Boba Fett is Overrated. There, I said it.

Growing up in a clearly original-trilogy loving Star Wars world, one of the most beloved characters of the era is clearly the Mandalorian bounty hunter, Boba Fett. Having just about 15 minutes of screen time in the feature films, what was a glorified background character spawned into a fan favorite. He was featured in early Star Wars cartoons, video games, and Christmas specials; he sold like hot pockets as action figures and coloring books; his design alone has been the hallmark for the intergalactic bounty hunter standard of coolness. And he didn't do a single thing to earn such a love. He simply existed.

Now, that's obviously an oversimplification. Boba Fett was sent out, on the payroll of Darth Vader, to find the Millennium Falcon and its passengers, and return to Vader with said prizes. Furthermore, by the time he delivered Han Solo to Jabba the Hutt, he served as a bounty hunter on permanent guard for the slug-like crime boss; Fett enjoyed the comfort and simplicity of a revered bounty hunter's lifestyle within the Tatooine palace. And after arriving to the Sarlacc Pit, Fett did his best to contain the escalating situation the Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker had begun. This was all to end in vain, however: taken out by the prize he had caught not two years ago, Boba Fett plunged into the belly of the thousand-year old desert monster. And as far as my canonical knowledge goes, that's where he remains to this day.

But put into context that short description of a character's achievements within two separate films, and it's kind of surprising that Boba Fett is as beloved as he is. He certainly looks cool: decked from head-to-toe in a dark green set of armor, equipped with a flamethrower, a grapple, several wrist-dart guns, a jet-pack, and a rocket-pack, and one begins to envision the kind of skills someone like a Boba Fett would need to have in order to effectively utilize each and every one of these tools.But he had, in the movies, never even really used any of his various gadgets. He used the flamethrower maybe once, his dart/rope launcher maybe once, all within the time span of appearing on-screen for no longer than 20 minutes; at least, as the version everyone likes him.

Now, no one hates Star Wars: Attack of the Clones more than me, but the interesting aspects of the movie (like those surrounding the Obi-Wan journey) introduce us to Boba Fett as a child, and his origins. We see how his mind was warped to be someone so soulless, we understand the beginnings of his trailblazing schemes to make his name in the universe. The animated series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars featured several story arcs that show a young Boba in action even more, and we get an understanding of the friends Boba had to make in order to survive the criminal underbelly of the Star Wars universe. Without these cornerstones to the Boba Fett character, he's just a masked bounty hunter. In theory, that's a really cool character idea; in reality, it doesn't mean he deserves the praise that he gets.

I'm not here to tell you that you shouldn't like Boba Fett, or the mystique that the character had before the new age of Star Wars content. I'm sure it definitely seems like that, but I'm not. I understand that a lot of kids of the early Star Wars era projected what they wanted on the unexplained, on the undefined. All I'm saying is that you have to consider what good has been given thanks to the new additions. We've got a more grounded, more relatable, much cooler character in Boba Fett than we did 30 years ago. At least, that's what I think.