Chefelf.com Night Life: johnnycancer - Viewing Profile

I never really thought about Lando and Boba Fett occupying the same space at the same time and how that might work out for the plan. But then, it's kind of hard to ascertain what that plan even is. I mean, I have no idea why Lando is in Jabba's palace. I don't know what he could possibly be doing in there to further the efforts of the rescue operation.

As for Boba Fett not recognizing Lando...well, Boba Fett probably didn't hang out with the guards too much for one thing. For another, we don't really know how many guards there are. It's been a while since I saw ROTJ, but, Jabba's palace is fairly large, so while there probably aren't hundreds of guards walking around, there's probably a big enough number (like, I don't know, between 60 and 80?) where it wouldn't be possible to recognize all of them.

Lando is Black, and I guess a Black guy would stick out, seeing as him and Mace Windu are the only two Black people in the Star Wars Universe. But then again, maybe not. Seems like Luke would stick out more; I mean, how many fair skinned blonde people with blue eyes do you know that live in desert areas (think of the Middle East)? So, maybe a dark skinned person wouldn't be that unusual.

The time frame we're talking about is a problem too. Unfortunately, based on what's in the movie, we don't know how long Lando has been there, or Boba Fett for that matter. For all we know, that's Lando's first day on the job. And, we don't know when Boba Fett shows up exactly either. I guess what I'm saying is, that given enough time, they might have bumped into each other and Fett would recognize Lando, but there's no way of really knowing how much time they've both spent in Jabba's palace.

For example, if you want to believe that there's a year in between ESB and ROTJ, then the storyline goes that Lando and Chewbacca were following Boba Fett and trying to intercept him before he got to Tatooine. They never caught up to Boba Fett. From all we know in ROTJ, Boba Fett had just recently showed up with a frozen Han Solo. Lando tells Chewbacca and Leia to stay behind while he infiltrates the palace (somehow) kills one of the guards and steals his uniform, and the tries to figure out where Jabba is keeping Han. This all happens in the space of a day, maybe two days. Since it's such a short amount of time, it's possible that Boba Fett never ran into Lando. Not the greatest example, but you see what I mean.

Another thing is the character of Boba Fett himself. I like him, but as far as the movies are concerned, I'm not exactly sure that he demonstrates himself to be the "greatest bounty hunter in the universe" that all of the EU mythos builds him up to be. All we know in ESB and ROTJ is that Boba Fett is one of many bounty hunters that the Empire employs. Oh, and he disintegrated somebody once when he wasn't supposed to. So, he might not even be the most competent bounty hunter that the Empire employs. Apparently the other bounty hunters really suck though, because they never even get close to finding Han or Luke or anybody else. That Boba Fett does find his quarry is not demonstrative of the fact that he's a huge bad ass. He's adequate at his job, let's say. Remember, before Boba Fett there was Greedo, and maybe that should be an indicator of the caliber of bounty hunters that were actually after Han Solo.

My point is, maybe Boba Fett would have noticed Lando; maybe not. Maybe he's a great bounty hunter; but maybe he's just lucky in a right place, right time kind of way. I mean, come on, he should know that that's not really Boushh as soon as he walks through the door with Chewbacca because, let's face it, if you're that size and you're trying to force a Wookie to go anywhere, that Wookie is either dead or sleeping, because if it's not you're going to get your arms ripped off.

johnnycancer

Well, at least you like the idea of the penguin. But, again, this is a helpful criticism for me, because I want to have characters that seem interesting and not generic, so thank you for an insight that I wouldn't have had on my own.

johnnycancer

Not at all. That's exactly the kind of objective criticism I was looking for. I'm not sure what happened to the color in the couch; I think in part it's a distortion that happened because the image was resized from 1275 x 1650 pixels to 618 x 800 by photobucket; but upon examining the original image it looks like there is a little blurriness as well (although not nearly as severe), so I'll have to play around and see if I can fix that. It looks like what is being blurred are the texture details on the couch, so, it might be that details can't be that fine at that resolution.

I'll work on the penguin. I actually had a really hard time shading him for some reason. I think that the midtone color that I picked is too dark. He might need to be a light gray or even a blue instead.

Anyway, thank you again for two very helpful criticisms.

johnnycancer

I really, really would not want to see Terry Gilliam direct it. Not that Gilliam is a bad director, but sometimes he can have a really distorted view of what the central theme of a story is. Listen to his commentary on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and you'll see what I mean. And the last thing I want is for Gilliam to decide that the Hobbit is at its heart a love story about Bilbo and Thorin.

Can't really think of who I'd like to see direct it or what direction I'd like to see the movie take though. I think I'll just be happy to see a film version of the story finally.

johnnycancer

What is the reality of the issue?

Not to seem confrontational, but that would probably be pertinent to the discussion.

johnnycancer