I'm not gonna beat the same dead horse about BoBF incompetence because you and I are going to remain miles apart on that one. But I had to include your hypothetical door opening scenario in the quote because that's freaking hilarious.
Okay, onto ROTJ Fett.
If you just allow for the possibility that he would prefer to take Luke alive, all of those points you bring up get resolved. You're looking for ways that it was incompetence, rather than taking the lasso use and extrapolating that to the character's benefit. I can't explain why, but I've always gone with a more positive view of it.
Okay first off my intentions here are to help you understand why BOBF was cool (
), not to try and make you hate ROTJ
,) but I have to ask, how do you come to the conclusion that Fett's intentions in flying over to the skiff was to put himself in great danger so that he could potentially capture Luke when the very
first thing he did upon landing was point his massive blaster rifle at Luke's
face until Luke chopped it in half?
(You know looking at the scene from this angle I never realized that Dickey Beer (Bulloch's stuntman) actually looked a little thicc like TM there, lol.)
But my actual point was that it was only after Luke destroyed his blaster that he started improvising and shooting different things (lasso, wrist blaster) at him.
Whether it was for a bigger payday from Vader or Jabba doesn't matter, but the lasso allows me the interpretation that he was more interested in taking Luke alive than killing him. Deliberately choosing a wrangling method rather than flamethrower, darts, rocket, or any other lethal means at his disposal can either be perceived as incompetent *or* purposeful. I choose purposeful.
With that in mind, the lasso requires close range. I doubt that the damn thing could be used accurately from more than a few feet away (how much cable could possibly be coiled in there?
). And if Boba was projecting a huge reward for wrangling Luke alive, he had no time for optimal circumstances and risk Luke either escaping or getting shot by tons of Jabba goons.
You know I don't have any problem with rationalizations like this, however you want to see it to make the scene cool for you is fine by me!
I'm just surprised that you're totally capable of rationalizing that a guy who easily could have fired his blaster from the safety of the barge but instead decided that he'd fly right up to Luke to point it at his face had somehow planned to capture him from the beginning while dismissing my take on BOBF as not being any way in line with the story that was presented.
You say that his actions at the Sarlacc can be interpreted as incompetent or purposeful and you choose purposeful while I can easily see his less than direct methods in the first few episodes of BOBF as also being purposeful, or more specifically the result of him realizing that the end result of his entire life doing what he was bred to do, following in his father's footsteps and others in his father's profession, was to be ignored and abandoned and left for dead in the belly of the Sarlacc. He lived the bounty hunter's life from birth to death and was not going to go down that road ever again. Since his new path was uncharted waters with no real mentors to guide him he was on his own and repeatedly erred on the side of being less than effective in certain moments as long as it meant that he didn't cross that line. And I'm not just making this stuff up out of thin air I'm literally going by his own stated motivations and desired methods.
Yes they leaned into the "guy out of his element" pretty hard on multiple occasions to the point of comedy which obviously turned lots of people off but I still think his journey was sound, his arc was compelling, and at the end became an incredibly rare character in Star Wars (possibly even unique??) in that he alone took the initiative to simply evaluate his own life and past choices and decided that he was going to do things differently in order to benefit both himself and
others like him.
And yes the "others like him," if you're open to any of his desired motivations being cool at all, actually allows characters like the Mods and even depressed Rancor, silly at first glance, to fall into place. The Mods were kids that became criminals who preyed on others because they saw no other option. Fett, plagued by dreams of being a kid who had no guidance because his dad was always jetting off from Kamino until he got killed on Geonosis (both scenarios repeatedly shown in flashback on this show) saw kids going down a similar road as him so he stepped in and gave them a different option.
The Rancor, also young, was again much like him in the sense that it was bred to destroy at the whim and pleasure of its owners until it would one day fall in combat, discarded and alone. Once again he said no, I'm going to give it a chance for something else that no one gave me. Now this is still Boba Fett we're talking about, so he's not domesticating anyone away from combat obviously but as he said to Fennec he's offering them a "tribe" to fight
with, brothers and sisters in arms who will be there both in and out of combat.
Below you mention him coming to Krrsantan's aid in the final battle and that's
exactly what I'm talking about. If you notice he's coming to people's rescue left and right in that final battle. He rushes out into the open (with his teammates covering him) to rescue Santo, several times he pushes Mando out of the way of the Scorponek Droids' fire, he saves Mando again with the Rancor when the damaged droid was about to crush him, then he and the Rancor blast through the wall next to the pinned down Mods and people of Free Town to save
them. What an awesome counterpoint to the Sarlacc battle where even though all of Jabba's goons had common enemies
none of them were actually helping each other. They were even prone to laughing when their brothers died horrible deaths as we saw several scenes earlier when the Gammy fell into the Rancor pit.
And that was the life and community that Fett no longer wanted any part of, and he wanted to throw a lifeline to anyone else who was in that life and also wanted out. Almost all of what I initially took as silliness (letting people mouth off to him, lowering his guard to win trust, offering people jobs) suddenly makes complete sense to me now and is totally in line with what I consider to be a really cool arc. Yes they could have refrained from having some of those now classic moments played at his expense but at the end of the day the fact that he stayed the course on his newly chosen path ended up with him saving
all of his allies (Fennec, Mando, Mods, Free Town warriors)
and a number of people who were initially against him (Krrsantan, Mayor's Aid.)
And he did it in ways that nobody thought he could. Trejo was all "huh, what, you want to ride that thing?" Fennec and Mando were certain that facing the Pyke army head on was suicide, Fennec told him point blank that the Hutt method of ruling by fear was traditionally the easier route.
And on
that note (I don't know who's still reading this but here goes, lol) they also gave Fett a really cool spiritual journey that was not completely unalike that of a Jedi. Fennec recommending that he rule by fear as I just mentioned, the quick and easy path that was NOT stronger than patiently and less aggressively winning
loyal allies through respect and sacrifice. I think it's kind of awesome how they gave us a version of fear leading to suffering, death and destruction that was
not centered around learning to use the Force. By doing that it showed how even non-Force users must learn to pass similar tests as the Jedi with similar results. Heck he even had "go on a quest to find your lightsaber" moment with the tree and the gaffi.
I'm honestly pretty shocked that this show and this version of the character is being so summarily dismissed just because of a few moments in those first four episodes that were admittedly sillier than what we were all expecting for the super menacing dude that was introduced in ESB. Yeah the rocket blast to the shield was dumb, "like a bantha" became an instant meme, the door button pushing, kitchen chasing and Sarlacc crashing. Like I said I'm still not sure what they were going for with the rocket blast, like a bantha was him trying to connect with and train his former captors, locked door was him choosing not to vandalize the mayor's office by blasting the door or destroying the lock, kitchen antics were him showing mercy to a droid just doing its job, Sarlacc pit was him just not in his right mind as he apparently thought that his armor was in there and that he had possibly killed it when he burned a hole through its side.
I'm not saying that those weren't silly moments by any means but they were definitely entertaining for all of us for weeks on end.
And they were all just stepping stone moments to him becoming the super badass who has his fellow warriors' backs while steering a Rancor one-handed as he fires a two-handed heavy blaster
also one-handed
yess
and gets the best of guys like Cad Bane.
I know that there are a lot of people here who just mock and insult anyone who likes something that they don't because that's what people do on the internet. But I hope that my longwinded take didn't completely fall on deaf ears for guys like you (ajp) and jye, a-dev, etc., and anyone else who actually respects what I have to say.
Again I'm not trying to challenge you or prove you wrong or myself right. I just hope that maybe you can consider your own take of Fett's performance at the Sarlacc Pit in ROTJ and maybe see that my view of his character in BOBF has some validity too, even if you still disagree in the end.
That explains the proximity to Luke and his saber. Fett's armor adds to the rationale for being willing to put himself in the line of fire (your boy in the BoBF did the same thing to rescue Krrsantan because he knew his armor could take it, right?
) And the wrist laser was so off, that I honestly don't know if the intent was that he was aiming for the lightsaber blade.
Just remember that if this justifying seems ridiculous (I concede how it easily would), I only need to do it for *one* sequence in ROTJ. You have to do it for 5 full episodes of BoBF.
Boba's bad fortune in ROTJ is not what bothers me; what bothers me is the aesthetic execution of it.
I hear you, thanks for elaborating on that.
) Boba Fett stumped by a locked door (and his incompetence in general). The old Lucasfilm actually took the time to define those blades in the calf pockets of his flight suit being for the purpose of bypassing locked doors. Because a bounty hunter *would* encounter doors getting locked. Boba should know how to recognize a locked door, and also know that you don't open one by repeatedly pressing the red button which is telling him that the door is locked. Just imagine if that's how locks in the SW galaxy worked. 
