It’s Book of Boba Fett day, I just got finished watching it, and you’re getting my fresh opinion right here on Chapter 2, The Tribes of Tatooine.
This episode does a lot of different things, and the first one is that it clearly confirms a theory I had last week. We’re going to see two parallel timelines. There’s the present, what Boba’s going through right now as he’s replaced Bib Fortuna as the daimyo of Mos Espa. And there’s the past, from when he pulled himself out of the Sarlacc (I almost said the rancor, forgive me) and everything he’s gone through in his journeys since.
Spoilers from here on, if you don’t know how this works.
The Sand Ninja, the Mayor and the DMV
The episode starts with Boba Fett having captured what we now know to be one of the Night Wind, which is an assassin group for hire. Sand ninja. I’m going to continue calling him the sand ninja. And somewhat cleverly, we get a really cool sequence where they threaten the sand ninja with being fed to the rancor. I thought that was awesome, because you get to see the throne move and the whole bit.
It also lets you into a bigger picture right away. The guy finally gives up that the mayor was the one who hired him, so Boba and Fennec head to the mayor’s place with the dude in chains and kind of just walk on in.
It’s funny, because the main foyer of the mayor’s office kind of looks like the DMV, to be honest. And the receptionist is very much, “Let’s see. Boba Fett? Boba Fett?” Oh really. We’re going to do that game. We’re going to do the whole I-don’t-know-who-you-are game.
So he and Fennec walk right in. You see the same Twi’lek from last time, who’s trying to be all, oh no, you can’t really come in here like that. They walk in anyway, and they finally get to meet the mayor. We’ve seen this character, he was in some of the trailers. The mayor, through a translator droid, tries to be all, hey man, sure, I’m here at your pleasure, whatever. There’s so much sass being thrown. Clearly Boba Fett’s going to have to earn some respect up in this piece, and it’s most likely going to happen the way it does in The Godfather, where he’s got to earn it all over again. Not the trust of everybody. The respect.
The Hutts Want Their Everything
The mayor sends Boba back over to the casino, we get that little setup again, and this time Boba finds out that the Hutts are involved. Jabba, apparently, was their cousin.
So I’m conjecturing here, but it seems like it was okay for Bib Fortuna to take over because he was Jabba’s majordomo, and he probably just kept the same show business going. The Hutts were basically like, hey, we’re going to let you sit there and be the figurehead you want to be, and that’s perfectly fine, but at the end of the day you’re going to make sure you get us our everything we need. That’s why Bib Fortuna’s all overweight. He was kind of like, all right, sweet, you get your thing, you get your thing, everybody runs the things they want to run, and I get to just sit around and be as decadent as can be.
After a few moments and some exchanged words, it becomes clear that Boba Fett’s going to have to fight his way into being the daimyo proper. I believe we’re going to have to see some sort of a come to Jesus moment with all the other crime leaders in this area. I don’t want to say bosses, but the leaders.
The Tuskens Are People Now
That’s what shifts us from the present into the past. We pass through this kind of vision world, if you will, and now we’re back in the desert.
Boba Fett witnesses the Raiders being abused by what looks like a speeding train. A speeder train, I guess, a hover train, I don’t know. It comes through the desert and people are being shot. My first thought was that it was some kind of really sick, what are they called, like a jungle tour. Come on down to Mos Espa, we’ll take you out in the sands and you can shoot you a Tusken Raider.
Before I go any further, this episode does something I didn’t expect it to do. It lends weight and depth to the Tusken Raiders.
The Raiders are characters we’ve seen forever as just throwaway background. Now mind you, I never really followed tight with Star Wars Legends, which is all the old books and canon. I did read a lot of the Dark Horse comic books, but a lot of those were focused on main plot story things. So I don’t know if maybe other authors have given the Tuskens this level of depth. But you start to see them as people, and Boba Fett as somebody who’s just trying to make his way.
This episode made it really clear that Boba Fett’s on a journey, and what we’re witnessing in the present is just another leg of a journey that started when he dragged himself out of the Sarlacc pit.
The Train Heist in Any Western Movie
So Boba Fett’s obviously upset. Some people died. The next evening he follows behind and he sees some speeders. Remember the little speeder bikers, the ones who were marking the house Boba Fett watched last episode. He goes to whatever bar they’re at, kicks some of their butts, steals all their speeders, comes back to the Tuskens and says we’re going to stop this train.
There’s a montage of him teaching them how to ride and how to do some cool things. Meanwhile there’s the one who’s been training him and fighting with the gaffi stick, who I still believe is female. I’m going to say she, only because the way the ribbons are set up looks like hair. I could be way off, and I may be adding gender where there doesn’t need to be any, but whatever.
Then he leads them on taking the train, and it’s so funny because it’s so Western. This is the train heist in any Western movie. They’re riding right there alongside the train, not on their horses but on their speeders. He’s taught them how to strategize, so you’ve got gunmen on the ridges, and you have a young Tusken kid signaling to some of the other gunmen. They’re doing long distance, because they’ve got those long guns. Remember, those things are amazing.
Meanwhile Boba and his crew on the little speeders have made it up to the train. They’ve jumped on board and they’re fighting their way to the front, where you have some pilot droids trying to jack up the speed as much as possible with this ginormous turbine engine rocket thing on top. Finally they bring the thing down. It crashes, the whole nine yards.
And Boba is sitting there, very similarly to how he sat on Jabba’s throne, just kind of sitting there as the Tuskens are raiding the train. I’m not sure what species this is, forgive me for not being up on my Star Wars lore, but the guy’s like, hey, we thought you guys were just raiders, we didn’t realize you were actually civilized. Which I think is kind of insulting, and says a lot about them.
Boba Fett’s answer is that passage through the desert’s not free anymore. You’re going to pay tribute to them now, and we’re not going to kill you. Go home. Walk in a single file line.
I think the voices they give these alien creatures are hilarious, because some of them sound like really bad 1940s characters. “What do you expect us to do? How are we going to survive?” And he’s got these catfish whisker antenna things coming off him.
The Lizard, the Tree and the Gaffi Stick
As a reward, we get this amazing sequence where the chief of the Tuskens begins to explain a little more. They’re having dinner that night, and he starts telling him about when the seas dried up. There’s a very Arrakis, very Dune history to Tatooine, and of course anybody who knows anything knows George Lucas has admitted he was very inspired by Dune, by the setting and how it works. That’s why we have sandworms and different things like that.
This was a pretty intense sequence. You learn history, and they give Boba Fett this little lizard thing that proceeds to take him on a spirit journey. They’ve really added a lot of superstition and really cool native or aboriginal beliefs here, and again, it’s depth for the Tusken Raiders.
In the fever dream he sees a tree. The tree’s the Sarlacc pit, and it’s strangling him, and there’s so much imagery and metaphor in what’s going on. He comes back dragging a large branch, and the branch is part of the ceremony for him to make his own gaffi stick. I’m going to make some leaps here, but it’s kind of a you-are-becoming-a-man, becoming-a-warrior sort of ceremony. He gets taken to meet the one who’s been training him, and they’re at what I guess is the equivalent of a Tusken blacksmith.
There’s so much that goes into it. I’ve always thought Tusken Raiders were just throwaway obstacles. Oh hey, we need something for Obi-Wan to wave his hands at and freak out, or once in a while we need somebody to come be a problem in The Mandalorian. But no. There’s so much more to them. Even the making of a gaffi stick is a major thing.
It’s very cool, and I’m excited to see where this journey continues to go. We never go back to the present in this episode, so I’d be interested to see if next episode starts in the past and then shifts to the present to continue the storytelling.
A Movie Chopped Into Eight Pieces
Real fast, because I don’t want to keep this too long. The entire idea that The Book of Boba Fett is slow, it’s bad, it’s this, it’s that. I want to take umbrage with that. I disagree. I didn’t before, but I do now.
Here’s the reason. Assuming they filmed all eight episodes the way they’ve been doing a lot of things, and I think Disney Plus has the same mentality, this is essentially a movie that’s been chopped up into pieces. So let’s say there are eight episodes, and let’s say this particular movie has a four act structure. I’d say we’re at the tail end of act one. We’re learning who our hero is. There’s a lot going on, and this is a really intense look at the Star Wars world. I’m half expecting to see, oh my gosh, where’s Obi-Wan, except the timeline doesn’t line up.
I’m liking what they’re doing. I really am. I’ve come around.
The Verdict
The Book of Boba Fett Chapter 2, The Tribes of Tatooine, is an 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
I genuinely enjoyed this episode. It wasn’t a 10 out of 10. But last week was a little slow for me, and this one, they didn’t speed up, but every moment was very important. They took the time they spent establishing things and used it to tell us a story. We’re going on a journey, and I’m really loving it.
It’s a good episode and it’s a great show. It’s beautiful. There are a couple of scenes on the speeders that look a little CGI, a little green screen, a little fake, but the rest of it I think looks fine. The train heist sequence is wonderful. Amazing. That’s a 10 out of 10 for effects and everything.
There you go, now you know. And if knowing is half the battle, then you’re halfway to being the know-it-all that I know you can be.
We’re going to talk more about The Book of Boba Fett next week. We’re also celebrating 30 years of Image Comics on the channel, and I’m doing some storytelling. I know I’m not normally the kind of guy who explains comics, but my take on it’s a little different, so you’ll want to check that out. And forgive the voice on this one. We’re recovering from a New Year’s Eve cold in this house. Mrs. Know-It-All and Baby Know-It-All are both doing well.
Did the Tusken Raiders land for you the way they landed for me, or have the books and comics been giving them this depth for years and I just missed it? Tell me in the comments on the video above.
