![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerGoddammit. I do not want to write this blog. I have been putting off this blog entry for over a week. But now I am making myself do the distasteful task of writing it to get it off my backlog. What's so wrong? We watched the season 1 finale of The Book of Boba Fett last week. In a word, it sucked.
What sucked about it was the poor writing. And when I say "poor writing" I mean crummy, downright amateurish writing.
It was obvious all season that writing was not this team's strong suit. The first 3 episodes jumped back and forth between 2 narratives, Boba Fett's time among the Tuskens recovering from his ignominious supposed death in the original movie trilogy, and the present day when he sets himself up as a warlord on Tatooine. Just about the time the Tusken story started to really pull together, it was over. The Tuskens were dead. And just as the present-day story sorta began to come together in episode 4 the writers switched over to writing about Din Djarin "The Mandalorian" in episodes 5 and 6. Boba Fett appeared in all of, like, one scene, with throwaway dialogue, in his own titular show.
Then the writers dropped a complete turd of poor writing in the form of episode 7.
Early in the episode we're treated to clunky exposition from various characters. It's clunky because it's so obvious... as is the "irony" that part of what they say in their exposition is immediately shown to be inaccurate as another character comes bursting through the door with contradictory news. It's like, "Hello, stupid TV tropes!" Seriously, do the writers think this is the 1950s, when audiences are buying TVs for the first time and only have 3 networks of programming to choose from? These jokes are decades past their sell-by dates for still being funny.
Then there's the other 2/3 of the episode. Oh. Em. Gee.
The last 2/3 of the episode is basically one long run-and-gun fight. The fish-head drug runners— I forget what their name is and honestly don't care at this point— send a few super-powered robots to destroy Fett and his allies.
The robots have laser guns with unlimited capacity. They also have unidirectional force fields. The gun-bots don't have to drop shields to fire their machine guns. The good guys try to penetrate the shields but can't. Even Din Djarin's darksaber can't penetrate the shields. One-way shields and impenetrable by Force weapons? Puh-leeze. Weak writing.
Oh, but the fact the shields are impenetrable doesn't stop the good guys from shooting back, constantly and pointlessly. And this is another way in which the writing is weak. They all fire back, constantly, with no apparent checks on their energy. Oh, and their guns all do similar damage, whether they're space-Derringers or Fennec Shand's space-sniper rifle. Ultimately nothing works, until Boba Fett comes out with his dungeon beast, which alone is able to penetrate the gun-bots' shields and rip them apart.
Oh, and meanwhile Fennec Shand sneaks off to the fish-heads' hideout and kills them all. Why, if the good guys had the power to take out all the enemy leaders with a single assassin, did they not exercise that power before nearly being TPKed?
The answer to all these rhetorical questions I've raised is "Because weak writing". All the stuff that didn't make any logical sense within the parameters of the story happened when it did because it made emotional sense. The writers knew how long the episode needed to be, what scenes they wanted to have in it, and just wrote whatever nonsense was necessary to string it all together to fill the allotted time.
With this final episode the series degenerated to a Space-Horse Opera. That's a combination of Space Opera and Horse Opera. Neither of those are good categories. Both disparagingly indicate that the writers give up a core component of the other genres— their gritty realism within the norms of historical or sci-fi settings— and replace it with nonsense devices and plot holes to achieve cheap emotional plays.
Moreover, this series fails in virtually any category because it doesn't develop sympathetic main characters.
Within the range of character development there are two basic arcs. A) a character overcomes long odds through skill and determination. B) a character grows emotionally. In both cases the character has to be sympathetic. (A) has to have more redeeming qualities than the foe or challenge s/he overcomes, otherwise the audience won't care. (B) can start out rough but develops appealing qualities. The Mandalorian did both A and B. On the surface each episode had an Arc A; the whole season had a long-running Arc B. Arc B is what made it a good story.
I warned in TBoBF episode 1 that the series was failing to make its characters compelling. It only started to achieve that for the title character in episode 4— right before it made him irrelevant for episodes 5-6 and frankly an idiot in episode 7. And in Fennec Shand, portrayed by the otherwise capable actress Ming-na Wen, there was pretty much nothing but wasted potential. Ultimately the series failed with characterization. The main characters never became appealing people, and the little the was accomplished with showing them overcoming challenges was undone by the ridiculously lame plot devices in the finale.
What sucked about it was the poor writing. And when I say "poor writing" I mean crummy, downright amateurish writing.
It was obvious all season that writing was not this team's strong suit. The first 3 episodes jumped back and forth between 2 narratives, Boba Fett's time among the Tuskens recovering from his ignominious supposed death in the original movie trilogy, and the present day when he sets himself up as a warlord on Tatooine. Just about the time the Tusken story started to really pull together, it was over. The Tuskens were dead. And just as the present-day story sorta began to come together in episode 4 the writers switched over to writing about Din Djarin "The Mandalorian" in episodes 5 and 6. Boba Fett appeared in all of, like, one scene, with throwaway dialogue, in his own titular show.
Then the writers dropped a complete turd of poor writing in the form of episode 7.
Early in the episode we're treated to clunky exposition from various characters. It's clunky because it's so obvious... as is the "irony" that part of what they say in their exposition is immediately shown to be inaccurate as another character comes bursting through the door with contradictory news. It's like, "Hello, stupid TV tropes!" Seriously, do the writers think this is the 1950s, when audiences are buying TVs for the first time and only have 3 networks of programming to choose from? These jokes are decades past their sell-by dates for still being funny.
Then there's the other 2/3 of the episode. Oh. Em. Gee.
The last 2/3 of the episode is basically one long run-and-gun fight. The fish-head drug runners— I forget what their name is and honestly don't care at this point— send a few super-powered robots to destroy Fett and his allies.
The robots have laser guns with unlimited capacity. They also have unidirectional force fields. The gun-bots don't have to drop shields to fire their machine guns. The good guys try to penetrate the shields but can't. Even Din Djarin's darksaber can't penetrate the shields. One-way shields and impenetrable by Force weapons? Puh-leeze. Weak writing.
Oh, but the fact the shields are impenetrable doesn't stop the good guys from shooting back, constantly and pointlessly. And this is another way in which the writing is weak. They all fire back, constantly, with no apparent checks on their energy. Oh, and their guns all do similar damage, whether they're space-Derringers or Fennec Shand's space-sniper rifle. Ultimately nothing works, until Boba Fett comes out with his dungeon beast, which alone is able to penetrate the gun-bots' shields and rip them apart.
Oh, and meanwhile Fennec Shand sneaks off to the fish-heads' hideout and kills them all. Why, if the good guys had the power to take out all the enemy leaders with a single assassin, did they not exercise that power before nearly being TPKed?
The answer to all these rhetorical questions I've raised is "Because weak writing". All the stuff that didn't make any logical sense within the parameters of the story happened when it did because it made emotional sense. The writers knew how long the episode needed to be, what scenes they wanted to have in it, and just wrote whatever nonsense was necessary to string it all together to fill the allotted time.
Space-Horse Opera
In the past I've characterized The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett as Space Westerns. This is a fine category to be in. Westerns and Scifi are known and respected genres. Space Western is the crossover between them. The Mandalorian was an excellent Space Western. Firefly years ago was an excellent Space Western.With this final episode the series degenerated to a Space-Horse Opera. That's a combination of Space Opera and Horse Opera. Neither of those are good categories. Both disparagingly indicate that the writers give up a core component of the other genres— their gritty realism within the norms of historical or sci-fi settings— and replace it with nonsense devices and plot holes to achieve cheap emotional plays.
Moreover, this series fails in virtually any category because it doesn't develop sympathetic main characters.
Writing 101: Characters Matter
It's taught in Writing 101 that a story can be about three things: the Setting, the Plot, and the Characters. Of these, Setting is the hardest; it requires strong Plot to develop meaningfully. Plot can carry a story for a while, but to be truly engaging and to rise above simplistic themes like "shoot-'em-up"... or "porn"... it's got to have interesting Characters. Thus to be good, stories have got to develop characters the audience cares about.Within the range of character development there are two basic arcs. A) a character overcomes long odds through skill and determination. B) a character grows emotionally. In both cases the character has to be sympathetic. (A) has to have more redeeming qualities than the foe or challenge s/he overcomes, otherwise the audience won't care. (B) can start out rough but develops appealing qualities. The Mandalorian did both A and B. On the surface each episode had an Arc A; the whole season had a long-running Arc B. Arc B is what made it a good story.
I warned in TBoBF episode 1 that the series was failing to make its characters compelling. It only started to achieve that for the title character in episode 4— right before it made him irrelevant for episodes 5-6 and frankly an idiot in episode 7. And in Fennec Shand, portrayed by the otherwise capable actress Ming-na Wen, there was pretty much nothing but wasted potential. Ultimately the series failed with characterization. The main characters never became appealing people, and the little the was accomplished with showing them overcoming challenges was undone by the ridiculously lame plot devices in the finale.
