Okay, let me start this with a confession. I’m a Boba Fett fan. There. I’ve said it. And now that I got that out of the way, stop laughing for a moment (you too, Ferrett) and let me add something. I’m beginning to seriously dislike Boba Fett. In fact, I'm getting sick of him. How do I reconcile this? Read on.

The Golden Age of Fett

When "The Empire Strikes Back" hit the cinemas, it introduced a couple of new characters into the Star Wars universe. One of these was a mysterious, highly competent bounty hunter who singlehandedly managed to do what the Imperial fleet had failed at so many times. He delivered Han Solo and Princess Leia right into Darth Vader’s hands. Rebel sympathizers in the audience loathed and hated him. Imperial loyalists, like me, cheered him on. And some were utterly fascinated and enraptured by him. Why?

Onscreen, Fett doesn’t do much throughout the movie. He doesn’t have a lot of lines. For most of his screen time, he stands around on the set and looks menacing. Big deal, huh? But let’s look at what he does and how he does it. As I already mentioned, he is the one who outsmarts Solo, something nobody else manages to do, meaning that he is indeed cunning and competent. I know the Fett Haters' main argument is "any other guy in a suit could have done the same." Or they say that IG-88 could have done it. Sure, but George Lucas wrote that Fett did it. IG-88 didn't. And real life aside, this means that in the Star Wars universe, Boba Fett is someone to be reckoned with. It means he is smarter than Solo, smarter than the Imperials, smarter than IG-88. Also, if you want to judge a character from that angle, everyone is replaceable. Any old smuggler could have done Solo's part in "A New Hope". Dash Rendar could have done it. Sure, Fett is a plot device; it is he who leads Vader to Bespin. On the other hand, he's also a character. IG-88 is a prop. We don't learn anything about it. Fett is another matter entirely. Sure, he doesn’t say a lot, but those few sentences very well define the important parts of his character. "What if he doesn’t survive? He’s worth a lot to me." When we heard those lines in the theaters, we knew this is a man who would sell his own mother for a spare blaster power pack. This is a cold, calculating guy. People don't mess with him. Essentially it was like Han Solo shooting Greedo in cold blood (yes, kids, that's the way it happened back in '77 in the original Star Wars), only amplified by a magnitude of 10.

And then there was the costume. A lot of Star Wars is about appearances. The artists and designers who worked on these movies created some unforgettable impressions. And Fett's costume was one of the best things they did. It looks rugged; it has lots of gadgets and stuff; it gives the impression that the armor and the man inside are inseparable, that this is indeed a walking Man-Machine. As Vader was the perfect Gothic villain, Boba Fett was his Industrial equivalent. A postmodern, apocalyptic vision, Fett was the cyber-dude from hell, and he was so at a time when it was not cool to put the syllables "cyber" in front of everyday words. I fell in love with that costume immediately. The combination of this walking arsenal and the silent, emotionless bounty hunter character were incredibly fascinating. Yes, "The Empire Strikes Back" truly was the Golden Age of Boba Fett.

Decline with the Jedi

When "Return Of The Jedi" came around, Boba Fett had already gathered a cult following. So it was decided that everyone's favorite bounty hunter would play a part in this episode of Star Wars, too. The problem is, "Return Of The Jedi" is a movie that desperately tries to tie everything up and force it into a sappy happy ending. So all the villains had to die, and Boba Fett was a goner. I will never understand why Lucas let him die the way he did. The competent, efficient and ruthless character introduced in Empire had suddenly been replaced with a blundering fool. Fett does have a nice moment in Jedi, namely when he is the only one (except Jabba) who doesn't panic when Boushh pulls the thermal detonator. All the more unbelievable that the person who acted this quickly and emotionlessly wasn't even able to hit Luke Skywalker in the back the next day. Well, there are theories that he was hungover from all the carousing at Jabba's palace the night before, but I never thought of Fett as the drinking type. But then again, there are so much totally unacceptable scenes in "Return Of The Jedi" (namely, 80% of the whole Jabba's palace sequence, and 95 % of what happens on Endor) that for me it was easy to just disregard the sail barge incident as one of ROTJ's numerous mistakes that do not exist in my personal canon. Little was I to know that the decline of Boba Fett had just begun...

I always loved "DooM", and when I first heard about the "Dark Forces" game being developed by LucasArts, I was totally psyched out. This was like DooM in the Star Wars universe, and with a vastly improved engine. I bought it as soon as possible. Imagine my surprise when there was a picture of Boba Fett on the game's box. Would I really get a chance to pit my skills against the legendary bounty hunter? And yes, he appeared in a cutscene, silent and menacing as always. I was thrilled. Well, after seeing this cutscene I raced through the game, always waiting for Boba Fett to appear... except that he didn't. It was only after finishing the game that I learned the sad truth. The mystery enemy in the Imperial City level was supposed to be Boba Fett. What a disappointment. You know, when I played that level for the first time, I only got a short glimpse of some weird figure standing on the docking pad, and before I could make out any details, it was already airborne, flitting around like a UFO on LSD and shooting what looked like the Romulan plasma weapon from Classic Star Trek at me. In fact, this enemy's rate of fire was so high and the opaque shots of his weapon were so big that throughout all of the firefight, I never got a clear glimpse of him. I always supposed this was a new kind of Dark Trooper, probably the ominous Phase III. It certainly bore no resemblance to Boba Fett. Well, the sprite used for it looked like Fett, but that's all. We have seen Fett's jetpack in action, and it certainly can't allow him to zip around like that Romulan Warbird was doing, never once touching the ground between getting airborne and dying. Plus, I have never seen Fett use the kind of semi-nuke his DF counterpart fires. Clearly, the Fett sprite had only been drawn so that LucasArts could rake in some more customers with the announcement that "this game features Boba Fett". The problem is the sprite was used for a game logic that in no way resembles Fett's fighting style. Pure marketing hype.

I still believe that the only reason why you don't have to fight Boba Fett in "Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight" is because the relevant memo from the LFL marketing department was lost before it reached the level designers at LucasArts.

Fett is Everywhere

When the Star Wars universe was awakened from its slumber with the absolutely fabulous "Heir To The Empire" by Timothy Zahn, nobody expected to hear of Fett ever again. He died in the Sarlacc after all, didn't he? Boy, were we wrong. Fett suddenly resurfaced in Dark Empire. It was a mixed blessing. Sure, back then I still thought there can't be such a thing as too much Boba, and seeing him refusing those Dark Jedi seemed to be vintage Empire-style Fett. Still, his unexplained survival of the Sarlacc pit was a mystery that kept gnawing on an unoccupied corner of my brain. Before too much damage evolved from this activity, a flurry of Boba Fett comics began hitting the markets. Among them was "Twin Engines Of Destruction", which featured not only Jodo Kast (and made him into a far less interesting character than he was when West End Games introduced him for their "Tatooine Manhunt" RPG adventure), but also a convalescent Boba Fett. More and more pieces of Fett's story began appearing in different places. How Dengar found him unconscious in the Tatooine desert. How he had an identical set of armor stashed away to replace the lost one (how convenient). "Tales From Jabba's Palace" finally had the story of how he had escaped from the Sarlacc, but it didn't stop at that. Fett appeared everywhere. Someone had caught on to the fact that whatever you write, if it has Fett in it (preferably on the cover), it sells. The rule of the day seemed to be "replace any minor character in your story with Boba Fett (no matter how much out of character you have to write him to squeeze him in), and you're on your way to success". Someone at Bantam seemed to have given out the fateful order to tie the whole Star Wars universe tighter together. Suddenly, the galaxy became a much smaller place. Everybody seemed to have met everybody else sometime in his past. In "Tales Of The Bounty Hunters", Fett's first meeting with Han Solo suddenly dates back to Han's youth. And Dengar was hurt by Solo during a swoop race in their youth. And so on, and so on.

I think the final blow was delivered by Ann Crispin. Before I continue, let me state for the record that I like her books very much. In fact, her novel "Sarek" is probably the finest Star Trek novel ever written, and her Han Solo books sure beat anything Kevin J. Anderson ever put on paper by a mile. Except for one crucial mistake. For some unknown reason (perhaps on orders from a certain marketing department?) she put Boba Fett into her Han Solo trilogy. Not only that, she had the man who was introduced in TESB as the Empire's most cunning, crafty and competent bounty hunter outsmarted and thoroughly humiliated by... Lando Calrissian. And we all know that's about as likely as a bunch of gay teddy bears beating a legion of the Emperor's best elite shock troops. (Wait...that actually happened in ROTJ.) Well, I guess you see my point anyway. By now, Fett is everywhere. But because the heroes always have to win, Fett is becoming dumber and dumber with every story written about him, because he can never win...because, according to the novels, Fett's only purpose in life is to catch Han Solo, and he's probably been hunting Solo since he was born. Fett has, in fact, become the Wile E. Coyote of Star Wars, with Han Solo as the Roadrunner.

Special Fett-ition

It couldn't get any worse, right? RIGHT? Wrong. It could, and it did. By the time George Lucas got around to restoring and upgrading the original Star Wars films for the Special Editions, word of Boba Fett's marketing potential had reached the ears of the Star Wars creator. The inevitable happened. Boba Fett got a cameo role in ANH:SE, doing nothing except walk though a hangar bay and look straight at the camera for a second. This look at the camera might have been intended as a menacing foreshadowing of things to come, but let's face it, it really comes out as a sort of "Look, here I am.   I, Boba Fett, have been in this movie, now go ahead and buy some more action figures" kinda look. Boy, am I ever glad they didn't touch any of Fett's scenes in TESB:SE.

Easily the worst part about that whole Special Edition thing was the new Greedo scene. But "Jedi Rocks" is a very close runner-up. True, it's hard to make something that's worse than "Lapti Nek". But the creators managed sans difficulties, and so ROTJ:SE contains a few minutes of footage that looks like Sesame Street filmed against a matte painting by Hieronymus Bosch. And, of course, they used the opportunity to do another "cute" Fett moment by having him romance one of the dancers. Does this make any sense? Would you romance a lady when you're wearing half a ton of steel on your body? Does he expect her to somehow crawl under his helmet or what? Apart from that, what I really don't get about ROTJ:SE is, if LFL had recognized Boba Fett as the perfect moneymaking machine by then, why didn't they do anything about his horrible, humiliating death scene? Weren't they afraid it would somehow hamper the sales of Deluxe Boba Fett action figures with portable proton torpedo launchers (sic!) on their backs, or of Boba Fett PJs, or of Boba Fett beanie babies?

Nowadays there are rumors flying around like maybugs (well, they are flying around like maybugs used to back in the 50's, preferably in May) that Boba Fett will be in the Prequels. You probably know more about this than I do, because The Phantom Menace won't be shown in the country I live in before September, and I'm trying to avoid spoilers. But again, the same question arises. If it's true, does this make any sense? Not to the story. Certainly not to the audience. It only makes sense to the people who cash in huge percentages on Boba Fett merchandise. And we know who they are.

My point? I used to go nuts over Boba. By now I'm sick of seeing him pop up everywhere. The character has been ruined, and that menacing mystery man from TESB has long since become a hollow shell for marketing strategists. In short, LFL have turned one of their most intriguing characters into an Ewok. And we all hate Ewoks, right?