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I understand the argument that the meaning of art is defined by the viewer.

I have no idea how many people see Fett as a Villain or an antagonist or a villain with small V.

He appears in two films as a foil to the heroes. He's not a spear carrier. He's definitely a Bad Guy.

My view is that Star Wars isn't the kind of series which deals with subtle degrees of moral ambiguity, and therefore Boba Fett as a kind of hero won't play. He's got "history" or pre-figured history as has Han Solo.

We'll just have to agree to disagree then KK, because I think they can do it, and ultimately will do it, by having Fett go from Antagonist to Protagonist and being an Anti-Hero in his story.

Aww, I missed so much.

I was going to say that if you’re going to make your villains aliens then they need to be either very nearly human (Maul, Dryden Vos) or really alien (Jabba). Because anything in the middle will be hard to take seriously. Case on point, this apparent idea for a cat person in the original draft of solo and nearly every villain from the prequels.

And Fett is a bounty hunter in the trilogy (doing what he does for money, not for loyalty). In the prequel he’s a small child who idolizes his father. In the Clone Wars cartoon he’s a boy out to avenge his father (in his eyes). Nowhere do we ACTUALLY have him as a true villain. SW canon has him as a misguided child who wants to fill his dad’s shoes, and he lets that love/vengeance guide his actions and turn him into the feared gun for hire he becomes. I don’t think it would be difficult at all to write him in a sympathetic/protagonistic role.

It'd be really easy- the first 10 minutes shows him passing on a bounty because of the effect it would have on the target's children, and/or disintegrating the employer for targeting children. It would tie nicely to his own background.

Rather on the nose, but keep in mind Han and Chewie were reasonable targets for a bounty, be it from the underworld or from totally legit planetary governments. And his only dialogue in the OT is about making sure Han is alive, and while that's self serving, he doesn't come across as a monster.

In the now Legends tale "No Disintegrations Please", Fett is hired to find the brother of an Imperial general who has welched gambling debts. Said brother goes into hiding deep in an Imperial garrison fully equipped with walkers, stormtroopers etc. Needless to say that Fett infiltrates and destroys the entire garrison, only for the quarry to flee in an escape pod. The reveal of the story is that it's being told by an old man to a group of kids, and that the old man is the quarry, and it ends with Fett finally having tracked him down again. Having picked up the bounty for his apparent death in the garrison, Fett lets the old man live.

I can't think of any appearance of Fett that paints him as outright villainous - perhaps Dark Empire where he is first seen resurrected and pretty much just wants to kill Han. Everything else either has him play the amoral cynical bounty hunter or ever assigns him some heroic qualities (Karen Traviss wrote him as giving up fighting to become a farmer I think before the Yuuzhan Vong war swept up Mandalore and he became leader of his people).

Regarding a Boba Fett movie and its possible connection to Solo:

 Easy E wrote:
I would love to see one centered around fighter pilots.... I don't know.... maybe somethign like Rogue Squadron?

I mean, how hard is it to make a fighter pilot genre movie and apply it to Star Wars? Answer.... not at all!

Lucasfilm already did Red Tails, so it's not impossible. On the other hand, it might feel like you're just stretching the plot of the last act of Star Wars out into an entire movie.

Briggs: A Star Wars story.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
And Fett is a bounty hunter in the trilogy (doing what he does for money, not for loyalty). In the prequel he’s a small child who idolizes his father. In the Clone Wars cartoon he’s a boy out to avenge his father (in his eyes). Nowhere do we ACTUALLY have him as a true villain. SW canon has him as a misguided child who wants to fill his dad’s shoes, and he lets that love/vengeance guide his actions and turn him into the feared gun for hire he becomes. I don’t think it would be difficult at all to write him in a sympathetic/protagonistic role.

YMMV, but the bounty hunters were all keyed as villainous by showing them as working for the Empire (YMMV, but at the age of 9 when I saw ESB, they were all definitely bad guys). Boba Fett is shown working for the Emperor's right-hand man and for a monstrous crime lord, and has to be chastised by a dark lord of the Sith for excessive violence. He displays no sense that he has any interest in his bounties beyond their value - "only doing it for the money" doesn't stop him being a villain. If bounty hunters as a whole had been introduced into the setting in a more neutral way - having some working for the Rebellion somehow - then I'd buy it, but Boba Fett in the films (and in Clone Wars to an extent) is definitely portrayed as villainous.

I'd buy a "start of darkness" - set before Star Wars, and have him try to reclaim his Mandalorian heritage, only to see Mandalore itself move away from that heritage into first a pacifist society and then an Imperial puppet dictatorship. Or a redemption story (have him survive the Saarlacc is easy - he's in fully enclosed armour and not long after he went in, Jabba's sail barge blew up a couple of metres away; just say the blast killed the Saarlac and he escaped. Only needs a two-minute prologue scene, not even any dialogue) set between RotJ and TFA.

As for new characters for new stories, I'd like to see these spinoff films point out areas where those stories could come from.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Briggs: A Star Wars story.

"Biggs".

It can be a buddy film with red-5 as well.

If you're going to do a Star Wars fighter pilot movie, then do it properly.

Star Wars: Top Gun

Set in the Imperial advanced fighter training school. Have 'em all in Interceptors or TIE Advanceds.

Definitely gonna argue against him being villainous in a lone Wars. He’s out solely for revenge against the man who killed his father. Regardless of reason, he’s a boy who wants to avenge the only family he had. If he was villainous, he’d feel nothing about anyone who got in the way, but he shows obvious guilt and sympathy for the clones. Yes, he fell in with a bad crowd to get things done. But in his eyes, his actions are done out of love. Obviously by the time he grows up and becomes a badass bounty hunter who has to be “toned down” by Vader, he’s in it for the money. But not in Clone Wars.

Getting revenge by destroying an entire Republic cruiser? That's several thousand people he left to die to target one man. Feeling guilty about it afterwards doesn't do anything to excuse that.

I eagerly await the Porkins movie where he sits around eating fried chicken and ribs before slowly being lifted into his Xwing with a crane.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Getting revenge by destroying an entire Republic cruiser? That's several thousand people he left to die to target one man. Feeling guilty about it afterwards doesn't do anything to excuse that.

In war, while fighting on behalf of the Seperatists. If we're gonna start saying actions done in war makes one a villain, then I've got a few things to say about Luke, Wedge and Lando.

What sort of thing?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What sort of thing?

Relevant Clerks scene:

I mean, once you take a job on something called a 'Death Star' that's specifically designed to commit atrocities...

 Spinner wrote:
I mean, once you take a job on something called a 'Death Star' that's specifically designed to commit atrocities...

To quote the roofer from Clerks who gives his input:

"A roofer listens to this <points to heart>, not his wallet."

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
the bounty hunters were all keyed as villainous by showing them as working for the Empire

This is absolutely correct. SW is black and white. As Leia says in ANH, "If money is all that you love, then that's what you'll receive." Later on, it looks like Han is bailing on the Rebels Luke clearly judges him: " Well, take care of yourself, Han. I guess that's what you're best at." Han's redemption is the fact that he doesn't bail after all but rather saves Luke, setting him up for the crucial shot. This is the morality of SW, whether you agree with it or not. Boba Fett stands on the mercenary side of the line, which in SW morality is equivalent to being an Imperial.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Definitely gonna argue against him being villainous in a lone Wars. He’s out solely for revenge against the man who killed his father. Regardless of reason, he’s a boy who wants to avenge the only family he had. If he was villainous, he’d feel nothing about anyone who got in the way, but he shows obvious guilt and sympathy for the clones. Yes, he fell in with a bad crowd to get things done. But in his eyes, his actions are done out of love. Obviously by the time he grows up and becomes a badass bounty hunter who has to be “toned down” by Vader, he’s in it for the money. But not in Clone Wars.

That's certainly one way to read it. The other is Vader is pointing out he wants living prisoners (and as we learn, he needs them or his trap won't work)

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Getting revenge by destroying an entire Republic cruiser? That's several thousand people he left to die to target one man. Feeling guilty about it afterwards doesn't do anything to excuse that.

In war, while fighting on behalf of the Seperatists. If we're gonna start saying actions done in war makes one a villain, then I've got a few things to say about Luke, Wedge and Lando.

He didn't blow up that ship on behalf of the separatists - he did it as part of his own vendetta. He chose to seek revenge against one man, and as part of that decided that the lives of tens of thousands of people were less important than that.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Spinner wrote:
I mean, once you take a job on something called a 'Death Star' that's specifically designed to commit atrocities...

To quote the roofer from Clerks who gives his input:

"A roofer listens to this <points to heart>, not his wallet."

To be fair, I don't think the Empire ever "officially" called it that. Galen calls it that because of his distain for it, as do the Rebels. Imperial officers and the Emperor himself likely only adopted the name "unofficially" after hearing it from those parties and use if either mockingly, or with arrogance because they know its true purpose.

But for joe schmoe "roofer" or enlisted Trooper, "death star" is very unlikely to have been in their job description when the agreed to work on the battle station.

-

The best characters are shades of grey. As we can see here, Fett's motivations have all sorts of interpretations which is what makes him interesting and 3-dimensional.

Still want a Rebel fighter pilot movie though......

 Galef wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Spinner wrote:
I mean, once you take a job on something called a 'Death Star' that's specifically designed to commit atrocities...

To quote the roofer from Clerks who gives his input:

"A roofer listens to this <points to heart>, not his wallet."

To be fair, I don't think the Empire ever "officially" called it that. Galen calls it that because of his distain for it, as do the Rebels. Imperial officers and the Emperor himself likely only adopted the name "unofficially" after hearing it from those parties and use if either mockingly, or with arrogance because they know its true purpose.

But for joe schmoe "roofer" or enlisted Trooper, "death star" is very unlikely to have been in their job description when the agreed to work on the battle station.

-

That’s true. I actually don’t recall a single time an Imperial called the Death Star anything other than Battlestation.

 Galef wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Spinner wrote:
I mean, once you take a job on something called a 'Death Star' that's specifically designed to commit atrocities...

To quote the roofer from Clerks who gives his input:

"A roofer listens to this <points to heart>, not his wallet."

To be fair, I don't think the Empire ever "officially" called it that. Galen calls it that because of his distain for it, as do the Rebels. Imperial officers and the Emperor himself likely only adopted the name "unofficially" after hearing it from those parties and use if either mockingly, or with arrogance because they know its true purpose.

But for joe schmoe "roofer" or enlisted Trooper, "death star" is very unlikely to have been in their job description when the agreed to work on the battle station.

-

Imperial officers do wargames as part of their training, of course, and there is an old wargaming tradition that a very large, powerful unit with a special vulnerability is called a "death star".

In other words it was never more than a nickname.

 Spinner wrote:
I mean, once you take a job on something called a 'Death Star' that's specifically designed to commit atrocities...

I dunno, would you serve on "USS Dictator" which has an armament which can lay waste coastal cities...?
Plenty of people have served on SSBN's, missile silos, nuclear bombers etc.

Planet destroying was a thing before Death Star, the battlestation simply made it much easier. It's like difference between using 500 B-29's to destroy a city, vs just one.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Galef wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Spinner wrote:
I mean, once you take a job on something called a 'Death Star' that's specifically designed to commit atrocities...

To quote the roofer from Clerks who gives his input:

"A roofer listens to this <points to heart>, not his wallet."

To be fair, I don't think the Empire ever "officially" called it that. Galen calls it that because of his distain for it, as do the Rebels. Imperial officers and the Emperor himself likely only adopted the name "unofficially" after hearing it from those parties and use if either mockingly, or with arrogance because they know its true purpose.

But for joe schmoe "roofer" or enlisted Trooper, "death star" is very unlikely to have been in their job description when the agreed to work on the battle station.

-

Imperial officers do wargames as part of their training, of course, and there is an old wargaming tradition that a very large, powerful unit with a special vulnerability is called a "death star".

In other words it was never more than a nickname.

Now you know that term only exists because of Star Wars.

I may be wrong but the Death Star actually has a rather plain sounding official name; the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station.