BOBA FERRETT vs. BOBA FETT
Musings by The Ferrett
Up next on Oprah: I Loved A Grocery Cart.
<break to commercial for the new Slim-Fast Broccoli Breakfast Treats, cut back>
Oprah <confused>: So you’re saying you put up a web page devoted to a grocery cart?
Enthusiastic Woman: Not just any grocery cart, Oprah. Oh boy, you should see the things that cart has in it! It’s got milk, eggs…. even a box of cake mix!
Oprah: So you’re saying you fell in love with this grocery cart because it has a lot of things in it.
Woman <so earnestly it raises the hair on the back of your neck>: Not just things, Oprah. Every baking implement ever created! In one — one! — grocery cart!
Oprah: But does the cart do anything?
<woman stares blankly>
Oprah: I mean, does it make a cake? Can the grocery cart cook? Does it do anything spectacular with all of these items?
Woman <defensively>: It could. If it wanted to.
Oprah: But the one chance this cart had, it rolled into a ditch. People had to drag it off the side of the road.
Woman <simmering with fury>: That wasn’t its fault.
Oprah: And what makes it different from any other cart, anyway? Seems to me you could take just about anything with wheels and jam it full of the same ingredients and it’d do the same job….
Woman <shouting at the top of her lungs>: THAT’S NOT TRUE! IT’S IRREPLACEABLE! NOBODY ELSE COULD DO WHAT THIS CART DOES! THIS IS THE KEWLEST CART IN THE WORLD AND —
<screen fades to black>
Okay. Ridiculous, I grant you. Now I’ll ask you to perform a function I usually reserve for my word processor:
Go back and replace all instances of the word "grocery cart" with "Boba Fett". Replace "milk", "eggs", and "cake mix" with "thermal detonator", "hidden garrote", and "wookiee braids".
Finally, replace "rolled into a ditch" with "fell into the Sarlacc pit with all the grace and dignity usually associated with old ‘Three Stooges’ movies," and you get the idea.
Why do people like Boba Fett?
Don’t bother — I’ll answer.
Now, Boba Fett isn’t a problem by himself. Certainly he’s a nice piece of scenery; even I have to admit his junk-shop costume is pretty neat. (Hey, Boba knew grunge before Seattle did, ya knowhudI’m SAYIN?) But then again, if I wanted to see neat costumes I could go to an Andrew Lloyd Webber production, or watch Stargate.
But the problem with Boba… is his fans. The ones who insist there’s something more than a costume standing between Han and Darth. The ones who insist that Boba has… a personality.
Diehard Wedge fans — who, incidentally, hate to be called "Wedgies" — I can tolerate. Admittedly, he was recently bundled in with a Biggs doll to create an exclusive FAO Schwarz toy pack, also known as "The Star Wars Footnote Set", but for all of his lack of personality and/or screen time, Wedge did something. He was a good enough pilot to back Luke up on Hoth. He was accurate enough to thread his way through the incalculable number of pylons, doodads, and walkways blocking the path to the Death Star II’s core reactor… and blow it up. And he ran like a plucked chicken the instant Luke told him he could leave the first Death Star. (Sorry, Wedgies. I gotta get some cheap shots in.)
But for all of that, Wedge did enough things he could be considered one of the best pilots in the universe. After all, he was the only man to survive both Death Star attacks, and he accomplished something. Now admittedly that doesn’t tell you a whole lot about his personality, but you can agree he was a pretty good X-Wing jockey. Later Rogue Squadron books showed him to be a naïve pilot with a lot to learn about management… which was kind of a shame, because I was sort of hoping that he’d show up a hopeless alcoholic, like a traumatized Vietnam Vet, and maybe the first Rogue Squadron book could have detailed the adventures of a squadron of green Rebel cadets having to track him down in the jungles of Yavin while he preached endlessly to Charlie Sheen. Call it Apocalypse Now.
But no matter what his personality might be, he was a well-ensconced role. He had a purpose in the screenplay and he filled it. Well done.
Now Boba Fett —
- well, Boba’s got a bit of explaining to do.
The thing that irritates me about Fett is not what he is… but the skin-crawling, loathsome fans drawn to him like a rabid dog is drawn to dry, warm places. People who shouldn’t be fans of anything, let alone Star Wars.
People who like secrets.
You see, Star Wars can’t be isolated, which is part of its charm. Unlike Star Trek or Babylon 5, which require continual upkeep from their fans — watching the show at least once a week to stay current — all you really need to be a Star Wars fan is three movies. Six hours of your life. And you don’t even have to watch them more than once.
Oh sure, you can read the books, which are like methadone — nowhere near as good as actual heroin, but if it’s all you can get I suppose it’s better than nothing. And you can buy all the toys and run around your house going "vroom vroom" and pretending to shoot Darth Vader out of the sky. And you can buy the soundtracks, and get all the video games, and buy the endless tides of increasingly-mediocre crap washing up across the counters of better stores everywhere, but…
…six hours. All you need.
Some people don’t like that.
Some pathetic losers have to be special. They don’t understand being a fan unless it involves being a part of a cult, possessing secret knowledge… for these desperate antisocial failures, it’s not enough to enjoy something. You have to memorize it. To fetishize it.
And anything less is an affront to them. They’ll attack anyone who feels different.
These are the morons who drive people away from the things they love, because they’re so barren in their everyday life that it’s the only place they can feel special. They’d rather nobody else was a fan. They don’t want other people around, because every other person who likes this thing diminishes them. Since this is the only place in the world they can feel superior, where they can be a big fish in a little pond, they want to keep their pond as small as possible."
And so… secrets.
Secrets keep people away.
"You mean you didn’t know that?" they’ll sneer — and invariably at some trivial, insignificant fact that doesn’t increase anyone’s enjoyment in the least. The only reason this fact is valuable — like, say, the serial number on the garbage compactor in the first Death Star, or knowing the sublight speed of an SSD — is because they know it… and you don’t. The only reason.
But they’ll make you feel like crap for not knowing it.
They’ll try and humiliate you. They’ll claim that the way you like the Holy Trilogy is somehow less than the way they like it. And then they’ll come out with that vile piece of claptrap that every drooling fanboy moron resorts to sooner or later when his IQ falls below freezing:
"If you don’t do <insert his favorite secret>, then you’re not a real fan!"
Don’t believe it
A fan is anyone who enjoys a movie… not these misguided misanthropes who stand on the edges of Star Wars and try to drive everyone off. If you watched it twice and liked Luke because he was cute when he swung across that chasm thingie, then you’re a fan.
But like a rusty nail festering with the tetanus virus, Fett creates a haven for these dregs of society. Because Fett’s reputation is not based on anything he does on-screen.
You see, all of the things we are told Boba is good at aren’t borne out in any way by anything he does in the actual movies. We’re told he’s the best bounty hunter in the universe, but all he does is outsmart Han — which is no great shakes, believe you me. And for all of Boba’s implied combat skills, he winds up dorking his way down into a Sarlacc pit first chance he gets to show his talent. When a blind guy outshoots you, you know you’ve got some work to do.
So where does he get his reputation?
In other places. Secret ones.
Not even from the books — from articles you have to read elsewhere. The ones that slavishly (no pun intended) catalog all the hardware Boba’s packing. All we see in the movies are the whipgun, the jetpack, and the rifle. But real Boba fans will tell you all about his kneepad rocket launchers, his miniature flame-thrower, the hidden wristlasers, the Death Star laser planetbuster concealed in a secret compartment up his butt….
…do we see Boba use this? ANY of this?
No.
Do we see any opportunity where if he had these items, he would have used them?
Sure do. For example, if you really had a comlink in his helmet connecting him to the Slave I, wouldn’t you have called your ship in the second you started sliding into the Sarlacc pit to blow it all to hell? Sure you would. If you really had a turbo-projected magnetic grappling hook with twenty-meter lanyard stuffed into your jetpack, wouldn’t you use that to stop your flight into the Sarlacc? And above all, if you really had a flame-thrower — then why in God’s name would you be stupid enough to fire a blaster at Luke Skywalker, a guy who’s deflected more blaster bolts in the past five minutes than Clinton’s deflected lawsuits?
I could go on. But why bother? Eventually, one of two conclusions must be reached:
- Boba Fett doesn’t really have these weapons at his disposal, or:
- Boba Fett is so mind-staggeringly incompetent he can’t use them properly.
Or, perhaps… both. Probably both.
But Boba Fett fans don’t like to hear that. Why? Because as opposed to the reality of the situation, they like the fact that they never see them used. Because it allows them to keep the "real" nature of Boba Fett a secret.
Put another way: Boba Fett is the only thing in the entire Star Wars universe that’s more impressive on paper than he is in real life.
Oh the "fans" love that.
Because it means they can make Boba Fett the little corner of the Star Wars universe all their own. One that you’re not smart enough to comprehend.
That’s why I hate Boba Fett. Because when it comes down to it, he’s an empty shell; scenery dressed in pretty little armor. A grocery cart in a hat. An insignificant plot point who could be wiped out in an instant and replaced with any other generic dork with a gun. But his very nature, his ineptness, attracts the sort of people who really shouldn’t be Star Wars fans — killjoys whose only real thrill comes from demolishing others.
Now does this mean that all Boba Fett fans are loathsome, abhorrent misanthropic freaks of nature who should be shot on sight? Of course not; what, you think you’ll catch me with that "my dog has four legs, my cat has four legs, therefore my dog is a cat" trick? Some Boba Fett fans like him just because he’s a mystery man.
But the multitudes of ignominious oafs who walk around shouting, "BOBA FETT IS THE KEWLEST AND HE COULD KICK LUKE’S BUTT!" are in the majority. And they have got to go.
The real Boba Fett fans are the people who love Star Wars the least. They are the sweaty, bepimpled lummoxes who make normal people cringe when they hear the name "fan". They deserve nothing less than complete exile. And as such, so does Boba Fett.
Because let’s face it. When you love a grocery cart with a macrobinocular viewplate, motion and sound sensors, and infrared capabilities just because it has them… then there’s something wrong with you.
(The Ferrett has made a career out of diatribe. He can be counted on for a rant on almost any subject, the Old Faithful of cynicism. You can read his opinion of subjects other than Star Wars if you email him for information about his website and you're over the age of 18 since there's no editor there to tone him down <g>)