Friday 14 January 2022

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 2: The Tribes of Tattoine

 "I am not a bounty hunter!"

Here we have another fascinating episode, yet again light on dialogue and heavy on well-directed and compelling montage sequences, in which the two contyrasting narratives play out. In the present, the esteemed Mr Fett and the redoubtable Fennec Shand, played by the ever-youthful kick-as Ming-Na Wen, 58, battle to seize full control of Jabba's former criminal empire on Tattoine, complete with loads of fun cameos from Return of the Jedi. Meanwhile, in the past, Boba continues to gradually earn the trust of his Tusken captors.

The first narrative is more straightforward, as Boba pursues the recalcitrant mayor only to discover that his true foe is "the twins", cousins of Jabba who are carried on a litter truly creaking in the middle, in a nice little bunch of scenes involving a nice bit of sleight of hand re the Rancor monster. But the meat of the episode is a fascinatingly cpurageous sequence where Boba earns the trust of his sand people captors by masterminding a raid on a train (shades of the Firefly episode Train Job, and a reminder that, like The Mandalorian, this is very much a Western) amnd adopts their customs, including an extraordinary druggy sequence where he swallows a lizard up his nostrils and things go well trippy. This is not your standard mainstream Disney Plus strreaming, and it's bleeding superb. And the mention of "spice" has to be a Dune reference.

Oh, and the train is being driven by a cool-looking droid. And it crawls off like a bloody spider when Boba chucks it out of the train. I have no idea where this is going, but I love it.

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