#76. Bonus: 'The Book of Boba Fett' Episodes 1 and 2
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
This bonus episode has Sonny, JVL, and Vic dig into the first two episodes of The Book of Boba Fett on Disney+, and all three arrive at roughly the same place: low expectations, a rough first episode, and a much better second one. Sonny found episode one embarrassingly cheap-looking — the fight choreography and creature costumes look like discount Mortal Kombat rejects, Boba Fett's Sarlacc-pit escape is achieved via "a bunch of tubes," and star Temuera Morrison (now 62) is neither age-appropriate nor a compelling physical presence for the role — but he warms considerably to episode two's political intrigue between the mayor and Jabba's Hutt cousins, and finds the Tusken Raider flashbacks unintentionally hilarious as a bald-faced Dances with Wolves/Avatar "white savior" narrative, complete with Morrison in ghost-pale pancake makeup. JVL, a Mandalorian skeptic going in, is pleasantly surprised, calling this the more successful Western of the two shows, and notes Disney clearly overcorrected for Mando's helmet problem since Boba now yanks his off at every opportunity; he also praises small touches like the Hutts' litter-bearers and a background actor wiping a Hutt's brow with a chicken, while dinging Ming-Na Wen's Fennec Shand as "cold" and miscast. The episode opens with a runner about Disney's insistence on "Grogu" versus the universally-preferred "Baby Yoda," and closes with the trio agreeing that Rogue One was a fluke never to be repeated, that the Dave Filoni-steered Star Wars era is aiming for spaghetti-Western pastiche rather than prestige, and that Marvel's baseline competency is something the franchise has simply never matched.
From the show notes
Do the guys like Dances with Tuskens ?
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of The Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, The Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe and tell your friends. Today, we are talking about the book of Boba Fett on Disney+. Let me ask you boys this first. At the end of The Mandalorian, when Luke Skywalker comes back post-Return of the Jedi, I think, to rescue the Baby Yoda. Baby Yoda. What was the baby's name?
JVL00:00:47Grogu. Grogu. This is like the Apple TV Plus application or whatever. Disney is really intent on getting people to call. This thing Grogu and instead of the world is not cooperating. No, it's just Baby Yoda. It has a name.
Sonny00:01:04It's Baby Yoda. I thought we literally we literally have a child's book. That's like, you know, it's like one of the golden spine Mandalorian books. And when I read it, when I read it to my three-year-old, he says Baby Yoda when Baby Yoda is on there. And I've had to stop calling it the child because that's what it's like. The Mandalorian and the child became a family. I have to say the Mandalorian. And the Baby Yoda became a family. You know what?
Vic00:01:29I almost called it the Gungan. Wait a minute. What is the Gungan? That's something else entirely, but not entirely. But I was going to say at the end of that.
Sonny00:01:38Mesa Baby Yoda.
Vic00:01:41Would you tune into that one? A little baby Jar Jar. Okay. So at the end of that, then they show you, okay, that the Mandalorian is done, which is I didn't know that. I didn't realize that. Okay. That's the end of him. And he moves on. Thank God. And, but when they showed you, this is what's going to be next season. The Mandalorian's not done. When they showed you. The Mandalorian's not done.
Sonny00:02:05There's going to be another season of the Mandalorian because he's got to go to, he's got to go to Mandalore. Please don't. And be king of the Mandalorians. I don't think so.
Vic00:02:12I think that, okay.
Sonny00:02:13I don't know. No, there's another. I'm telling you what's happening. There's another season. All right. All right. Then Baby Yoda's going to show up and kick some ass.
Vic00:02:21Teen Yoda. Okay. So, but then they showed you, okay, this is what's coming up next. And it was Boba Fett. Sitting on the throne of, of, uh, of Jabba's throne and the book of Boba Fett. How did you feel at the time? Were you skeptical? Did you think, oh, this, what is this all about? And then.
JVL00:02:39After watching two episodes. I was deeply skeptical because I hated the episode of the Mandalorian where they brought Boba Fett in.
Vic00:02:46It was, it was.
JVL00:02:47You didn't like it.
Vic00:02:48I loved it. I didn't like any of the Mandalorian period. I like cheap fan service.
JVL00:02:51I really didn't like the Boba Fett episode. I really didn't like, uh. Uh, what's her name? Uh, the. Ming-Na Wen. Ming-Na Wen. Hated Ming-Na Wen's character. Did not like her portrayal of the character either. Uh, so very, very low expectations for this. Same. For me. What about you? How about you guys?
Sonny00:03:13I had pretty low expectations just because I, I have learned not to expect very much from most of these Disney plus series. Streaming things. Yeah.
Vic00:03:23Uh, yeah, same. So I had very low expectations. I was, I mean, I. I really just put it on. It was like, uh, you know, I'll, I'll, you know, while I'm working out and I'll start, and then all of a sudden I, I got done and I just kept watching. Uh, do we, do you want to give a, a quick review of what happens?
Sonny00:03:40Well, so I, it is for me, it is very much a tale of two episodes. The first episode I thought was not very well done at all. It, it was cheap looking like to the, to the, the aesthetic of this, of the first episode of this show. It was less Star Wars and more Mortal Kombat, like the guys, the guys that Boba Fett was, were fighting with like the, the like ninja costume looked like, looked like rejects from a cheapo Mortal Kombat, uh, cable, basic cable series, like something you would see on TNT. Right. And then like a Goro style character popped up, the, like, the, like lizard guy with four arms. I was like, holy shit. They're, they've just ripped off. They've just ripped off. Mortal Kombat.
Vic00:04:27I was expecting a lizard or a sandworm, like a la dune.
Sonny00:04:31Yeah. So I, I didn't, I didn't think very much of that episode. I thought the action was, was bad. I thought it looked cheap. I don't think that the, I don't think that the actor who plays Boba Fett is very good. I like make no one a little more, um, uh, New Zealander. Yeah. He's he's, he's fine in bits and pieces, like when he has like three lines or whatever, but like, generally, I just think he's not a very compelling screen presence. Um, I, I, I just, I didn't, I didn't care for it very much at all. The only thing that like really made me smile in the first one was when Matt Berry showed up as the droid, Matt Berry, the British guy. Uh, he's in what we do in the shadows, what the toast of London, uh, remind me what, what droid he's not the protocol. He's he's the, he's the droid in what used to be Jabba's palace.
Vic00:05:22Oh yeah. The white, the white painted droid.
Sonny00:05:25Yeah. Okay. So anyway. Uh, but that, that made me smile, but like, not because he was doing anything particularly funny, just because I recognized the voice because I was like, oh, that's, that's Matt Berry doing a droid voice. Um, and so I did not, I didn't think very much, but I was like, this is not going to be a fun series to watch. And then in the second episode, the second episode is, I think much, much better. I think it is, they actually have a, they're setting a story in motion, um, and they, uh, it doesn't look cheap and terrible. Um, there, there's kind of interesting stakes with, you know, the, the job, a cousin job of the huts cousins come to, uh, reclaim his territory and, you know, and, and, uh, there's, there's drama with the, there's political intrigue because the mayor is like, you know, I, you're not really in charge. I don't know who's in charge here and the people running the businesses don't know who's in charge, but better than all of that, better than all of that is the, uh, is the flashbacks to the Tuscan village. And I realized what they have done with this show is they have essentially, uh, they have essentially made. Avatar or dances with wolves or dune. It is a last of the, it is a very straightforward, uh, white savior narrative where the, the civilized outsider comes to the savage peoples and teaches them how to defend themselves. From encroaching outsiders and becomes like king of the tribe. Basically that is like, that is what's happening in this. And like, on the one hand, I saw, I actually saw a few other people on Twitter mentioned this because I searched it. I was, I was curious and some people got very angry. They're like, how can you say this is a white savior narrative? This character, this actor is may or he's a, he's an indigenous person. Except for the fact that in the show itself, he is wearing like island of Dr. Moreau, Marlon Brando pancake makeup. He is like made up. To look like a fucking ghost.
Vic00:07:28I think, I think it's from being in, it's from being in the sun.
Sonny00:07:31He's like, it's, it's sun, sun bleached, whatever. But like point is he is like, he's like the whitest person in the show. And like, and again, I'm, I'm just, I, I just, I, I, I sat there thinking to myself, I can't believe they're, I honestly can't believe they're doing this. I cannot believe, I cannot believe they are doing something so like kind of stereotypically, uh, you know, white savior. They're going to get raked over the coals, whatever. So it was, it was actually like, it turned into something very, very amusing for me to watch. I don't know that it's necessarily great. Anyway, I, I enjoyed it. Uh, it's, it's a, it's an, uh, I was mostly just kind of amused by it, frankly, more than anything else.
Vic00:08:12JVL. I mean, I know you were not a fan of the Mandalorian. So I really want to know what, what, what it is about this that you, you liked, or if, if we were expectations higher for Mandalorian.
Sonny00:08:24Very possibly.
Vic00:08:25Yeah.
JVL00:08:25Yeah. I mean, you know, the trailer we were given for Mandalorian, which made us think that it was going to be dark with Werner Herzog and right. And the PI storm troopers heads on pikes. And yeah, I would say that show did not deliver on what it was promising to audiences, but people liked it. People liked what they did get. I was not one of them. I thought this was a more successful Western than Mandalorian was. These are Westerns. Uh, it is. Clearly Disney learned a very great deal from the Mandalorian because every minute he can Boba Fett yanks his helmet off. Did you guys notice that Boba every in scenes where it makes no sense, that guy yanks it off like it's hot and it's because they realized it was a real problem having your lead characters not be able to see their eyes for, you know, seven or eight episodes. It's at a stretch. Yeah. I feel like this is so the the the fellow who plays him who that's interesting to where to my right to where Morrison who was in the the Lucas prequels. Yeah, right. Yes, as a result, he got grandfathered into this and he is no longer the right age for this part. He is this part should be. Should be a guy who is 40 years old, not somebody who is mid to late 50s, which is how he presents. Yes, he is physically not right for the part. I mean, just everything about him is stiff and just not athletic. Nothing about this guy says right badass bounty hunter, right? It's much more and not even like he had to learn to man the sad people, right? But also there's. Zero charisma to him. And as Sonny said, there, there are moments where, when he is just being a capable man where it's okay and you can get by, but there are moments where you do need somebody who's a more traditional leading man type. It is, he can't do that.
Vic00:10:44It's a weird thing to have a movie where there are no sort of leading actors, actresses that are like enjoyable to look at on screen. You know what I mean? So I mean, and making. No, I mean, no one is attractive for her age. I, I liked her. I liked her in, I'm pretty sure, no, she's not, she was in, she was in an NBC sitcom and I think it was Jonathan Silverman's, the single guy, maybe. And she dated like the, the, the, the, the other, the, the other dude that with the curly hair and was like, I can't believe she's with this guy, but, but she was cute. And I think she may be ER, you know, but she did a brief stint on it.
JVL00:11:24Yeah. So, but she's just all wrong. And this again, her physicality wrong is wrong. She's, she's neither funny nor tough. Yeah. Right. I mean, she's just sort of there taking up space.
Vic00:11:36I'm surprised they didn't do some sort of a switch route, uh, to, you know, retro ret, retcon, you know, like just bring in a different, you know, actor altogether. Who's young and, and, and, and dashing with some other hot, attractive, younger person.
JVL00:11:50Okay. Well, I'm not saying that I need like hot people. I'm saying I need people who are slightly more age-appropriate who move. I need, I need hot people who are able to like, you know, give line reads in interesting ways. Yeah, that's, uh, it's pretty dead.
Sonny00:12:04But I see, I like, I like Ming-Na Wen, but I, I do think that, uh, it's all cold.
JVL00:12:09It leaves you cold in a weird way.
Vic00:12:10And yet I found it very interesting that I had said, right.
JVL00:12:13It's it is who you are in a lived in world, which is interesting. Yes. Uh, you have Boba Fett's character, and this is why the, the reason his. His dances with wolves stuff is important is because he goes from being a bounty hunter, a guy who's just like out doing his own thing with no responsibility to anybody, but himself to trying to stand up a crime family, right? So he comes, he kills, uh, what's it was. Who's what's the job of the huts, major Jomo, but he kills, but we don't see that. Right. That's that's not yet, but we may get a flashback to him because if you remember.
Vic00:12:55That's right. And I remembered this, I think at the time that Bib Fortuna was not on the sail barge.
JVL00:13:03Correct. I think that's correct. Yes. Um, anyway, and he, you know, like he has ideas about how he's going to rule, right? He wants to rule through respect, not fear, but maybe that's not going to work. And maybe they're gonna explore that a little bit. I don't know. I mean, these are interesting things. The mayor is clearly an interesting character. The mayor's hammerhead species, the hammerhead species, uh, I really liked the guy who plays the mayor's, uh, chief of staff.
Vic00:13:29Yeah.
JVL00:13:29I don't know the actor, but yeah, he's the most interesting actor in the entire piece, uh, except for Jennifer Beals. Who am I going to say? That's crazy. What Jennifer Beals with the, the crazy alien head kind of does it for me?
Vic00:13:47I looked at it. I'm like, yeah, I can work with that. I can work with her abilities and I didn't realize I was into it, but you know, uh, any, any way, you know, once you go, whatever the species is, you know, that's it, you never go back, but it's, uh, I thought, you know, she looked like Celine Dion strangely enough to me. I was like, who is that?
JVL00:14:09Okay. Jennifer Beals. Yeah. I, uh, and there were, so there are little touches when the, the two huts show up. So the hut, the, the whole idea of the hut is interesting and underexplored in, in the old expanded universe, which is no longer cannon, but, uh, but it's underexplored in the current Disney version of it and I, you know, the, the detail of the huts that I loved so much was that the two huts are being carried on a litter and one of them is using a creature as a, as a, uh, like a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off their brow, and it's like a little, like a little, like a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off their brow and it's like a little, like a chicken or something that is wiping its brow with a chicken. You know what? That made me laugh. It was a really nice little detail. It was executed well.
Vic00:15:04And I was amused by that too.
JVL00:15:05I would like to learn more about these huts. I would like to know when he says we can't kill the huts unless we get permission from the family, like a made guy, like they're me. I would like to know more about that. That's right. So I don't know if the show's going to turn into anything or not, but I liked
Vic00:15:20it much more than I thought I would brother sister in sort of the ancient Egyptian sense of, is there more to it? Because you know, these species, I hope we're going to see the huts do it. You know, I'm telling you, it's like crazy. Uh, uh, w w let me ask you this. Can I just, uh, a quick throwback question to JVL and at the sunny too. Cause it's sunny. I assume you saw the phantom, uh, no, not the fan. Excuse me. The, uh, the star Wars reboot. Remember when they redid star Wars episode four and they re-released it in theaters. Did you see it in the theater? You must've been very young JVL and I were at the standard.
Sonny00:15:54It's like 15.
JVL00:15:55Oh, okay. Wasn't that young. Okay. All right. Uh, oh, I'm sorry. Tamara, Tamara Morrison is 62.
Sonny00:16:01Oh yeah. He's too old. He's too old for this. That's old.
Vic00:16:04Um, when you saw JVL, when you saw a job of the hut in the new star Wars, when they redid episode four, were you like, this is amazing.
JVL00:16:15I was so angry.
Sonny00:16:17No, it was terrible.
JVL00:16:18I was so angry with the CGI.
Vic00:16:21Really? Yeah, I know. Guilty as charged. I was quite, but the CGI is terrible though. Now we look at it. It's so, you know what I mean? It's so, cause it's so early. It was always terrible. It was terrible at the time. Oh no.
JVL00:16:36But the, the Stan Winston creature design of the original job, it was fantastic.
Vic00:16:41Okay.
JVL00:16:42Like I, I have no, did you guys not love the original? No, I did. Absolutely.
Vic00:16:45It took like, it took like multiple people inside and that was, it was fantastic.
JVL00:16:50You know, that whole movie return, so I do not like return of the Jedi. At all, but the movie absolutely falls apart once they leave tattooing. Everything that is interesting in that movie happens in the first like 35 minutes while they were on tattooing. Yeah. Not with the Ewoks.
Vic00:17:08Uh, what did you think? Two things. I have two Wookiee related questions. The first one is, uh, when, uh, one of the other, um, citizens denizens, uh, give tribute to Boba Fett. Is that a Wookiee pelt he brings him? I was wondering.
JVL00:17:25I was wondering that yikes, because doesn't Boba Fett carry Wookiee pelts? Yes, yes, he does.
Vic00:17:30He does. And I think that might be, that's a thing. I think it was a thing. Okay. What did you think of the huts? Uh, uh, muscle that scary looking, scary looking Wookiee.
Sonny00:17:43Can I tell you, it's another thing that looked cheap to me, the costume, the costume, the costume just did not look as good as the, the costume that they made for Chewbacca. Three years ago or whatever, it just doesn't look as good. That is true.
JVL00:17:58Uh, B you know what, you know what it looked more like? It looked like one of the Wookiee costumes from the, from the life day special. I'm sorry. It did.
Vic00:18:09We should just, cause there's something going on with the eyes and it just wasn't working. You know what, I think they're fake eyes.
JVL00:18:14It was a real person though and not, not a CGI creation.
Vic00:18:18So I, I, for some reason I had, I, I had less issue with the CGI, uh, of, of these, uh, certainly. The second episode that I did have some of the Marvel stuff that I've been seeing.
Sonny00:18:27I have to say another, another thing that was annoying and like kind of cheap looking about this. If you looked at, if you looked at how the litter was carrying Jabba, it's like kind of bowed or the huts, you know, Jabba's cousins, it's kind of bowed in the middle. Like it's so heavy and like the actors who are holding it are doing just this terrible, like it's so heavy, I'm shaking under the whole time and I just couldn't stop looking at them. I was like, you have to stop, you have to stop moving extras.
JVL00:18:55Also, the physics of that don't work. You could not carry these, these human having humans carry this instead of like the pig men or something. Right. It just, it doesn't.
Vic00:19:07It doesn't make sense. The weirdest thing in Star Wars for me are whenever you had extras who were just plain human faces, they have the plainest faces as one of the things I find so like weird.
JVL00:19:17It's just very weird. So here is, here is, here is something that is interesting. This is a, a thing about Hollywood. The bar, the Jennifer Beals bar. Yes. There are two servers, right? The two, there's a male server and a female server who come up and, and ask for them. The female server is an actress who goes by the name of Andrea Bartolo. She, I think has never been in anything before other than this. Uh, I'm just going to text you guys, uh, a little thing from her, from her IMDb page, a little photo from IMDb page. So you guys chit chat for 15 seconds while I figure out how to do this.
Vic00:20:08Okay. Uh, Sonny, what else did you, uh, like, uh, you know what I liked in the first episode though? They begin. I liked, I liked how they showed you what happened to Boba Fett, like, how is it that he survived? And I remember early on saying what Boba Fett's live, how did he get out of there? And they show you what happens when he goes into. It's the laziest thing I've ever seen.
Sonny00:20:27He's like, it's just like, it's just a bunch of, it's like a bunch of tubes.
JVL00:20:30No one's ever really dead.
Vic00:20:31A bunch of tubes.
Sonny00:20:32A bunch of tubes. And then he's climbing out of the sand. Do you mean when he's inside the guts?
Vic00:20:35No, I said, I feel like they spent all their money on that first part and then the rest of the episode was like, wait, we have no more money left.
JVL00:20:42No, that looked, that looked terrible actually. And I did think to myself, this is the first shot of your series and you make this look like something that a high school stage production would do.
Sonny00:20:53That's really. Yeah.
JVL00:20:55That's bad.
Sonny00:20:56And you know what?
JVL00:20:57I saw the picture you sent. Right.
Sonny00:20:59So this is what I'm saying.
JVL00:21:00Like Hollywood is just a ridiculous place. That's all.
Sonny00:21:04The whole point of this.
JVL00:21:05She's an attractive lady.
Sonny00:21:06Yeah.
Vic00:21:07Not going to disagree with that. That's insane.
JVL00:21:09She should have appeared like that. Uh, anyway, the whole, the whole thing is just, uh, I don't know, I don't know, but
Vic00:21:18it's fine. I don't know where it's going.
JVL00:21:20I have no idea where this is going to go. But it's better than Mandalorian and this is, this is the realm of expectations that we now exist with for Star Wars because we ain't never going to get another rogue one. I think that's clear by now. Do you remember? Rogue one was an accident and that we cannot get another rogue one. The Kathleen Kennedy era is over and it has been. Star Wars has been pushed down to these have been directed by Robert Rodriguez, but who's the guy who's overseeing sort of all the Star Wars stuff now? I'm forgetting his name.
Sonny00:21:54I think it's Jon Favreau.
JVL00:21:55No, no.
Sonny00:21:56And Dave Filoni.
JVL00:21:57Dave Filoni. Right. And Dave Filoni has a much more kiddie version of Star Wars in his head, where it's a lot more like 60s space operas and spaghetti western type stuff. And it's absurdist at times and makes you laugh like it's a that's just that's as good as it gets, you know, and at least I guess it's better than a solo story. Maybe. Oh, man. Yeah. Reminding me. But it's going in a in a very different direction for better. Yeah.
Sonny00:22:29And it couldn't be worse than Rise of Skywalker.
Vic00:22:32Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's where we are now. I mean, think about after after Return of the Jedi and the long hiatus and then the anticipation for the Phantom Menace. Yeah. About that and those expectations. And now we come into these things expecting the worst.
JVL00:22:48It makes what Marvel has done all the more remarkable. Yeah. I think. Right. I mean, again, say what you want about Marvel. It's not all great. The median Marvel entry is is very mediocre, I think. Yeah. But you know what? Like there is a base level of competency. Yeah. Which is very high. And you know, it the Marvel brand really is a pretty good guarantee that you're going
Sonny00:23:18to get some you're going to clear some minimum threshold.
JVL00:23:21Yeah. Yeah. For watching. Yeah. And in Star Wars does not have that in the Star Wars franchise, I think really hasn't panned out for for Disney the way it should have.
Sonny00:23:33Well, I mean, they we could go back to the movies, but I mean, the the whole plan with those movies to not have like an actual idea of the story you want to tell and to have each of the directors essentially at war with each other from JJ Abrams to Rian Johnson and back to JJ Abrams, like terrible. It was just terrible planning. They didn't they didn't know what they were doing. They didn't do a very good job with it.
JVL00:23:55So who's they?
Sonny00:23:56Who? I mean, I will. This is I mean, this is a question. So but I mean, I like The Mandalorian more than you do, JBL. I think the first two seasons of The Mandalorian have been good. I'm I'm I'm I'm perfectly happy with them. Yeah.
Vic00:24:11Me, too. I liked it, but I don't know, I mean, again, but it's hard to watch. Sometimes you're looking at these actors like Tamara Morrison and it's like, oh, you know, he has that he looks like somebody who you put like when you put sunblock on, but you don't fully completely get it to absorb in your skin. So you just have this white. It's going around.
Sonny00:24:35That's what I'm talking about. Like, he's he's like it's like he's it's like he's made up to look like Marlon Brando in the island of Dr. Moreau. I mean, it's like it is like weird and distracting in a way, but it is. It's also very funny on a on a certain ideological level. I'm just waiting for the. Angry Star Wars nerds to the different strokes show we're going to do is going to be much
JVL00:25:01better.
Vic00:25:02We will look into that. I'm sure.
?00:25:04It's fine.
Spot something wrong in this episode? Suggest a correction →
Comments
Loading…