BW Media Spotlight

Picture of fan-made Boba Fett and Stormtrooper costumes from ConnectiCon 2009.

That’s right, I wrote it and I’m glad I wrote. No, it isn’t some hate-causing clickbait title. Boba Fett is, in my opinion, highly overrated when you stick to his canon appearances.

I’m sure someone will point to this book or that comic or whatever but I don’t think that counts. First of all the books were never really canon, even if DisneyFilm ignoring them completely wasn’t the best move. Second of all the only reason Boba Fett became a badass in those stories, and I don’t know if he showed up in the Marvel Star Wars comics from around that time outside of the actual movie adaptations, was because fans were so smitten with him that the novels and comics built on that, the novels even retconning his death in the third movie.

Yes, I’ve read about Craig Miller, former fan relation director at Lucasfilm at the time, talking about how the third movie would have been about chasing Boba Fett until George Lucas decided he planned out too far for his own good (and given how the only good thing that came from the sequels was the money and getting his Skywalker Ranch…while his wife ran off with the designer), but that doesn’t matter either because it’s not what we got. What matters is what we actually saw of him in the official productions at the time…which isn’t much.

Boba Fett made his debut in the only watchable segment of The Star Wars Holiday Special and was actually first seen by more than a handful of people in The Empire Strikes Back, where what little personality we saw in his animated appearance wasn’t showcased in the actual movie. He would later die in Return Of The Jedi, the last film of the original trilogy, but thanks to fans loving the character to death he managed to avoid his own death. The question is…what was it about Boba Fett that immediately caused such love? When you actually watch what he does…he doesn’t do anything.

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