Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 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.