Oh right, they own that now too.
Boba Fett (Good Idea) – by Kimberly Keller
Disney’s latest acquisition of Star Wars has left the House of Mouse with quite a few merchandising opportunities. Whether you’re a fan of this development or not, it’s hard to ignore Disney’s already close ties with the franchise in the past: dressing Mickey and the gang in Star Wars costumes, modeling a whole section of Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios park like the movies, and even featuring an ad where Darth Vader explores Disneyland for the first time. Even though it’s Christmas time, and putting the Star Wars Christmas Special jokes aside, let’s take a break from the eggnog and look to the future of our favorite galactic saga.
Of course, with new acquisitions comes new merchandising opportunities, and, as Disney Interactive VP of product development Bill Roper hinted at back in April, Disney Infinity will soon see its share of galactic visitors. There will undoubtedly be figures for characters like Luke, Leia, Vader, and my favorite, Han Solo, but let’s look at someone a little harder to put Mickey ears on: the ruthless bounty hunter Boba Fett. It’s been rumored that Disney has a Boba Fett standalone movie in the works taking place sometime in between the original films. This puts the popular bounty hunter in the forefront for Disney Infinity.
Hopefully he can be featured without the seriously anti-climatic death...
Boba Fett would actually fit in great in the Disney Infinity universe if used right. Feeling a little dark today? Slap that figure onto the scanner and load him up. This isn’t like other villains featured in the game who come off as silly or playful, this is a character that is going to look cold and menacing no matter where you put him. This is an opportunity to play with real, uncaring evil. Disney has always said the possibilities should be “infinite” for their open world game, making it into a place where anyone can let their imagination run wild in the Toy Box. Well, what if your dream is to rule over this silly whimsical land and work outside the laws of friendship and fun? Boba Fett fills in this void almost too perfectly.
I can just picture it now, Boba’s dark visor looking over the land he now controls has he cradles his gun. True, he has no ambitions to rule in the films, he’s more of a survivalist really, but this is a guy who commands attention, even from Darth Vader himself. He works only for himself and will do anything to achieve his monetary goals, but in Disney Infinity I’m in charge, and I say Mr. Fett over here is going to help me rule a kingdom, sarlaccs be damned.
Here’s an interesting conundrum, which version will Disney choose? Badass or New Zealand? The prequels caused Lucas to ditch the famously cruel voice of Jason Wingreen in the Special Edition of the films and replaced him with the accented voice of the prequel’s Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett) to fit in with his clone backstory. (The obvious solution, of course, would’ve been to simply cast someone who sounded like Boba Fett in the first place, but I guess that’s ancient history now.) In an interesting move, Disney actually used the original version of Boba’s voice for their highly popular Star Tours ride, completing ignoring the new canon. This then begs the question: what will Disney do with the character now that they own the franchise?
Emperor Palpatine (Bad Idea) – by Becky Hollada
What’s a discussion about Disney without their latest acquisition? Although Star Wars has been associated with Disney for a long time, they have only owned it since recently and it’s hard to imagine that Disney will completely overlook it when considering characters for Disney Infinity.
Since Star Wars takes place throughout an entire galaxy (far, far away), there are plenty of characters to choose from and no shortage of bad ones (Jar Jar Binks anyone?). At first, this supreme bad guy and lord of the Sith may not necessarily seem like a bad choice for a Disney Infinity boss, but there are many other, better choices.
Seriously not a healthy look.
Emperor Palpatine tops the Star Wars list of evil jerks. He has no problem killing people, he is a tyrant who weaseled his way into power and created an empire out of a republic, and those lightning powers are an awesome way to slowly, painfully kill someone. So that basically means that there isn’t a soul alive who wouldn’t love to kill him. But while Palpatine is all sorts of evil, his primary strength comes from his ability to manipulate people, rather than physical strength. His lightning attack is pretty lethal, but that’s all he’s got. Palpatine relies heavily on his attack dog, Vader, to protect him from an outright assault. He doesn’t even have a lightsaber in the later trilogy leaving him pretty vulnerable to close range attack. In terms of a boss in a real-time battle setting, this is a pretty big chink in his armor.
Aside from all that, the Emperor has one more big issue. He’s old. Like pretty darn old by the later trilogy. This means movement isn’t going to be his strong suit. That much is obvious by the fact that he spends most of his time in the movies looking menacing from a chair. This reduces a lot of what he can do in terms of a game like Disney Infinity.
While the Emperor might be about to work with some creative development to make up for his limitations, there are much better options in the Star Wars universe for characters or bosses.
