The Short Take:
The Book of Boba Fett Episode 2 brims with thrilling delights for Star Wars fans. Its representation of Tusken culture rebuffs the historical imperialism of its genre roots. While I thoroughly enjoyed all that we got, the structure of the episode felt disproportionate.
[SPOILER WARNING: I’m fully on board with this show at this point, so if you’ve been waiting for some kind of endorsement before you start watching, go forth. You’re no good to me if you haven’t seen the episode.]
The Long Take:
As a Star Wars fan, my heart continually exploded for the duration of this episode. Every conflict, every setting, every character, every design, and every detail, tapped into so much of what I love about Star Wars. How uniquely fantastical the world-building can be. How weird and imaginative. How much I want to root for characters. That sense of adventure, directly descended from the pulp fiction and serialized television that originally inspired George Lucas to make A New Hope. We get all of that in this one episode.
Surprisingly, only a small percentage of the episode relies on a nostalgia play with Jabba’s Palace. It opens with a callback to the famous Return of the Jedi shot of the gate slowly opening to reveal a cloaked Luke Skywalker. The blinding light from the hot suns of Tatooine once again pierces through, but this time Fennec Shand drags her freshly-captured prisoner in for interrogation. Was it a thrill to see it all again? Of course. Was it wonderful to hear Boba and Fennec hype the empty rancor pit only to troll the Night Wind assassin? Immensely.
But everything thereafter was even more thrilling to see. The Mayor is an Ithorian who seems mild-mannered and yet sinister at the same time. Not one but TWO Hutts show up, and they are twins that awkwardly share the same litter. One of them uses a space hamster (they’re called hoojibs; you’re welcome) to wipe the sweat off his brow. In this week’s bacta tank flashback (Though, can we really call it a flashback if it’s 35 minutes of a 50-minute episode? More on that later.), the Tuskens give Boba Fett a hallucinogenic lizard that wriggles up his nose to guide him on a vision quest. This leads him to a tree branch he can fashion into a custom gaffi stick, thus completing his initiation into the Tusken tribe.
I repeat: A lizard. Went up. His nose.
And Boba’s response is, “I’m sorry; I think I swallowed it. Tricky little bugger” because he doesn’t want to be rude in accepting the gift. A funny and sweet moment that endeared me to Temuera Morrison even more.
There’s a great train robbery. The most ruthless Crime Syndicate in the galaxy, the Pykes, are using a “long speeder” — essentially a bullet train — for spice trafficking. They remove their helmets! They’re actually vulnerable! Boba and the Tuskens send them packing! Between The Clone Wars animated series, The Bad Batch animated series, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and several comics, I know full well how much you do not want to mess with the Pyke Syndicate. So the Tuskens putting them in their place is huge.
There are more (brief) flashbacks of young Boba Fett circa The Attack of the Clones. There are more (again, brief) flashbacks of the Sarlacc pit escape. Am I forgetting anything? I probably am because this episode is dripping with Star Wars goodness.
You may be wondering at this point, “Hmm…I wonder why she didn’t mention the menacing Wookiee that shows up with the Hutt twins. He seemed super cool.” I did NOT, in fact, forget Black Krrsantan. I was simply saving him for last because his appearance got the biggest reaction out of me.
My two favorite Marvel comics (post Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm) are Darth Vader, which started in 2015, and Doctor Aphra, which spun off from that series in 2016 because Aphra and her compatriots were so popular in the Vader comics. You know who’s in Aphra’s crew? The scariest, most brutal Wookiee you’ve ever seen, that’s who. Chewbacca is intimidating, of course, but he’s also lovable. Black Krrsantan is just absolutely terrifying, like he could snap you in half if you breathed on him the wrong way. I thought his brief live action debut captured that well.
I’d almost say that, especially for those who don’t know he’s a pre-existing character from the comics, he may capture the original mystique that Boba Fett had in the original trilogy. He looks so cool and I would instantly want to know more about him if I didn’t already recognize him. According to the comics, Boba Fett already knows him because they both worked for Vader at the same time, so I can’t wait to see what happens when Boba and Fennec run into him again. And I’m fairly confident they will because BK gave them some LOOKS. Plus, Fennec scoffs at Boba when he says maybe that was the end of it. Filoni and Favreau would not have included that exchange if they weren’t planning another encounter. Could other characters exclusive to the comics make an appearance? While BK certainly opens up the door, I doubt anyone else will appear in this series, at least this season.
Image Credit: IGN (originally from Darth Vader #1 by Kieron Gillen, 2015)
If I put my Star Wars fan receptors on hold for a moment, the critic part of my brain engages with this episode differently. I appreciate the Tusken train heist/vision quest flashback as a gorgeous pastiche of certain cornerstones of film history, much in the same way that I appreciate George Lucas’ work in the original trilogy. Visually, the desert scenes in this episode capture the sweeping epic feel of films like Lawrence of Arabia or any number of classic Westerns that use wide landscape shots. Watching Boba train with the Tuskens, witness the Pykes bullying them, hit up the Star Wars equivalent of a saloon to rough up some thugs and steal some speeders, and then help them take down the Pyke’s spice train, felt like a miniature film. It also felt like a very classic film.
Star Wars has a multi-faceted cinematic lineage, but this episode makes me think of one very specific branch. Akira Kurosawa makes Seven Samurai in 1954, an epic film set in 16th century Japan. Then, John Sturges adapts Seven Samurai into The Magnificent Seven in 1960. Both films have the same core plot: a helpless village terrorized by bandits seek help. One enlists samurai and the other cowboys. George Lucas in 1977 clearly draws from both. In fact, I would argue that Star Wars as we know it would not exist had this adaptation of Kurosawa by Sturges not occurred. Because feudal Japan and the Old American West seem inseparably melded in the galaxy far, far away. In this episode, Boba Fett calls himself a “daimyo” or feudal lord, and moments later he’s racing through the sands of Tatooine to hop on a moving train, which is one of the most classic Western tropes of all time.
The Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven influence most noticeably manifests in the story of Boba and the Tuskens. While they are not exactly defenseless, they do seem out of their depth with the Pykes, and Boba helps to not just defend them but to teach them how to defend themselves. One of the most memorable scenes in The Magnificent Seven that I can remember is an extended montage of the villagers and the cowboys preparing for the arrival of the bandits; the hired guns help the villagers to set up traps and learn how to shoot. It’s become an untraceable trope at this point, but Boba teaching the Tuskens how to ride the speeders so that they can catch the Pykes off guard and stand up for themselves reminded me of the Sturges film nonetheless. (Also the late 90s television series, which I loved as a teenager but am skeptical about how well it holds up today.)
I should note that The Mandalorian also had an episode with this general premise. In “Chapter 4: Sanctuary,” some farmers on the swamp planet Sorgan hire Mando and Cara Dune to fight raiders that have an old AT-ST. The version we get in this Book of Boba Fett episode, though, packs so much more of a punch — whether that’s because the writing and direction allow the Tuskens to imprint on me more, because the setting is more breathtaking, or simply because I’ve spent multiple episodes with the story, I’m not sure.
Boba teaches the Tuskens how to beat the Pykes, but I would be remiss if I didn’t say that he learns just as much if not more from them by the end of the episode. A much more glaring film comparison is with Dances with Wolves, or any film — but especially a Western — that features some kind of cultural exchange between one person — usually a white American — and a race or culture completely unknown to them — usually an indigenous people. I haven’t seen Dances With Wolves recently enough to speak on how problematic that film actually is by today’s standards (so please jump in with your thoughts if you have some), but I must acknowledge that there’s a history of oppression that lurks behind the Western. Historically they have presented “going native” as a way to demonize indigenous peoples, to unjustly imply that they are all savage rapists who pose a threat to white settlers, or to patronizingly “other” an indigenous tribe as an exotic novelty.
A fair share of the Internet has raised concerns about Boba being a white savior in this episode, showing them how to be more “civilized” by gifting them more advanced technology. Considering Temuera Morrison is of Maori descent, at least the white part of the white savior argument doesn’t quite hold up.
A sampling of the white savior Twitter discourse. (I do not necessarily support either of these takes.)
More broadly, is the story of Boba ingratiating himself and ultimately assimilating into Tusken society, adopting their ways, problematic? After some thought, I would say no. It can be really difficult — perhaps impossible — to separate the racist history I mentioned earlier from any film that pays homage or borrows tropes from the American Western. But in this iteration, in this tribal assimilation story, there appears to be a.) mutual respect, both between characters and in how the show portrays them and b.) Boba doesn’t represent an imperialist race or institution at war with the Tuskens. If he had been a Pyke, for instance, the context shifts. You could argue that Mandalore in its heyday was an empire, but — and anyone should correct me if I’m wrong — I don’t think Mandalorians were an imperialist presence in the galaxy. The Galactic Empire colonizes them, right? What’s more, Boba is a clone and a loner who has never really occupied a position in Mandalorian society. Am I just making excuses because I love Star Wars so much? I’d have to do a closer analysis of the camerawork in problematic vs. not problematic media in this context, but I didn’t feel the colonizer’s “gaze” here at all.
I loved how the episode showed how much the Tuskens have influenced, perhaps created the Boba Fett we meet in The Mandalorian. That final scene — when he dons the dark robes, wraps the bullet-lined belt around his waist, and holds his newly minted gaffi stick at his side — rivals the chilling moment of the Darth Vader helmet clicking into place on Anakin Skywalker’s head in Revenge of the Sith. His hand-to-hand fighting style, his physicality, his desert survival skills (Is this an excuse for me to mention desert power? I don’t have time to make a Dune comp, but I see you there, Fremens.), and his approach to Mos Espa in the present day timeline very clearly stem from this experience with the Tuskens. Just as he helped them see that they did not have to hide in the shadows, that they could plant their feet in the sand and demand respect (and payment) from the Pykes, he seems determined to do the same for himself in Mos Espa. Taking control and rising to power because he commands it and will not accept otherwise.
I will admit that in Chapter 1, I was a little antagonistic towards the Tuskens because they were dragging Boba around, but listening to The Wampa’s Lair podcast and their thoughtful musings on Tusken culture made me realize that I was bringing an implicit bias to the show — that whatever group has been positioned as indigenous must be violent and terrible. There’s a really smart line that Favreau and Filoni slip into the script: that, in response to colonizers on Tatooine, some Tusken tribes choose to fight, but the ones we meet with Boba choose to hide. This small comment does a lot to establish that, like with all races/species, we cannot paint with a broad brush and rely on stereotypes (even if those stereotypes formed during the original trilogy). I’m so glad that this show has enabled Tuskens to get a fuller, more humanizing representation. The show, (and many defend Dune with this argument), may actually critique the occupation of Tatooine by the Hutts. By being a “different” kind of daimyo, can Boba disrupt the power structures in place? Is that what this show is actually about? Or is he unaware of how he’s complicit in this system?
All this is not to say that I don’t have my own critiques of the episode as a serialized story. As much as I enjoyed and appreciated the flashback we got in this episode, I still don’t think the parallel storytelling, with the crime boss present and the Tusken past, is quite right. There was more of a back and forth in the first episode, but here 1/4 of the episode is in daimyo Boba Mos Espa, followed immediately by 3/4 of the episode entirely in the flashback timeline. Again, I wouldn’t necessarily have traded the ending we got because it was so awesome, but the fact that we just ended there and never returned to the present day felt incomplete.
Maybe I just want the entire episode to be Boba with the Tuskens from start to finish? And then have the following episode start with the Hutt twins and tell more of that story all at once? If this really is The Book of Boba Fett, maybe it makes more sense for each chapter to be more self-contained. Are my complaints a sign that this story is too big for a Disney+ series?
The wonky structure doesn’t bother me enough to interfere with my enjoyment of the show so far. I’m very, very excited to see what goes down in Mos Espa next week.