Why Boba Fett Died in 'Return of the Jedi' and How the 'Star Wars' Buzz Machine Began
‘The Empire Strikes Back’ (Everett)
It’s May the 5th, which technically means that May the 4th is over. But at Yahoo! Movies, we like to think that every day is Star Wars Day, which means it’s always a good time to share juicy bits of trivia about the original trilogy, especially when they involve crucial information about Boba Fett.
In a new interview with Inverse, Craig Miller — Lucasfilm’s first official fan relations officer and a man who played a key role in getting Star Wars loyalists excited for The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 — says he leaked a list of rumors about Empire to the sci-fi magazine Starlog in an effort to build buzz. Some of those rumors were false (like Leia choosing to be with Luke), some were legit (like Han Solo being frozen in carbonite by movie’s end), and some were initially legit but didn’t stay that way.
Related: We Talked to Boba Fett, a.k.a. Jeremy Bulloch, About Fan Tattoos, That Costume and the Spinoff Movie
Miller explains that the “rumors” about the bounty hunter Boba Fett made him sound like a fairly prominent new character — because he originally was supposed to be.
“Originally Boba Fett was set up in Empire as a character,” Miller tells Inverse (and former Yahoo Movies) staffer Jordan Zakarin. “Boba was going to be the main villain.”
This was back when creator George Lucas was toying with the idea of 12 Star Wars movies, plans that gradually got scaled back. Miller said: “When George [Lucas] decided not to make a third trilogy, he completely jettisoned that story line, which is why in the first ten minutes, Boba Fett gets bumped into and falls into the mouth of a giant monster. So he took what was planned for the third trilogy, which was the confrontation between Luke and Darth Vader, and the battle with the Emperor, and that got squished down from three movies to one movie. And that became the plot of Jedi.”
Lucas ratcheted back on his original plan to make multiple Star Wars trilogies, because, as Miller explains it, he lost interest in continuing beyond the initial three.
Obviously, he would later change his mind about that when he embarked on the prequel trilogy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in time to save Boba Fett from the Sarlacc pit. Although, with a Boba spin-off movie in the works and the possibility that Boba didn’t die in said pit, maybe that plucky bounty hunter will finally get his moment in the villainous sun after all.
Watch a bunch of kids celebrating ‘Star Wars’ Day:
