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I've got such mixed feelings on this. The only real positive I can think of is nostalgia. But really it feels like it's been amateur hour for Star Wars ever since Disney got a hold of it.

And that centaur lizard thing was one of the worst monsters i've ever seen come from Star Wars. Even the weird creatures from old SW galaxies pixelated video game looked better.

And another gripe, they take the effort to have the Tuskens speak gibberish. But I miss when all the aliens spoke weird languages. It feels super off to have Trandoshans speaking english, along with most other aliens. Even the old KOTOR games did better than this, my god. There's something about this that feels highly un-authentic.

I loved the centaur lizard. It was a merry allusion to Harryhausen and reminded me of the Rancor effects.

One thing that does bother me along the lines of “inauthenticity” is how twi’leks are so human looking — I mean, think about how ugly Bib was in RotJ. But this isn’t new to Disney. Even in RotJ, Oola hardly seemed to be of the same species as Bib. In the prequels, Aayla Secura cemented the “hot human” look that Filoni faithfully followed in his Clone Wars series and is being reproduced in this show. I think the same uncannily human twi-lek’s also appeared in KotOR? (EDIT: yes, e.g., Mission Vao: although Twi’lek males could still be pretty rough looking.) So really, Bib and that really fat senator from the prequels (Orn Free Ta) are the only gross looking ones.

Note that the Aqualish and the Rodian both spoke in their own languages.

I wasn't that impressed.

I actually want a ruthless, power hungry Boba as well, not some idealist. Young Boba (clone wars) was like this.

Whilst some will have forgot in the time period about Boba, the intimidation of him seems to be lost/forgotten by everyone, he doesn't need to be quite as scary as Vader appearing on screen to the other characters, but he should be quite scary still.

Lastly, where was the badass that absolutely ruined the storm troopers in the Mandolorian? He was a schmuck in that fight in Mos Espa.

 Manchu wrote:
I loved the centaur lizard. It was a merry allusion to Harryhausen and reminded me of the Rancor effects.

Yeah, I got the feeling that it was done on purpose to look like the classic stop motion at times. I dont think it was a happy accident as substandard or rushed cgi has its own issues that look different. That was competently done to look like classic effects (faults and all) similar to how they built a physical ship model for the Mando Razor Crest both to use for in camera shots and to guide the cgi. Then there is the Imperial capital ship that was purposefully made in 3d to look like a hand built kitbash. I think this is the next incarnation of that effort but, unlike the other two.cases, I don't feel it was the best choice.

I liked that a lot. Looked really good, enjoyed all the characters. Going to be a fun watch.

 Manchu wrote:
The name and image of Boba Fett has floated around in pop culture for decades but to be honest there has never been much character there until the second season of The Mandalorian. Now that Boba is the protagonist of his own show, it’s important to actually give him some personality, starting with some brief flashes of Kamino and Geonosis from Attack of the Clones before striking out into the story of what happened to him between Return of the Jedi and “now” — so to speak.

While it may not be canon any more - probably because the Mouse doesn't want to pay the royalties to the authors that it should - the EU had expanded on Boba Fett's character quite a bit from what was seen on screen.

 Manchu wrote:
Golly.

An interesting question to be sure but somehow the opening episode posed it in a frustrating way. I could carefully sift through the structure beat by beat but my instinct is, it’s the Mos Espa action sequence. The antagonists‘ strange cattle prod/energy shield weaponry make the stakes confusing. Do they want to assassinate Boba? Capture him? Just humiliate him? The scene shows our main characters caught off guard — but why? And then the fight shows us Boba trying thing after thing, none of which really work, until he’s flat on his ass. At which point, Fennec takes over solo and there is a much more dynamic chase scene where she seems (puzzlingly? tellingly?) much more competent alone.

i can sort of understand that, given she is an assassin, not a bodyguard, and might well be at a disadvantage when she has to think in terms of protecting a charge as opposed to killing a target. once she is set loose to hunt she is much more in her element.

what puzzled me was why didnt Fett USE THE BLOODY JETPACK?!? He could easily have boosted clear with a short hop, and forced the attackers to split up or otherwise break the encirclement, but it never seems to occur to him. even if he didnt want to leave fennec alone, like i said he could have just made a short hop to escape the sheild wall and still be in the fight. I get that the narrative purpose was let the Gamoreans come in to save the day (and by extension, validate his mercy and show the merits of his methods), but it just feels a clumsy way to do it. that, and the sudden disappearance of the Gamoreans who had previously been glued to Fetts shoulders (which i noticed pretty quickly) kind of telegraphed something about to happen. something as simple as a quick command to them to hang back slightly form Fett so he can discuss things with Fennec could have closed that loop hole (or maybe show them being held up by other assassins),

xerxeskingofking wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Golly.

An interesting question to be sure but somehow the opening episode posed it in a frustrating way. I could carefully sift through the structure beat by beat but my instinct is, it’s the Mos Espa action sequence. The antagonists‘ strange cattle prod/energy shield weaponry make the stakes confusing. Do they want to assassinate Boba? Capture him? Just humiliate him? The scene shows our main characters caught off guard — but why? And then the fight shows us Boba trying thing after thing, none of which really work, until he’s flat on his ass. At which point, Fennec takes over solo and there is a much more dynamic chase scene where she seems (puzzlingly? tellingly?) much more competent alone.

i can sort of understand that, given she is an assassin, not a bodyguard, and might well be at a disadvantage when she has to think in terms of protecting a charge as opposed to killing a target. once she is set loose to hunt she is much more in her element.

what puzzled me was why didnt Fett USE THE BLOODY JETPACK?!? He could easily have boosted clear with a short hop, and forced the attackers to split up or otherwise break the encirclement, but it never seems to occur to him. even if he didnt want to leave fennec alone, like i said he could have just made a short hop to escape the sheild wall and still be in the fight. I get that the narrative purpose was let the Gamoreans come in to save the day (and by extension, validate his mercy and show the merits of his methods), but it just feels a clumsy way to do it. that, and the sudden disappearance of the Gamoreans who had previously been glued to Fetts shoulders (which i noticed pretty quickly) kind of telegraphed something about to happen. something as simple as a quick command to them to hang back slightly form Fett so he can discuss things with Fennec could have closed that loop hole (or maybe show them being held up by other assassins),

The whole fight was weird, from the distant bodyguards, to Fett shooting a missile directly at the shield (which was only ever going to blowback on them), not using his flamer on their exposed legs, neither Fett nor Fennec ever drawing their guns, it was strange and one-sided. It looked, honestly, like a public beatdown of someone who didn't know the rules of the game, which is a poor starting point for someone trying to latch onto a place of power in the underworld.

I do hope the show will at least introduce the concept of why he thinks he wants or needs to be the 'new Jabba.' Because it seems like a poor fit, both for the character and for his understanding of what it entails.
I don't think anyone else in the SW underworld would have accepted a small box of coins or a ratty-looking wookie pelt as 'tribute.'

TBH the idea that Boba is some kind of badass largely comes from his cool costume. In ESB itself, Boba is shown to be cautious and cunning. But he’s not shown to be an expert marksman or terrifying close quarters combatant. Moreover, his infamously poor showing in RotJ makes it clear he is much more man than myth.

By the time the EU got off the ground in the 90s, the first generation of childhood Star Wars fans were becoming writers and artists and they seemed to remember Boba more as a really cool action figure than a screen presence. I remember Boba’s various appearances in Dark Horse comics and Del Ray novels, not to mention video games. The gap between the character in the movies and the pop icon was becoming a yawning chasm. This was even more the case after the Prequels turned everything “up to 11” and we got Jango Fett.

This Book of Boba version of Boba feels much closer to the “scum” Admiral Piett contemptuously dismissed in ESB. Keep in mind, Boba had the same idea as Han to drift away with the garbage; and probably not because Boba was a genius, but for the same reason Han thought of it. Namely, they’re both practical, modestly capable survivors.

It isn't really 'not being a badass' (though maybe I'm misremembering his fight with stormtroopers in Mando, where that seemed to be the entire and only point of a very long sequence, while the protagonist of that series was standing around like a doof), in this fight he looked, at best, barely competent.

No one who's used the weapon before is going to fire a missile at (a shielded) someone a few feet away, and whatever else he is, he was a bounty hunter for some time. That requires at least a few skills. I don't even like the character, and I think its weird that in the premiere of his own show, he spends most of it on the ground being pummeled like a small child in a universe too big and cruel for him to understand.

Honestly, the lack of dialogue (what there was was decent to good), the bad backdrops, and the plodding pace were kinda rough. The only decent to good scenes had Fennec in them.

I've got fingers crossed it improves as I'll keep watching. But my kids, who were way into The Mando, were drifting hard on this one.

Some of the Fennec scenes were weird, too. Not the actress, but there were a couple closeup zooms on her so you could see her eyes, and the helmet looked really plastic and fake. Like a baseball batting helmet and a faceplate that looked like it was scavenged the day before and moulded into the rough shape overnight. Cheap props add to the uneven feel of the show.

Does anyone else feel like Morrison is acting his age in the show in terms of action? Every time he moves, I feel like he should be doing an old man grunt as his moves seem weighted and slow. Obviously he is in great shape (shirtless scene proves that) but I don't think that it carries over to action scenes like the market ambush. It's him because they're having him fight helmet off so they can't easily cover it up with a stunt double either. And that's on top of the bad to nonsensical fight choreography.

 warboss wrote:
Does anyone else feel like Morrison is acting his age in the show in terms of action? Every time he moves, I feel like he should be doing an old man grunt as his moves seem weighted and slow. Obviously he is in great shape (shirtless scene proves that) but I don't think that it carries over to action scenes like the market ambush. It's him because they're having him fight helmet off so they can't easily cover it up with a stunt double either. And that's on top of the bad to nonsensical fight choreography.

Yes, he moves like an old man. And not like one that's lived a life where he's been beaten up but still game and plucky but like he's a 70 year old avoiding a fist fight with teens.

I feel like he moved better in the Mando scene we had with him. Maybe they are milking the "injured" thing. Was he hurt I. The Jabba palace take over onscreen?

He's still chronically injured likely from the Sarlacc pit because he has to sleep in the bacta tank apparently every night.

The "problem" (assuming others agree) would have been to simply have him put his helmet on after his lines in the street and have the stunt double do the fight scenes. I don't understand why they'd have an old man (admittedly in better shape than me!) risk doing the fight scenes and having to choreograph them as plodding and nonsensical (the point blank rocket blast against the shields).

Maybe he just isn't in peak physical condition anymore after his vacation in the Sarlacc and with the Sand People. I don't mind that depiction one bit. It also serves as motivation to take over Jabba's (or Bib's) business as a retirement plan since he won't be doing so well bounty hunting anymore. Yeah, it's a bit hard reconciling that with his big showing in Mando, but come on. He beats up Stormtroopers. Big whoop. You put a nicely cushioned couch in a room full of Stormtroopers, they're going to get beat up by the couch. Real bad like.

On the narrative structure, it makes some sense in principle. At least I can see what the idea might have been.

Dream, part one: Well, this sucks. Everything is hard!
Here and now: Hey, this might actually work out. No, wait. It sucks after all. Everything is hard!
Dream, part two: Okay, still sucks. Still is hard. But I put in the work and pulled myself out of it. Go me!

There's two things missing for me. The present doesn't establish very well the overall suckage of his situation and gets lost in small time insolence and thuggery. The second one is that the show ends with winning over the Tusken, when it would be more relevant as a morale boost in the present. The latter is probably going to come through in the next episode or two. I have a feeling Book of Boba is going to be closer to the Bad Batch than Mandalorian in that it flows way, way better if watched in one go.

Overall I'm happy with it so far. More, please.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
I actually want a ruthless, power hungry Boba as well, not some idealist. Young Boba (clone wars) was like this.

He really wasn't. When he had his own crew and was on the job he was shown as professional, which of course comes with a measure of ruthlessness. That's bounty hunting for you. When set out to blow up Mace, though, he was strongly opposed to murdering anyone else to achieve that goal. He was as far from ruthlessness as possible.

For those who haven't seen the scene, someone put up a clip on youtube.




Now that I'm rewatching it, I'm wondering if he's trying to coordinate the fight to a Maori haka. He seems to do one on every behind the scenes Star Wars thing I watch with him so it's obviously very important to him and I wonder if he's trying to incorporate that part of his culture. Fortunately, the attackers are obliging letting him forcefully deflect each blow (whether before or after contact) with seconds to spare before the next person tries.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For comparison, here is a similar scene from Mando S2 with both him and a stunt double. I feel like the fight choreography with both him and the double is leagues better than the Boba one.

Second fight scene looks better overall, by all measures I can think of off the top of my head. A few thoughts.

-Stormtroopers are generally amongst the lowest tier of mooks in Star Wars, particularly in The Mandalorian. Only surpassed by maybe Tusken Raiders, Battle Droids, and low level mercenaries, i.e. Jabba the Hutt's mooks.

-Stormtroopers are likely not trained in melee combat at all and the their rifles aren't even a decent size or length for butt strokes or bayoneting...if they even had bayonets. My point is that their rifles are likely a hindrance in combat over fighting even empty handed.

-Boba Fett had two advantages of surprise in The Mandalorian scene. First was the sneak attack and the second was when he returned with his armor and its gadgets.

-In the first scene, Fett and Fennec are on the defensive. Fett doesn't have any useful weaponry outside of his armor which he doesn't use particularly well in close quarters. He could have use a flame-thrower at their feet for one.

-He also gets wounded in the first scene or at least zapped a bit which gets progressively worse as the fight goes on. He takes no hits versus the Stormtroopers.

-The shielded assassins were far more competent than the Stormtroopers and are at least a "tier" up for mooks. If only for melee combat.

The Book of Boba Fett scene doesn't look as good and I doubt anyone really wants to see Boba get manhandled by mooks, but it's not completely terrible. It does have some minor value for narrative purposes at least in that the Gamorrean (sp?) guards are shown to be loyal for now and that he can't afford to be soft in his Mos Espa dealings.

I'm not too excited about the first episode. It's nice to follow Boba's story after his escape from the sarlac pit, but this was all a bit tepid and didn't feel much like Star Wars to me. The whole ninja ambush and parcour sequence in particular felt out of place and gave off strong power rangers vibes, which is not a good thing in the context of Star Wars.

Props to the composer who adapted the cantina theme, it was recognisable but still a fresh take.

 Hulksmash wrote:

I feel like he moved better in the Mando scene we had with him. Maybe they are milking the "injured" thing. Was he hurt I. The Jabba palace take over onscreen?

Nope. They just wandered in and shot a handful of people. Barely an inconvenience.


The problem with the 'chronic injuries' argument is it should have affected the Mando scenes as well (and with less recent medical care), barring woo-woo Tusken healing magics.
Mando season 2 and BoBF take place the same year in chronological order, so whatever is affecting him 'now' would have been affecting him 'then,' and as far as we know he didn't have a Bacta tank until after taking over Jabba's palace from Bib.

There is a lot we don't know about the 5 year period between RotJ and Mando/BoBF, but from what's been said, Boba and Fennec went from the Mando climax to Tattoine and straight to Jabba's palace, where they took over and had, well, this day. With maybe a couple days getting the palace in order before seeing the people who bothered coming to him.

There's a huge difference in his capabilities in what's basically a month or so (or less) later (depending on hyperspace travel times).

Voss wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

I feel like he moved better in the Mando scene we had with him. Maybe they are milking the "injured" thing. Was he hurt I. The Jabba palace take over onscreen?

Nope. They just wandered in and shot a handful of people. Barely an inconvenience.


The problem with the 'chronic injuries' argument is it should have affected the Mando scenes as well (and with less recent medical care), barring woo-woo Tusken healing magics.
Mando season 2 and BoBF take place the same year in chronological order, so whatever is affecting him 'now' would have been affecting him 'then,' and as far as we know he didn't have a Bacta tank until after taking over Jabba's palace from Bib.

There is a lot we don't know about the 5 year period between RotJ and Mando/BoBF, but from what's been said, Boba and Fennec went from the Mando climax to Tattoine and straight to Jabba's palace, where they took over and had, well, this day. With maybe a couple days getting the palace in order before seeing the people who bothered coming to him.

There's a huge difference in his capabilities in what's basically a month or so (or less) later (depending on hyperspace travel times).

I dont generally agree with your take on media but that was my confusion with this as well. It just feels like they added an issue to add an issue amd we got sub par choreo on top of that. Plus the purpose of the shield dudes is super muddled since they seemed to be just hitting them with low voltage tasers.

I admittedly wrote that off as it wasn't an assassin team but a capture team.

With the hope that there would be an explanation at some point, because really, he's a bounty hunter with an assassin friend who's trying to jump from 'asset' to 'boss' and the Star Wars underworld has a _lot_ of heavy weights who won't take kindly to that sort of thing. Most wouldn't hesitate to squash him, and he doesn't seem to have any sort of backers who would care if they did.

Which is probably my biggest issue with what's been presented so far. He's trying to muscle into controlling Hutt territory as an independent with no backing. That's... laughable. The Hutts made both the Empire and the Republic (for thousands of years) quietly look away and find something more productive to do.

---
The alternative to capture is 'something something magic mandalorian metal, so don't bother with assassination by blaster,' but that line of thinking annoys me.

He could have had a Bacta tank in Slave 1, or wearing his armour again is putting an increased strain on him.

I wonder where Slave 1 was while he was with the Tuskens - does Jabba's palace have parking?

beast_gts wrote:
He could have had a Bacta tank in Slave 1, or wearing his armour again is putting an increased strain on him.

I wonder where Slave 1 was while he was with the Tuskens - does Jabba's palace have parking?

He says it's in hammerhead. "We get there and we can get off world."

Voss wrote:

The problem with the 'chronic injuries' argument is it should have affected the Mando scenes as well (and with less recent medical care), barring woo-woo Tusken healing magics.
Mando season 2 and BoBF take place the same year in chronological order, so whatever is affecting him 'now' would have been affecting him 'then,' and as far as we know he didn't have a Bacta tank until after taking over Jabba's palace from Bib.

There is a lot we don't know about the 5 year period between RotJ and Mando/BoBF, but from what's been said, Boba and Fennec went from the Mando climax to Tattoine and straight to Jabba's palace, where they took over and had, well, this day. With maybe a couple days getting the palace in order before seeing the people who bothered coming to him.

There's a huge difference in his capabilities in what's basically a month or so (or less) later (depending on hyperspace travel times).

That's a good point and disintegrates a pretty big hole in that chronic unhealed injury theory. Obviously it was just an in universe attempt to explain the more practical change of fight choreography/actors but still...

Just something to note, Boba Chap 1 and Mando Chap 14 that warboss linked above were both directed by Robert Rodriguez. Mando Chap 14 is IMO the worst in the entire show and a lot of it is due to the eye-rolling, boring action sequences.

Something that’s been nagging at me: why was there a Storm Trooper with Boba in the Sarlaac Pit?

 Manchu wrote:
Just something to note, Boba Chap 1 and Mando Chap 14 that warboss linked above were both directed by Robert Rodriguez. Mando Chap 14 is IMO the worst in the entire show and a lot of it is due to the eye-rolling, boring action sequences.

Something that’s been nagging at me: why was there a Storm Trooper with Boba in the Sarlaac Pit?

So he could have a breathing tube or... whatever that was... for a single lungful of air as dug his way out the hard way through tons of sand. Honestly, the Sarlaac spitting him out because of the armor would have been easier to swallow than that sequence. Big creatures reacting poorly to what they've swallowed at least has a history in SW.

But yeah, the Stormtrooper is weird. If Jabba had some sort of problem with a stormtrooper, he would have had him quietly murdered or blackmailed/paid off an officer to deal with the problem. He wouldn't have put on the big circus of execution that he did for Luke and friends.

I guess one could have wandered across it and fell in (presumably during the search for R2 and 3PO), but that seems absurdly unlikely. And even less likely that the oxygen tank (that I guess stormtrooper armor has now) would've been intact after a couple years in the Sarlaac. There's little other reason for stormtroopers to be on planet, and almost no reason for them to be outside the big settlements that have space ports.

 warboss wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I loved the centaur lizard. It was a merry allusion to Harryhausen and reminded me of the Rancor effects.

Yeah, I got the feeling that it was done on purpose to look like the classic stop motion at times. I dont think it was a happy accident as substandard or rushed cgi has its own issues that look different. That was competently done to look like classic effects (faults and all) similar to how they built a physical ship model for the Mando Razor Crest both to use for in camera shots and to guide the cgi. Then there is the Imperial capital ship that was purposefully made in 3d to look like a hand built kitbash. I think this is the next incarnation of that effort but, unlike the other two.cases, I don't feel it was the best choice.

Gideon's cruiser was an ACTUAL model, not just a 3d model that looked like a kitbash. There is footage of the crew setting up the motion control camera shots for the compositing. It's in the BTS features.
And Phil Tippet's crew did the stop-motion scrap walkers from a previous mando series, too. With actual models. So stop motion fx work is and always has been a thing for the SW movies/shows.

 chromedog wrote:
Gideon's cruiser was an ACTUAL model, not just a 3d model that looked like a kitbash. There is footage of the crew setting up the motion control camera shots for the compositing. It's in the BTS features.
And Phil Tippet's crew did the stop-motion scrap walkers from a previous mando series, too. With actual models. So stop motion fx work is and always has been a thing for the SW movies/shows.

That's cool to hear, chromedog - always like to see practical effects, as well as CGI, where appropriate.

John Knoll built the motion-control rig for mando in his garage.

When he showed off the first "sizzle reel" to lucasfilm, they wanted him to do something NOBODY had ever done with a MC shot before. A front-on POV shot that swings around in an arc to side view and then aft, while the ship itself "waggled" - so he had to build the custom 3-axis gimbal to go with it.

The same rig was used in the filming of S2 of mando.
Which was also when they switched from using a stock commercially available render engine for the volume to a proprietary one that they wrote themselves (which John Knoll also had a hand in - since he and his brother wrote photoshop back in the day, and he'd done a bit of coding for several editdroid iterations.