We need to have a proverbial sit-down conversation before I delve into a review for this episode. So let’s chat.
I don’t know who was in charge of the third episode and I don’t know how concept art, prop design, character design, etc, was all assigned for this show. What I can tell you is that whoever came up with this should have been laughed out of the room. Disney+ and The Walt Disney Company’s future has a lot riding on Star Wars, and this is how you go about annihilating that future. Anything I have reviewed before for Marvel or Lucasfilm has a totally different issue than whatever is wrong with The Book of Boba Fett. I don’t know how you can put characters that look like they were pulled out of a Dr. Seuss book on comically ridiculous rainbow-colored hover bikes and have them take down a supposed baddie with glow sticks. Whoever did this doesn’t understand Star Wars. They also don’t understand maintaining intellectual property aesthetics. And clearly they don’t understand money… because this episode is going to cost Disney millions of dollars, minimum.
This is awful.
I can go into how horrible the story is, and it’s bad. There’s no tension here because every danger is coddled and becomes a cute little friend. Evil wookie jogs clumsily off the screen like an nonathletic extra in a costume when Boba Fett decides an attempted murderer just gets away. Giant rancor creatures that Luke Skywalker barely defeated are turned into puppies… perhaps an opportunity for Galaxy’s Edge to sell plushies in a plastic bag like banshees in Avatar. I’m expecting by next episode to see Boba Fett strike a treaty with great white sharks who decide to go vegan and start doling out hugs as part of their syndicate. But really, just talking about how horrible the story is doesn’t cut it.
I can talk about how pathetic the production is on a show that has a $100 million dollar production budget! Repeatedly now this show has shown vastly different levels of polish, and some of the worst lows I’ve ever seen in something this headlining. The opening CGI for the episode with the “potion spider” might as well be stop motion. Maybe it is and I just didn’t get the wink. The hover bikes the Whoville teenage delinquents ride in on are embarrassing. Embarrassing! How can Jon Favreau stomach having his name attached to this? The twi’lek spokesperson for the mayor is covered in brown makeup all over his face, yet his hands have no makeup whatsoever. This thing has mistakes that a high school play would catch — what is going on?
This is Star Wars:
This is Dr. Seuss:
// tbobf book of boba fett spoilers
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i put the tokyo drift music over the speeder chase pic.twitter.com/3MfnxEZypO— tea . (@cqstamere) January 12, 2022
Hey, we’ve got a gang of teenagers dressed like Dr. Who working for Boba Fett. They can’t afford water, but they come with cool Dr. Seuss hover bikes. Because reasons (and toys).
— Boba Fett Writing Room
Let’s imagine for a moment that I was going to do a movie about racial segregation in the south during the fifties, and someone suggested that during the movie we have a gang of teenagers ride up on rainbow colored tricycles to defend an innocent person from evil. I would probably just look at them and blink, because it would be so absurd and incompetent. So how did that never happen during any of the planning for this episode? And how did nobody say, “we’re about to sink hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Disney”?
Small children won’t understand this about The Book of Boba Fett, and one day they may remember it fondly. Hyper-partisan ideologues might still try to defend this. But I can’t see any way that this doesn’t represent the nail in the coffin for modern Star Wars. I have to watch the series to review it, but I don’t look forward to it. There is no intrigue. There is just annoyance.
Boba Fett learns his new Rancor Monster is depressed. He spends a few minutes smiling & mewing while he pets it like a puppy. Danny Trejo approves. pic.twitter.com/xDZl8Dtzvo
— Dataracer (@Dataracer117) January 12, 2022
It’s not just that this episode was bad. It was. The real thing about this is that it takes everything that people have thought about Lucasfilm and it shoves it up to such a self-parody level that all I can assume is this thing needs to fail hard. That is the only way Bob Chapek is going to realize utter incompetence is running one of his studios. This is like expecting to go to a fine restaurant which you’ve loved, and even though they’ve changed the menu 180 degrees they still sometimes have good food, but just now they served you a plate with various colored ketchups sprayed on a plate. All you can do is look at the server and say, “Are you serious?”
Are you serious, Lucasfilm? You just served your audience neon-colored garbage.
One-hundred million dollar garbage.
And I never, ever, ever talk this way in a review. But it has to be said.
Score: 1.5 / 10
Do you feel the same? Am I just completely off my rocker? Let me know in the comments below.
