Loathing Boba Fett

For the most part, I can be happily apathetic about the stuff in Star Wars I don’t care for. Some of it I have to cover, so I cover it despite my own lack of caring. I play a lot of stuff down the middle, either due to apathy or due to not being an asshole.

And then there’s Boba Fett.

Let’s not be coy here: I hate Boba Fett. I’ve given myself permission to go full-out negative on one thing and he’s it.

To me, he’s an overrated supporting character who lucked into a cool costume and not much else. But he was eaten by a giant sand vagina in Return of the Jedi and that’s the end of it, right? Wrong.

Boba Fett proved to be such a fan favorite that they brought him back. Twice. He was sprung from the Sarlacc in the Dark Empire comic series and a whole thing about him and Han Solo became an epic feud instead of a one-time job. He got a bunch of new backstory. He starred in a lot of comics, some short stories, and a book trilogy, all of which I did not read. It was actually super easy to ignore him in this period, because most of his stuff happened off to the side and if you didn’t care, that’s fine.

Then George Lucas threw him (as a kid!) into Attack of the Clones, giving him a dad (Jango Fett) and a whole new backstory. The stuff in the books and the comics was spun/retconned to work with his new movie background. His EU ‘real name’ became an impostor of some sort. I am not an expert in any of this and I will not pretend to be. Let’s just say there was spin.

Then he started showing up in the stuff I did read. He made a cameo at some point in the New Jedi Order and in the wake of the prequels the whole Mandalorian culture became a thing. He was given a ‘humanizing’ tragic background with a wife and daughter. And finally, he and his granddaughter ended up getting a sort-of significant subplot in the Legacy of the Force books. I didn’t really feel it added anything of value to the series and thought it would have been better spun off into its own thing.

Oh, and baby Boba started showing up in The Clone Wars, too. Naturally.

This amuses me.

But basically, I lost my patience with Boba Fett all over again. He was on my territory, and it’s like the fandom refused to let me just ignore him.

I’m already resigned that there probably will be a Fett movie at some point. I’m resigned to covering it, in some fashion. I can grit my teeth do that, if in a businesslike fashion when I can’t get James. I’ve certainly done it before.

Fett fans will go on about his Clint Eastwood man-with-no-name mystique. Or his angst. Or just his ‘coolness,’ because that’s descriptive. I understand that, in theory, but it does not work on me. Just doesn’t. I am not interested, but he keeps getting pushed up as this ultimate amazing figure of Star Wars. ‘Try this,’ people say! ‘Or this!’

No. Just no. You will not change my mind. You don’t have to try. Please don’t.

Honestly, I think that’s what annoys me more than anything else: The insistence that if I just see or read this random thing, some switch in my mind will flip and I will suddenly appreciate the character. The sheer obnoxious evangelism of it.

I’ve not liked Boba Fett a long time. The more he’s pushed, the more ‘everyone wants a Fett movie’ stuff that I see, the more I am annoyed. Star Wars is big! So big! Can’t we all just not like some of it sometimes? Can’t we realize that Star Wars fandom is not a hive mind?

I don’t hate him enough to go around trolling and attacking Fett fans or anything like that – I just sometimes go off on my own site or Twitter. I’m no angel. It happens. I regret nothing.

That said, I will feature some of my favorite Fett things. Because I am nothing if not contrary.

The first is a tad obscure: It’s a piece by Tim Bissell in A Galaxy Not So Far Away, an unauthorized essay collection from 2002. Titled ‘Pale Starship, Pale Rider: The Ambiguous Appeal of Boba Fett,’ the best bits come when Bissell gently lampoons a few of Fett’s appearances in the Expanded Universe. I don’t know how much of a recommendation this is, but the first time I read it I laughed so hard that I scared my cat clear across the house.

The second is, of course, Robot Chicken’s interpretation:

Continuing on that theme, Todd Alcott’s thoughts on Fett and Vader.

And, finally… Fett’s Vette by MC Chris.

Not even I can hate on that.