Boba Fett is lame and people who like him are lame.

Okay, I just have to get this out there.  Boba Fett is a stinky character and he represents everything wrong with fandom today.  Let's first of all examine just precisely why Boba Fett is lame and overrated in the first place.  

If you look at the events of the original Star Wars, you can see that Boba Fett is a disposable character at most.  He makes his first appearance when Vader hires him to capture Han Solo, a task which he failed at.  It was Lando that ultimately hands Han Solo over to Vader.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Boba Fett supposedly "talks back" to Darth Vader in a surly way, and this makes him a bad-ass.  Watch the scenes again - can you really say that tone is surley?

 His lines were:

"As you wish"
"He's no good to me dead"
"What if he doesn't survive?  He's worth a lot to me"

Wow.  What a badass, eh?  Seriously, though, he comes off as a disgruntled lackey at most.  He in no way challenges Darth Vader's authority.  The last line comes off like he's asking Vader to throw him a bone because he's broke and he really needs the cash.  It's a wonder Vader doesn't just bitch-slap him and tell him to shut his mouth, because he bungled the mission.




Then there's the famous scene with Luke Skywalker and the Sarlacc pit.  Boba Fett doesn't even land a shot with his blaster because Skywalker cuts it in half the moment he draws it.  Then, the next thing Boba Fett tries against a Jedi is a rope.  Yup, that's right, he brought a rope to a light saber fight.  Of course, Skywalker just cuts it off and Boba Fett flies through the air and lands in the Sarlacc pit not long after. I couldn't find a Youtube clip of it, but I have Return of the Jedi right here and I can assure you I'm not making any of this up.

So let's review: Boba Fett fails to capture Han Solo.  He grovels to Vader for cash because he knows he screwed up the mission. He wasn't able to out-draw a Jedi and thinks a rope will stop a lightsaber.

So, why exactly is he so popular again?  For the same reason that obscure comic book characters are popular : Certain fans like to latch on to obscure characters because they think it sets them apart as cooler fans.  There's also the aspect of feeling closer to a character because not many people know about him.  Why do you think we have characters like War Machine and U.S. Agent?  These characters pretty much mimic other heroes that are more popular, in this case Iron Man and Captain America.  Characters such as War Machine and U.S. Agent were created to exploit this kind of fandom.

However, unlike the Marvel heroes I just mentioned, I believe the obsession with Boba Fett was not planned at all.  I think it honestly caught the producers by surprise.  It didn't take long for Lucas to exploit this, though.  Scenes of Boba Fett are digitally inserted in Return of the Jedi to give him a greater presence.  Comics and novels focused on him as if he was an important character.  In fact, when the new Star Wars Episodes I - III came out, Boba Fett and his father become crucial characters in the series. They even went as far as to say Boba Fett escaped the Sarlacc pit. This is really just a bad, bad mix of fan-service and retconning, two things I don't like about entertainment in general. But, hey, it's what makes money, right?