Mjölnir;36701833 said:
Your premise is flawed at the foundation. How would an individual's ability to beat people up be particularly relevant in an environment where you have weapons where one pull of the trigger kills someone? Anyone that was allowed to carry a blaster near Jabba could theoretically have killed him, as with any crime leader in history when personal firearms were common. The notion that ambitious people avoided to do that because the leader was physically capable is laughable. You don't do that because of that no one is leader without having powerful and loyal friends, and if you want to usurp someone that's the factor you need to solve, not the actual killing which is trivial.
Of course the weapon thing comes into it, I'm not debating that. And it's not about "beating people up", it's just that traditionally organized crime types have a history of getting their hands dirty themselves. Capone, Cohen, Gotti, all of those types of guys started out as low-rent thugs on the streets carrying out other people's nasty business. Even guys who inherit the power tend to be put to work by their fathers to prove themselves. They started out as "Greedos", Jabba clearly doesn't come from that pragmatically-capable mold.
It's more than just brains & economic management - hell, half the Trade Federation guys had that type of know-how. In any context without their armies of battle droids, had those guys gone into the criminal business, their power isn't going to last all that long, because you take a look at them for two seconds and realize they're cowering pvssies with no hard-man merit whatsoever. Sometimes leadership is taking the point of the spear and getting involved yourself, guys like Boba of all people are going to respect that. And there are likely others in his employ like Han who're only purely in it for a fat wallet at the end of the job, nothing sentimental in play whatsoever.
Like, yeah, Jabba's brainy and has the temperament for the job. Surely plenty of other beings out there in the GFFA do too, though, and criminals/gangsters tend to be the reckless & ambitious type. I'm more just wondering how Hutts as a
species are reasonably supposed to be taken seriously in this line of work, when guys like Maul & whoever else they introduce as the heads of these gangs are out there. It's more than just brains & strategem, there's a blunt-force element to this gangster life too. Hutts can't have always been the gangster Dons of the GFFA, they had less power at some point in time.
As for the loyalty thing, aside from his right-hand Twilek guy in Jedi it never really came off like any of those guys particularly had any love for the big lardass. He just paid well & threw cool parties. I don't buy that if Boba or some other ambitious upstart offed Ol' Sluggy in a very spectacular public fashion, declared he's giving everyone on payroll a higher cut from then-on, and naked guy gets to keep his cool Rancor, that all that "scum & villainy" wouldn't be on-board.
As for your Sidious comparison, talk about flawed. Sidious' frail-old-coot thing was an act, a deception. Some guy busts in on Palps while sleeping or whatever, he's pretty likely to rouse and fry the guy's balls off while laughing maniacally. Jabba's power really does rely on the trustworthiness of others, and he's operating in an industry where loyalty goes to whoever's got the deepest pockets and/or threatens you with the most unpleasant death. Jabba's guys can most likely be scared into submission, or simply bought with a higher wage from Jabba's seized wealth. Hypothetically: Maul as depicated in Clone Wars shows up on Tatooine sometime prior to EpIII, either on his own or with a small force of Mandos or random mercs, lays out 15 dead Jabba-cronies on that palace floor, and throws out a Roman "join or die, I've already found sneaky access to Jabba's credit stash", those ne'er-do-wells aren't going "gee wiz, scary devil-guy, I really do think I'll have to stick with the half-ton gooball who can't really do anything to any of us unless one of us carries it out for him." They'd piss themselves and bend a knee to Mr British Satan-Ninja.
Also, how the hell did we get onto this from EpIX talk anyway?
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