Like so
many kids her age, my 9-year-old daughter has become a Star Wars fanatic. It’s amazing that Star Wars has never become retro; it remains current, be it through
the films, the LEGO phenomenon, the action figures or the books. For Chelsea, her
immersion happened out of the blue; we were talking about the Star Wars movies, she expressed a desire
to watch them, and before you know it we had watched all six films together in
the course of a week’s time.
Like my brother and me three
decades earlier, Chelsea was not content with merely watching the films; she wanted
to talk about them in-depth, to the point where we continuously pressed pause
on our DVD remote so we could debrief what had just happened. She wanted to
know whether the Emperor had really died when Darth Vader threw him down a
seemingly endless shaft at the end of Return
of the Jedi. She wanted to know why Darth Maul was killed so quickly in The Phantom Menace. She wanted to know
what exactly was happening with all the Senate proceedings in Episodes I, II
and III (if only I could help her there). Chelsea loved Yoda and R2-D2, sure,
but she also was fascinated with Greedo, Lando and, of course, Boba Fett.
I was discussing Chelsea’s Star Wars fascination with my brother,
who was my childhood companion in all things Star Wars (Eric even went so far as to leave one of his Han Solo
figures outside our house one winter so that Han could be frozen, as he had
been in The Empire Strikes Back). My
brother was, of course, thrilled with Chelsea’s appreciation for the films, and
we got to talking about some of Chelsea’s questions and interests. As gripping
as the George Lucas’ Star Wars stories
are, there are flaws in the films, and Chelsea’s questions raise some of them.
Perhaps none is so obvious, though, as the decision to offhandedly kill Boba
Fett at the beginning of Return of the
Jedi.
Over the past three decades, Boba
Fett has grown into one of the most popular Star
Wars characters of all, which is amazing considering how few lines he has,
and how marginal he is to the overall plot (his main job is to bring Han Solo,
frozen in carbonite, to Jabba the Hutt during The Empire Strikes Back). But Boba looks cool, has a Dirty
Harry-like, minimalist swagger to him, and never shows his face beneath his green,
red and black mask. And yet, during a fight scene early in Return of the Jedi, Han Solo accidentally knocks into Boba Fett,
igniting his jet pack and sending the bounty hunter directly into the mouth of
an alien with giant teeth, located inside a desert pit. With that careless
move, Boba Fett is gone from the Star
Wars saga. As the Walt Disney Company, which now owns Star Wars, prepares for Episode VII, it must do so without Boba
Fett and his cult-like following.
Of course, that needn’t stop Disney;
there’s already talk of a stand-alone Boba
Fett film that would cover more of his life before he wound up in the alien’s
mouth. But even so, this character’s story does say something about how
important it is to keep your eyes on the ball when crafting a narrative. Sometimes,
you have a jewel in your hand and don’t realize it. With the Star Wars saga, George Lucas created a modern-day version of the Greek myths, which
has delighted my generation and my daughter’s; but he missed the boat on Boba
Fett.
This kind of thing happens all the
time, in fact. We’re often so intent on adding one piece to the story that we
forget another, perhaps more important piece. Other than Star Wars, the only narrative I’ve had time to watch this summer is the six-month-long epic known as a
baseball season. But even here, in Major League Baseball, there are Boba Fetts
among us. Several ambitious big-league teams made daring trades on the July 31
trading deadline in an attempt to stockpile enough dominant pitching to win the
World Series. But in making these trades, clubs such as the Detroit Tigers, St.
Louis Cardinals and Oakland A’s traded away players who were important
contributors to the clubs they had. By tossing those players into trades, they
may have lost themselves a Boba Fett and gained nothing more than another
Stormtrooper. When the Tigers traded their leadoff hitter and center fielder
Austin Jackson for starting pitcher David Price, Jackson actually had to be
removed from the game in the middle of an inning. When the Tigers fans realized
what was happening, they gave Jackson a standing ovation.
Austin Jackson is not the best
player in baseball; David Price, on the other hand, is among the game’s elite right
now. But in order to win, baseball teams must rely heavily on the delicate
chemistry of their club. To trade a young, developing player who has done
nothing but contribute during his 4½ years in Detroit is risky. The Tigers are a
different team now, as their plotline has been altered. They may still win, but
it won’t feel the same without Austin Jackson in center.
My daughter, of course, doesn’t
care about the Detroit Tigers. But she is still excited about Star Wars. She bought some LEGO “microfighter”
ships the other day, and she borrowed an armful of Star Wars books from the library as well. As she scanned the book,
Chelsea asked me who my favorite character was from all the films. I told her
right away: Boba Fett. She nodded, understanding completely. We turned to his
page in the Star Wars Character
Encyclopedia, tucked in between Bib Fortuna and Boga. “Cool and
calculating, Boba Fett is a legendary bounty hunter,” the page begins.
At
that point, I should have shown Chelsea the Boba Fett death scene, and compared
it with the clip of Austin Jackson jogging off the field in Detroit. But she
would have just said I was being weird like English teachers can be sometimes,
making all those deep connections. And she’d be right. But it’s also true that some
of us have to stand guard over our stories, lest the next bounty hunter – or center
fielder – end up in the desert pit.
