Boba Fett, George Lucas, and SW geeks

What Alessan and shy guy said: in Star Wars, Vader is only Tarkin’s henchman, who takes care of the strong-arm stuff: he only really comes into his own in Empire, where he really kicks arse and takes names, with great lines like, “You have failed me for the last time.”, and, “Apology accepted, Admiral Needa.” That’s why Fett’s backchat in Empire really stands out - he argues terms with Vader and comes out with what he wants.

Pretty much all of the bounty hunters in Empire got uberfied. In fact, in Tales of the Bounty Hunters, Fett probably had the most uninteresting (and depressing) story out of all of them! IG-88 almost conquered the galaxy and had total control of the Death Star (yeah, the one around Endor was IG-88, essentially… gack); Dengar gallavanted around the galaxy, had insanely-uber fighting skills and cyborg abilities, and rescued Boba Fett from the Sarlacc Pit (well, sorta) and they became friends (triple grande gack); Zuckuss and 4-LOM had the coolest story… Zuckuss was an introverted depressed religious disciple, and 4-LOM was a glorified butler droid that got pissed off at humans and their slovenly excesses and decided to kill them; and Bossk hated everyone and everything and was driven to maddened lengths to kill Han Solo, Chewbacca, Boba Fett, and pretty much everything else he came across.

Fett’s story was about how shitty his life was after failing to catch Solo, essentially.

All in all, I don’t think Fett (or the Y-wings) received any sort of glorification or deprecation from the EU… the REAL victim of the EU was the humble TIE fighter. I, frankly, thought that they kicked super-ass in the movie… call me crazy, but weren’t the Imperial pilots picking off X- and Y-wings with ease? And yet the EU would have us believe that even fledgling pilots in a pair of X-wings could disassemble a TIE squadron with ease.

Sigh.

The EU is a real bitch. About half of it is really cool, and the other half is pure drek…

Which Extended Universe are you living in? The SSD Executor gets destroyed by an A-wing. :stuck_out_tongue:

Re: Boba Fett in SWSE. That wasn’t a reshoot; Lucas had always intended him to be in the film because he looked cool, which is probably why Fett gets to catch Solo in TESB.

This is a joke, yes? Honestly, I can’t tell if I’m being whooshed here or not. My Sarcasmometer isn’t getting any kind of reading here at all, but it’s an older model that requires constant repair. The thing is, I can actually imagine Lucas making this argument: "Yes, I’d always planned on having Boba Fett in the original version of the film, but unfortunately the technology available at the time rendered it impossible to film cool characters under certain lighting conditions. I desperately wanted to include him in the film, but the costume just kept turning invisible…it’s the same optical phenomenon that caused Jabba to appear onscreen as a chunky Irish guy. But we’ve fixed that.

One out of countrol A-Wing crashes into the SSD.

Several in-control Y-Wings swat TIE Interceptors with impunity.

Feh.

No, he cut it for length. In 1977, 122 minutes was a long movie.

And we never see B-wings do ANYTHING… yet in the games they’re built up to be uber-juggernauts of Star Destroyer-bashing doom.

It would have had to have been a much longer movie indeed to have included a scene featuring Boba Fett, since that character hadn’t been created at that point. The scene featuring Han and Jabba in Docking Bay 94 from the Special Edition was indeed based on original footage shot for the first movie. However, to the best of my admittedly sparse knowledge of Star Wars trivia, Boba Fett was added in digitally for the Special Edition and didn’t appear in the original shot, just as Muppet Jabba was added in over Irish Jabba as I previously alluded. Someone will surely correct me if I am mistaken here, but so far as I have ever heard, Boba Fett was first created to be a character in Empire, although he was actually introduced in cartoon form in the sublimely canonical Star Wars Holiday Special, as were so many other beloved Star Wars characters like Space Bea Arthur and Space Harvey Korman (who I believe were actually the biological parents of Jango Fett).

Actually, that’s “Apology accepted, Captain Needa” (emphasis Vader’s). That, I think, was uncalled for: I can see that he screwed up, and it’s therefore appropriate to Force-choke him, but ya gotta admit, he had balls to go to Vader personally. That’s a top-notch officer, there, and there’s no good reason to go stripping him of his rank posthumously.

Back to the OP, nobody else has mentioned the key factor: The action figure. All of the other action figures, from Luke on down to the cantina musicians, you could buy at the toy store. But not Boba Fett. For him, you had to send in proofs-of-purchase or some such promotional. So not everyone had him. So the kids who had him were cool. So he, himself, was therefore cool, even if you had no idea who he was or what he did (of course, you would never dare admit that you didn’t know).

Correction acknowleged, Administrator Chronos.

I don’t know, Chronos. when I got the 6" Boba Fett figure through the mail late in the summer of 1979, and I had a pretty disdainful attitude about Boba Fett. He wasn’t a “real” character for me yet – he was just from the cartoon. (I also remember feeling ripped off that the “missile” on his back didn’t shoot like the Shogun Warriors toys. For some reason, all the kids expected it would, from the pictures.) That changed when Christmas came around, and Boba Fett was the coolest of the 12"’ figures. He had better articulation, a working grappling hook, he was totally awesome. Some time after that, Starlog included a promotional poster showing the bounty hunter line-up, and Boba suddenly had that much more credibility, and after The Empire Strikes Back came out, he was the undisputed coolest character ever.

Well, he was if you were nine, anyway.

Needa was never an Admiral. I never really detected any special emphasis in Vader’s tone when saying “Captain”.

It was supposed to. The design was altered at the last minute (I think the missle was just glued in, actually) when Hasbro or somebody got sued by the mother of a kid who choked and died on a firing missle from, of all things, a Battlestar Galactica toy. Hasbro did finally put out a missle firing Boba Fett as their 300th figure in the PoTF line a few years back.

If anyone cares, the recently released Boba Fett 3.75" and 12" figures from the Vintage Original Trilogy Collection are really cool.

Chronos nailed it…it’s the action figure. First of all, it was something you had to send away for, with several proofs of purchase (thus proving you were a bona-fide Star Wars fan. Secondly, the mail-away offer touted him as a new character to be introduced in Empire Strikes Back, which meant that anyone who got the figure had a “piece” of the new movie before any real aspect of the new movie was available.

Even though Boba Fett was ultimately a character of very little significance in the original trilogy, the exclusive action figure made him a household name amongst Star Wars fans.

shy guy:

Do you have a cite for this? I remember hearing such things when I was a kid, but in retrospect, I’ve become suspicious that this was all post-hoc speculation. After all, the moving parts on all the other action figures are pretty minimal, so a spring-loaded back missile would have been different from and more expensive to produce than everything else…on an action figure they weren’t even selling on the shelves! I certainly don’t remember the “free action figure” offer specifically mentioning a missile that actually fires, and that would have been a heck of an enticement.

Is there any definitive source that says that the Boba Fett figures were originally designed with a launchable missile on his back?

I was watching Return of the Jedi with the audio commentary on and Lucas said he considered adding a scene where Boba Fett climbs out of the Sarlacc pit.(Lucas give me a break)

Anyone else get pissed at the stuff lucas added even after the special edition for the dvds?
I can take a different Jabba the Hutt in EpisodeIV that actually looks worse to me than the one in the special edition, and I guess changing the hologram emperor in Episode V is understandable to a degree, but fucking taking Sebastian Shaw out as Darth Vaders Ghost in Return of the Jedi and putting in Hayden was just retarded, is it just me or did they also change the face when Luke takes off Vader’s mask?, I mean it looks like they did the face doesnt seem to fit right.

:eek:

Maybe not definitive, but here’s a source.

I certainly don’t remember any note of that nature included in my Boba Fett. That said, I don’t know that my memories of my 8 year old year are 100% reliable.

Yeah. The extra musical stuff in Jabba’s palace looked silly, and the ghost thing pissed me off. It’s just classless if you ask me. Sebastian Shaw is dead and now Lucas edits him out. These strike me as pointless changes that are disrespectful to the original actors (Shaw for Christiansen, redubbing all four of Boba’s lines with the actor who played Jango, that kind of stuff). I know they say film is a director’s medium, but I think it lacks class. Also, since in Jedi never seen Anakin as a young man, you don’t even know who it is unless you saw the other movies.

Marley23:

I think this is the point: to make the “proper” viewing order of the movies seem to be the “Episode” order rather than release order.