Wowie zowie, 3.5 readers! Talk about a fantastic season finale!
BQB here with a review.
I stand corrected. I have been complaining that the B of BF stunk with a lot of blah blah blahing and not enough action but it turns out the show was just throwing us breadcrumbs that really pay off in a major way in this episode.
Even so, Mando and Grogu remain the dynamic duo of this universe, though the Boba-ster did get his moment, though he really is at his best when his helmet is on and he is blasting his enemies rather than talking to them.
It was a fight to the finish on the streets of Mos Eisley, with Boba “I turned over a new leaf” Fett and Mando taking on the Pike Syndicate and stopping their evil spice trade for good. Remember kids, space drugs are bad, mmkay?
Sidenote – not to give away a spoiler but that thing Boba did at the end, why didn’t he just do it at the beginning? So the show could happen I suppose.
There was even legit character development. All of the little bit players got a moment that showed us who they are.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Rogue One was great. Solo, I think, was better than the bad rep it got. The saga sequels had their moments but by and large were unintelligible with the plot being an afterthought. The Mandos, be it Mando who is a true believer of Mando-ism or Boba, a cynic who just likes their armor, are carrying the Star Wars franchise on their beskar protected backs.
Why does it always sound like the guy singing that “hah!” in the theme song is having a hernia?
BQB here with a review.
I can’t help but notice the two best episodes of The Book of Boba Fett had very little to do with this new fangled “I want out of bounty hunting” version of Boba Fett. They transferred all of his bad ass stoicism to The Mandalorian and now Mando gets all the cool episodes.
BTW, these past two episodes were visually stunning, filled with gratuitous fan service (cameos by R2, CGI Luke, Cad Bane and Ahsoka from the cartoons) but more importantly, graced by plotlines that make me think Disney might finally be getting the hang of building a post-Empire universe…maybe. We’re not there quite yet but it’s looking good.
Here, Mando tries to visit his teensy weensy BFF Grogu or the Artist Formerly Known as Baby Yodo. G-Spot is knee deep into his Jedi training from a CGI’d up Young Master Luke, and as Ahsoka warns Mando, Jedis can be badass space monks or they can be part of a family but they can’t be both. (Sidenote – why did this scene make me wish I’d abandoned my extended family and become my own personal version of a kickass space monk years ago? Is this orange tentacled babe (Rosario Dawson) right? You can be awesome or you can have a family but you can’t have both? Hmm.
Moving on, CGI Luke was cool yet not overly convincing last season. They have it done better this time around though I noticed much of the action occurs with the camera zoomed out of Luke so perhaps a body double did the far away action scenes?
SIDENOTE: As CGI rendering continues to make old actors young, or rather, rebuilds their youthful bodies anew, are actors/actresses getting worried? As this tech improves, what’s to stop the studios from just giving all the human talent the boot and creating movies featuring CGI humans rendered entirely from scratch? Maybe someday some zit faced teenager will render an entire Oscar worthy film on his laptop. (Come to think of it, most of today’s “Oscar worthy” films look like they were rendered on a zit faced teenager’s laptop but I don’t mean that in a good way.
Cameo from Timothy Olyphant was fun.
Finally, the plot centers around Mando and others coming together to help Boba Fett fight off the Pikes, i.e. a syndicate of alien spice runners. Double sidenote – In Star Wars, “spice” is totes code for drugs, but since it’s a kids show, if your kids ask you what spice is, you can tell them all the aliens are just fighting over a yummy food topping. (Honestly, you adults who want to retain your innocence can feel free to assume they are fighting over a yummy food topping and what? You already thought they were fighting over a yummy food topping? Oh um…hey! What’s that over there? Squirrel!)
My main question is if The Fettmeister is against the drug (er yummy topping) trade…but he also wants to solidify his position as Tatooine’s top crime boss, um…what other crimes will he be ok with? Because seriously, if he wants to be a crime boss and he’s not cool with spice (oregano or otherwise) then what crimes will he support? Murder? Extortion? Space whores? I knew it. He’s totally pimping out space whores.
Or maybe not. It is a Disney Plus show, after all, so don’t think about the space crime lord’s space crime too much. (It’s space whores.)
I hate to say it, 3.5 readers, but this was the best episode of the Book of Boba Fett so far and it’s because the new, I don’t wear my mask anymore and I don’t hunt bounties anymore because I’m trying to be a crime boss Boba Fett wasn’t in it.
The Mandalorian returns and it was all about Mando, from a duel with a fellow mando over the dark saber, to a fixing up a broken down starfighter montage with wacky mechanic friend Amy Sedaris, this installment was a lot of fun and makes me wonder if Disney Plus might have been better off just focusing on putting out a third season of Mando.
I feel like they ruined the Boba character but technically, they just took all his patented stoicism and bad guy killing skills at the flick of a wrist techniques and transferred them to Mando as well as the followers of the mando religion. So you still get kick ass bounty hunting missions, you just have to watch as Mando does them.
Book of Boba does have its moments but Mando seems to be the superior series, with hints in this episode of what Mando might be up to if there is a Mando Season 3.
At the outset, I have to ask, if your host indicates to you that you are setting on top some kind of door or grate that leads to the Rancor pit, why would you keep sitting there?
Beats me, 3.5 readers.
This show is getting bad reviews. Personally, I find it a bit over middling. Like I’d give it a B but then eh, why not? I’m in a good mood. Give it a B Plus.
A lot of streaming stuff isn’t completely up to movie quality and Disney Plus shows are no exception. Even so, I’m enjoying it. It is a nostalgia dump, to be sure and I gotta think it’s probably more for us old timers who remember going to see Jabba the Hutt on the big screen as kids back in the day than it is for today’s kids, because do today’s kids really want a symposium on the intricacies of intergalactic organized crime?
The wookie is cool. The tentacle lady who gave the rousing speech to the wookie is cool. The wookie doing what he did…well, this wookie ain’t Chewie, so let’s leave it at that.
Boba is back and there are so many hutts to blast and so little time, 3.5 readers.
BQB here with a review.
I have mixed feelings on this show. On one hand, the Boba Fett of the original films was a surprise breakout star. George Lucas was a baby boomer who like those of his generation, grew up on a steady diet of Western films, so when he had his chance to put space on film, he imagined much of it as wild, lawless territory – places where might makes right and those who can kick ass live to fight another day.
Boba Fett always reminded me of Clint Eastwood’s silent but deadly (seriously, no pun intended, I just don’t know how else to describe him) old West character. He never said much but he could punk a man out with a cold stare. Thus, when it came to Boba, less was always more. He said very little but his armor, helmet and gadgets were quite menacing indeed.
Ergo, I’m not sure we needed a story about who the person is under that mask. He was way cooler with it on.
On the other hand, Disney paid boku bucks for the Star Wars IP and if you count it all as one great big expensive experiment, they’ve learned so far that all the money at the House of Mouse’s disposal can’t put together a writing team that can make a decent Star Wars flick set outside of the time of Luke vs. Darth Vader (or directly thereafter).
Long story short, Boba is one of the last few characters from that era who is still alive and kicking, so we must make do.
My next complaint is Boba is the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter, isn’t he? Don’t we want to see him, oh, I don’t know, hunting bounties?
But I admit, the after credits scene following the last episode of The Mandalorian where Boba blasts Bib Fortuna and takes a load off on the late Jabba’s throne was pretty kick ass and enough to get me invested in a Boba series. The past two episodes have piqued my interest, so all in and all, I’ll give it a try.
To Disney’s credit, if you preferred the Boba who rarely spoke, The Mandalorian introduced us to the Manadalorian religion, where the most devout from that respective planet travel the galaxy, earning a living as bounty hunters and never taking their helmets off, believing the only way to not incur an enemy’s wrath is to keep their identities hidden. Ultimately, we’re given a whole race of silent but deadly (sorry) Boba types and we further learn the actual Boba was never a Mandalorian religion practitioner but rather was just a dude who liked the armor.
In this episode, we are given a double hutt douse, a brother and sister team who have returned to Tatooine to fight Boba for Jabba’s throne. They have a kickass wookie, so that’s cool. I gotta be honest, a lot of this feels like fan service but I’ll take it.
Meanwhile, we’ve yet to learn why Boba sleeps in a bacta tank, but whenever he does, he has flashbacks to a Dances with Wolves type of arc where he was captured by the sand people only to win them over and become their BFF.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Disney Plus does seem to be a better home for Star Wars, at least until they figure out how to make a decent film.
Bookshelf Battle 