Just Who is Boba Fett?
by Andy Mangles, from Star Wars: Boba Fett (pages 4-8)

      He’s the most notorious bounty hunter in the galaxy… but just how much do we know about the man and his mysterious past?

      His past is a mystery, cloaked in legends and stories. His face is unseen, hidden behind the helmet of a long-dead race of warriors. His armor carries scars of past battles, while his weaponry hints to the elements of his survival. And yet, for all his mystery, for all the rumors, for all that is not known, one fact is clear: Boba Fett is the best bounty hunter in the galaxy.

      The man who would become Boba Fett apparently was once a Journeyman Protector named Jaster Mereel, who kept the law on the world of Concord Dawn. Stripped of all he owned for killing a corrupt fellow Protector, Mereel disappeared into the galaxy. Years later, Mereel would reemerge, wearing the armor of an elite group of warriors known as the Mandalorian supercommandos, and calling himself Boba Fett. Some said that Fett had joined the Empire in the interim, becoming one of its faceless stormtroopers, while others had tales of Fett’s past which were equally unprovable.

      What is clear fact is that Boba Fett is dangerous, and extremely good at the art of the hunt. Following the Clone Wars, Fett worked as a mercenary, a soldier, a personal guard, an assassin, and most frequently, as a bounty hunter... the most expensive bounty hunter in the known systems. His ellipsoid ship, Slave I, became as feared on the space ways as any pirate ship, while his visored helmet hid any trace of emotion when the hunter finally stood triumphantly with his prey.

      The modifications Boba Fett has engineered into his Mandalorian armor make it more dangerous than even its original builders had intended. The helmet houses a macrobinocular viewplate, motion and sound sensors, infared capabilities, an internal comlink with his ship and a broadband antenna for intercepting and decoding transmissions; wrist gauntlets house lasers, a miniature flame projector and a fibercord whip/grappling device; a back-pack jet pack, includes a turbo-projected magnetic grappling hook with a 20-meter lanyard; knee-pad rocket dart launchers, spiked boots, a concussion grenade launcher and a BlasTech EE-3 rifle complete the armor. Braided Wookiee scalps hang over his right shoulder, while a tattered cloak, perhaps a momento from some past hunt, hangs from his left shoulder.

      Boba Fett has often been employed by the notorious Hutts and their criminal clan leaders, such as Jabba and Gorga. During the time of the Galactic Empire, he regurally took bounties for the Imperials, making himself equally the scourge of criminals and of the Rebel Alliance, many of whose members he captured... or attempted to capture.

      One of Boba Fett’s most frustrating targets was a Corellian smuggler, Han Solo, who has crossed Fett’s path several times before becoming a hero of the Rebellion. Working for both Lord Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt, Fett was able to track down and capture Solo, bringing him frozen in a block of carbonite to Jabba’s Tatooine palace. When Solo’s friends made a daring rescue to free their frozen compatriot, Boba Fett met a seemingly unfortunate end in the belly of the Sarlacc in the Great Pit of Carkoon.

      Boba Fett eventually freed himself from the Sarlacc pit and resumed his notorious bounty hunting career, sometimes working with fellow hunter Dengar. Fett’s reputation is undimmed by his failures to capture Han Solo, whom he has encountered many times in the years since Solo’s escape from Jabba. There are many bounties in the galaxy, and every one of them hopes they will never become the hunted prey of Boba Fett.

EARLY DEVELOPMENT

      The Star Wars trilogy has dozens of memorable characters, but few have sparked as intense a fan interest as has Boba Fett. Some of that popularity can be traced to his origins. The collaborative efforts of creative teams from Lucasfilm, Kenner Toys and animation studio Nelvana all created an early phenomenon for the bounty hunter.

      Boba Fett’s deadly look came from Ralph McQuarrie and Joe Johnston, who designed the Fett armor at ILM in California. Originally, Fett’s heavily armored gear was intended to be worn by squads of supercommandos from the Mandalore system. However, it was decided that Boba Fett would be the only character in the weapon-laden suit. Johnston, who created the final design for the character, kept the armor symmetrical, but painted the pieces in such a way that they appeared to be scavenged from several uniforms. It was important to Johnston that the armor be aged and dented, as well as personalized with the braided Wookiee scalps and other trophies.

      Boba Fett made his first appearance in the "Star Wars Holiday Special," a two- hour TV program that aired on CBS in 1978. Fett’s appearance on the special was in a cartoon adventure, animated by Nelvana. The following spring of 1979, Kenner Toys offered fans a chance to get a mail-order action figure of the new Star Wars villain. Fans, wondering who this new bounty hunter was and what his connections were to the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance, would have to wait until May 1980, when Fett appeared on the big screen in The Empire Strikes Back.

      Well, not every fan had to wait that long. Sound designer Ben Burtt reveals that Fett made his first live-action appearance earlier than Empire. According to Burtt, the effects people brought him the costume and asked him to build in a sound effect for personal appearances and such. Burtt designed a "pinging telemetry device sound," which would be the signature sound whenever Fett was in the scene. The sound was mixed in to both films, "but usually it was lost in the music and other sounds," says Burtt, adding that it is most audible in the Empire scene in which Fett is in Slave I pursuing the Millennium Falcon through garbage, and at the end of the new Jabba scene in the Star Wars Special Edition.

      The sound that was built into the suit was first heard by fans at the 1979 San Anselmo Country Day Parade, where Darth Vader and Boba Fett made celebrity appearances. Burtt, who attended the parade, recalls that the uniform was all white then, instead of the grey-green camouflage look it took on later!

      Boba Fett’s armor evolution didn’t end with Empire. For Return of the Jedi, designers created some new armor pieces for him, showing that Fett was resourceful when it came to weaponry. The main difference in the Jedi costume is in the wrist gauntlets, which had been changed from dull green to red and orange, and which were shaped differently to accommodate the fibercord/whip grappling device that Fett used against Luke Skywalker on the skiff.

BOBA FETT UNMASKED

      Want to know what Boba Fett really looks like under his helmet? Check out the scenes in The Empire Strikes Back when Leia and Chewbacca are being taken through Cloud City by an Imperial officer and a squad of stormtroopers.

      The Imperial officer is played by Jeremy Bulloch, who is the man inside Fett’s armor! Through the magic of editing, and filming on different days, Bulloch is in scenes as Boba Fett during the same section of the film.

      A vision of what the character, not the actor, might look like was provided by comic book artist Daniel Brereton in Series 2 of Topps’ Star Wars Galaxy trading card set. Pictured in an imaginary enemy encounter, with fellow bounty hunter Bossk at his side, Fett is shown with his helmet off, revealing the face of the salvage warrior.

Andy Mangles is the author of Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Characters (Ballantine Books, 1995).