I was fortunate enough to have seen Return of the Jedi during its initial theatrical run, which means I saw the first instance of a Hutt hitting the big screen. Jabba’s cyclopean torso filled my entire field of vision, and it was obvious that this bulbous blob of fetid flatulence was the fantastical embodiment of a slug distended to twice the length of even a very tall human being.
Being the languorous layabout that he was, Jabba never moved from atop his cushioned slab of concrete, probably due to the fact that early 1980s silver-screen technology didn’t yet exist that could facilitate such movement in a manner convincing enough to appease George Lucas. Either way, the message was symbolically stated and etched in Star Wars lore that Hutts are pudgy pieces of (as Jabba himself would say) “Bantha poodoo,” who may have possessed the brains adequate to run intergalactic criminal empires, but couldn’t be bothered to slither from their slabs even for the five seconds it would take to put a Twi’lek slave in their place.
Of course, all of his slothful practices worked against Jabba in the end. Somehow, despite weighing close to 3,000 pounds, he couldn’t muster the leverage to prevent a 90-pound princess from choking him out with a chain. At his size, Jabba should have been able to shrug off the princess through a bare minimum of exertion of what would have amounted to a cable-style crunch. I’ve heard of skipping leg day before, but Jabba paid a severe price for skipping all of the days.
Fast-forward nearly 40 years, though, and we’re finally introduced to Bokku the Hutt through Marvel’s Star Wars: Darth Vader comic series. This is a Hutt who definitely skips leg day — only because he clearly has no legs — but he obviously skips nothing else: Nary a meal, nor a round of supplementation. I don’t know what they use for performance enhancement in the Star Wars Universe, but whatever it is, Bokku is taking it. My guess would be that he’s dabbling with some sort of Gamorrean growth hormone (GGH), dining on only the leanest cuts of Dewback and definitely not hitting the Hookah with the frequency of his corpulent cousin, Jabba.
Seriously, Bokku has an upper body that resembles that of Drax the Destroyer in his prime, which means he probably takes supplements the same way Drax allegedly supplemented in his prime.
According to the lore of the Star Wars expanded universe, Bokku would have certain species-specific advantages we would have to factor in as we evaluate a Hutt who appears to have prioritized buffness over badness during at least some segments of his long life. Since Hutts are capable of living to be well over 1,000 years old and don’t strike middle age until they reach around 650 years old, Bokku would have had plenty of time to bank the muscle cells that he could draw on to maintain the prodigious power of the musculature that undergirds his enormous physique.
This is where things get tricky when evaluating the anatomy of a Hutt who is both ripped and jacked. Without the benefit of juxtaposition, it’s hard to size Bokku up with other Hutts to determine whether or not he just recently leaned out his body. We may just happen to be catching Bokku as he’s peaking during his cutting phase, no doubt getting ready to grace the stage to defend his bodybuilding crown as “Mr. Outer Rim.”
With that being the case, I have no idea exactly how jacked most Hutts are beneath those layers of blubber. There’s nothing about a diet of what are essentially frogs that would make a Hutt so rotund. On its face, a frog-like being would be the equivalent of a low-carb, high-fat, high-protein snack, with plenty of nutrient content provided by the organs as well. Bokku’s mammoth measurements also break the basal metabolic rate (BMR) calculator, so I asked myself if I was nerdy enough to calculate an approximate BMR for him by hand.
I was.
88.362 + (13.397 x 1,133.98) + (4.799 x 365.76) – (5.677 x 500) = 14,197.02 calories per day
What this mess of math means is that Bokku would have to consume bookuu calories to fortify his beefy batch of brawn and maintain it even if he didn’t move one slimy muscle. Of course, this calculation is by human standards (or “Terran” standards if I really want to let my inner Star Wars nerd shine forth). If someone with advanced degrees in cellular biology and kinesiology from MIT wants to take a crack at devising an accurate BMR calculator for a Hutt, go for it. The real point is, we must assume that Hutts are eating far more than frogs, and also eating nonstop, or their stoutness can’t be maintained. We must presume that Jabba was wolfing down entire Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes in between frogs.
So how does a glorified slug get a six-pack, along with every other meaty attribute on his mountainous chassis? My guess would be that he wraps his tail around something high up and cranks out reps of hanging sit-ups. I would have thought that a Hutt’s midsection would be more like a snake’s, but Bokku’s abs definitively illustrate that this is not the case. Snakes’ bodies are certainly strong and sinewy, but a six-pack is something that will always elude them.
From there, Bokku is probably going through a standard battery of upper-body exercises. I’d love to imagine him pressing pounds on the bench (or at least from his back) like a prime Ronnie Coleman, but the reality is that Bokku could build a chest like that at his immense size simply by doing push-ups to failure every morning.
Even if Bokku maintains half of his mass in his lower half, and it never leaves the floor during a rep, you can’t tell me that pressing yourself off the floor with at least 1,200 pounds being yanked down by gravity and supported by your carcass won’t beef you up in a hurry — or snap your humerus, radius and ulna, and dislocate your shoulders. However, since we see Boku standing around looking sexy, we have to assume he has managed to find a workaround for whatever physical impediments might have prevented the manifestation of such a muscular marvel.
To build his back, I absolutely adore the idea of Bokku performing pull-ups and lat pulldowns while wearing weight gloves, and toweling the sweaty slime away from his brow in between sets. Of course, the sight of That Hutt Over There doing dumbbell back extensions — or better yet, reverse hyperextensions — would have been a glorious and hilarious sight to behold.
I say “would have been” because Star Wars and Marvel have already killed Bokku off with a single stab from Darth Vader’s crimson lightsaber. Apparently, Vader had no appreciation for the hundreds of years and tens of thousands of training hours that Bokku put into crafting his impressive appearance. Oh Bokku, we barely knew ye!
Hopefully, the collective minds of Star Wars and Marvel will spawn a new hot Hutt to take Bokku’s place. There’s absolutely no way Bokku could have loomed so large for so long without inspiring at least one ambitious Hutt to follow his example and mirror his training regimen. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, some other Hutt has taken up Bokku’s mantle in the quest to become the next Mr. Outer Rim. I just know it.
Ian Douglass
Ian Douglass is a volunteer firefighter, lackadaisical Concept2 rower and SkiErger and is the worst masters swimming All-American in recorded history. He also helps professional wrestlers publish their autobiographies, assists businesspeople with the writing of coherent thoughts and has overhyped degrees from Michigan and Northwestern.
