Strip away all the supplementary material, and judging him exclusively on the movies, I must say Boba Fett is amongst the most overrated characters in Star Wars.
The only thing he has going for him is the undeniably cool looking suit of armour. Apart from that he does absolutely nothing noteworthy, and in TESB they only call him “bounty hunter”, just to show how little Lucas thought about him.
I sincerely don’t understand why he’s so popular with fans as he’s pretty much a nothing character.
I agree, completely. I never really gave Boba Fett much thought when I watched the movies when I was a kid. When I discovered Star Wars fan websites around 1997, I was kind of shocked to find out that he had this massive following.
I understand this view, but I feel like it misses some critical things.
One is the marketing. Boba Fett was introduced multiple times to the public as the “cool new character in the upcoming Star Wars sequel!”. He was in a parade with Darth Vader. He was in the best part of the Holiday Special. He was this exciting mail away figure that was SUPPOSED to have a firing rocket pack. He was cool, new, mysterious, and exciting.
Second, he DOES do some cool stuff in ESB. He actually talks back to Darth Vader. Twice! And he gets away with it! All while imperial officers are dropping like flies for the slightest infractions throughout the movie. Plus he sees through Solo’s trick. He looks AWESOME. He even SOUNDS awesome (adding the spur sound effects to his walk was a stroke of genius). He’s this intimidating, mysterious “Clint Eastwood/man with no name” “strong silent type” guy in a cool armor suit who does a super cool job (bounty hunting) and even has to get singled out by the big man himself to be explicitly warned not to disintegrate his target!
Oh, and he has a flipping jet pack!
Of course he resonated with little nerds around the globe and developed a fan base. He was specifically engineered to do exactly that!