Boba Fett vs Jubal Early

Ted C · Post by **Ted C** » 2008-02-20 08:39am

The top bounty hunters from Star Wars and Firefly in a battle of wits and skill, not technology.

Each is plopped on 2007 Earth with a $25,000 spending account and some street clothes.

Mission 1: Locate and kill Jason Bourne -- might as well pick a difficult target. Whichever one succeeds gets the best payoff he's ever had in his own currency.

Mission 2: Eliminate the rival bounty hunter. The one that succeeds gets another big payday.

There's no time limit, but they both start at the same time, so speed is a factor in order to beat the other guy. Both are assumed to be as proficient with 21st century technology as they are with their native technology. Building futuristic weapons, however, is not an option.

Thanas · Post by **Thanas** » 2008-02-20 09:13am

This is somewhat ridiculous, given that all we know of Early is that he is a somewhat proficient martial artist and a major league sociopath with limited intelligence who was easily fooled by a psychotic, mind reading teenager. (BTW, why did you pick Early and not the Operative from Serenity? He seems superior in almost all regards).

Meanwhile, Boba Fett is the guy who landed in the sarlacc after getting poked by a half-blind spice smuggler. And I am talking movie Fett here, not wanked-six ways till sunday EU Fett. (If you take the KT crap in account, you'd start to believe Fett's small finger could blow up the DS).

So, in short, there is nothing to compare their abilities.

Early speaks and reads English, while Fett does not. Having no access to translators and not being a Kalish, Fett would be stuck without being able to access any information since he cannot even communicate with the locals. So Early wins this one, if only by virtue of superior information.

Steven Snyder · Post by **Steven Snyder** » 2008-02-20 09:42am

I am also a bit curious as to why Early was picked over The Operative. Pehraps the recent Scifi marathon of Firefly keeps him prominent in our recent memory.

Assuming that Fett can speak the language, he stands a chance. But I would give the edge to Jubal, he would fit in better with landscape and have an easier time getting around society because the society he is from has roots in 21st century earth.

If The Operative were involved, I would bet on him. He is intelligent, charismatic, well trained, and utterly devoted to the cause. However, I seriously doubt The Operative would be motiviated by money so perhaps that is the reason why you didn't include him...

Peptuck · Post by **Peptuck** » 2008-02-20 10:19am

With technology and resources all equal, I think Early is the one with a slight advantage here, due to his intuition. According to Whedon's commentary on Objects in Space, Early has "near psychic" intuition and intelligence, and he's able to figure out the best way to defeat everyone on Serenity just by listening to their conversations. While he does get outsmarted by River, that's mostly because she's a psychic genius who probably knew he was there before he'd even arrived.

Movie Fett has.....what? Anything that gives him an edge over what little edge Early himself has with his intuition?

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2008-02-20 10:42am

Why would either of them ever find Bourne? It took the whole damned CIA to find him, and much of that time was spent with Bourne seeking them out.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2008-02-20 10:49am

Man is stronger by far than woman, yet only woman can bear a child. Does that seem right to you?

Early takes it. He's just too awesome!

Don't go questioning my intentions. Don't you ever.

I mean, seriously. He's a fucking nutjob! He's so noisy!

Am I a lion? I don't think of myself as a lion, but I do have a mighty roar.

Maybe Boba shoots him while he's rambling. I don't know. I think he's invincible when he's rambling.

*licks post*

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2008-02-20 12:01pm

I haven't even seen all of a Bourne movie, and I'm still thinking of him as the winner here.

Baal · Post by **Baal** » 2008-02-20 12:46pm

The bit of hand to hand we see from Early suggests that movie Bourne would eat him for lunch. I would even say the same thing for the Operative since he couldnt take out Mal in the final fight scene. I mean Mal is tough but when one pulls out a sword and the other grabs a SCEWDRIVER the fight should be over right there. Yet Mal still wins. If nothing else this means that the Operative arrogant beyond belief and it is a huge weakness for him.

As for Fett, we never see movie Fett in hand to hand combat. We Jango in a fight and we can assume that they are of similar abilities. Yet Jango is fighting a Jedi and even with his armor that would make him fairly immune to physical punches and the fact that ObiWan had been ordered to capture him and thus would be pulling his punches Jango still lost.

My final bet is that if any of the three made the mistake of getting into melee combat with Bourne they would go down hard and Bourne would be seen limping away 5 minutes later with another notch on his belt.

Lex · Post by **Lex** » 2008-02-20 01:34pm

pfft no offense but obviously all your minds are clouded by your, of course deserved, hatred of KT; we know that boba is a clone of jango and thus has his abilities and strenght, and he also displays sharp mind when being to only one who is able to track down Han Solo^^ he definitely is the winner in this scenario...

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2008-02-20 02:14pm

Also, Early makes a bit more sense to use than the Operative here, because he's an such an obvious Fett rip-off. I yelled "Slave I!" as soon as I saw his ship.

Ted C · Post by **Ted C** » 2008-02-20 02:29pm

Thanas wrote:This is somewhat ridiculous, given that all we know of Early is that he is a somewhat proficient martial artist and a major league sociopath with limited intelligence who was easily fooled by a psychotic, mind reading teenager. (BTW, why did you pick Early and not the Operative from Serenity? He seems superior in almost all regards).

Because the Operative is a government agent who relies largely upon a governments resources, while Jubal Early is a bounty hunter who relies upon his own resources (much like Boba Fett).

Thanas wrote:Meanwhile, Boba Fett is the guy who landed in the sarlacc after getting poked by a half-blind spice smuggler. And I am talking movie Fett here, not wanked-six ways till sunday EU Fett. (If you take the KT crap in account, you'd start to believe Fett's small finger could blow up the DS).

I an only interested in BF in his movie capacity here, not MandoWankMan.

Thanas wrote:Early speaks and reads English, while Fett does not. Having no access to translators and not being a Kalish, Fett would be stuck without being able to access any information since he cannot even communicate with the locals. So Early wins this one, if only by virtue of superior information.

For our purposes, assume that Galactic Basic and English are the same language.

Thanas · Post by **Thanas** » 2008-02-20 02:39pm

Peptuck wrote:With technology and resources all equal, I think Early is the one with a slight advantage here, due to his intuition. According to Whedon's commentary on Objects in Space, Early has "near psychic" intuition and intelligence, and he's able to figure out the best way to defeat everyone on Serenity just by listening to their conversations. While he does get outsmarted by River, that's mostly because she's a psychic genius who probably knew he was there before he'd even arrived.

Really? She didn't act like it.

And as to the "near psychic" intuition thing, I find that very hard to believe. I mean this is the guy who almost believes River transformed into the ship, who failes to check on the prisoners/airlocks (note how Mal got out quite fast) and believes that River would surrender to him willingly. And he is stupid enough to leave the ship without attaching a safety line - he believed River would just sit there and surrender - when in fact nothing would have stopped her from just blasting off/ramming him with his ship. Yet he is just willing to take such unnecessary risks. So for all his intuition he is extremely gullible and has very little sense of tactics - he didn't even ask for a guarantee that River would surrender. Which is a moronic thing to do.
Listening to the ships communication and deducing that a)Kaylee is a bit insecure and b) realizing that the crew would sleep at some point is not much of an achievement either.

Bourne woul eat that guy alive. However, I am still giving him better chances because once again, Fett does not speak english.

Lex wrote:pfft no offense but obviously all your minds are clouded by your, of course deserved, hatred of KT; we know that boba is a clone of jango and thus has his abilities and strenght, and he also displays sharp mind when being to only one who is able to track down Han Solo^^ he definitely is the winner in this scenario...

Doesn't matter. He still does not speak the language, so what exactly would he be able to accomplish? If we dropped you in, say, Peking, you would not be able to find a quarry that has gone to ground unless you can read/speak Mandarin. And Boba does not have his Slave I or any other techno gadget at his disposal.

Thanas · Post by **Thanas** » 2008-02-20 02:46pm

^Dammit didn't see your post before I posted - and no edit button.

Ted C wrote:For our purposes, assume that Galactic Basic and English are the same language.

Okay. Early then has the advantage that he can blend in, since he is probably used to living on low-tech planets. Boba still relies on technology to a huge extent, but is - according to the Han Solo smuggler trilogy - a very competent hand-to-hand fighter. He certainly is a better fighter than Early, going by what I have seen from the latter in firefly.

Boba has the better chances of finding Bourne then, however I still maintain that there is a very small likelihood of him doing so (if the CIA cannot do it with all their black ops stuff, what chance does Boba have with only pants and shirts?) and even if he did, once he lets Bourne get close, he's frelled.

Gullible Jones · Post by **Gullible Jones** » 2008-02-20 08:10pm

Early is a psychopath who can't think ahead.

No, scratch that - Early is a complete fool. He didn't have to anticipate Mal's ambush; River demonstrated that she was in control of his ship. Even if the ship had no weapons at all, a nudge from the thrusters could have sent him tumbling off into deep space. Security systems or no security systems, venturing outside Serenity again was retarded.

(Thus, why I consider Objects in Space to be one of Firefly's dumbest episodes. The whole thing was contrived to let River teach everyone some sort of lesson in teamwork.)

So, although Early is a much nastier sort than Fett... I'm going to give #2 to Fett. If he lays out some trap for Early, Early will probably blunder right into it.

As for #1, Bourne would probably not think much of either of them.

Gaidin · Post by **Gaidin** » 2008-02-20 08:28pm

Baal wrote:The bit of hand to hand we see from Early suggests that movie Bourne would eat him for lunch. I would even say the same thing for the Operative since he couldnt take out Mal in the final fight scene. I mean Mal is tough but when one pulls out a sword and the other grabs a SCEWDRIVER the fight should be over right there. Yet Mal still wins. If nothing else this means that the Operative arrogant beyond belief and it is a huge weakness for him.

Mal doesn't win because of the Operative's incompetence. He wins because he had a nerve cluster removed that for all intents and purposes would've ended the fight with mal dead to rights if it was in his medical record. Mal just happened to know something the Operative didn't.

Granted, the arrogance is there. Somebody like Bourne would've hit the nerve cluster and then gone straight for a kill. Instead the Operative starts monologuing.

FA Xerrik · Post by **FA Xerrik** » 2008-02-20 11:10pm

As has been mentioned, if we go strictly with movie Fett there's next-to-nothing to go on. He's such a minor character in the films, that we have almost no assessment of him if he were dumped on Earth without his armor. However, there is a wide spectrum of his abilities as displayed between the movie version and his KT mandowank treatment. For most of the EU he is displayed as an extremely competent and proficient bounty hunter, but nothing really beyond belief. If we use Jango as a baseline for his abilities, the skill to fight a Jedi to a standstill is somewhat in his favor, though it did require his armor and assistance from Slave 1.

Given the open-ended parameters of Mission 1, it seems unlikely that Fett could even find Bourne. After all, his remarkable ability to track targets around an entire galaxy is not based on anything magical, but instead a well established network of contacts and what he can hack from the Holonet. None of that will help him on Earth, so he's pretty much stuck with whatever means a normal Joe has, albeit a normal Joe with $25k. While I can't accurately assess the skills of this Early fellow, having never seen the show, given what's posted it sounds as though he's just somewhat unhinged. I would guess the tendency we've seen from Fett to cover his bases, or at least play as smart as possible, would give him a slight edge in a hunt against Early.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-02-21 12:15pm

Gaidin wrote:Mal doesn't win because of the Operative's incompetence. He wins because he had a nerve cluster removed that for all intents and purposes would've ended the fight with mal dead to rights if it was in his medical record. Mal just happened to know something the Operative didn't.

Granted, the arrogance is there. Somebody like Bourne would've hit the nerve cluster and then gone straight for a kill. Instead the Operative starts monologuing.

That was after Mal feigned paralysis, so it's not like The Operative was being all that stupid given they were alone, he'd consistently kicked Mal's arse and now he was going in for the kill after lecturing him on the error of his ways. Of course, Bourne would simply kill him as he despatched the rest of Treadstone, but The Operative would've been no different had a total unforeseen aspect of Mal's physiology been there.

I agree with most assessments here. Neither party would be able to get Bourne, even if they had a good idea of what Earth was like and its intelligence services. For going head to head, I'm unsure whether Early's psychosis is a match for Fett's firepower.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2008-02-21 05:14pm

Jason Bourne leaves them both as a greasy smear, they will not get up to be able to fight each other.

Baal · Post by **Baal** » 2008-02-22 03:32pm

Gaidin wrote:
Baal wrote:The bit of hand to hand we see from Early suggests that movie Bourne would eat him for lunch. I would even say the same thing for the Operative since he couldnt take out Mal in the final fight scene. I mean Mal is tough but when one pulls out a sword and the other grabs a SCEWDRIVER the fight should be over right there. Yet Mal still wins. If nothing else this means that the Operative arrogant beyond belief and it is a huge weakness for him.
Mal doesn't win because of the Operative's incompetence. He wins because he had a nerve cluster removed that for all intents and purposes would've ended the fight with mal dead to rights if it was in his medical record. Mal just happened to know something the Operative didn't.

Granted, the arrogance is there. Somebody like Bourne would've hit the nerve cluster and then gone straight for a kill. Instead the Operative starts monologuing.

Long before the nerve junction move Mal should have been sliced and diced the first time the Operative pulled his sword and Mal pulled his scrwedriver.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-02-22 04:27pm

Baal wrote:Jango still lost.

This is meaningless. Any real human would lose a fight against Obi Wan. General Grievous' punches were putting large dents in a combat starship's hull, yet Obi Wan was essentially unaffected by this. There's basically nothing an unaugmented human could do to harm Obi Wan in a fight without advanced weapons.

Jango lasted a very long time against Obi Wan, considering just how inhumanly strong and tough Obi Wan is.

Besides, how did you decided that he lost? A win for Jango was escaping, a win for Obi Wan, arresting Jango Fett.

Gaidin · Post by **Gaidin** » 2008-02-22 05:14pm

Baal wrote:
Long before the nerve junction move Mal should have been sliced and diced the first time the Operative pulled his sword and Mal pulled his scrwedriver.

No. Just because the operative has advanced melee training doesn't mean Mal doesn't put up a fight. The man is formerly a military grunt and an experienced mercenary. Anybody fighting the operative knows going in that the pointy object getting into you is a bad thing. Mal knows how to handle himself and can act on that in a more competent fashion than most other people. Just because the operative has a sword and he has a screwdriver doesn't mean the fight is an absolute breeze for the more highly trained combatant.

You give the operative too much credit and Mal not enough.

Baal · Post by **Baal** » 2008-03-03 06:37pm

Gaidin wrote:
Baal wrote:
Long before the nerve junction move Mal should have been sliced and diced the first time the Operative pulled his sword and Mal pulled his scrwedriver.
No. Just because the operative has advanced melee training doesn't mean Mal doesn't put up a fight. The man is formerly a military grunt and an experienced mercenary. Anybody fighting the operative knows going in that the pointy object getting into you is a bad thing. Mal knows how to handle himself and can act on that in a more competent fashion than most other people. Just because the operative has a sword and he has a screwdriver doesn't mean the fight is an absolute breeze for the more highly trained combatant.

You give the operative too much credit and Mal not enough.

Well my opinion still stands that if Mal can beat the Operative when is at such a disadvantage then there is no way in hell that the Operative is going to last even a couple minutes against Jason Bourne.

Darth Smiley · Post by **Darth Smiley** » 2008-03-03 07:29pm

Defeat by act of plot != Defeat by skill.

Mal is the protagonist. As such, the writers are sort of obligated to find some way for him to avoid getting sliced into ribbons. TWICE Mal is down for the count and an act of plot saves him (Inara's flash bomb and removed nerve cluster). However, in a crossover "what-if" there is no writer to pull a deus ex machina. The Operative may well have been able to pose a credible threat to Bourne (as long as he had his sword. If it's just hand to hand, he's toast).

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2008-03-04 05:37am

Whereas Boba Fett does not have a mighty roar.

Gullible Jones · Post by **Gullible Jones** » 2008-03-04 08:48pm

He does have a mighty Wilhelm scream...