The Book of Boba Fett (2021) s01e00 Episode Script

Boba's ship, when it starts up, is something like this.
(WEAK HORN BLOWING) (LAUGHS) Wait a second.
(WEAK HORN BLOWING) Let's see if this'll Here it is.
(HORN BLOWING) - (SHIP WHOOSHING) - (BLASTER FIRING) NARRATOR: Boba Fett, only four lines of dialog BOBA: As you wish.
He's no good to me dead.
What if he doesn't survive? Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.
NARRATOR: and six minutes 32 seconds of total screen time Boba Fett? Where? NARRATOR: and this somewhat unceremonious introduction.
Bounty hunters.
- We don't need that scum.
- Yes, sir.
NARRATOR: So how did this become this? MAN: The universe's most famous bounty hunter, Boba Fett.
It's Boba Fett.
MAN: Whoa! (PINBALL PINGING) (ALL YELL) (WHIRRING) Dude, it's Boba Fett's ship.
(LAUGHS) Look, the Giant Chicken is Boba Fett.
Boba Fett, you didn't know who he was, where he came from.
He didn't get much screen time.
I never thought they'd be talking about him after 1980.
Despite his lack of screen time, next to no dialog, he's everywhere.
You a big fan of the Fett? He signed it for me.
Dude, look at that.
(WHOOSHING) BURTT: Okay, we'd like to introduce Boba Fett.
And here he is.
A new character.
- Uh, can you speak to us, Boba? - (ON MIC) Certainly.
(CROWD CHEERING) JOHNSTON: Star Wars had become this phenomenon.
Now we had to top that.
Nobody wanted it to be just another sequel.
We had to do something better.
We sort of jumped in on Empire.
We had to hit the ground running.
Because there were more shots and there were more complicated designs.
Ralph McQuarrie and I had traded sketches back and forth and sort of had a direction for this prototype suit.
And it evolved into Boba Fett.
I liked the design.
I don't think we even changed that much of him.
There were different versions of it.
Each character, when we do it, we do other alternative versions of it to see where we go.
VILMUR: The design for the character, the armature and all the gadgets and weaponry, is something we've never seen in Star Wars before.
One thing that stood out above the rest is his "T" visor.
Medieval in its styling, it's something that speaks to, you know, the days of sword and sorcery.
It just gives him that added dimension of magic and mystique.
JOHNSTON: I don't remember if Ralph added the "T" shape or if I did it, or if George came by and said, "Hey, give him a 'T' shape".
I don't know.
I don't remember where that came from.
But during the whole process of evolution, a lot of stuff like that would happen where somebody would suggest something and the other guy would take it and say, "How about this?" FILONI: It shows you the power of a design.
Anything out there that resembles that visor is just Boba Fett.
JOHNSTON: The Boba Fett suit itself was originally intended to be an army of what George called Super Troopers, and the plan was to build 100 of these suits, and to have them sort of be the Empire's upgraded stormtroopers.
BURTT: They wanted to show what Boba Fett looked like to the crew in England.
And I made a, kind of, stand up, you know, introduction.
"Here's the new character, Boba Fett" Boba has sort of a radio voice.
There's a speaker built into him here.
And also, there's a certain amount of telemetry going on.
And certain amount of feedback for some reason.
It was just a show-and-tell of the character, but it was a very functional costume.
This is a range finder.
Is this This is This tilts down here.
There's a flamethrower here.
This is a dart-throwing device.
Very deadly.
These also shoot some sort of darts, projectiles from each knee.
Sure, have him turn around and get a shot of the jetpack.
Can you do it, Duwayne? (JETPACK WHOOSHING) We put the costume on Duwayne Dunham, who was part of our editing team.
I just happened to be the size to fit that costume.
And George said, "Hey, why don't you put this on him?" "Okay".
George is standing there and he's looking, and he says, "You know, we need a cape".
I said, "George, there's a Star Wars towel right there in the garage.
(LAUGHING) "We use it when we rinse off after a volleyball game at lunch".
That was the first introduction of Boba in some sort of physical form to us, months before the film went into production.
Apparently, there was a budget issue.
And once the original suit was built, George decided that we didn't have the money to turn them into an army.
But we had this one suit.
And George said, "Let's make him a different kind of a character.
Let's make him a bounty hunter".
So the first thing I did was I painted the entire thing silver, so that when I put the subsequent layers of paint on, it would look like something hit the suit and broke the covering away, whether it's paint or some kind of metallic finish, and you would see the metal underneath.
And from that, I just started mixing rail road colors and just painting it up and damaging it.
I would take a heat gun, I heat the plastic, and I think I had a rock or something that I would then press into the hot plastic to make a dent.
George never came by and said, "I don't know, I don't like that orange on there".
You know, he said, "Just take it and run with it".
There was no sort of interim stage.
He went from white plastic to Boba Fett.
I said, "This is a good character.
People like the bad guys".
And then later, they were doing this holiday special.
(MACHINE BEEPING) And there wasn't much of our involvement.
But I came up with the idea, "Why don't we take the Boba Fett character and put him in that? "Make a little movie out of it?" I am Boba Fett.
Follow me, friend.
Boba's first appearance in film.
SANSWEET: So he really predates by a couple of years the actual release of The Empire Strikes Back.
FILONI: Beautiful work, very stylized.
It's just very simple, kind of fantasy storytelling.
Chewbacca suspected all along there was something bad about Boba.
How did you know, Chewie? It wasn't until the last ten years that any of us realized that a month before the Star Wars Holiday Special came out, Boba Fett was actually in this Marin County parade.
BURTT: George Lucas, who lives in the town, wanted to do something very local that was exciting about Star Wars.
And so, they put Vader and this strange character, Boba Fett, that people didn't know, into the local parade.
It's hard to imagine a local parade where Star Wars characters, not just like people in costumes, the actual screen-use costumes are walking down the street.
But that's exactly what happened.
Duwayne was inside it at the time.
And it was a strange sight because Boba hadn't been put on film yet and become well-known.
DUNHAM: At first glance, you didn't say, "Oh, that's a stormtrooper".
You said, "Whoa, who is that?" VILMUR: Vader was a known quantity at that point.
But the fans definitely responded to Fett.
LUCAS: And that's where it really started.
You know, and then, over time, we put him in the movies.
I think what made Boba Fett really popular was that he was a mystery.
Like Darth Vader, the helmet was his face.
I liked that we didn't give him any backstory.
He was just one of the bounty hunters.
George never worried about stuff like that.
He never felt like he had to give you a big backstory.
DARTH VADER: but I want them alive.
No disintegrations.
BOBA: As you wish.
Less is more with Fett.
He's enigmatic.
We don't know what to expect from him.
(BLASTER FIRING) He's encased in this battle-worn scorched armor that we just know nothing about.
And all of these mysteries form kind of this amazingly cool vision of who this guy is.
He wears the poncho.
It's just like Clint Eastwood.
He is an icon drawn out of George's appreciation for Westerns, and, I think, the gun fighters of Sergio Leone's films specifically.
I mean, I jokingly said at one point, "If Boba Fett is a bounty hunter, why can't he wear spurs like we hear in the Westerns, you know?" Although I said it half-jokingly, Bob Rutledge, who was in charge of the foley, actually took my suggestion of spurs like these and did foley footsteps for Boba.
(SPURS CLINKING) Within the DNA of Star Wars is a deep appreciation for movies that George liked, that he was inspired by, of different genre.
And so spurs make absolute sense when you think of it that way.
As surely as, you know, Obi-Wan looks like a samurai.
That makes perfect sense if you understand who the creator of Star Wars, the person that devised it all is, George Lucas.
It's just part of the appreciation of the art form really.
Boba Fett in both, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, that was Jeremy Bulloch.
BULLOCH: His half-brother, Robert Watts, was a producer, and he called Jeremy one day and said, "There's a little part in The Empire Strikes Back.
Get your agent to get onto it".
Jeremy said, "I can't.
I'm in the theater".
"Yes, well, just go along".
And he did.
And tried the suit on and everything fitted perfectly.
So he got the part.
He said when he put the costume on and walked onto the set, there was absolute silence.
Everybody was amazed at what it looked like.
379J take 1.
FILONI: What was interesting about what Jeremy captured was in his posture and in the armor, he did carry that kind of Eastwood gun-slinger contrapposto stance.
Like, he had the way about him.
371A take 1.
Every little subtle move that Boba has in these films, you remember.
VILMUR: Jeremy actually had a face role in The Empire Strikes Back.
He was an unnamed Imperial officer who was actually dragging Princess Leia away from Luke and he was a pilot in Revenge of the Sith.
We're receiving a message from the chancellor's office.
- Send it through.
- Yes, sir.
And then, I mean, Jeremy the person, after the films, at conventions.
(CROWD CHEERING, CLAPPING) BULLOCH: It was in the mid-'90s when they re-released the films when it just took off.
Then eventually, I went and I sort of dealt with all the setting the tables up and everything.
So we did it as a partnership, which was nice.
We went to Poland, and the whole town came out to meet him.
Lots of lovely memories.
And sometimes, he would stand in front of the table, he wouldn't sit down so that he could be there if they wanted pictures.
And always took time to chat to people and everything.
He loved all that.
FILONI: He really appreciated what that character meant to people, what his performance had meant to people.
(CROWD CHEERING, CLAPPING) He had a phenomenal relationship with Star Wars fans.
He's one of the originals.
This is the lovely metallic one, isn't it? - MAN: Yes, it is.
- It just shines.
It was a deep loss to all of us and the fans when he left us last year.
BULLOCH: That's what he used to write on his photographs.
"Stay cool.
Stay cool.
Jeremy Bulloch, Boba Fett".
SANSWEET: Lots of people, over the years, have worn the Boba Fett costume.
There were stunt guys who did some of the work, especially in Return of the Jedi.
RANDALL: This is what happens to an old stunt man.
He needs this equipment in the morning.
Maybe what I'll do is start with that wet suit.
It'll pick up enough slack so it won't slip around.
MAN: Why don't you go up this ladder? - MAN 1: Hey, buddy.
- LUCAS: What if he came up higher and tighter so that you could get the dunes behind him? - Where is your hand go up? - Up four, down MAN: The flexibility of the costume is such that you could produce virtually anything and justify it.
Let's shoot this.
Stand by to go.
It's a wonderful thing when that character is performed by so many great people.
LUCAS: I always liked him, and he was a good character.
And then I came and needed another one, so I did Jango Fett.
(BLASTERS FIRING) Boba Fett's father.
Temuera Morrison was hired to play Jango Fett, and Boba Fett is the sole clone that was purely his DNA without alteration.
My first introduction to Boba Fett was, um Actually did a behind-the-scenes interview for Attack of The Clones, and they open up this book that basically explains all the characters.
I remember I opened this book and I go Whoa! I even get the jetpacks.
(CHUCKLES) I remember the guy behind the camera probably thought, "No, you're only going to get a blue jumpsuit.
"But the original guy has all of this".
LUCAS: Acting-wise and everything, it was very good to have Tem there 'cause he'd worked the character out, and they were supposed to be the same person more or less.
LOGAN: The first day I met him, he said to me, "I guess you're going to be playing my son, and I'm going to be playing your dad.
You call me dad and I'll call you son".
Dad, I think we're being tracked.
Hang on, son, we'll move into the asteroid field, and we'll have a couple of surprises for them.
I remember being all of four-foot-nothing and I look up at him and I said, "All right, Dad".
And he just looked back down at me with this big smile and he goes, "All right, son".
(LIGHTSABER ACTIVATES) Whose helmet is that anyway? It belongs to a bounty hunter I killed on Geonosis.
I was a fan of The Clone Wars, and I really loved the cartoon, and I was hoping to come back.
BOBA: You got a problem with that? My name's Boba.
I was so thrilled to be able to voice Boba Fett again and to be able to fill in the gaps after Attack of The Clones.
The greatest thing is I've been able to show my son Attack of The Clones.
And I show him the little Kamino Escape blue figure and I would point out and say, "Hey, who's this?" He says, "Boba Fett".
SANSWEET: I've been a collector all my life, and when Star Wars came out, that became the focus of my collection.
(LIGHTSABER WHOOSHING) And when I moved up to Northern California to go to work for Lucasfilm in the marketing department, I needed someplace to store my objects.
So I bought a house with chicken barns.
So what used to house 20,000 hens, now houses Rancho Obi-Wan, a Star Wars Memorabilia Museum, which, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the world's largest collection of Star Wars memorabilia, including one or two Boba Fett items.
So here is a maquette of the original Boba Fett costume.
The all-white costume.
And this is the original Boba Fett rifle.
When he was wearing the all-white costume before production started.
I think that there are well over 1,000 Boba Fett items in the collection.
This is one of two Lego-authorized Boba Fett figures that were sold at FAO Schwarz.
In our cantina set, we have Boba Fett guitars from both Japan and the US.
And how many more than the 1,000 is really hard to say because there are a lot of objects that have Boba Fett as part of a broader spectrum of characters.
This is a Japanese Boba Fett toy, and it actually tap dances to a couple of Star Wars melodies.
There are many strange Boba Fett things, there are many fan-made Boba Fett objects.
But perhaps my favorite because of what Rancho Obi-Wan used to be is a painted Easter egg of Boba Fett.
The inside of the egg is long gone.
One of the reasons that Boba Fett has become so popular among collectors is because of the story of the send-away Boba Fett action figure.
Here we have two versions of the rocket-firing Boba Fett, the one with a four-sided missile.
And this was an attempt to do a locking mechanism with an eight-sided rocket.
This is instead what we all got in the mail.
Boba Fett in a plastic package with a sonic-welded missile in it, and a note to consumers "Sorry, the launcher has been removed from the product for safety reasons.
"If you're unhappy, we'll send you a different figure".
The handful that are out there in the public among collectors came from the ones that were tested at Kenner Products in Cincinnati, and when they go up at auctions, they can go into the six figures now.
The Boba Fett figure was a big deal because if you had that, you had a capable villain to do your adventures with.
And it invited creative thinking.
It invited stories to be told about this character.
And now we play with biggest toys there are.
And Boba Fett is still one of them.
He gets out of the Darth Vader carrying case, and he's back in play.
(LAUGHS) (DEVICE BEEPING) KENNEDY: How the fans would react to Boba Fett reappearing in The Mandalorian.
We knew it would be big, I have to say.
I think this was sort of a gasp rather than a scream.
MORRISON: All that time since the '80s, when Boba disappeared and now it was like, "Here he comes.
The great comeback.
" KENNEDY: To have Temuera Morrison back, he's just remarkable in the part.
Big day today.
(WHOOSHING) First reveal.
I've been tracking you, Mandalorian.
Boba, he's back.
MAN: Here we go.
And Action! WEN: What happened to Boba Fett after he was swallowed up by the Sarlacc? That's a story in itself.
I'm here for the armor.
If you want my armor, you'll have to peel it off my dead body.
Where's Boba been all this time? I don't want your armor.
I want my armor.
It belongs to me.
BURTT: I never imagined that Boba Fett would be a character, that we'd be talking about 40-plus years after he was created.
A character if you see it, and it enters your imagination at the right age, it changes your DNA.
You sort of carry it along.
And there was a whole generation of Star Wars kids, I would call them, and young fans that absorbed what was in the movies.
And it became a culture.
The world was ready for this bounty hunter.
FILONI: Temuera and what he's brought to the character, Daniel, Jeremy, these people that have been in the suit, it becomes their legacy as well.
Fans have wanted this character to come back in Star Wars for so long.
It's even more exciting to realize that we have a whole series on the way that features Boba Fett.
(CRACKLING) The anticipation is remarkable.