The Book of Boba Fett premiere uses the past to enrich its present.
Meaty flashbacks frame Boba Fett as an honorable survivor.
The Short Take:
With flashback-driven storytelling that informs and enriches the main plot, episode 1 of The Book of Boba Fett brings fans back to their favorite seedy desert planet, opening up a clear-headed character study of the galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter. If you love the pulpy Western vibes of The Mandalorian, you’re in the right place.
Image Credit: Newsweek
The Long Take:
[The spoiler-free section of this review is actually going to be pretty brief, even though I’m writing about a premiere. I keep coming up with points that necessitate spoilers! But, as always, I’ll give fair warning before switching over.]
Tatooine is so cool. The desolate desert, filled with treachery. Jawas callously scavenging. Tusken Raiders mercilessly attacking without warning. Menacing creatures shifting beneath the sands. Austere moisture farms. Sketchy cantinas with intoxicating tunes. Underworld bosses. Hives of scum and villainy.
The Book of Boba Fett offers a hearty taste of this entire world to its viewers, and doesn’t spare any details. Even if the actual story of the show were just meh, I’d still want to keep watching the show just for the chance to revisit these old haunts. To live in this textured corner of the galaxy for a while. Pair that with the Old West mood that Ludwig Goransson, composer of The Mandalorian and Black Panther, creates with another mesmerizing score, and I find myself engrossed.
[UPDATE/EDIT 12.31.21: I recently learned that Ludwig Goransson wrote the theme song for the show, but Joseph Shirley composed the broader score.]
This score is distinct from that of The Mandalorian; it has a lot more of a percussive, aggressive tone, with a lot more vocalizations and choral singing. That seems to match Boba’s gruff personality. It also harkens back to Ennio Morricone’s work more — especially the iconic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly theme. It even has some “dubba dubba” singing that nods to film and television music from the 60s and 70s.
The sound still clearly occupies the same universe as Mando. So my initial recommendation would be that if you’re not a die-hard Star Wars fan who’s going to watch everything no matter what, you should still check out this show if you enjoyed The Mandalorian’s look, feel, and sound.
Thankfully, the Boba Fett part is also great! I had some concerns going into the show about ruining the mystique that made the character so cool in the original trilogy, but this episode, by the end, convinced me that I did in fact want to get to know Boba Fett better. To understand the totality of his experience and understand his motivations in the here and now.
This first episode does an excellent job of threading that needle. Creators sometimes use flashbacks, as I’ve noted in other reviews, as a crutch. Or flashbacks can clog up a story if executed poorly. I do admit that in the first few moments of this episode, I did flinch a little for this reason. Creators Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau have such a clear vision for the character, though. The purpose behind these flashbacks is undeniable.
[SPOILER WARNING: Now that I’ve given you my own spoiler-free taste of the show, go watch the episode and return for a more detailed breakdown of what happens in it.]
We don’t just watch Boba escape the Sarlacc pit (which, as a reminder, he fell into after a tussle with Luke, Han, and Chewie in Return of the Jedi) just because that’s what fans might be wondering about. We don’t see tiny Boba Fett mourning his father’s death in Attack of the Clones just to get prequel fans excited. The Book of Boba Fett returns us to these key moments in Boba’s past to establish two core ideas:
1.) Boba Fett is, above all else, a survivor. We see him, time and time again, pull through against all odds, because of his sheer grit. He’s lived through the Clone Wars, he’s flamed and clawed his way out of a Sarlacc’s digestive tract, and, as a prisoner of the Tusken Raiders, we see him dragged through the desert, imprisoned, deprived of food and water, and repeatedly beaten.
and
2.) He does not wish to perpetuate the same cruelty he has witnessed and experienced. A lot of this episode establishes that Boba Fett is very much in the shadow of Jabba the Hutt. The return to the Sarlacc pit reminds us that he spent the entire original trilogy serving and watching ruthless leaders like Jabba and Vader. They ruled with fear, but, Boba tells Fennec, “I intend to rule with respect.”
I have to admit that when I saw the trailer I thought that this proclamation was a little random, and a lot of folks justifiably were confused by Boba being a kinder, gentler ruler than Jabba, especially since his original trilogy origins are, as George Lucas himself has said, a “bad guy” that everyone thinks is cool. But in the context of what we see in this first episode, it makes perfect sense. The flashbacks remind us where Boba has been so that we can better understand how he’s responding to his past, learning from it and evolving from it as he goes forward.
For me, Boba’s time with the Tusken Raiders drove home this point the most, as they are complete jerks to him UNTIL he earns their respect by killing the somewhat goofy-looking semi-sentient semi-bipedal lizard creature, saving the life of the bratty Tusken Raider princeling. That final scene — from Boba triumphantly standing over the vanquished creature to the elder Tusken Raider offering him water — solidified this idea in a big way, so without the ongoing Tusken Raider flashbacks, I’m not sure I would have believed Boba’s commitment to being a better and nobler crime lord.
The diegetic mechanism through which we gain access to these flashbacks was not to my personal taste. That’s mostly because the bacta tank dreams fade in and out with a heavy-handed visual signal — they start out greenish and pixelated and then become clearer as we get further into the scene. I get that some viewers may need the guidance, but I found these transitions to be distracting. And I am not super interested in Boba Fett having bad dreams in every single episode; that sounds like it will get old fast. I may be out of luck, though; the amount of time he spends using the bacta tank in this episode implies that he has some kind of ongoing health issue. Or this could just be a refreshing acknowledgement that the dude is old and needs to ice his old injuries after battle. If the bacta tank as a narrative device also serves a plot-related purpose, then I’m more into it. But otherwise I don’t think we need a diegetic access point for flashbacks; Filoni and Favreau can trust the audience to keep up.
The one unfortunate byproduct of a flashback-heavy premiere is that we didn’t get a lot of time in Tatooine’s criminal underworld, which presumably is the main focus of the show going forward. I don’t mind that being the case for this one episode, but it does prompt me to be more “wait and see” about the show in general rather than all in right away. What little we get does foreshadow a lot of future conflict, though. The Twi’lek envoy in the tribute scene very clearly warns Boba and Fennec that a very different (read: muscly) delegation will show up next time to shake them down for a tribute. It’s unclear if the attack in the street at the end of the episode was said delegation, but there are obviously going to be continual challenges to Boba’s authority, likely from multiple fronts.
I am all in on Fennec Shand. I enjoyed her stint on The Mandalorian, of course, but episode 9 of The Bad Batch, in which she faces off with Cad Bane, blew me away. She’s so skilled, and so resourceful. And the animators designed one of the most dynamic fights in all of Star Wars. Fennec continues to flex here, completely owning those two fleeing thugs at the very end of the episode. I especially liked the editing here because we can see her thought process as she decides which one to kick over the building and which one to bring back to Boba. Ming Na-Wen is a total action hero boss.
The rapport between Fennec and Boba is very strong and in keeping with the core themes of the episode I identified earlier. It’s clear that they respect one another even though she calls him “boss” and that Boba values her opinion. She does “speak freely” with him, providing a necessary counterpoint to his approach, if only to practically convey to the audience what Boba is doing differently by explaining what Jabba would do in the same situation. I like that she’s more cynical and ruthless than Boba, and I look forward to their bond strengthening over the course of the season. This moment was very small and subtle, but I absolutely loved that when Boba comes out of the bacta tank and says that he’s having dreams again, Fennec completely ignores him, just sticking to business. That implies that Boba trusts her, but maybe she’s still closed off to him in a way that the story can push on in the future.
With actors like Ming Na-Wen and Temuera Morrison carrying the show and selling us on these characters, I’m more than willing to wait and see what this show becomes. I mentioned at the top of the review that the show, especially with the score, gives a spaghetti Western feel, but I also notice that the Mos Espa cantina is more like an Art Deco nightclub. It’s a lot swankier than the one on Mos Eisley in A New Hope. The only familiar face was Max Rebo, who SURVIVED Return of the Jedi too (much to my delight). Both the cantina and its new owner, Garsa Fwip, radiate noir femme fatale energy. Could the organized crime part of this show slip into that genre more? I wouldn’t be mad about that at all.
So much uncertainty, but in a good way. I can’t wait until next week.
Random shout-outs to:
The adorable massiff with the Tusken Raiders. I want one as a pet.
The Gamorrean guards. Those guys are all right.