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[Trevor (MMM)]

In the first of our Clear Our Cobwebs question, we ask you our faithful listeners to tell the MMM team - just what is it about Boba Fett that produces this fanatical, religious, flag-waving adoration and devotion from Star Wars fans?

What exactly happened in Empire Strikes Back that caused the Star Wars community to go totally fanatical over Fett?

It seems every single spinoff, adaptation, radio play, novelisation and cereal packet connected with Star Wars has Mr Fett included in it, even if the link to the armoured bounty hunter is tenuous at best.

Please use this thread to let the team know just what provokes this bed-wettingly ceaseless love of a minor character from Empire Strikes Back?

Also, if you are as bemused as we are, then let us know too!

[David (MMM)]

As Fett himself would say :  ....

[Andrew Stevens]

This is primarily speculation since I am not a Boba Fett fan (or particularly a Star Wars fan).  However, about 1980 or so, my best friend and next door neighbor was a huge Boba Fett fan, due to his appearance in an animated short in the 1978 The Star Wars Holiday Special and, most importantly, because he owned the coolest action figure ever produced for Star Wars, the original Kenner Boba Fett.  The key to understanding the Fett cult, I believe, is that Boba Fett was already popular before he ever appeared in Empire Strikes Back, largely because of that action figure.  So the fact that he just stood there in Empire and looked cool made him even more enigmatic and appealing.

If you've never heard of the Holiday Special (which came out at the height of Star Wars mania) and never seen the action figure, Boba Fett's popularity is a bit mystifying.

[Andrew Stevens]

I happen to have a lot of free time on my hands lately, so I listened to the Star Wars commentaries, even though I'm not a fan of any of the films except Empire (and only just watched Sith for the first time).  Turns out you guys are way more uber-nerdish about Star Wars than I was expecting (I didn't think anybody read the Star Wars novels) and mentioned the Holiday Special a couple of times, so I apologize for implying it was too obscure.  Still, it probably took an American who was a kid at the time to remember the 1979 Kenner Boba Fett action figure (with "working" rocket pack that didn't work, at least on my friend's figure), so I hope my comment was helpful anyway.

[Trevor (MMM)]

I think you underestimate the power of the Star Wars Holiday Special.  Everyone knows about it, and I don't think it is that obscure.  Even if they don't know the name, they know that movie where they went to Chewbacca's house.

The team hasn't read a huge amount of the Star Wars novels, and on the whole they aren't too bad to be honest.

[Andrew Stevens]

I'm sure you're probably right that it's well known in Star Wars circles.  Did I mention I wasn't a fan? 

I had vivid memories of the Boba Fett action figure and that my childhood friend was a huge Boba Fett fan prior to the release of Empire (which I remember mostly because I found this baffling back then).  I only rediscovered The Holiday Special through a bit of Internet research which is why I assumed it was obscure (oh, and the fact that Lucas has refused to release it any form since its initial transmission), though I do have very vague memories of it myself.  I should probably mention that I had just turned five when it was first broadcast.  You folks are all probably a few years older and, at those ages, those few years make a crucial difference in how vivid one's recollection is.

I didn't mean to make any comment on the quality of the novels, never having so much as picked one up.  Now that I think of it, I had a girlfriend circa 1993 who was a big fan of them, so I'm sure they have something going for them.  (Although, come to think of it, she was dating me so how good could her taste have been?)  I'm probably too quick to dismiss books based on television shows or movies, probably because my only attempt at them were some early Star Trek books and they were abysmally bad.  I have no doubts that this isn't universally the case.

[KnightLife]

Haven't seen any action on this for a while, and I have a little free time, so here is my take on Mr. Fett:

The biggest draw, IMHO, is the mystery. He is barely on the screen, does little, says less and has a cool costume. In addition, like others have stated, on top of that mystery you have the built in popularity of a figure that we had to send away to get, when most of us were young of us for that to be cool, new, and exciting.

So here we have a cool looking guy, who is a bounty hunter (which is always a cool job in the movies), with a rocket on his back! There is no back story other then him being the best there is at what he does. Plus, he was the only one to take out a lead character. We knew Vader was evil, much as we know Luke is good. But Fett is just in it for the money, a kind of moral gray in the black/white Star Wars universe. Plus, I think he had the coolest looking ship in the 'verse.

Add all that together, with the imagination a lot of eight, nine, and ten year olds employ, and the chance is there for a character to go beyond even his creators wildest imagination.

Then again, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

[David (MMM)]

Many thanks.

As Boba Fett himself would say "What if he doesn't survive?"


Now can we PLEASE have help with out other persistent cobweb.



"Where is Sarah Michelle Gellar in Chevy Chase's Funny Farm?"


Please help someone who never wants to watch or discuss that  film again.

[Andrew Stevens]

I don't think you're going to get a response to the Funny Farm question.  Based on a bit of research, I concluded that you're right and Gellar's scene was cut from the movie (giving the reason she was uncredited).  Not a single person, as far as I know, actually claims to have seen her.  Much more common is the "Where was she?" reaction.  I've never seen the film, and I don't intend to, but since she was uncredited as "Elizabeth's student," she shouldn't be all that hard to spot if she was actually in it.

[David (MMM)]

This is what we expected. But as son many people like Leonard Maltin go on

about it, we figure the appearnace must have existed at some stage or why do

they bother?  eg Many references are made to Costner in Big Chill but they

ALL stress that his part was cut apart from the corpse. NONE of our sources

about SMG say it was cut, which means a) we are all missing something or

b) the scene has been cut but was in the movie at SOME stage.

We will probably never get definitive proof, but the beauty of the Net is that

someone always knows something!

Many thanks, the search continues...

[Trevor (MMM)]

To add more possible insult to injury, the latest Australian empire mag has a piece with the man behind the Fett mask, and his Top 10 Star Wars moments....

I see they don't extend the same interview request to Ahmed Best...

[Andrew Stevens]

To add more possible insult to injury, the latest Australian empire mag has a piece with the man behind the Fett mask, and his Top 10 Star Wars moments....

I see they don't extend the same interview request to Ahmed Best...

Boba Fett had ten Star Wars moments!?

[stuartbannerman]

no but the man behind the mask had ten moments that he quite liked 

[bluewolf]

Fett, Boba Fett.  Boba makes me think of a rouge James Bond. As others have said, mystery and a cool costume are most like the two biggest factors.  If you have read any of the books about Jango or boba Fett, they are drawn as very cool characters. Very calm and in control, with not a great deal of emotion.  As boba was being raised by Jango, the relationship between the two was pretty stiff, at no time can I recall any emotion that we might expect from a father and son.  One would expect even less emotion, or more repressed emotion as Boba finished raising himself.  I think if people really got to know Boba, they would find he wasn't someone they would want to hang-out with. 

Mysterious guy, with way cool gadgets and awesome armor.

[lurkio]

it's gotta be the look.  cool helmet, the posture of supreme relaxation - if someone came at him with a weapon you know he wouldn't move until the last moment and he'd kill with one swift movement.  Just a cool killer really 

[DarthSkeptical]

It's not a matter of what happened so much as what didn't happen.  The Holiday Special was, as has already been noted, a huge factor.  Though a minor figure in ESB, he was a significant part--even the featured part--of the cast of the animated short that was mixed into that Special.  The number of lines and focus he generated  in that special--not to mention the sold-out Kenner action figure in 1979--made it seem as though he was going to be hugely important to ESB.    Also, a significant plotline in the then-huge Marvel Star Wars comic book--which, oddly, didn't actually involve him (long story)--added to his fame post-ESB.  For literal years fans were kept on tenterhooks about some big use that was going to be made of Boba Fett.  When he was quickly (and, some felt, too easily) dispatched in ROTJ, it was too late for them to admit they'd, essentially, backed the wrong horse.  So they refused to believe he was a minor character. 

Lucas, who had never intended to generate so much fan interest over the character, did a soft backpedal over the years, eventually stating in some interview or another that it had been a mistake to kill off Boba.  Thus, stories which posited an afterlife for Fett began to make their way into licensed material.  Eventually, in Dark Horse comics and the novels, he gained a huge amount of story material supposedly happening after the Sarlaac pit.  In time, Lucas would come to validate the importance of the character by finally making the Fett family central to the highest order of Star Wars canon by using them extensively in the prequels.   Today, If one looks at the films in episodic order, and certainly if one takes Star Wars as the sum of movies and Expanded Universe stories, it would be very hard indeed to view the Fetts as "minor characters".