REVIEW #143 The Book of Boba Fett (Season 1)

The Book of Boba Fett is the latest Disney+ original series following the iconic Star Wars character Bobs Fett as he attempts to lead on Tatooine. The series also provides key flashbacks showing how he survived the events of Return of the Jedi. 

CAST & THE ACTING 

Temuera Morrison returns as Boba Fett and continues the legacy of the character, performing well, particularly in those flashback scenes with the Tuscans. Ming-Na Wen returns as Fennec Shand and her best performances came during the action sequences. Other cast members from The Mandalorian reprise their roles such as Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin and Timothy Olyphant as Cobb Vanth. Although there were certainly no bad performances, I can’t say there were particularly great ones either. The storyline doesn’t really provide the opportunity for acting masterpieces. Performances across the series just didn’t generate an emotional response from me, with the exception of Pascal and Grogu of course but that’s just a continuation from previous projects. 

PLOT & THE STORYLINE 

I have seen a lot of criticism about Boba Fett not actually being in it a lot but I don’t get that, it’s just one episode where he doesn’t predominantly feature. Other than that I think the storyline certainly fills the gaps between Boba Fetts Return of the Jedi appearance and his The Mandalorian appearance. The flash back scenes provided some excellent character development and really gave an insight into how his mindset has changed since living with the Tuscans. The present day events make sense, with Boba’s aim to take over from Jaba the Hutt on Tatooine and although that does unravel at a rather slow pace, the conclusion was exciting. It also introduced Cad Bane the bounty Hunter which was a really cool character who slotted into the story naturally and the same goes for Black Krrsantan who was awesome! By the end of the series it had set up a nice family like bond between Boba and his soldiers, so season 2 would be interesting! The main issue is definitely the pacing but my other criticism would be that I didn’t really care for any of the characters, the two I named above are exciting but in terms of an emotional connection I didn’t feel that with any of the characters except Djarin and Grogu. So I wasn’t really bothered about their journeys, they need to work on that in season 2.

The main debate centres around if they made the right decision to have Din Djarin, Grogu, Luke and Ashoka all appear. I think they did to be honest. Djarin played a key role in the finale and the scenes with Luke will set up the events of The Mandalorian season 3 nicely. What did annoy me was Luke giving Grogu the ultimatum, I wanted to see him wield Yodas light saber! I get that he was enforcing the Jedi way but to be honest I’m getting sick of the Jedi way, it’s boring! I hope as future Star Wars projects progress we get to see more unconventional Jedi’s, that embrace different lifestyles. It’s clear the strict rules of the Jedi regime is what leads to Sith Lords! Anyway that’s irrelevant to this series but just my thoughts in general.

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS 

I want to start by saying how well they done with the CGI for young Luke, it was much better than his The Mandalorian appearance! It looked so realistic, I couldn’t quite believe it. It’s set on Tatooine which is a desert planet but it does allow for some great visuals! The cinematography was really good, as I would expect from any recent Disney project. I loved the scenes with Luke and Grogu and that small glimpse we saw of order 66 in Grogu’s memory, that looked great too. The set design delivered a huge sense of nostalgia with Jabas palace especially! I’m also a fan of how they’re still using real prosthetics to create the different alien races, it looks much more realistic compared to CGI. So no criticisms at all here really, as my previous post highlighted, Star Wars always has brilliant cinematography. 

OVERALL (7.5/10)

The Book of Boba Fett certainly fills in the gaps between Return of The Jedi and The Mandalorian, meanwhile providing a good present day storyline for the character. However my favourite parts of the series were the scenes that featured Din Djarin, Grogu and Luke, which shouldn’t have been the case. I firmly believe that they were right to include those characters but the slow pacing of Boba Fetts arc meant that I lost interest in those sections. The flashbacks were great and provided some excellent character development but beyond that I just didn’t care about any of the new characters. It’s definitely worth a watch and I did enjoy it but I think they need to do a better job at building a connection between the audience and Boba Fett and his new crew. Otherwise fans will just look forward to seeing Mandalorian characters which defeats the object of a solo series for Boba Fett.

Thanks for reading.

Callan