The Mandalorian is, by far, the most well received Star Wars production during Disney’s ownership. At least by the fans. While the sequel films The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and Solo most likely grossed more money due to box office sales, they were all met with mixed reactions in some form or another by both critics and the large fanbase.

Rogue One was met with smaller sales than The Force Awakens (grossing 1.056 billion, while The Force Awakens made over 2 billion) but, in my and many other fans’ opinion, was the better movie. The Force Awakens relied heavily on nostalgia, with Rey basically being a much less efficient Luke Skywalker, while Rouge One introduced new characters with an unfamiliar storyline, even if the event was mentioned in A New Hope. However, Rogue One had the problem most prequels do- it’s storyline ended with Rogue One. It was a prequel, and the rest of it’s story was told in A New Hope.

Meanwhile, The Mandalorian was instantly loved for its simple, charming story of “Baby Yoda ” and his pseudo-parent, the Mandalorian, a.k.a. Din Djarin. The Mandalorian had much lower stakes than even Rogue One did, working solely in it’s own little bubble of the new planet Nevarro, Tatooine, Djarin’s ship the Razor Crest, and several other locations visited throughout the two seasons, without the galaxy depending on the cast like the movies did. S\

The Mandalorian has a review score of 8.8 on IMDB, and a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Book of Boba Fett received an IMDB score of 7.6, and a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes. Reviews may not be the end all be all of a movie’s worth, but I actually agree with these scores. The Mandalorian deserved it’s high score, with a plotline that was easy to follow, charismatic main characters, and a captivating familial relationship taking center stage. In The Book of Boba Fett, the plot is a little unoriginal, introduced characters with little consequence, and had no compelling relationships other than the one between the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda, which is only a detriment to a series supposed to be about Boba Fett. So, where did The Book of Boba Fett, a spin-off of The Mandalorian, go wrong?

In my opinion, the biggest problem with this series was the characters. Where the plotline was a little iffy but generally alright, a large number of characters were inconsequential and made no impact on the series. The biggest example of this were the newly introduced “Mods”, a group of teenage gunfighters with colorful prosthetics. They’re an interesting idea, but they’re not developed and feel very stale. There’s little background to them and only two of them have any lines. They’re also very one note, there’s no emotions from them other than anger, and even that isn’t executed well.

There was also the Tusken Raiders, who were very interesting as they had already been introduced, but hadn’t been expanded upon before. We spent three relatively slow episodes getting to know them and for the most part it worked. I liked the Raiders. They had a completely different culture from the rest of the characters on Tatooine- the show explained that they had been on Tatooine first, back when the desert planet had water. Now they lived away from the rest of civilization, demonized as they could not communicate with the newcomers to their planet. They were pretty well developed and there were a couple distinct characters we got to know. And only for them to be killed offscreen after three episodes. They were replaced with the Mods, who were not nearly as interesting or developed.

There was also a problem with cinematography. Most noticeably in the episodes directed by Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Alita: Battle Angel) where there’s an excessive amount of slow-mo and weird action scenes. In one of them, there’s a car chase using speeders, but the speeders are slow and clunky and it just makes the whole scene dull. The chase is also anti-climactic, as the big reveal we expected at the end just. Doesn’t happen. A boring end for a boring chase. And the combat action is so overly injected with slow-mo that you can’t take it seriously. Where was the cool Boba Fett from The Mandalorian?

Also, I lied. The biggest problem of this series was calling it The Book of Boba Fett when  for two episodes we saw zero Boba Fett and they were the best episodes of the series. The biggest pitfall of this series was failing to make The Book of Boba Fett about Boba Fett. When the story did focus on Boba Fett, it only gave any emotion through flashbacks. While in the present, his motives were unclear and shaky at best. The flashbacks could have been a great way to explain why he was so closed off in the present, but the reasoning behind it is less like a chapter in The Book of Boba Fett and more of a footnote.

To conclude, The Book of Boba Fett had all the material to be a great series. It came from Jon Favreau, the writer of The Mandalorian, which is a great show. It featured a fan favorite character with plenty of interesting backstory to build upon. It had a huge budget and the backing of an enormous studio. But the writers must’ve just not been interested because they went right back to writing The Mandalorian halfway through and those were the best episodes of the series. The Book of Boba Fett is disappointing at best, and lazy at worst. I rate it a 5/10 only because the Mando episodes were great.