More footage for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released today. Fifteen seconds, to be exact, which can be viewed over at ComingSoon. Every single image leading up to the December release of this flick is, of course, deliberately meted out to the hungry masses by the carefully calculating, enthusiasm-inflating marketing machine which is, I suppose, trying to ensure that you watch this film more than once. It can’t be to sway undecided audiences, as most people I know personally were already locked in from the word “go.”
An important thing to note about the Star Wars marketing is how few images we are receiving that are completely original. We are given a few shots of the young cast, all playing original characters, but otherwise, the blank information we’re sucking through our skull-holes is nothing more than nostalgia exploitation. We have vague narration about foul things afoot, and then shots of X-Wing fighters, R2D2, light sabers, the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca… all things we’ve seen before. If the trailers are any indicator, the Star Wars universe is not being expanded at all, but staying close within the lines and close to familiar characters.
Check Out: Boba Fett Will get His Own Movie
20th Century Fox
Say what you will about Star Wars parts I – III, they at least did expand on the Star Wars myth. This led Crave to ask the rather pertinent question: What if The Force Awakens sucks?
I’d like to focus in on a particularly strange phenomenon of the Star Wars universe that has always baffled me: The cult of Boba Fett.
Boba Fett is a character who first appeared in The Star Wars Holiday Special, muttered a few times in The Empire Strikes Back, was killed in Return of the Jedi (he was swallowed alive by a gigantic, sand-dwelling vagina dentata), and whose backstory was explained in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. It turns out that all the Storm Troopers in Star Wars are clones of one man, and who are artificially aged to be adult soldiers. One clone was allowed to age naturally. That clone was Boba Fett, who grew up into a bounty hunter.
Fans of Star Wars adore this character, and I’m not exactly sure why. He has a cool-looking helmet, I suppose. And he was mysterious until his backstory was explained, but otherwise, whe has no dialogue or character to speak of. He’s just a dude with a gun and a mask. I don’t understand why people look to Boba Fett as an iconic symbol of the Star Wars series, when there are much more vivid and interesting character to focus on. More discussions about Star Wars involve Boba Fett than they do Luke Skywalker, the would-be protagonist of the series. Boba Fett is seen as badass, awesome, kickass, boss, and whatever other meaningless adjectives you have in your arsenal to depict “cool.”
Check Out: The First Boba Fett Screen Test
20th Century Fox
Excluding Attack of the Clones (not a very good film by any stretch), I think I might be able to theorize why people might like Boba Fett: We know nothing about him. We see him riding a dinosaur, we know he’s a turncoat, and we know he’s willing to work for Darth Vader. He’s a free agent in the Star Wars world. In a universe where all the characters either work for the Good Guys (the rebels) or the Bad Guys (the Empire), it’s refreshing to see a character who works for himself. He’s an independent businessman, and that’s where he gets his power. I suppose Jabba the Hutt is also an independent businessman, but people don’t like a fat, evil slug as much as they like a human-shaped helmeted, gun-toting badass.
And that makes us wonder about him. Who is this man? Where does he sleep at night? What must his life be like? Our imaginations are filling in the gaps on Boba Fett, and we’re seeing a stoic professional. We didn’t see his formative years. And, thanks to that omission, we don’t need to. We’ve already constructed our own story for Boba Fett in our heads, and he’s way more interesting remaining unexplored.
Check Out: Nine Star Wars Characters that Deserve Their Own Movies
20th Century Fox
In short, Boba Fett is cool because he’s mysterious. The less we know about him, the more titillating he becomes. That’s one of the (myriad) reasons Attack of the Clones was so dull: It took time to explain who Boba Fett was, where he got his helmet, where he was born. Did that make the character better? No. It made him worse.
As Disney puts their long-winded and exhausting Star Wars lineup of films (one a year for the next 117 years!), Boba Fett will likely come around again, this time as the star of his own film. If the trend of TV-resembling “cinamtic universes” continues to dominate the movie marketplace, then it’s likely we’ll even get two or three Boba Fett feature films. This means that the character will finally be ruined once and for all. We’ll finally know everything we always wanted to know about him, and he will vanish. Do you want to see him as a soldier? As a fighter? As a lover? As a drug addict? As a sullen teen? The mystery will be undone.
A mystery made Boba Fett. An explanation will unmake him.
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
