We're once again living in a world where Star Wars is king, and the universe is opening up yet again. Considering the Expanded Universe canon has, for the most part, been jettisoned from the universe, the stories of some characters, such as Han Solo, will be officially fleshed out in the world of the movies. Which means that we'll have to re-evaluate the existing characters through this lens, especially if they are going to receive their own spin-off in the end. All of this sets me up for a controversial statement that deserves to be said: Boba Fett is the most overrated character in the Star Wars galaxy, and possibly the history of movies.
A lot of people have this image of Boba Fett being built up as the ultimate badass, what with the Star Wars EU giving him a second life by having him climb out of the Sarlacc, only to go on being featured throughout various origins, adventures and even a novel where he invalidated a lot of the stories about himself as fictions he created for his own business. Whether he's effective or not as a character in the Expanded Universe can be up for interpretation, but this means specifically jack shit in the world of the films, as he hasn't done all of that in the official canon.
What Boba Fett did do was get hired to find Han Solo and his buddies in the name of the Empire, as well as capture him for Jabba the Hutt, during his canonical debut in The Empire Strikes Back. To be fair, he did find Han and friends by camping out in an asteroid belt, and tailed them to Cloud City, thus helping the Empire complete their task. Good job, buddy. But as for the capture, he had to rely on Darth Vader and his stormtroopers to do the job. Again, he did the job he was hired to do, but if he was really the badass that everyone says he is, wouldn't he have flipped Vader the bird, caught Solo for his own and say, "The Falcon's at Cloud City. I got what I came for. The rest belongs to you!"?
If bounty hunters are supposed to rely on government officials to do their work for them, why aren't we just giving said officials the power to moonlight as officers of justice on the side? Of course, the greatest moment of buffoonery comes from his defeat in Return of the Jedi, and before we go any further, I'll provide the evidence upfront. Here's the game tape from when Fett gets his ass accidentally handed to him.
Now while Fett's motivations aren't 100% clear in this scene, let's assume that he hasn't been paid yet, and as such he's still hanging with Jabba's crew until the job is finished and Solo is dead. It's not his fault that the crime lord wants to see it all go down before he signs any checks, as Fett's so expensive that Jabba wants to make sure Solo's dead once and for all. So keeping that in mind, there are two different ways Boba Fett screwed up.
For starters, he abandoned Jabba The Hutt on his sail barge to go after Solo. He's eager to close the deal, and there's nothing wrong with that. Except for the fact that if Boba Fett was around on Jabba's barge while Luke, Han and Lando were fighting for their lives, he could have protected Jabba from Princess Leia's strangulation of the infamous criminal slug. The sail barge would have been secured, and Fett could have had a tactical advantage to mop clean-up and possibly kill Solo later on. Instead, he left the barge, presumably to take out Han Solo, which lead to yet another failure on Fett's part.
If it was just Han on that barge he landed on, I could see merely taking aim at his target and calling it a day. But Luke Skywalker, a somewhat experienced Jedi Knight, is an obstacle between Boba and his target. Now, no matter what level of experience a Force sensitive person is, one would think it's a better idea to engage them head on rather than just ignore their presence altogether. Yet there's Boba getting his blaster chopped in half by Luke's lightsaber, only to be further humiliated by a half-blind Han Solo. If only Boba Fett would have left Luke Skywalker to the whole barge full of people he was fighting, he could have killed the unguarded Han Solo, taken down Chewbacca as a bonus and zoomed away.
If the banishment of the Expanded Universe has taught Star Wars fans anything, it's that the movies are king. With that logic in mind, Boba Fett is, hands down, the most over-hyped character in the Star Wars universe. Nowhere is that more readily proven than in this context, as the character becomes less useful the more words you use to describe him. With only about seven minutes of screen time in the original trilogy, and barely any story beats in the prequels, this highly valued badass is more hype than anything. Then again, this is all opinion. If you think you can defend Boba Fett, or if you think this evaluation was a long time coming, hit the comments section below and join the fight.
