S01.E02: Chapter Two - The Tribes of Tatooine

[Kirbyrun]

OK, I realize that this may seem iffy, but...

Am I the only one who wonders if the payoff to Boba's adventures in the past will end with him killing all of the Tuskens?

Think about it: They ENSLAVED him! They changed their minds, sure, but they enslaved him! I don't know that I could forgive that.

It would also put to rest the white savior narratives mentioned above.

And it would maintain the character's reputation and be one hell of a twist.

Anyway...

[Guest]

10 hours ago, revbfc said:

How come all the Twi’leks have human teeth now?  They’re supposed to have pointy teeth all around, aren’t they?

It’s a budget issue, isn’t it?

It’s not a budget issue. All the way back to the original trilogy there were Twi’leks who didn’t have pointed teeth. According to wookiepedia the pointed teeth aren’t natural and is generally a male thing. 

Edited January 11, 2022 by Guest

[North of Eden]

20 hours ago, arc said:

I read somewhere that those two are a deep cut reference to old SW lore. I think a deleted scene from A New Hope or something. So they might not mean anything more. (Aside from the way the franchise under Disney has a regrettable habit of digging up tiny small things and blowing them up into full movies rather than make something new, anyways.)

Nice catch. Thanks for the info. Impressive dipping back 45 years to the original movie.

11 hours ago, Morrigan2575 said:

Yeah, I read on Twitter they're Luke's friends from ANH (Camie and Fixer) oh and that was Tosche Station. Haha! I'm going to have to rewatch now because I feel like a failure as a Star Wars fan. 😂

Hah, that's great. I wonder if Boba Fett picked up any power converters while at Toschei station!

Edited January 12, 2022 by North of Eden

[johntfs]

4 hours ago, Kirbyrun said:

OK, I realize that this may seem iffy, but...

Am I the only one who wonders if the payoff to Boba's adventures in the past will end with him killing all of the Tuskens?

Think about it: They ENSLAVED him! They changed their minds, sure, but they enslaved him! I don't know that I could forgive that.

It would also put to rest the white savior narratives mentioned above.

And it would maintain the character's reputation and be one hell of a twist.

Anyway...

To what end?  The truth is that I think Boba already has killed all the Tuskens - most of them, anyway.  He killed them with the train robbery.

There's a quote from Leigh Bardugo's The Ninth House which is appropriate hear, I think:

Quote

Alex knew it was probably a mistake. Better not to be noticed, remain the quiet girl, in over her head but no threat to anyone. But, like most mistakes, it felt good.

See, for all the talk about Boba being a "White Savior" he hasn't really saved anyone.  If anything his arrogance on behalf of his adopted culture has put it in hideous danger.

Before the Tusken tribe was seen as, at most, an annoyance.  The people on the train took potshots at the Sand People to give a clear warning to stay away from the train.  Well, not only has the train been robbed and destroyed, Boba even presumes to dictate "protection terms" to the syndicate running it to get tribute for the Sand Tribe.

They might pay once or twice, but they'll been investing whatever profits they get from those trips into some kind of heavily armed mercenaries (and five years after a Galactic Civil War, there'll be plenty of those) to go into the desert and wipe that Tusken tribe out to the last child.

So no, Boba isn't going to be the Tuskens' White Savior.  He's more likely to end up as their Accidental "White" Destroyer.

[paigow]

A lot of Tuskens are still alive when Mando showed up "a few months ago" which is well after the train robbery. That tribe might have been wiped out, but the Pikes gain nothing by launching a planetary genocide campaign.

Edited January 12, 2022 by paigow

[Guest]

2 hours ago, johntfs said:

See, for all the talk about Boba being a "White Savior" he hasn't really saved anyone.  If anything his arrogance on behalf of his adopted culture has put it in hideous danger.

Considering that the history of the white savior complex actually saving the “primitive people” or being beneficial is not a necessary component. If anything the lead actually doing more harm than good but still being portrayed as the hero makes it more of an example of the trope. 

2 hours ago, johntfs said:

To what end?  The truth is that I think Boba already has killed all the Tuskens - most of them, anyway.  He killed them with the train robbery.

I doubt they’d go there but Boba deliberately harming them under the guise of being helpful would actually be a subversion of the white savior trope. 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Guest

[johntfs]

57 minutes ago, Dani said:

Considering that the history of the white savior complex actually saving the “primitive people” or being beneficial is not a necessary component. If anything the lead actually doing more harm than good but still being portrayed as the hero makes it more of an example of the trope. 

I doubt they’d go there but Boba deliberately harming them under the guise of being helpful would actually be a subversion of the white savior trope. 

He's being portrayed as the hero now, but I think it's a much more interesting subversion of the White Savior trope if his "salvation" backfires and gets most of the tribe killed.  Him deliberately killing the tribe for "reasons" would be shocking... for about three seconds.  And then a lot of people would drop the show because they don't want to watch a murdering asshole be the main character.

[Guest]

22 hours ago, johntfs said:

He's being portrayed as the hero now, but I think it's a much more interesting subversion of the White Savior trope if his "salvation" backfires and gets most of the tribe killed.  Him deliberately killing the tribe for "reasons" would be shocking... for about three seconds.  And then a lot of people would drop the show because they don't want to watch a murdering asshole be the main character.

I agree. Plus him outright killing them would just be a retread of Anakin’s actions. Him unintentionally causing to them being destroyed and dealing with the consequences would be a more interesting subversion in the trope.

Also it’s an interesting contrast with Mando’s interactions with Tuskens.

On 1/6/2022 at 11:17 PM, arc said:

I know Temuera Morrison is mixed race, but in the context of Star Wars, which kind of maps human racial divisions to all humans being white-coded compared to Tuskens, Gungans, etc, this episode's flashback was still extremely a white savior story. (Esp after the Tuskens gave him a vision lizard drug trip.) So yes, Dances with Wolves or Lawrence of Arabia. I didn't like that vibe at all.

Personally I think it’s too early to consider this to be a white savior story. Particularly when you consider how the Mandalorian dealt with the Tuskens. That episode went along way to giving the Tuskens a more nuanced portrayal so I have hope that the trope isn’t being played straight. The narrative structure of the show also supports that belief for me, in that, it feels like the flashbacks are building towards something more than just Dances with Wolves in space. 

[arc]

(I don't think speculation needs to be spoilered)

On 1/8/2022 at 8:46 PM, johntfs said:

I think something happened to trigger his desire to "become a crime lord."  Something tragic.  He was in a position to see Din take the armor from Cobb, which indicates that he was there to get it himself.  And once he got it he and Fennac returned to Tatooine.

Consider as well what happened in this episode.  He and his tribe destroyed a valuable vehicle belonging to a crime syndicate, took or destroyed it's valuable cargo and humiliated the syndicate's representatives.  I think that there will very likely be some bad repercussions from that.

That definitely could explain his bounty hunter to crime lord arc but if anything, it undermines how comically naïve Boba Fett has been as a wannabe crime lord. He let the mayor's majordomo talk smack to him, he got set upon by expensive (albeit overpriced) assassins, he has made no moves to consolidate his supposed crime empire that consists of three henchmen (Fennec and the Gamorreans) and a droid of uncertain usefulness yet starts walking Mos Espa to collect the tributes he thinks he's owed... If he did all this after a tragic fuckup in the past, that'd be just awful.

(almost as awful as getting a feared bounty hunter with a ton of gadgets getting booped by accident into the sarlacc's pit! It can never be overstated how OG trilogy Boba Fett went out like a punk.)

[Kirbyrun]

14 hours ago, johntfs said:

And then a lot of people would drop the show because they don't want to watch a murdering asshole be the main character.

Depends on the end goal of the show. If it's to turn him into a credible villain for the franchise, then we're talking one season of BoBF and then he's the bad guy in other shows/movies. 🤷‍♂️

ETA: But for the record, I agree with you that whether by his hand or by his decisions, he's killed all of those Tuskens.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Kirbyrun
Hit publish too soon!

[paigow]

1 hour ago, Kirbyrun said:

Depends on the end goal of the show. If it's to turn him into a credible villain for the franchise, then we're talking one season of BoBF and then he's the bad guy in other shows/movies. 🤷‍♂️

ETA: But for the record, I agree with you that whether by his hand or by his decisions, he's killed all of those Tuskens.

The spice trains were killing Banthas and  warriors before Boba showed up. Blaming him for choosing to escalate hostilities in a Kobayashi Maru situation is illogical.

[Ottis]

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 QUOTE

The flashbacks with the Tusken Raiders are giving me some of major "Dances with Wolves" vibes with the whole "outsider integrates himself with the local tribe and learns their customs" scenario

 

Actually, Fett is pretty much Dune, with a tiny bit of Lawrence of Arabia, except there is no point to any of it because nothing any of them are doing stands for anything.

This show is excruciatingly bad, unless you are 10 years old. There is no logic to the plot, nor to things like physics (good luck walking on a  train moving that quickly) or even consistency (so if Fett put the lizard up his nose, lizard is a poor choice BTW should have been something smaller because honestly the lizard would have damaged him, while he was with those raiders, where did they, or he, go that the next day it looks like he has been wandering in from the desert? And that train had to have gone 30 miles during the poorly planned heist, how were the Raiders on site when it crashed?). 

The show is on Tattoine (again), with more of the species SW has shown before (again) including a poor man's version of Max Headroom as the "mayor's" secretary, with the Rancor (again). No originality. Fett without his helmet looks like someone political, what with the teeth all the time. They should have made his #2 Fett, she is far more convincing. And as soon as he got the speeder bikes and brought them back to the camp, I said "let the hilarity ensue!" And of course it did, because this show is predictable. BTW, isn't Fett a bounty hunter, with "certain skills?" because he seems more like a newbie.

Is this going anywhere? If this is intended to fill in white space around Fett, OK, well, guess so. Did anyone want this? Watching a dude wander around Tattoine?

If this were set at the origin of Boba Fett, I would get it. Or if Fett were training an apprentice, I would get it, mostly. But this is just a bizarre peek into one guy's experience for a few weeks that honestly isn't very interesting.

Quote

 

  QUOTE

When they mentioned the twins, for half a second, I thought Luke and Leia were going to show up. 

 

What show just had that scenerio, where human male and female twins from Italy showed up to take over? Was that the Sopranos movie? The twins were very stylish and the woman loses her cool. Anyway, even that has been done.

 

[WatchrTina]

Pausing in my re-watch to come here and say that the scene when the raiders waste all that water (that they had just captured from the raided train) made me crazy . . . at first.  Then it made me think of the book/movie "Dune" where the ritual of "wasting" water is a power move that demonstrates the wealth of the person pouring it out on the ground.  Then I realized that Tuskan Raiders have no use for a tank car full of water.  What would they do with it?  They might fill up a few containers as spoils from the raid, but they have adapted to living off the moisture that they can harvest from the sands.  As such, to them the tank car full of water is not "riches" -- it is proof that the people who run the train do not belong in the Raiders' desert lands.

On 1/7/2022 at 12:41 PM, arc said:

I'm just struck at the sheer impracticality of wearing heavy black robes in a punishingly hot desert environment.

I'm aware that Bedouins wear black in the Arabian desert so I did a Google search asking why that it is and it came back with this:

"Abstract : The amount of heat gained by a Bedouin exposed to desert heat is the same whether he or she wears a black robe or a white one. The additional heat absorbed by the black robe is lost before it reaches the skin and drives convection under the black robe, making it more comfortable than a white robe."

Quote

The people on the train took potshots at the Sand People to give a clear warning to stay away from the train. 

Hmmmm.  I think it is interesting that you think the shots fired at the Sand People were to warn them away.  My initial reaction was that people on the train shot at sand people in the same way that westward-bound white settlers shot at buffalo from the train during their journey.  Those buffalo "hunters" didn't do it to eat or even to harvest the skins. (The trains didn't stop.)  The passengers just enjoyed killing things as a means of breaking up the monotony of the very long train ride.  So the shooting of the Sand People by the people on the train made me think first of THAT parallel.  It would be interesting to know which came first -- raids by the Sand People on the trains or people on the train shooting at the Sand People?

Edited January 14, 2022 by WatchrTina

[johntfs]

On 1/12/2022 at 12:22 AM, Dani said:

I agree. Plus him outright killing them would just be a retread of Anakin’s actions. Him unintentionally causing to them being destroyed and dealing with the consequences would be a more interesting subversion in the trope.

 

I love-hate the aftermath of that scene.

Anakin: I killed them.  Men, women, even children.  I killed them all.

Padme: Oh, Anni, wanton genocide makes me soooooo hot for you!

[Starry-Eyed]

On 1/13/2022 at 4:21 PM, WatchrTina said:

Hmmmm.  I think it is interesting that you think the shots fired at the Sand People were to warn them away.  My initial reaction was that people on the train shot at sand people in the same way that westward-bound white settlers shot at buffalo from the train during their journey.  Those buffalo "hunters" didn't do it to eat or even to harvest the skins. (The trains didn't stop.)  The passengers just enjoyed killing things as a means of breaking up the monotony of the very long train ride.  So the shooting of the Sand People by the people on the train made me think first of THAT parallel.  It would be interesting to know which came first -- raids by the Sand People on the trains or people on the train shooting at the Sand People?

That was EXACTLY what I assumed they were referencing when I first saw the scene.

[Kirbyrun]

On 1/12/2022 at 4:14 PM, paigow said:

The spice trains were killing Banthas and  warriors before Boba showed up. Blaming him for choosing to escalate hostilities in a Kobayashi Maru situation is illogical.

I think my statement is a little more nuanced than that outright blaming him (

Spoiler

especially given what we’ve seen in Epi 3 now

), but YMMV of course.

[johntfs]

On 1/12/2022 at 3:14 PM, paigow said:

The spice trains were killing Banthas and  warriors before Boba showed up. Blaming him for choosing to escalate hostilities in a Kobayashi Maru situation is illogical.

I don't know how Kobayashi Maru the situation was.  "No win" situations kind of depend your definition of "win."  If that definition is "prevent the train from costing the Sand People more lives and livestock" then I think the situation is quite winnable.  That win can best be achieved by "white savior" Boba Fett leaning into his "whiteness."  Basically, Boba could've gone into town, dug around a little and learned the train's route and schedule, then come back and share that information with the others in the tribe so they can stay out of its vicinity.

The problem with escalating hostilities is if the other side is stronger than you and decides to escalate right back.

Edited January 24, 2022 by johntfs

[paigow]

42 minutes ago, johntfs said:

I don't know how Kobayashi Maru the situation was.  "No win" situations kind of depend your definition of "win."  If that definition is "prevent the train from costing the Sand People more lives and livestock" then I think the situation is quite winnable.  That win can best be achieved by "white savior" Boba Fett leaning into his "whiteness."  Basically, Boba could've gone into town, dug around a little and learned the train's route and schedule, then come back and share that information with the others in the tribe so they can stay out of its vicinity.

The problem with escalating hostilities is if the other side is stronger than you and decides to escalate right back.

Kobayashi Maru scenario eliminates retreat / evasion as an option. So the Tuskens could fight a hopeless war of attrition or try changing the parameters...

[arc]

3 hours ago, paigow said:

Kobayashi Maru scenario eliminates retreat / evasion as an option.

Don't think that applies here. The train's main purpose is unrelated to the Tuskens. If the Tuskens retreat or evaded, it's not like the train would change course to find them.

(Besides it being a space western, why was it a train at all? Just fly your stuff in a spaceship like everyone else!)

[paigow]

25 minutes ago, arc said:

Don't think that applies here. The train's main purpose is unrelated to the Tuskens. If the Tuskens retreat or evaded, it's not like the train would change course to find them.

The point being that these Tuskens refused to be displaced from their land.

[johntfs]

9 hours ago, paigow said:

The point being that these Tuskens refused to be displaced from their land.

Which kind of eliminates the Kobayashi Maru aspect since the lack of evasion/retreat was their choice.  Even so, Boba had a bit of influence with them by then.  He could have gotten them to avoid the train that they couldn't catch or harm to preserve their lives.  But he wanted a glorious victory for them and himself.  Pearl Harbor was a glorious victory for the Japanese, but it cost them quite a bit in the end.

[paigow]

10 hours ago, johntfs said:

Which kind of eliminates the Kobayashi Maru aspect since the lack of evasion/retreat was their choice.  Even so, Boba had a bit of influence with them by then.  He could have gotten them to avoid the train that they couldn't catch or harm to preserve their lives.  But he wanted a glorious victory for them and himself.  Pearl Harbor was a glorious victory for the Japanese, but it cost them quite a bit in the end.

Boba is not motivated by vanity. His adoptive family refuses to retreat. So he can watch them slowly be exterminated or try a desperate action that might save them. Revenge and survival, not glory, drive his plan.

 

 

[Camera One]

I found it a little harder to hold my attention with this episode.  There were still some interesting elements of his training and earning his place in the tribe, but it dragged on a bit too long.  Boba also isn't as interesting as a character.  

The present-day plot wasn't much better since I still don't understand why he wants to be the crime lord, so it's hard to care about all the threats to his position.

Nevertheless, the show is well produced, so I'm going to stick with it.