Boba Fett’s life as a fan favorite likely has little to do with his character and everything to do with his design — he has only five lines in two movies, and one of them is “Aaaah!” Something about his helmet made people excited to see what he was capable of. As “Under the Helmet” points out, Boba Fett’s costume was originally designed to be a pure white suit of armor worn by a class of soldiers that George Lucas wanted to call Super Troopers (no relation to the Broken Lizard feature film). 

Fun trivia: During the screen test, editor Duwayne Dunham wore the costume and sported a “Star Wars” bath towel as a cape. Budget issues prevented the building of a hundred Super Trooper costumes, so George Lucas repurposed the costume to serve as a singular bounty hunter. The white costume was painted, and Boba Fett was born.

The making of the Boba Fett costume happened to coincide with a public fair in Lucas’ own hometown. It was September of ’78, and Lucas wanted to contribute something fun for the locals in San Anselmo. He dressed up one actor as Darth Vader — in the screen-used costume, incidentally — and Dunham put on the Boba Fett costume and the two of them walked down the main drag waving to kids and signing autographs. 

In “Under the Helmet,” Lucas pointed out that the audience reaction, in retrospect, kind of served as market research. People responded so positively to the costume, that it became important to include it in the movie. Boba Fett became the bounty hunter that tracked down Han Solo and froze his body in a block of stone. Boba Fett exits “The Empire Strikes Back” with a hero in his captivity.