Fandalorians

“Just because World War II was real, doesn’t make Saving Private Ryan a true story”
Pablo Hidalgo: Lucasfilm.


What is a Fandalorian, lets start with Mandalorian. Boba Fett from StarWars is a Mandalorian. A race or culture of people that are warriors, mercenaries, and sometimes bounty hunters.......and if you read the EU (extended universe) farmers, prolific adopters of stray and runaway children, and loving fathers and mothers. They even have the StarWars Universe’s first same sex couple.


Fandalorian: Someone who believes that Boba Fett is thee coolest, baddest, most feared person ever and anything ever written about him (unless it’s by George Lucas himself) is thee carved in stone, never to be doubted or changed, bedrock gospel.


Why all the snarkiness?


Let’s just say this, I like Boba Fett he does look cool. That being said he died in Return of the Jedi. Now, countless stories have been written about him surviving and his character has lived a rich full life post StarWars films. This is the problem.


Various books and authors created a back story for Boab Fett. Episode II came out and it turns out Boba is a clone of Jango Fett, Prime donor for the clone army. None of which was mentioned in any Boba Fett back story.


“Fans” got mad....didn’t George know about Boba’s “true” origin story? Guess what..he probably didn’t. A book publisher probably asked for permission to commission a Boba Fett story and Lucas ok’d it. Since this is all material that George Lucas created he wanted to add a Boba Fett piece to the StarWars mythology and wanted to tell a story with his own characters and creations,I was ok with it. Why wouldn’t I be....it’s his right.


So, to make nice what was said to be Boba’s back story in previous material was then said to be Jango’s backstory. It’s kind of all still true, from a certain point of view (ahhh, that old StarWars tagline that makes everything ok)


Peace reigned...for awhile,enter Karen Travis. Karen Travis wrote a series of books, awesome books that dealt with the clone troopers and the Mandalorian culture. People loved it. The mando were out, adopting, farming, loving, caring, just wanting to be free and live in peace.


The CloneWars animated series came out and introduced a story line dealing with the Mandalorian culture in which, they were a planet of pacifist with a sub group called Death Watch that wanted to return Mandalore to it’s warrior past. All this was not only approved by George Lucas, but he had a hand in it.


Of course all the Fandalorians went bonkers “George is messing with cannon” ,”he ruined my childhood” (I refuse to say “raped”, if you think being unhappy with fictional characters in a fictional world is even remotely close to comparable to someone being raped your priorities are way out of whack).


The main point of contention was the mention of Death Watch. In the EU, Boba then Jango fought with Death Watch....because Death Watch wanted to wipe of Mandalorians.


I’m writing all this to tell my Mando/Fando brothers out there to RELAX. The CloneWars is not your enemy, they’re restoring Boba Fett and Mandalorians that follow him to his true toughness.


Young Boba in the Clone Wars is awesome! He’s already challenged the Jedi, brought down a battle cruiser, been to prison, gotten out, and teamed up with some other bounty hunters to do some pretty cool stuff.


I’m not saying anything bad about the Karen Travis books, they’re great I own all of them.,but they are very interchangeable. They’re solider stories, they could be World War II books, or Vietnam book and would be just as good. She did kind of turn the Mandalorians into the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of the StarWars universe.Like the quote I opened with, just because it says StarWars, doesn’t make it true. We can be shown or told something else and we can change, we can still like and enjoy the previous us too....just settle down, it’s only a movie.


What the Clone Wars is doing with Boba and Death Watch is going to give fans a HUGE payoff. Death Watch is a bunch of thugs and I have a feeling before the show is over, a Boba Fett vs. Death Watch show down is going to happen.


I also need to mention a great Dark Horse story line called Boba Fett: Bloodties. It has raised the question was Jango a loving caring father that just wanted a son and that’s why he had himself cloned...or was he a cold, calculating business man that knew one way to beat the system and cheat death would be to have himself copied?


Let’s just read the books, watch the show, drop the “danlorian” and be fans...and have fun.