I was really kinda excited for this one. One of my favorite Mandalorian episodes so far was the Boba Fett episode, directed by Robert Rodriguez. I was really excited for the potential of a show with episodes exactly like that one, with Rodriguez being able to do whatever the hell he wanted. What we got, however, is one of the most poorly-plotted and executed shows I've ever seen, and it just kept getting worse...
Book of Boba Fett is a show about the titular character (along with Fennec Shand) taking over for Jabba and becoming the crime lord of his territory in Tatooine. This seems like a really cool premise, as we get to see more of Temeura Morrison's take on Fett as well as more focus on Fennec Shand, one of my favorite new Star Wars characters. However, the series almost immediately fell apart when I realized that half of the first episode was just flashbacks of how Boba Fett escaped the Sarlacc Pit. That's probably my biggest gripe with the series, the first four episodes are composed of like 75% flashbacks and 25% present day story, which makes for a really poorly-paced show. Even worse, those flashbacks just feel unneccessary to me. The Mandalorian did a great job of leaving enough hints that you could infer what happened to Boba Fett between it and Return Of The Jedi, The flashbacks did have some neat scenes like the train chase, the Ratcatcher droid scene, and Fennec blowing up the Sarlacc, but the show spending so much time on things the audience pretty much already knows wastes time from the present day stuff, which ends up having some major problems of its own. I'm not a fan of some of the story directions taken in the flashbacks either, like the entire first episode being spent on Boba Fett being tortured and the tuskan raiders getting abruptly killed off.
Boba and Fennec trying to run Tatooine was a much more compelling storyline than the flashbacks, at least at first. I think Boba and Fennec's dynamic is by far the best thing about the show, their banter is great and gives the series so much energy. However, this storyline suffers from feeling really overstuffed, often writing out characters introduced in previous episodes to make way for new ones. The biggest example was The Twins, who initially seemed like an intimidating antagonist over the show only to leave Tatooine in Episode 3. By the final episode, there was only enough present day stuff (not counting the Mando stuff) to make up a little more than a single episode of the series, which is just awful pacing, no matter how you cut it. I also think the show suffers from Rodriguez's direction in some early episodes, both of which were far and away the worst in the series. They looked oddly cheap, with some bad effects and baffling directoral choices, and ended up having the bulk of my plot issues with the show. They made a bad first impression for Boba, and while every episode not directed by him looked so much better, they still struggled to make up for that rough start.
However, this is only how I'd describe the first four episodes of the show, because the second half of Book Of Boba Fett is an entirely different beast. In Episode 5, we had a perspective shift to see what The Mandalorian was up to, and I kinda liked it. It was a well-directed episode and nice change of pace to tie Mando into this show's storyline, and I expected to return to Boba soon enough. But then we got Episode 6, which not only shafted Boba Fett again, but instead focused on Luke, Grogu, Timothy Olyphant's character, Ahsoka, and Cad Bane all in the course of a single episode. That was the breaking point for me. I can't even begin to explain how much I despised this episode. I was already annoyed with Luke showing up in The Mandalorian, but this is just plain ridiculous! The whole episode was nonstop hollow fanservice and nostalgia baiting, and everything I hated about this generation of Star Wars. I watch Star Wars to see something I've never seen before, there's a whole universe to explore and we get the same ten characters showing up in everything! The least I wanted from Book Of Boba Fett was a look into the politics and underworld of Tatooine, to breath new life into what's become a fairly generic planet, but we couldn't even get that! The finale was actually one of the better episodes, as it brought back the focus to Boba Fett and had some of Rodriguez's best (or least bad) direction, but the fact that there was virtually no show to set it up meant that it felt kind of rushed and hollow. It tries to be a large-scale final battle that brings back all the characters that you know and love, but I don't know and love any of them because they barely got any screentime, depth, or development.
Overall, I tend to not get burned by Star Wars. I love the sequels and have a lot of nostalgia for the prequels despite their divisive natures. But Book Of Boba Fett felt like the first Star Wars property to not just disappoint me but genuinely anger me. The show was already rough with its abundance of pace-killing flashbacks, wasted characters and plot points, and inconsistent visuals, but even that was better than the show bringing the focus off the main character to bring the audience on soulless nostalgia trips. By the finale, for the first time ever, I was sick of Star Wars. My favorite franchise ever.
1/5 Stars
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