http://www.dose.ca/tv/story.html?id=07253d69-32c3-41fa-b12b-707c909f4886
Seth Green and the Mystery of Boba Fett Kat Angus Published: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 "The mythology of Boba Fett is more significant than the reality," Seth Green insists. "The perception of him, his cultural significance, is more than his actual film role." Green has been carrying on for several minutes, passionately trying to explain the enduring popularity of the mysterious Star Wars bounty hunter. Despite appearing in less than ten minutes of the original trilogy and suffering a humiliating end inside a Sarlacc pit, Boba Fett remains one of the most revered Star Wars characters. Green explains that he was in awe of Boba Fett before The Empire Strikes Back was even released in 1980, when he and every boy he knew were tempted with a mail-away Boba Fett toy that came with his own rocket launcher. "Six weeks later, everybody got a four-by-two inch white box in the mail and when we opened it up, inside was this brand-new Star Wars character. Inside also was a note that said, 'Hey, sorry, I know you thought you were going to get the spring-loaded rocket launcher, but due to safety standards, it has been deemed too hazardous for children in your age group,'" Green remembers. "What we determined, with wide-eyed wonder, was that this toy, this character, was too dangerous for us to play with. Too bad-ass, man!" The Robot Chicken creator's love of the Boba Fett legend comes across even more in his show's second Star Wars special. The first special affectionately mocked the Star Wars franchise through stop-motion animation and was such a hit with fans and George Lucas himself (who even contributed his voice to the special) that U.S. network Adult Swim quickly commissioned a second installment. Much of Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II (airing Dec. 12 on Teletoon) serves as Green's wish fulfillment for Boba Fett. In one sketch, the bounty hunter successfully attacks the Ewok village with two lightsabers and his rocket launcher; in another, he is indeed swallowed by the Sarlacc beast but then pretends he went out in a blaze of glory. "Here's my thing: When Return of the Jedi came out and Boba Fett fired off his rocket for the first time, it doesn't work right, first of all, which was heartbreaking to every little boy who had been waiting ten years for him to fire that f*cking rocket," Green explains. "And then he misfires it, gets bumped by a sight-impaired Han Solo and then falls, screaming like a woman, into the Sarlacc pit. And when that happened, every single boy was like, 'What the hell?!' And all I can think is: Boba Fett must have been feeling the exact same way. Nobody was cooler than Boba Fett and he was about to kill the Christ figure of the Jedi. He was about to kill his greatest enemy - and instead, in one fell swoop, when he was supposed to be the coolest ever, he got tripped into a hole that promises a thousand years of digestion. And that must have really sucked. Really sucked." But as a self-described nerd who embraces all things geeky, the 34-year-old expresses nothing but deep admiration for George Lucas, even as he pokes fun at certain Star Wars elements. "George Lucas, at the end of the day, is a storyteller. He's a director; he's a nerd who likes sci-fi and history. I can relate. I can relate to that," Green says. "He is successful in a superior way to the average person who pursues the same path. For that, I absolutely respect him. I think he is a pioneer and a really, really fun dude." Green also credits Lucas with having an open mind and a good sense of humour about Star Wars. The director even gave his seal of approval to a sketch that some Robot Chicken writers thought was too risky: parodying the scene in Revenge of the Sith in which Anakin Skywalker kills a room of Jedi younglings, the Robot Chicken special depicts Anakin imagining his "happy place" and pretending he is simply wielding his lightsaber in a field of sunflowers. "The case that I made was that, you know, this is actually something that happened in Star Wars. Anakin Skywalker, on his path to become Darth Vader, murders all of the younglings," says Green. "And I said, 'I know this is a moment that everybody doesn't want to acknowledge because it's so dark; let me make a joke about it and I think we'll all be cool.' And nobody wanted to say yes, so it ultimately had to go to George and then he watched it and said it was funny. And that's why I love him." But despite Green's reverence for Lucas and all things Star Wars, he can't stop trying to justify his love of Boba Fett. There is far more to the character than what the Star Wars films showed, he stresses again, and that is what an entire generation of men find so appealing. "It is the mythology of the guy who was bad-ass enough to capture the most bad-ass guy in the Star Wars universe, who is Han Solo," he says. "Han Solo is the coolest guy in Star Wars; Boba Fett caught him, trapped him in ice. So he must have been awesome - and yet -" Green sighs. "...And yet all evidence to the contrary," he admits.
