Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett. If you don't want to be spoiled, please turn around and walk back the way you came. Once you have finished the series, if you still want to read this post, it will still be here. Thank you!
I will admit, even as a Star Wars fan practically from birth, I never quite understood people's obsessions with Boba Fett. Other media aside, out of the two movies he was initially in, he has five lines, one of which is 'AAAHHH!' Yes, I can sort of understand the mystery of that, and I do understand that there are Extended Universe books featuring him. Comics, as well (though a good chunk of those were made as non-canon as the EU once Disney acquired the rights). The initial interest started from The Empire Strikes Back, though, and it just always confused me as to why. He was rather a flat character in the films.
When Fett showed up in season two of The Mandalorian, I was initially annoyed. He was supposed to be dead, being digested down in the belly of the Sarlacc. It felt, at first, just a fanboy retcon that he was alive. I couldn't help but like his portrayal, though, so when the post credits scene popped up at the end of season two's finale as a lead in for his own spin off, I decided I'd watch it. If nothing else, I wanted to see if they would explain how he got out of his predicament (especially considering that his jet pack had been damaged).
I was not disappointed, and I accepted Jon Favreau's explanation of how Fett gets out of the Sarlacc. That beskar is some good shit, yo.
I thoroughly enjoyed the series. I especially enjoyed watching more interactions with the Tuskens. As a child I never gave them much thought... They were pretty much just a plot device in A New Hope, after all. Getting older, though, I got a bit more interested in them, so I am glad that both The Mandalorian and TBoBF have been exploring them as an actual people.
So... I generally try to avoid actual fandom, but that isn't always possible to do on social media. As such, I have seen some of the reactions by the Boba Fett simps, and they are not happy with how Fett is being portrayed in TBoBF. I even ran across one recently who said that Jeremy Bulloch, the original actor who played Fett in Episodes V and VI, would be rolling over in his grave at what Disney 'has done' to the character.
What the actual fuck, random internet dude?
I'd like to look at this, if we could? So, estimates are that Boba Fett is around 41-42 years old during the events of TBoBF. He'd been doing the bounty hunter gig for a while, and assumingly was pretty good at it. But, you know what? His last job landed him inside a fucking Sarlacc. One can take for granted that Jabba's threat of painfully digesting over a millennia is hyperbole (if for no other reason that no one would live that long inside the beast, what with being broken down by stomach acids and the fact that there's no food or water), but one would imagine it still wouldn't be a pleasant experience.
Fett himself says he's tired of working for idiots trying to get him killed. I don't know about you, but if I woke up inside a giant sand monster as a result of my day job, I think I'd have to reflect on my life choices, too.
His time with the Tuskens also helped shape his development. Boba Fett has been alone for a long time. His only family, his father Jango, was killed when he was just a child. Then, as an adult, he gets captured by this tribe of people, expected to be a slave for them, ends up earning their respect, and is accepted as part of their family. He has a place to belong again, to just be and live.
This is is not a misrepresentation of Fett's character, even if you take into account the other (canon or non-canon) media about him. It is not a disservice to Boba Fett. What it is, loves, is character development. And that's what good characters do. They grow and they change and they develop into new versions of themselves, just like actual, real people do. Stagnation only breeds death.
(I do find it poetic, though, that what he decides to do with himself is take over the territory of the dude who almost got him killed.)
I've also seen the simps whining that Boba Fett is weak and lacks badassery in his own series, and again I'm like, what the fuck?
Boba Fett shot a hole in and crawled out of a Sarlacc. Boba Fett choked some reptilian monster bitch out and was accepted by fucking Tusken Raiders because of it. Boba Fett beat the shit out of a biker gang using what is essentially a gaffi stick shaped bouken. And then stole their speeders. Boba Fett-- fucking Boba Fett-- rode his rancor baby into battle against the scorpenek droids that were unleashed on Mos Espa and defeated them. He then (albeit somewhat ambiguously) took out Cad Bane with his gaffi stick, stabbing that blue bastard in the chest with the pointy end.
People who say Boba Fett isn't badass in TBoBF either aren't paying attention or are just looking for shit to complain about. (More likely the latter.)
But! There is one little thing in the series that I have some serious issues with... I am speaking, of course, about the demon spawn that is CGI Luke Skywalker. I get it, the technology is new-ish, and it isn't perfect... and in the grand scheme of things, it's kind of neat, but... Observe:
It got worse.
When we first meet Luke Skywalker in A New Hope he is 19 (I believe Mark Hamill was 24 while shooting it). In Return of the Jedi he is 23. The Mandalorian starts 5 years later, so he'd be at least 28.
His cameo in The Mandalorian was greeted with one of the biggest fangasms the Star Wars franchise has seen in a while, but once the euphoria wore off there was, in fact, certain criticisms over the CGI used. Personally, for how long he was on screen, I didn't care. It's Luke, and he was taking down an entire platoon of Dark Troopers by himself and generally being fucking badass! And while the animation around his mouth while he was speaking was kinda shit, that seems to be an ongoing issue with this type of CGI, so meh. At least he mostly looked like Luke Skywalker.
In TBoBF, though... I will grant, the mouth animations were a lot better, but that doesn't look like a younger Mark Hamill. It looks like some knock off you bought off Wish. I don't know if it has to do with the facial structure of the actor behind the computer generated mask (the body double for The Mandalorian and the body double for TBoBF were two different actors), but... And it bothers me that he looks younger than he's supposed to. He looks more like the 19 year old farm boy who got caught up in a story he never dreamed of, not a dude who is almost 30.
It bothers me a lot.
And then there's his voice. I couldn't put my finger on why it sounded so... wrong, but then I learned Mark Hamill did not record lines for TBoBF... They used a program called Respeecher. Basically, they constructed his dialogue using a Vocaloid-esque computer program, Frankensteining old sound bites into something that almost, but most certainly does not sound like young Mark Hamill. When I learned this, my brain went, 'Oh... that makes sense. I fucking hate it!'
Just cast a new actor, Disney. The fans know that Mark is 70. You did a good enough job casting for Han and Lando for Solo, I think you can do it for Luke, too.
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