What's with the Boba Fett obsession?

I think the white prototype armor has a lot to do with it. I could be wrong though.

 

I've always wondered this, too. It's great people like him so much; after all, we like what we like. But I never got it.

 

I'm not sure,actually.

 

I don't know either. I think people see him as a badass because of his armor. You know, he doesn't have too much dialog in OT, was highly criticized in AOTC, and he was good in TCW. It's not that much. A movie about Clone Commandos would be so much cooler, but it's almost impossible.

 

I really love the character of Boba Fett, but like you I don't precisely understand it. There's the mystery and the baddassery surrounding him to an extent, even if mostly through allusions to his credibility rather than much screentime to show us why he's so fearsome. Plus the awesome armor. The armor itself spawned a whole culture (both within the Star Wars universe and the real-life world) of obsession with the armor, though all of them are really only copies of the original Fett armor from ESB/RotJ.

Honestly, I think the mystery is what really draws some people to him. The fact we know (excuse me, knew) nothing makes it all that more interesting, in a sense. If I recall something I read correctly, Boba Fett actually made an appearance a year or two prior to ESB in some parade, and already garnered a bit of interest before the movie was even released.

Other than that, there's really nothing more. You had a ton of stuff in the old EU, but I hardly read any of that, and almost nothing in regards to Fett anyways. The character himself got blown way out of proportion starting with the EU, and I think a lot of the fandom is a result of about two decades of material from the relative fringe that focused on glorifying him.


So my main opinion is to probably just blame the EU. The EU was pretty bad for that. If you think the love for Fett is bad, consider that some of the random Jedi seen even more briefly in the PT (whose names you might need to look up to even know them) have pretty big followings themselves. Taking it further, remember that even the random alien seen anywhere in the background of one of the films had probably been given a whole name, backstory, and personality by the time the EU was dissolved.

*ahem* http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Willrow_Hood

 

Max is on tempo with this one. *ducks*

Growing up with Star Wars - put yourself in our shoes. It's 1979. You saw Star Wars 1-2 years before (released 77 and actually re-released in 78). You've got a ton of toys. You get every comic (I didn't - didn't find out about them until the summer of '81 with issue #51 and then HOLY blast! - MONTHLY STAR WARS NERDGASM!!!!) - you get every book, read the back of every package - buy Starlog and Fangoria if it's even mentioned. Even Bananas! etc. You are OBSESSED with this in a way that we can't even imagine nowadays - because - primary thing here - LACK OF INFORMATION. Call it Mystery Box v. 0.1.

And then - then - a SCRAP - a free mail away figure - Boba Fett - Bounty Hunter. HOLY GOOD GOD! WHAT IS IT?!?!? He looks so f-ing cool! And then - on top of that - NO FIRING ROCKET. WHAT? WTF? What happened. My cousin's brother's best friend heard that a kid at summer camp actually got one. What!??!! WHERE? How do I GET IT!?!?

And then you are also hearing rumors that this character was in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Which you didn't see - because it was on once and the only people who owned VCRs lived in mansions. OH MY GOD THAT MUST HAVE BEEN AMAZING.

So - anyway - back to fall/winter 79-80. You've spent months fantasizing about what this character is all about. And then - BAM - Empire comes out. Holy crap is he awesome. All the things Max mentioned above. Cool outfit, cool gun, cool voice (not Temeura Morrison!), cool SHIP! THE SHIP! DAMN! And he talks back to Vader. And Vader KNOWS him - knows he disintegrates blast. How cool is that?

Then - you've got 3 years - 3 LONG LONG years between Empire and Jedi. Who is Boba Fett? Darth Vader says he's Luke's dad - is he lying? is it a trick? What about Han - what's going to happen. Oh my God I can't take it! Rumors start to percolate. Darth Vader is Luke's dad - BUT - Boba Fett is actually Luke's MOM! In disguise. Pretending to be bad - but really good. (Lucas even gives a nod to this in Jedi by having Leia dress as a bounty hunter named Boussh). Another rumor - no - Darth Vader is lying - Boba Fett is actually Luke's dad in disguise. He's waiting to get his revenge. (Revenge of the Jedi remember?)

There is tons of crazy speculation (remind you of anything?) going on around this character. We are all out of our minds. Then Jedi comes and - pfffft - he's gone in a blaze of lameness.

But - he can come back - that's what we all say and want. He can be redeemed.

But....but...prequels. And then it all goes to hell with a whiny clone kid and lame background.

So there's some insight into why he's so big. Because...mystery. Because...potential.

And I hope to God Kasdan gets his way and we can reboot this character. He's one of the best (potentially) in Star Wars.

I leave you with this:

 

To me it's the mask along with his whole get-up. When Vader says no disintegrations, you are left to believe that out of all the hunters there he was the one with a nasty reputation. Making him the top gun so to speak, and along with Vader just a bad ass villain! I do however understand that he isn't displayed much in the OT. This was a mistake IMO. We should of saw a disintegration, before his bull crap fall into the pit. I would have no problems with him somehow disintegrating the sarlacc pit from the inside, sort of like the EU wrote about it. I know he'd be old as ------, but his death was weeny. Ramble over, Bals out!!

 

I think I can keep this pretty simple. Let's ignore the clone kid Boba Fett here. From an OT perspective...

He looks cool, he does cool things, and we know nothing about him.

He's a blank canvas in which we can weave our own personal Expanded Universe. I really think that's it.

 

I loved Boba Fett since I was a kid because there was so much mystery about him who, what, where, why. I went a few years till EU expanded on his story and he was a bad ass for sure that would become the leader of the Mandolorians damn! I enjoyed that Lucas had him in PT as a kid to explain who he was and how he started out doing what he does and how his look came to be. Yes he was a whiny kid because he was a kid and he was a little bad ass trained by the best Jengo and later by other bounty hunters. I want more and hope he comes out in Rebels to fill in more of his past and of course his own anthology please! I believe he survived the sarlacc because he was too much of a badass not to. He is a cool character of Star Wars that is not a Jedi or Sith but can hold his own with them and we need more characters like him either bounty, smuggler, or solders.

 

Personally don't understand why people became "obsessed" with Boba Fett to the extent that it appears some people have, but I can completely understand why he is much-loved character.
In a way, I think you've kind of answered your own question...

Ah but... well, I'll come back to that, because it kind of ties in with the next point...

So, from my point of view, you do kind of have to look beyond to the movies to a degree to understand why people like the guy.
Because, first and foremost, he was a just cool-looking design.
Not enough to warrant obsession, for sure. But this made for an equally cool looking toy too.
So when you add that to the fact that, back in the day we knew very little about him because, as you say, he didn't really do or say very much - you actually had a winning combination.
You had a cool looking design that you could project your own imagination on to and make up your own stories, because there wasn't really much else to confine you.

He - from my experience, growing up in the UK - was definitely the figure everybody wanted to have in their collection and play with, moreso even than the Lukes and the Hans etc.
He had a rocket pack on his back, so he could fly if you wanted him to. He had a snazzy helmet. He had armour. He had those little dart things on his wrists.
You could do whatever you wanted with him when you were playing out a little scenario with your toys, and you weren't really restricted by the movies.

So - and this is just my opinion - but I think that, over the years, that affection for him, simply on the level of him being a cool design, has kind of cross-pollinated with how people regard him within the movies themselves. I think that's where some of the emotional attachment comes from - it kind of started outside the movies on some levels, and then fed back in to them.

Like I say, I don't see why there should be any over-the-top love for him, or any kind of notion that he is in some way important to the overall narrative of the films themselves... But I can see how that has happened, and I can see how it is hard to explain this to someone who didn't grow up in that era and experience it themselves firsthand.

Like Rebo said, the more Fett has featured in the saga (in the movies and in other media), the more that initial sense of "Wow, look at this dude. What the hell is he all about?" diminishes.

I'd put myself in the camp that likes Boba Fett primarily for aesthetic reasons, and for the fact that he is just a background character, hanging round looking cool. Seeing more of him in the saga, and finding out more about actually works against this and undermines a huge part of his initial appeal.
Y'know - I like him on the same level I like, for example, the white interior corridors of the Tantive. It's cool and iconic, but I don't want the interior of every spacecraft in Star Wars to look like the interior of the Tantive.
He's just a small part of a bigger tapestry. And, ultimately, it is the whole tapestry that is important, even though it wouldn't exist without the little details...

 

It's the rocket backpack.

Who doesn't want a rocket backpack?

Which is why the ROTJ finish is so despised because he's killed when the rockets misfire (well he's unkilled now but that still wrankles).

 

For me, it's the mask, costume, weapons and Slave 1. Plus, being introduced to him (along with the other bounty hunters) on the bridge of the destroyer, it was pretty cool. And I love the brief interactions between Fett and Vader.

 

Because people like to say "Boba Fett." It's like that whole "salsa" thing:

GEORGE: Why don't they have salsa on the table?
JERRY: What do you need salsa for?
GEORGE: Salsa is now the number one condiment in America.
JERRY: You know why? Because people like to say "salsa." "Excuse me, do
you have salsa?" "We need more salsa." "Where is the salsa? No salsa?"

I just crack myself up...

 

You and Max Rebo said it better than I could have!

One thing that I don't think a lot of younger fans realize about Boba Fett is the fact that the hype for the character originated with Lucasfilm. First of all, he was introduced in a cartoon segment of the SW Holiday Special in November of 1978. As cringe-inducing as the rest of the show was, even to a ten year-old Star Wars freak like me, the one memorable thing about that trainwreck (aside from getting to see a clip from the movie of the star destroyers chasing the Falcon - which was huge for me, since there was no home video of Star Wars and few published star destroyer photos) was this cool-looking bounty hunter in some mighty bad-ass armor.

Then, the following summer, Kenner released the Boba Fett figure as a free giveaway if you mailed in proofs of purchase from other SW figures. This, to young first-generation Star Wars fans, was huge. First of all, it was our first taste of The Empire Strikes Back, and that alone was enough to get us doing backflips. But then on top of that, it was also by far the coolest SW figure that Kenner had put out at the time, even with the non-firing rocket. I remember seeing Barenaked Ladies at a small venue in Chicago in about 1993 when hardly anyone had heard of them yet, and one of the band members, as between-song banter, just hollered out, "Who's favorite action figure was Boba Fett?!" to which a considerable portion of the audience erupted in an enthusiastic cheer. It brought back to me exactly how big a deal that little bit of plastic was to so many of us when we were little.

Suffice to say, by the time ESB was released, we were all primed to the gills as far as Boba Fett was concerned. And the character did not disappoint. No, he didn't have a lot of lines, and he wasn't really in any action sequences other than that quick exchange of blaster fire with Luke. But he was cool, he looked bad-ass, and he was obviously a dangerous customer.

But the initial hype over Fett was very deliberate on the part of LFL and their marketing team.

 

As long as your neighborhood SWAT officer resembles Boba Fett, there will be an obsession with him.


The mystery, the unspoken history, the style.. I'm not a walking history archive, but Boba Fett was probably the genesis of the concept of 'kitbashing' to produce a tacticool look in sci-fi/fantasy.
Prior to Boba most sci-fi/fantaasy soldiers were depicted in very shiny, streamlined costuming with very uniform looks. Even the stormtroopers hearkened to this general concept.
In that setting the kitbashed, scratched up and customized costume of Boba Fett emerged as an Iconoclast of what a sci-fi warrior should look like. And in turn, he became the Icon and the doctorine that prevails to this day.

 

The only thing I've every stolen in my life was my cousin's Boba Fett action figure, back around 1984. My parents wouldn't buy me one so I took his. And yes, I did get busted and had to take it back to him. There was just something about that dude and his jet pack.

FWIW, I was six years old at the time.

 

The Fett man is a mystery. I don't think they thought he would be as big as he was by any stretch.

First he had a great look. He looks well outfitted and like he has survived. You look at him and know he has the skills.

Second he holds his own with Vader. Everyone else around looks away, snaps their heels Boba steps in, "He's no good to me dead." I don't think Fett would win but Fett was willing to push for promise of payment.

Third its been said but hey he has a jet pack.

Fourth you want to know his story.