully added back to the present?
I don't see an interest from the makers in what you would have liked to see. Even episode runtime is variable and not constricted by TV programming of yore. If they had wanted to add a few minutes of conversations, they wouldn't have had to cut out anything else. Similarly, Book of Boba is not a masterpiece of pacing. The end result doesn't hit the sweet spot in such a way that added material would have been detrimental.

Agreed. Someone seems to be operating under the assumption that story and exposition is somehow more meaningful or valid if its set in the "present" as opposed to the "past". I wonder to what extent perceptions might differ if the Tusken sequences were presented chronologically rather than as flashbacks/dream sequences. Would have been the same story and plot, just presented in a slightly different order.

 insaniak wrote:
Honestly, I don't think you can blame Boba's benevolent nature solely on Disney. It's the direction that they were already taking the character with Clone Wars, where he was trying to be a bad-ass and proving to not be very good at it.
It's also not that different from the treatment that Karen Traviss and co gave him in the later EU books, when he became Mandalore.

Correct. Towards the tail end of the pre-Disney era Boba had already developed into a straight-shooter and a good guy who came to the rescue of the New Republic in its war with the Yuuzhan Vong, had kids/grandchildren, etc. who he trained and went on adventures with, and teamed up with Han Solo and his kid in order to kill Hans other kid who went evil (long story), etc. Disney doesn't have much to do with softening him up, rather it seems they are simply re-establishing the nature of his character as it was in the pre-Disney era, just on an accelerated timeline and cutting out the 80s/90s era content where he was initially developed as an absolute bastard before shifting him in a different direction. In general, The Mandalorian and TBoBF seem to be set on re-Travissing the Mandalorians in general and moving the Mandos away from the George Lucas pacifist interpretation of their society.

I do love when people blame Disney for making Star Wars kid friendly. Like Ewoks weren't a thing or even Yoda to a degree. Like we didn't have three movies that couldn't bring themselves to make Darth Vader anything shy of a hero until the very last minute possible.

The only place Star Wars has ever really been allowed to be dark is the novels. Any form a mass media has always been pretty light and kid friendly. It's definitely not something that started with Disney.

X may always have been bad, but that isn't an excuse for X continuing to be bad.

It's not a question of good and bad, its a question of tone and people being surprised that the hero of a Star Wars story isn't a ruthless loner. The best story arc of the original film is "ruthless loner finds value in others" and for better or worse, the franchise continues to try and chase that high.

Slipspace wrote:

Voss wrote:

So, I was thinking about Mando Season 2.5 here (and the end of Season 2), and it occurs to me that the Mando Cult of Mando Ur-Culture did a shockingly bad job of teaching Din (and by extension, other foundlings) the history and culture of the Mandolorians. I get that part of it is simply the convenience of the other characters having someone to explain things to (for the benefit of the audience); but he knew nothing absolutely nothing about his culture's equivalent of Excalibur, the fact that he lived with the heir of Merlin and/or Arthur and the woman he met in a bar was effectively Lancelot or Mordred (depending on the version of the story) who personally brought Camelot to ruin and wanted that mystical sword back.

Everything about the Cult is weird. As far as I can tell there are only 2 left now that Din got kicked out, which is at least an accurate depiction of ultra-fanatical fringe groups. But I am left wondering what exactly their creed is, other than "don't take off your helmet" and what they teach. Also, what do they want and how do they plan to achieve it now? Din seems clueless about pretty much anything to do with Mandalore and its history. He even seems shocked other Mandalorians exist when Bo Katan shows up in season 2.

Well, he's specifically looking for other Mandalorians, so that isn't a surprise. He is surprised they don't follow his 'true way,' which is actually consistent with being raised by a cult.
The shock (for me) is that he wasn't raised to think of Bo-Katan specifically as the Devil, who lost them Mandalore. That's where its weird that they didn't teach him (and other foundlings) at least a twisted version of Mandalorian culture and history, and he knows basically nothing about their holy relic, its creator, said creator's successors and that its specifically Bob over there on the other side of the room under the sewers.
Other than the super-inconvenient (borderline unlivable) helmet doctrine, 'the way' (however nebulous), scooping up kids and collecting/tithing beskar, the cult doesn't seem to have... goals?

I presume they're going to be at least partial antagonists for season3, but other than showing up to fight him over the sabre, I don't know why. Other than pathos for Din to be fighting his original found family, but that doesn't translate into a motive for them.

One other issue I'm thinking they may have to deal with is we now have some really important plot and character development for Mandalorian season 3 happening in the middle of a different show. They'll probably just assume everyone will have seen BoBF, but with how bad it was at the start I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people stopped watching right before the Mandalorian episodes. I know I was in that position and only kept watching because I already knew Mando would make an appearance in the next episode.

Its the opposite MCU treatment (at least early MCU, where other than easter eggs, it didn't matter if you didn't see another film). Though Wandavision, Strange2 and Spider3 seem to inverting that for the MCU going forward as well.
Know that they have their universes established, they want the audience to attend all of it.

 LunarSol wrote:
I do love when people blame Disney for making Star Wars kid friendly.

Don't believe I ever said "kid friendly".

It says something when the best scenes of the entire series are scenes the main character isn't in.

The spectacle at the end of the show was fun when I could turn off my brain. Sometimes during it it was so bad my brain turned back on and then RANCOR!!!!

But seriously, this was the weakest disney+ offering to date.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
On the topic of Boba and filling gaps, did you know they recently had a ~dozen (or more, I forget how long it took) issue big crossover event in the comics of Boba trying to deliver frozen Han to Jabba?

Yeah. And how many characters did he Starwars street along the way? Completely wasted terrible waste. Just more evidence of how broken the whole thing is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Geifer wrote:

I don't think cutting short his screen time with the Tuskens would improve anything because it is the only time when Boba actually gets to develop. In my opinion present day Boba's development should have been brought up to that level. In this regard they could have just made Book of Boba an eight episode show/season like Mandalorian. They could have packed a lot of stuff in another thirty to fifty minutes without dropping anything from the Mandalorian detour they so obviously wanted to show.

I guess I went into execution a little after all...

What you are not getting is that if they cut out all that time with the Tuskens we could have gotten that development with him in the present. You literally lost about 2 hours of story telling to it. In the modern day you could have had a 10 minute conversation between Fennec and Fett instead of the "blink and you miss it" bit. He could have really hammered home his losses that we have already seen. Talked about his struggles in the desert. All the stuff with the Tuskens could have been handled in a a bit of dialog just like "When I met your father he was a great pilot." Was that background improved by seeing little Anny accidentally blow up a space station? Boba could have said "When Jabba's barge was destroyed and I fell into the Sarlac I barely survived. I lost my armor. I was taken captive by the Tusken's. I Survived. I learned. I grew. And when I saw more people killed by the gangs I thought of a better way. I am tired of seeing our kind die for their greed. It's time they answered to us."

2 hours. 2 freakin hours could have been given back to the current day actual story of the show where Fett could have actually developed. The antagonists could have actually developed. And Bobas actual plans could have been explained at all. The development they gave us was misused and misplaced.

If you had your way, most Star Wars content essentially would not exist and there would be no worldbuilding or lore to speak of.

If I had things my way we would have more content like the original trilogy. Jam packed with lore and world building and stories worth telling.

Remember when Mobius revealed that Loki was D.B. Cooper and Loki said "I lost a bet with Thor".

I don't need a comic, a cartoon, or a tv show to show me the bet they made that he lost. The world is built and fleshed out with the single line of dialog and the story can keep moving forward. SW would 100% make a movie or show or comic and show me that bet. And it would be a waste of everyones time.

 LunarSol wrote:
I do love when people blame Disney for making Star Wars kid friendly. Like Ewoks weren't a thing or even Yoda to a degree. Like we didn't have three movies that couldn't bring themselves to make Darth Vader anything shy of a hero until the very last minute possible.

The only place Star Wars has ever really been allowed to be dark is the novels. Any form a mass media has always been pretty light and kid friendly. It's definitely not something that started with Disney.

Which is fine, but it makes it even more baffling they'd try to tell the story of a bounty hunter becoming a crime lord given those limitations. There are an infinite number of stories they could tell, so why choose one that doesn't work within their self-imposed guidelines?

Slipspace wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I do love when people blame Disney for making Star Wars kid friendly. Like Ewoks weren't a thing or even Yoda to a degree. Like we didn't have three movies that couldn't bring themselves to make Darth Vader anything shy of a hero until the very last minute possible.

The only place Star Wars has ever really been allowed to be dark is the novels. Any form a mass media has always been pretty light and kid friendly. It's definitely not something that started with Disney.

Which is fine, but it makes it even more baffling they'd try to tell the story of a bounty hunter becoming a crime lord given those limitations. There are an infinite number of stories they could tell, so why choose one that doesn't work within their self-imposed guidelines?

It makes more sense if you consider it probably started as part of the Solo film plan. They put a bunch of money into developing a movie, probably made sure to get Morrison on board, etc only for Solo to disappoint and the yearly film plan to get scrapped. After Mandalorian proved to be a success, someone likely just figured they could get something out of it by bolting it onto that production instead.

Anyways, he says changing the subject because a thought is relating around in his head….

How long until we see Live Action Hondo Ohnaka?

I’m well up for it.

Giving up his life of crime and just trying to help the poor orphans?

He's a side character, so as shown in Rebels he's allowed to scam people a little. Well, as long as the people he scams are the bad guys.

And given his appearances in Rebels I assume if he does show up anywhere it'll be in Ahsoka, since she's searching for Ezra and that's a cause Hondo could be won for.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How long until we see Live Action Hondo Ohnaka?

That would be nice.

Is there any point in having live action appearances if they're not really characters?

Hope you just enjoyed *seeing* Cad Bane, because he didn't do anything and then got merked.

its fan service mostly.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Is there any point in having live action appearances if they're not really characters?

Hope you just enjoyed *seeing* Cad Bane, because he didn't do anything and then got merked.

Easy.

Star Wars is a multimedia franchise spanning decades of real world time.

We who watched Clone Wars know well who Cade Bane is. Those who watched The Bad Batch (which I really should rewatch) will have a passing familiarity.

The same as Krrsantan. Those who have read some of the comics will be familiar.

Everyone else? They’re hooks to invest further in the various media offerings. And as such, bait for further income/viewing figures/action figures.

Consider. Some folk will have signed up to Disney+ just to watch Boba. But should they be sufficiently intrigued by the side characters, they’re more likely to stick around in the mid and ideally long term.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Is there any point in having live action appearances if they're not really characters?

Hope you just enjoyed *seeing* Cad Bane, because he didn't do anything and then got merked.

Easy.

Star Wars is a multimedia franchise spanning decades of real world time.

We who watched Clone Wars know well who Cade Bane is. Those who watched The Bad Batch (which I really should rewatch) will have a passing familiarity.

The same as Krrsantan. Those who have read some of the comics will be familiar.

Everyone else? They’re hooks to invest further in the various media offerings. And as such, bait for further income/viewing figures/action figures.

Consider. Some folk will have signed up to Disney+ just to watch Boba. But should they be sufficiently intrigued by the side characters, they’re more likely to stick around in the mid and ideally long term.

Maybe? I think the last sentence only hold true if there's any indication that these characters exist in some wider context. That's not the case at all with Krrsantan in BoBF and only very obliquely mentioned by Cad Bane just before he dies. I'm not really seeing any hook to pull people deeper when the show hasn't really done the work to build these characters up at all.

In fact, Disney+ is pretty bad with this kind of thing. I'd have thought after certain characters appear in these shows they should be pushing suggestions to subscribers for the earlier shows in which they appear but they don't do that at all. There's no obvious "so you liked blue Western alin with red eyes? Now go watch him in Clone Wars". Big missed opportunity for me.

That’s where the fandom comes in.

All bits and bobs stitched together to draw people deeper into a particular fandom/cultural rabbit hole.

That's Slipspace's entire point though. For the fandom, they're a wink and a nod. For the general audience, they're... nothing.
They don't draw anyone in. Maybe they'll get a google hit, but its not going to get Fred, Beth and their tween Twyla to go hunt down whatever random comic the inept wookie is from.

Yup.

My brother used to work for Warner Studios leading a team to help build the DC Universe App. One of my suggestions was to categorize all their content with tags for the characters.

So you read a good comic that features Harley and then it could recommend an episode of Batman the Animated series with Harley in it at the end.

Or you watch an Episode of Titans and then get recommended a Comic featuring Dr Light or whatever.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Star Wars is a multimedia franchise spanning decades of real world time.

We who watched Clone Wars know well who Cade Bane is. Those who watched The Bad Batch (which I really should rewatch) will have a passing familiarity.

...

Everyone else? They’re hooks to invest further in the various media offerings. And as such, bait for further income/viewing figures/action figures.

I disagree. The reason I say that the show wasted the character's potential is that they didn't do anything with the character. It was basically "Look! It's Cad Bane!" and expected you to know who he is.

That's the worst way to bring in an existing character that may not be familiar to the greater audience (especially when you kill him unceremoniously in the next episode). There's only a certain amount of taking your audience for granted that you can get away with, and expecting people to understand who Cad Bane - a character from a cartoon - is, is taking that too far.

I didn’t say it was done competently

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I disagree. The reason I say that the show wasted the character's potential is that they didn't do anything with the character. It was basically "Look! It's Cad Bane!" and expected you to know who he is.

That's the worst way to bring in an existing character that may not be familiar to the greater audience (especially when you kill him unceremoniously in the next episode). There's only a certain amount of taking your audience for granted that you can get away with, and expecting people to understand who Cad Bane - a character from a cartoon - is, is taking that too far.

i must disagree slightly here, because everyone i have spoken to who actually watched book of boda fett knew exactly who he was without further introduction, because they were all long time star wars fans who'd been watched the clone wars already. I dont think BOBF is bringing in new viewers really, its mostly getting watched by existing fans of the franchise.

I don't see why Cad Bane's introduction to viewers not familiar with him is supposed to be a problem. He walks into town, guns down the sheriff and the deputy and delivers a message from the bad guys. He doesn't wear their uniform and can easily be identified as a gun for hire.

Next episode he's revealed to have history with the protagonist, gets to talk tough and has a showdown which he seems to dominate only to get beaten in the end.

What more do you need from him if you have no idea he's an existing character? He fulfills a pretty typical function in this kind of story. What wasted potential is there without attachment to and expectations for the character? That's something reserved for existing fans who know the character and want to see him portrayed a certain way.

xerxeskingofking wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I disagree. The reason I say that the show wasted the character's potential is that they didn't do anything with the character. It was basically "Look! It's Cad Bane!" and expected you to know who he is.

That's the worst way to bring in an existing character that may not be familiar to the greater audience (especially when you kill him unceremoniously in the next episode). There's only a certain amount of taking your audience for granted that you can get away with, and expecting people to understand who Cad Bane - a character from a cartoon - is, is taking that too far.

i must disagree slightly here, because everyone i have spoken to who actually watched book of boda fett knew exactly who he was without further introduction, because they were all long time star wars fans who'd been watched the clone wars already. I dont think BOBF is bringing in new viewers really, its mostly getting watched by existing fans of the franchise.

So, you realize that when you speak to people within your own demographic, people who know and like starwars enough to watch the clone wars when it was a Saturday morning cartoon, corrupts your census data, right?

Like, right now you are 9 out of 10 Dentists recommend this brand-ing yourself.

 Geifer wrote:
I don't see why Cad Bane's introduction to viewers not familiar with him is supposed to be a problem. He walks into town, guns down the sheriff and the deputy and delivers a message from the bad guys. He doesn't wear their uniform and can easily be identified as a gun for hire.

Next episode he's revealed to have history with the protagonist, gets to talk tough and has a showdown which he seems to dominate only to get beaten in the end.

What more do you need from him if you have no idea he's an existing character? He fulfills a pretty typical function in this kind of story. What wasted potential is there without attachment to and expectations for the character? That's something reserved for existing fans who know the character and want to see him portrayed a certain way.

So, I will admit that both my wife and I had no idea who he was and had never heard of him, and our reaction was exactly this! (actually, we both thought he was a cool NEW character that they introduced.)

It's only afterward that I found out he was supposed to be some big shot from other shows! I think his introduction went over exactly as it should for people who don't know him because that is literally my own experience with him!

 Lance845 wrote:

So, you realize that when you speak to people within your own demographic, people who know and like starwars enough to watch the clone wars when it was a Saturday morning cartoon, corrupts your census data, right?

Like, right now you are 9 out of 10 Dentists recommend this brand-ing yourself.

yes, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but my point was "people who watched clone wars cartoon" and "people who watched BOBF" seem to be highly corelated. ive not seen a huge influx of "who was he?" type posts/comments on facebook or other social media platforms that would indicate mass confusion as to who Cad Bane was. So, either the vast majority of the veiwership knew who he was, or the BOBF makes it clear enough that the basic plot makes sense without knowing all his backstory.

same as Krrsantan, who i have no idea was an established character before off-hand comments on this thread and elsewhere. he works well enough within the story arc that its not strictly relevant.

 Hulksmash wrote:
It says something when the best scenes of the entire series are scenes the main character isn't in.

The spectacle at the end of the show was fun when I could turn off my brain. Sometimes during it it was so bad my brain turned back on and then RANCOR!!!!

But seriously, this was the weakest disney+ offering to date.

Think this would probably be my summary too. It certainly wasn't that bad, I did eventually watch the last episode (although I think it says a lot that I forgot about it then came back a week later). But yes, it says a lot that the episodes I enjoyed most were the Mandalorian ones, or those featuring Luke/Asoka and baby Yoda.

To me, it had some good ideas but a lot of them were executed quite poorly:
- Quadrophenia biker gang led by Noel Fielding. Good idea with a kind of chop-shop biker gang, but I don't think they fitted in with the dirty and worn down looking setting. The cleaner clothes and cyborg stuff might have worked better in a Coruscant crime gang setting perhaps?
- Slow, dim-witted Boba that gets tricked and outplayed by everyone throughout the series. Got conned into thinking the biker gang had killed his beloved sand people. Is this the same Boba that out-witted all of the other nastiest Bounty Hunters in the galaxy in the original series, hiding his ship in the dumped waste when the Star Destroyer left? Or that beat Luke & the gang to the Cloud City and got the trap laid in time? He completely lost that sense of razor-edge, lethal feeling to me through the course of the series. I'm not actually sure Temuera Morrison was the right pick for casting, despite the prequels. Jeremy Bullock had a lot slighter frame and had more of the 'assassin' feel to him for me, relying more on his brains and wargear rather than head-butting his way through every encounter.
- Giant prequels-era robots were a great idea, as was the fight with the Rancor, although someone apparently forgot to take the blindfold off the robots! At least have them gun down a few of the Quadrophenia biker gang or a few other secondary characters to show how dangerous they were.

Anyway overall I won't say it was that bad, and there were bits of it that I really enjoyed. But, I'm not sure it was the legacy for Fett that I was hoping for, and as a whole I don't think the series was a patch on the Mandolorian.

I watched it with my wife and brother and neither of them had any idea who Cad Bane was. A guy in my gaming group watched it with his wife and daughter and neither of them knew either. I'm sure many did know but there were still a decent amount that did not. Not every Star Wars fan consumes all the content outside the movies. To be honest I more accidentally knew him because I didn't watch much of The Clone Wars but I did catch a few episodes he was in.

 Ahtman wrote:
I watched it with my wife and brother and neither of them had any idea who Cad Bane was. A guy in my gaming group watched it with his wife and daughter and neither of them knew either. I'm sure many did know but there were still a decent amount that did not. Not every Star Wars fan consumes all the content outside the movies. To be honest I more accidentally knew him because I didn't watch much of The Clone Wars but I did catch a few episodes he was in.

I got him mixed up with Hondo (or whatever his name is). And I did watch all of clone wars and the first season of rebels.....

xerxeskingofking wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

So, you realize that when you speak to people within your own demographic, people who know and like starwars enough to watch the clone wars when it was a Saturday morning cartoon, corrupts your census data, right?

Like, right now you are 9 out of 10 Dentists recommend this brand-ing yourself.

yes, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but my point was "people who watched clone wars cartoon" and "people who watched BOBF" seem to be highly corelated. ive not seen a huge influx of "who was he?" type posts/comments on facebook or other social media platforms that would indicate mass confusion as to who Cad Bane was. So, either the vast majority of the veiwership knew who he was, or the BOBF makes it clear enough that the basic plot makes sense without knowing all his backstory.

same as Krrsantan, who i have no idea was an established character before off-hand comments on this thread and elsewhere. he works well enough within the story arc that its not strictly relevant.

The vast majority of the viewership doesn't go on social media to ask questions about it. They watch it, talk about it face to face with their friends and family if at all, and then go about their lives. The people who take to the internet are the vast minority. A loud Minority, but minority all the same.

I have never seen more than a few episodes of the 1st season of Clone Wars, and I STILL knew who Cad Bane was, as soon as you could see any detail through the sun-haze.

I recognised him as a character from Star Wars Legions but then had to look him up!

I actually thought he was probably the best baddie in the series, he certainly carried a level of menace not exhibited by anyone else, and it's a shame they killed him off.

Not to worry. He's not dead until they chop up the corpse, incinerate the parts and dump the ashes in at least three stars in different corners of the galaxy. And even then I wouldn't be sure... what if they decided to let J.J. Abrams have another shot at ruining Star Wars?

Then we would get episode 4 again.

 Geifer wrote:
Not to worry. He's not dead until they chop up the corpse, incinerate the parts and dump the ashes in at least three stars in different corners of the galaxy. And even then I wouldn't be sure... what if they decided to let J.J. Abrams have another shot at ruining Star Wars?

JJ's still busy ruining star trek. With a 4th movie to be made later this year. "With the original cast [sans Chekov, because Anton Yelchin being dead and all)".

I had no idea about who Bane was and absolutely loved that character. I think also Rosario Dawson's and Katee Sackhoff's characers were supposed to be well known to SW fans when they made their appearance in The Mandalorian. No idea about who they were, still loved them.

I heard a lot of critiques about the series, especially about the protagonist. I've alwyas found the mandalorian (character, not series) extremely overrated and in fact even in The Book of Boba Fett the lowest points to me were episodes 5 and 6, when the mandalorian became the protagonist. Last episode was great. What did people expect from Boba Fett? He's always been nothing but an henchman, who was popular thanks to his amazing armour and gadgets, nothing more. I've seen Return of the Jedi like 10 times and don't remember a single line from him. Now he's finally a developed character.

Couldn't stand fake luke instead. I never understood the reluctancy to re-cast actors. JJ's Star Trek, which I adore, being paused partially because the horror of re-casting or eliminating a character annoys me as well.

Overall it was a nice series, same level of seasons 1,2 of The Mandalorian IMHO.