#basically: if this is tbobf at its worst/average i will probably still enjoy the series overall even if i think it could be better

[syn0vial]

now that i'm off work...

things i liked about the tbobf premiere

i had a huge smile every time fennec was onscreen. she's just so badass and fun, and i can't help but feel charmed by her dynamic with boba and how protective she is of him. honestly it was just nice seeing boba be close with someone for once :,D

those little flashes of character we get in boba's flashbacks: his interactions with the massiff, him futilely trying to fend off the tuskens armed with nothing but a wooden club, showing defiance to the tusken kid even when he's exhausted and enslaved—those things really made me grin

the new plot point about boba's ordeal leaving him physically disabled, to the point where even a moderate brawl in which he isn't seriously injured is enough to render him barely able to walk and in desperate need of bacta. i'm very, VERY curious to see where they go with this, both in terms of explanation (though honestly gesturing vaguely to the mistreatment he endured in his flashbacks and saying "that" would probably be sufficient lol) and what future implications it might foretell.

things i disliked about the tbobf premiere

i knew that they were going to tone down boba's amorality and general unsociability but damn, i did not realize to what degree. this man had less edge than din djarin in episode 1 of the mandalorian and, as someone who felt underwhelmed by din precisely bc he felt like a watered down version of boba fett, this was... not gratifying to see. like, he talks about escaping from the tuskens after they've literally tortured and enslaved him, but the second he actually breaks his chains he just... willingly goes back to them? why??? or refusing to harm the mayor's major-domo even after being blatantly disrespected and even threatened by him? bc he didn't want to upset the mayor??? what is he, a boy scout?! not to mention how freely and trustingly he does things like hand his father's helmet over to complete strangers and don't even get me started on how well-socialized he is with gorsa. in these scenes he really feels like a completely different character and as someone who really enjoyed his prior characterization, this was majorly disappointing to me.

honestly, i wouldn't mind this so much if they'd just provide some dang in-universe explanation for this shift in his morals/behavior instead of just steaming along pretending that this is just who boba has always been. like, even if we put aside his characterization in legends, this is the man who hunted down rebels for the empire and back-talked lord vader—and now he can be cowed into silence by some provincial mayor's secretary? come on now. even if disney doesn't want to go with the "psychic trauma from the sarlacc pit" route even though it's awesome, they could still do something interesting to justify boba's sudden docility—for example, throw in some acknowledgment that he HAS to play nice now bc he knows how outgunned/outnumbered he is. his *~criminal empire~* literally has like four people in it, he's physically weaker than he was before, and he's entirely dependent on a medical device in a fortress that, again, has a maximum of four people defending it at any given time. all of these are plenty good reasons for boba to favor diplomacy over fennec's more aggressive approach without completely changing his personality.

like, how much more interesting would it be to, instead of having a brand new characterization of boba that's just effortlessly friendly and good, have boba fett STILL be an amoral, unsociable bastard, but one who has to adapt to a sudden state of vulnerability and reliance on other people? it would be so easy to turn this change into something compelling, but i don't have a huge amount of faith that disney will actually do anything of the sort :/

on a more general level, i was very underwhelmed visually. like, there were multiple scenes where i had lowkey second-hand embarrassment seeing how goofy everything looked and this is due to a number of factors:

1. the fight choreography was really not great, especially compared to the mandalorian. like, the scene where boba and fennec are ambushed by the shield ninjas, for example. we could've seen boba and fennec doing some awesome team-work, bouncing off the shields, shit like that, and have the ninjas be equally formidable foes to try and contain them. instead, boba stands there like a goofus for several seconds before firing a concussion rocket directly into the shield held inches from his face and predictably knocks both himself and fennec over in the process. it just looked... really stupid. like, why did he do that? bc the choreographer felt like the audience would be too dumb to figure out that fennec and boba are trapped otherwise? like, there must have been a better way to get that point across. there must have been. as it stands, i had hard time believing that this was the same boba fett who effortlessly wrecked those stormtroopers on tython.

2. the cgi was subpar. the massiff was fine when it wasn't moving around too much but the second it started chasing boba, it became hard to look at. same with the lizard-centaur thing that attacks boba and the rodian when they're digging. it looked like a monster from a bad video game movie, especially when it started physically interacting with the actors.

3. WHY WAS THE CINEMATOGRAPHY SO BAD. like, look, i don't actually know anything about camera-work. but i know that as the viewer, there were several points where i burst out in embarrassed laughter about how bad certain scenes looked. i think the worst offender was when boba was getting chased by the massif and the way it was shot made it look like he was some middle-aged suburban jogger being chased by a geriatric great dane. it just looked like they were moving SO slowly and there was no drama or interest in the shot at all. it looked like a fucking meme. i'm laughing just thinking about it again.

overall, i'm kind of disappointed bc it seems like not as much time, resources, or effort was spent on TBOBF as it was for the mandalorian, but i'm vaguely hopeful that things can get better from here. i don't think i'm going to get what i want in terms of characterization that's consistent with or at least respectful of prior canon, but i'll honestly say that i still found the premiere to at least be enjoyable, despite all the ways it could've been more compelling. i mean, lbr, as a legends fan, i can stomach a LOT of inconsistency and camp. i just hope that, even if things don't get markedly better, they don't get any worse than this rather rocky start.