The Mandalorian

You can accept that Boba didn't really do much and looked more impressive than he actually was, without it coming from a place of hate.

The fact that he's kind of an overhyped chump even In-Universe when you get down to it is one of my favorite things about the character,

The obvious source of the Boba hate is the old EU, which blew him up to ridiculous proportions and made him a physical manifestation of all that is wrong with the SW fanbase solidified in a character.

I mean, as a Batman fan, I can relate to the annoyance in a meme of the character being overpowered and people reacting to that meme despite the character not actually being that way any more (and barely being that way in the first place) - so I get the frustration.

So are you talking about the Batman beats up homeless people meme, or the Batman can beat anyone with prep time meme?

The latter is sort of reflected in a story called “No disintegration’s please”, from Tales from the New Republic. It’s about an ex Imperial officer telling a story about Boba to a bunch of children, in which he takes on an Imperial garrison and wins thanks to prep time.

In the end Boba meets the mark, the storyteller, and decides that he isn’t worth pursuing because the statute on the bounty had expired. The two depart amicably, but not before Boba disintegrates a really annoying creaky sign.

Edited by Beatman1 on May 9th 2020 at 12:44:32 PM

[1]

Probably the " Batman is an amoral bastard who is only put up with due to being popular, Who treats his friends and family like shit and cares more about his martyr complex then anything"

Boba's not that bad till Traviss and her love from Spartan brutality masked as Savage enlightenment.

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on May 9th 2020 at 11:56:54 AM

When he’s not hyped up as the Star Wars equivalent of Batman, the Legends Boba Fett was shown to have a very clear morality and empathy. Even The Last One Standing ends with two people (him and Han) trying to find an excuse not to shoot the other and walk away.

Seems weird to suggest that a guy who hunts down and kills people for Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt is an empathetic and moral person.

Or a competent one, given that Vader had to specify to a bounty hunter not to disintegrate the target. Needing to be able to prove your kill seems obvious to me.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 9th 2020 at 11:39:44 AM

It was a Noodle Incident in the story where Fett went for the “dead” in dead or alive. And if it helps, Leia does call him out on it in the story (Jabba gave Leia to Fett for a night, but Fett refuses to do anything with an unwilling partner, so he just sleeps on the couch, and the two have a talk). Essentially, since bounty hunting is a legal profession, and the government in charge is paying him within the confines of the law, he’s being moral. Leia calls BS.

Boba and Jyn are polar opposites when it comes to culture and law vs morality. That will likely be the core of their conflict.

Edited by Beatman1 on May 9th 2020 at 1:53:15 PM

What part of "totes moral because he's paid within the confines of the law" involves working for crime syndicates?

This is the kind of thing that made Legends Boba an obnoxious character. Writers running away with the character so far that they wind up having to try and justify the fact that his original canon appearance completely does not gel with the character they designed.

It's another reminder that the Legends EU is officially licensed fanfiction. Because this happens with fandoms, who will invent their own version of a minor character from a work and go so hogwild that the character ultimately barely even resembles whatever role they originally filled.

And god forbid the actual canon start fleshing out the character and it's nothing like the popular Fanon version; that's when everybody loses their shit and starts crying "Ruined Forever!". Not that Legends ever had to deal with that, since it was technically considered the actual canon until Disney's retcon.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 9th 2020 at 11:58:02 AM

Then you have Armed with Canon. Traviss was infamous for this, putting down everyone else (especially the Jedi) to prop up her Mandos, but she was far from the only one.

to be fair, in that story being referred to, it's Boba himself who is the one saying he's morally justified because his job is a legal one. Leia pretty much tells him it's a load of crap.

Its not actually supposed to be justified to the reader as much as it's how Boba justified it to himself.

Edited by jakobitis on May 9th 2020 at 9:49:55 AM

While also unironically working for crime bosses. "My jobs are justified because they're legal even though many of them aren't legal but that's fine because they're justified because my jobs are legal."

The problem isn't that Boba Fett believing that about himself is delusional. The problem is that Boba Fett believing that about himself is stupid. The logic is stupid. It's a poorly-conceived code of honor to make the character seem more dignified while still being antagonistic, that is actually just nonsense gibberish.

It was written to be flawed, but it's actually dumb.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 9th 2020 at 3:00:46 AM

That's partially why bounty hunters and mercenaries are romanticized, as there is a sense that they are not a direct part of the oppressive system but learning to profit off it anyway while maintaining their own freedom. The fact that they are often fighting worse people gives them a vague sense of moral ambiguity.

On the Fett vs Phasma debate, the main difference is that Fett was introduce in TESB as a random Hypercompetent Sidekick and first seen behind the more alien Bossk and you could almost be forgiven for not seeing him in early crowd shots of Jabbas palace (though it is hard to say you missed his defeat in the sarrlak fight), while Phasma got a Vader-like entrance in both movies with a dramatic reveal and musical cue. Boba Fett was an Ensemble Dark Horse who received overexposure over time, while any praise for Phasma seemed to surround her early publicity and nothing she actually does in the movies, which would be like if all of Boba's popularity was from the Holiday Special.

There's multiple reasons that the Boba Fett story makes no damn sense. At the end of the day, he just works best as a merc who works for the Empire and Jabba the Hutt because they pay him.

In addition to being overhyped to a ridiculous degree, a lot of the backlash to Boba seems connected to the general backlash to Karen Traviss' treatment of the Mandalorians where she made them so obnoxiously perfect and awesome that even Jedi would ditch the Order to join them.

Doesn't make the argument of "he didn't do shit" any less asinine.

I wasn't saying that it did.

But in the films Boba really didn't do shit (on screen). The single most impressive thing he did was NOT fall for one of Han's tricks. The Falcon was literally limping along. Even at the other end it was Vader and the Stormtroopers who actually did the capturing.

Yes he was implied to have this badass rep but on screen he lost a fight to a blind man. That's... Not badass.

Edited by jakobitis on May 10th 2020 at 4:16:12 PM

I'm gonna see what happens.

That's all I've got to say. I don't care what Boba was, what he did or didn't do or any of that.

I'm gonna see how it plays out and judge him on that.

Bad shit happens, especially if you don't expect it to. Considering Han Solo is (or should I say) probably one of the luckiest people alive, I never actually held that one against Boba Fett.

Unless every time a protagonist wins through dumb luck now means the respective antagonist is a chump.

Also again, what else did people expect him do to? He showed up, did what he was supposed to do and got paid.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 10th 2020 at 9:22:43 PM

Again, you're coming at this with the idea that people are lambasting him for the expectation of him to be great, when what's happening is people are just describing him as he is.

Nobody here, at least, expects him to be anybody but Boba. And Boba is just a minor character who didn't really have all that much to him and eventually went out like a chump, as minor villains tend to do in this series.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 10th 2020 at 12:34:05 PM

Honestly the immense hate for the character is rather disconcerting.

It is isn't it?

I mean, I kinda get where they are coming from. Yeah, he never did much before he got punked by (a blind) Han Solo, but people seem to find the idea of him showing up again out right offensive.

Again, lets see what happens.

Aaanyway, to move this to a more productive discussion - I actually wonder what kinda role Boba Fett will serve in the series.

Is he an antagonist joining in on the hunt for Baby Yoda? Somebody who temporarily works with Din on a job? Just a cameo?

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 10th 2020 at 2:34:09 PM