While the Mandalorian was an excellent surprise and even though full of fan-service ... well, actually fan-service fans wanted, not what Disney and KK wanted fans to want ... this one seemed a bit like a cash grab riding on the nostalgia wave.
What did we get?
- exterior short of Jabba's palace from RotJ
- interior shot of Jabba's palace from RotJ
- introduction to Jabba's gamorrean guards from RotJ
- the Sarlacc pit from RotJ
- exterior shot of the Khetanna, Jabba's sail barge from RotJ
- Max Rebo and a Bith from the Cantina band from RotJ
- a Cantina from aNH and RotJ
- sandpeople and Banthas (no Bantha podo though)
- a few names from the past like Bip Fortuna
- Bossk from TESB (son of Cradossk who was a wookie hunter) with a wookie hide
- a (sort of) Bacta tank
- some Yamakasi-style parcours (sort-of) assassins
- real Boston Dynamics robot dogs
- a scene to remind us of the killing of uncle Owen and aunt Beru from aNH
- an end-credit drawing of Boba sitting on his throne in the same position Conan did 1982 in the end credits
- and a desert creature we have never heard of or seen before and who just happens to die the same way Jabba did in RotJ
So one could assume this is a good thing? Well, here it gets a bit difficult: It's completely meaningless and only looks to be put there for the reason of "remembrance" and not to introduce or serve any plot. The story is absolutely lame and unnecessary. It's again like another "origin story" nobody had ever asked for ... ok, who of you just mentioned "Solo" ???
Let's start with the Sarlacc pit escape.
There have been so many rumors and hints about how Fett actually manage it, up to even bringing up a Jedi's mind who had fused with the pit while he was slowly digested in the past. Here we get a rubber-duck slime Sarlacc pit that reminded me more of the rubber-feet Alien in Carpenter's "Darkstar" than an actual Favreau/Feloni production. A bit of flame thrower, a bit of punching and grunting ... and the fierce between 20 and 50.000 year old Sarlacc pit was a goner. Just - like - that. Boring.
Boba Fett.
There is only one word that came to my mind while watching the episode: Weakness! Who is that weak old man who gets so easily ambushed and beaten up by literally everyone? Where is jet-pack Boba with his incredible fighting skills? Where is Boba the whole Galaxy far far away trembled in fear once your name came up on a contract? I have no idea where Boba was, but that guy in this episode was not the Boba Fett everyone was looking for.
Ambushed by a bunch of never seen assassins, beaten unconscious by a Java, beaten and humiliated by Tusken kids .... And why was he talking so much? Boba Fett is a quiet loner, not a sarcastic talker.
Uncle Owen scene.
So a moisture farmer get's attacked, his water stolen and he gets (probably) killed on the porch of his house while crawling out of it. Where have we seen this before? And why was it shown? The Tusken kid and Boba just passed by, had a look at it and moved on. What was the purpose of that scene other than to remind us something we have already seen? If the purpose was to show us the lawlessness caused by the disappearance of Jabba the Hutt, they could have done this in a much better way.
Desert creature fight.
A mini-rancor looking thing still three times the size of Boba and strong like at least ten Bobas gets killed super-easy, barely an inconvenience, by Boba simply by wrapping a chain around its neck after he got punched multiple times by claws the size and the force of a swinging crane hook .... yet all this achieved was some grunting. Tusken boy only had a small gaffi stick out of wood with no blade, yet they get back to the Tusken camp with the head of the creature. How did they get it off the torso? What could cut through this thick lizard hide?
CGI, dialogue and acting
I read somewhere that the BoBF production team stepped away from Favreau's curved LED video wall technology to go back to cheaper green screens ... and it's easy to spot. The Tusken's Massiff (the dog) looked like the usual video game animation we have become used to over the last decade and the same goes for the PhysiX and ragdoll animation. Compared to The Mandalorian show nothing looks real, everything looks fake and CGI. The dialogues - Boba has clearly too much of it - sound uninspiring and don't give the impression of serving any plot other than to attach one memorabilia-scene to another. The acting of most - and especially Boba Fett - was amateurish, the costumes looked like they were made by fans for a low-budget fan-fiction short film, and the practical effects like the Sarlacc pit, were close to ridiculous and cheap looking. The fight sequences were badly choreographed and shot and I hate to still see in 2021 actors running/climbing up walls where their movements and the speed by which the cables pulled them upwards are not synchronized. Batman climbing up a wall in the 1960s by crawling on the floor with a 90° tilted camera looked more real.
All in all, where The Mandalorian was a pleasant and unexpected surprise, this first episode was a huge disappointment and a let-down. The Book of Boba Fett however is exactly what Disney+ subscribers can expect and goes in parallel with the Disney Star Wars universe they show in their parks, aka. Galaxy's Edge and also this new Star Wars Hotel experience.
I gave this show/episode 4 stars, because I think the heart of Favreau is there, but the economic interests of Disney got the upper hand this time.
I'll give it another go with E2 and maybe E3, but if the tone and quality of this series doesn't improve by then, this show is not for me.