Lucasfilm’s latest Star Wars streaming series, The Book of Boba Fett, has finally premiered on Disney+ after being announced in a post-credits scene over a year ago. This one is a direct spin-off of The Mandalorian with its own pulpy action sequences, prequel-era flashbacks, and mind-blowing Ludwig Göransson theme. Like the flagship series, it captures the tone and style of the Star Wars saga beautifully. The pilot episode, “Stranger in a Strange Land” – now available to stream on Disney+ – is a promising sign for the show’s future in its subversions of Star Wars’ usual traditions.
Most Star Wars stories jet all over the galaxy, bouncing from planet to planet. The original 1977 movie starts on Tatooine before sending its plucky young hero to a giant death machine in space, a misty jungle world, and the trenches of intergalactic battle. The Empire Strikes Back begins on a snowy planet and ends in a city in the clouds. Revenge of the Sith has a lava planet, a forest planet, a city planet, and a planet adhering to Kramer’s “levels” apartment design from Seinfeld.
The pilot episode of The Book of Boba Fett doesn’t take audiences all over the galaxy. It doesn’t just use Tatooine as a jumping-off point like the 1977 original or The Phantom Menace; the whole thing takes place on Tatooine. There are flashbacks set on Kamino and Geonosis, but the main story never leaves the desert. It tells a refreshingly small-scale story as a post-Return of the Jedi survival thriller is contrasted with a gangland actioner a few years later.
The Book Of Boba Fett Is A True Star Wars Western
The Book of Boba Fett’s refusal to leave the sands of Tatooine behind makes it a true Star Wars western. The Mandalorian characterized its titular bounty hunter as a Man with No Name-style gunslinging antihero wandering the frontier, but it’s a more traditional planet-hopping Star Wars adventure that introduces fans to brand-new worlds in almost every episode. It’s closer to a straightforward space opera than the revisionist western it was conceived to be.
By sticking to the galaxy’s most western-inspired environment, The Book of Boba Fett has established itself as one of the Star Wars saga’s only full-blown westerns. There’s even a fun nod to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western classic The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly when a beaten and bloodied Boba is dragged through the desert by Tusken Raiders on banthas. Westerns aren’t the only cinematic influence on The Book of Boba Fett; it’s also heavily influenced by gangster movies – particularly Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy.
The early scene of locals coming to Boba’s throne and begging for favors is reminiscent of the iconic opening sequence from The Godfather. The show’s parallel prequel/sequel storylines, charting Boba’s escape from the Sarlacc Pit alongside his takeover of Jabba’s palace, follow a similar narrative structure to The Godfather Part II. The mainline Star Wars saga is about super-powerful clairvoyant warriors battling for control of the entire galaxy, but The Book of Boba Fett focuses on the criminal underworld of Tatooine. It’s about ruthless mobsters battling for control of a single section of a single planet.
Boba’s Series Is The Show The Mandalorian Promised To Be
Based on its first episode, The Book of Boba Fett is shaping up to be the show that The Mandalorian promised to be: a small-scale Star Wars western series filled with nefarious outlaws and ice-cool gunslingers, exploring the darker, shadier corners of the galaxy. Mando is a traditional antihero throughout the first episode of The Mandalorian, but becomes a more straightforward hero after taking Grogu under his wing. His intimate Lone Wolf and Cub story blew up into a Skywalker-sized war for the galaxy when the Imperial Remnants got involved.
When The Book of Boba Fett was first announced, some Star Wars fans worried it would skew too closely to The Mandalorian, since they’re both half-hour serials about Mandalorian bounty hunters. But the show’s producers have done a great job of making The Book of Boba Fett stand out as its own thing. It doesn’t feel like The Mandalorian 2.0; it has the same title design, but also has its own distinctive style. Boba is much less overtly heroic than Mando, the stakes of his conflicts are much lower, and his story is confined entirely to the unforgiving deserts of Tatooine.
It’s possible that The Book of Boba Fett is only sticking to a small-scale story in its first episode and that Boba and Fennec will explore new corners of the galaxy as the series goes on. Much like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett could have a larger-scale future. Whether Boba’s series will continue with its ground-level perspective or not, Jon Favreau and Robert Rodriguez have gotten the series off to a terrific start with the Tatooine-centric “Stranger in a Strange Land.”