The Book Of Boba Fett Intentionally Copied Patton Oswalt's Star Wars Filibuster
Over the past 20-odd years, the rise of geek culture has been something absolutely wild to witness. For members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, the popularity of comic book movies, sci-fi/fantasy franchises, and other attendant IP has always been the norm, while for us in the Gen X or millennial generations, it's been a roller coaster of emotions. There was the rising exhilaration of seeing characters and material long regarded as merely silly or lesser-than suddenly legitimized in a big way, followed by the over-the-hill period we're living through right now, in which many feel groggily hungover by the chokehold that comic book movies and cinematic universes have had on populist cinema for the last several years.
There's a bit of a monkey's paw aspect to all of this, where growing up being bullied and made fun of for loving comics and geek media saw the rise of geek culture feel initially like revenge, then victory, and now villainy; as some superhero movie once said, "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." The dreams long held by geeks like me became reality because the geeks themselves became the ones able to actually make them happen.
That cycle can best be observed in the instance of comedian and actor Patton Oswalt delivering a hilariously improvised (and, of course, well-informed) filibuster pitch for "Star Wars: Episode VII" during a fifth season episode of "Parks and Recreation." Oswalt's deliriously nerdy pitch included a resurrection scene for Boba Fett, and when such a scene was eventually shot for real as part of Disney+'s "The Book of Boba Fett," the show intentionally copied Oswalt's exact description.
How 'The Book of Boba Fett' used Oswalt's 'Parks & Rec' pitch as storyboards
When "The Book of Boba Fett" was first announced at the end of the second season of "The Mandalorian," it was clear to just about every "Star Wars" fan that some kind of explanation was going to be needed for how Boba escaped the thousand-years digestive tract of the Sarlacc after being accidentally chucked into it by Han Solo during the sail barge battle of "Return of the Jedi." Fortunately for director Robert Rodriguez and writer Jon Favreau, the perfect visual shorthand for the moment had already been described in detail by Oswalt.
During his filibuster in character as Garth Blundin in the "Parks and Recreation" episode "Article Two," Oswalt describes how the camera should "pan down from the twin suns of Tatooine" to reveal "the gloved, Mandalorian armor gauntlet of Boba Fett" reaching up as he pulls himself from the maw of the beast.
Oswalt revealed during a recent interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" that Rodriguez and Favreau used his description of the moment as de facto storyboards for the scene in the episode "Chapter 1: Stranger in a Strange Land" of "The Book of Boba Fett." As confirmed by Favreau himself to Oswalt, the visual of Fett's hand reaching out of the Tatooine sand as he pulls himself out of the pit was cut to match Oswalt's pitch. In addition to Favreau's confirmation, this mash-up video proves that there's no doubt of Oswalt's influence on the episode.
Oswalt finds himself being careful of what he wishes for
The last 20 years of cinema are littered with geek wish fulfillment, in which many ideas that seemed like pipe dreams to nerds of the '80s and '90s came true: "Freddy vs. Jason," "Alien vs. Predator," a dark and realistic Batman trilogy, the "Star Wars" sequels, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and more.
When Oswalt improvised his filibuster scene 11 years ago, the wave of geek culture was reaching its peak. "The Avengers" had just hit it big at the box office the prior summer, proving that the MCU experiment was not just creatively successful but financially viable, and as Oswalt says during the "Parks & Rec" scene, Disney had just purchased Lucasfilm, announcing that more "Star Wars" was coming soon.
It's uncanny to look back at Oswalt's "Episode VII" pitch from 2024, especially for Oswalt himself. As he said during his Kimmel interview, "Parks & Rec" actor Chris Pratt had yet to be cast as Star-Lord in "Guardians of the Galaxy" when his episode was filmed, and Amy Poehler's ad-libbed remark toward the pitch of "The female part's a little underwritten" is weirdly a viable criticism of some of the MCU and "Star Wars" movies that eventually got made.
Even crazier is how Oswalt's fever-dream pitch involved "Star Wars" crossing over with the Marvel Universe, and while that exact thing hasn't happened (yet), it nonetheless subtly predicts the MCU's current obsession with the multiverse and crossovers, as well as their acquisition of the X-Men and Fantastic Four.
Hopefully, the weird stagnation we're currently experiencing with the reign of geek culture will eventually give way to whatever the next trend is, whether it still involves superpowers or robots or not. Whatever happens, the chances are good that someone somewhere right now is joking about something that will become a reality tomorrow; let's just hope it's entertaining.