There are characters that appear for mere moments in a film and yet they garner a cult following, and public interest. Bossk has always been one of these characters for me. In the Empire Strikes Back you see him for but a moment on deck with a Motley Crew of bounty hunters. He kind of hisses at one of the military siffs and I remember thinking as a kid “what is that guys deal?”
It is a great thing when we know little about a character sometimes. It allows the imagination to wander. I often would look at the costume of Bossk and wonder if it was designed to work best with his Reptilian form. He is a shifty 3 fingered bad ass that I knew nothing about, so I filled in the blanks with my young mind. All I knew was that lizard dudes were creepy, and I wish I had one in my tree house to keep watch while I read contraband.
Through books, encyclopedias and role playing supplements the story of Bossk has filled out some. To my delight, the scribes have made good use of the character, and yet he still retains a small element of mystery. My favorite story about Bossk is where he kills and eats his own Father later in life; this mirrors his earliest memory where he ate his unborn brothers and sisters when they were still in eggs. This guy is a serious bounty hunter, If you kill family – you will kill anybody!
In recent history a monster that left me thinking “what is that/what is his deal” was the weirdo guy from Pan’s Labyrinth that had his eyes in his hands. I loved that we knew next to nothing about this ghastly creature. He walked so slow and yet scarred the hell out of me simply because I did not know anything about him, or what he was capable of. That was the magic of Hitchcock, he used our imagination to fill in the blanks, which is genius because he knew what we are capable of thinking.
