The Book of Boba Fett 102: There’s A Bounty Out For This Episode

In my review of The Book of Boba Fett Episode 1, I shared how growing up I never had any real interest in the character of Boba Fett and thought that he was trivial. Then when he was brought into The Mandalorian series and I watched the first episode of this series, I was really excited to see more of the story of Boba Fett and the fresh kind of story they were creating with Boba Fett. 

This episode pretty much erased all that. 

I don’t say this lightly, either. I know that creating a show like this has a lot of creative challenges and barriers and not everyone has the skillset to pull off a show like this. But as a viewer, this was one of the few episodes that I’ve watched on Disney+ that made me lose interest in the series.

Overall, this episode had a lot of issues in my opinion. From a storytelling point of view, there were some problematic pieces that didn’t make sense. In episode 1, it’s established that Boba Fett is captured, possibly a slave, by the Tusken tribe. In this episode, it’s unclear if he still is or not. He obviously has their respect, but when they allowed him to leave on his own because he gave his word that he would return, it doesn’t stand to reason that they would allow him to do that since there was no indication that he was staying there of his own free will. 

This episode was also very slow-moving. There were scenes here that were probably supposed to be dramatic and exciting, but it left me bored and wished they had sped up that scene. I understand what they were trying to capture in those scenes, but their execution missed the mark. 

Another issue in this episode is possibly a combination of writing and acting. In the entire episode where Boba Fett is walking around and establishing his dominance and territory as the new Daimyo, yet as a viewer I’m not convinced that he’s convinced of it. It seems like he keeps getting in over his head with what little he knows of the territory and information as the new Daimyo. Maybe that’s the goal, but it just wasn’t clear to me if he truly does know this or if he is supposed to have more of a commanding presence and it’s more of the lack of execution from Temuera Morrison. 

Speaking of, I’m wondering why they cast Morrison and not the actor who played child Boba Fett in Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones, Daniel Logan. Morrison is supposed to be playing a character in his 40’s (I believe), yet he is 61 and moves like someone that age as well. All of the action scenes with him in it are clearly slow because of his age. This is no fault of his own, but if the character is supposed to be a fierce and feared warrior, I wasn’t convinced of it. It would have made more sense to cast Logan who is much younger, played the character as a child, and would have just had as much of an impact in the Star Wars fandom. Maybe there is a reason why they didn’t go with him that I’m not aware of, but either way, Morrison does not present himself to be intimidating. 

The visual effects (VFX) of the Star Wars universe have always been exciting, cutting edge, and high quality. So I was very disappointed when we see a glimpse of the droid that is controlling the train and it had a lot of jumped frames like what you could see in the first Robocop movie with ED-209 (the giant enforcement robot). It could be that it was simulating the train shaking as well, but it’s not really clear so it’s poor filmmaking technique either way. 

There are some positive and interesting aspects to the episode, however. I loved some of the comedic scenes that they created here, and we do get some answers to questions we’ve been wondering, such as how did Boba Fett get his attire from his appearance in The Mandalorian, and are the Tusken really sinister like what we saw from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. And really, the idea of the story itself is a very interesting one that was probably great as an outline, or even as a book; but it just did not cut it in this episode. 

Lastly, I’m curious to see the fate of the Tusken tribe that we see here in the series. So far we haven’t seen them in the present-day story of the show, so the fact that they haven’t been seen or even discussed in this part of the series is probably worrisome.