PT Controversial thread: Was Jar Jar the prequels HanSolo?

This tall alien, who followed the heros and had a strange way to talk?

Jar-Jar was intended to be the prequels Chewbacca!!!! Not Han!!

 

Huh?

One's covered in hair, the other's a slick amphibian -- an important symbolic difference.

One is gangly, physically uncoordinated, has been banished from his underwater society, and ends up fumbling on a battle field at the end, the other just snarls and pilots a ship, mostly.

One speaks in (relatively) comprehensible English, while only Han can understand what his buddy says.

Etc.

Obviously, there are similarities: as above, they're the loyal alien sidekick that has pledged, or pledges, a life debt, they are both a subject of racism and scorn, and they have literal moments (in different movies) of "thinking with their stomachs".

But such similarities, as I've stressed, can also be drawn between Jar Jar and other characters: Han, Yoda, Threepio, et al.

There is always a strong implication in fan comments on Jar Jar that Lucas was trying to merely repeat himself, rather than vary the tapestry of Star Wars and introduce new ideas, textures, and moods.

It almost seems to be a result of some ungainly projection ----------> people seem to wish the PT had been more like the OT, and I think this wish gets tangled up, at times, with the idea that Lucas must have been trying to recapture the glory of the OT, in a lot of plot elements and characters, and that he failed.

Jar Jar as Chewbacca? No, another strawman fantasy.

 

How did we get descriptive differences from PT alien sidekick? I don't think AFS meant that. Just sidekick in general. Not the differences between Chewie and JJ.

What if Jar Jar whistled to speak? Or too weird?

 

Um, I was making a broader point.

In 1998, I was fifteen years-of-age, and kinda had other things going on. That said, I was eagerly anticipating TPM, and had downloaded all the still images I could find, and I recorded the teaser trailer when it was shown on TV.

From the trailer, I saw many fantastic creatures, but nothing like a Wookiee. I did, however, notice a salamander-like alien getting his tongue zapped in an energy beam. I don't ever recall confusing Jar Jar with being another Chewie, personally.

None of the characters in TPM are "along the lines" of any character from the OT (except the droids, Yoda, and Palpatine/Sidious) -- and that's something I very much like and admire about it. If the media misled you, sorry but that's kinda how the media works.

You must have vision problems as anakinfansince1983 clearly wrote:

"Jar-Jar was intended as a sidekick, the PT's Chewbacca.
Yeah, that went well."

(emphasis mine)

As in, Jar Jar is so far removed from Chewbacca that, if that's what Lucas was intending, he failed. Or maybe she was just blasting the media and the hype surrounding TPM at the time.

Either way, she concretely expressed the idea that Jar Jar and Chewbacca are quite dissimilar, by linking the two in the first line, and sarcastically mocking that link in her second.

What did I say that was wrong?

 

I'm no SW academic, but in light of Lucas's liking for rhyming episodes, wouldn't it be at least conceivable that some PT characters could be somewhat reminiscent of OT ones?

 

I cannot agree with those arguments...

Appearence, background story and idiom are so small compared to being the "alien sidekick"...
If the alien sidekick from the prequels was to be so identical to Chewie, it would be ANOTHER negative critical to TPM....

We must all agree that Qui-Gon is the prequels old-Ben, right?
But I could use your type of comparison and say that they are not because:

1. Qui-Gon has long brown hair and a green saber, while Ben has short white hair and a blue saber...
2. Qui-Gon is an active Jedi Knight with an active apprentice, while Ben is an hermit remanescent from an extinct Jedi order
3. Qui-Gon had spent lots of time near Padme, while Ben never went close to Leia

which doesn't make sense....

 

You obviously haven't been following my posts in this thread. Yes, it's conceivable. There are some pretty striking similarities between them all. Funny, when I argued this some years ago -- when I myself first compared Jar Jar to either Han or Chewie -- I was bashed for having the audacity to make a neutral comparison.

But there are also differences. To condense Jar Jar to one character or the other, as some have tried doing in here, is willfully ignorant, in my opinion. It's clear that these particular comparisons are being done to degrade Jar Jar. Such attempts are disingenuous and a form of smuggled-in bashing. But we each have our opinions.

They're not small. Jar Jar is manifestly different to Chewbacca, to Han, to Luke, Leia ......... whoever you care to name.

And if you're willing to just see Jar Jar as an "alien sidekick", as if that suffices as a description of him, and as if that confers some special set of inerrant traits on him, well, that looks like racial stereotyping to me.

You're playing a semantics game here. Qui-Gon is the prequels' "Old Ben", but that doesn't tell you much about him. He's also Han-like and rogue-ish (a maverick, at the least), and follows his own philosophical code. It's faulty to throw these labels out if you're not going to look beyond crude containers.

The differences you've put up between Qui-Gon and Ben are trivial. While the differences between Jar Jar and Chewie are significant. Qui-Gon, after all, is still a Jedi, like Ben, and is in fact his mentor. Jar Jar and Chewbacca share no inherent master-student connection. They don't dress alike, they don't walk or talk alike, they're not part of the same social fabric, and they come from different backgrounds.

Are Jar Jar haters always this obtuse?

 

Yeah I have been following, but my question above was specifically in response to your prior post in which you said that none of the TPM characters are along the lines of any of the OT characters. It's all good though, I'm not dissing The Binkster at all. Apologies for obtuseness notwithstanding.

 

Well, they're not. Not in the way that that phrase was initially meant, anyway.

Good. Then maybe you won't be in such a rush to skew what I've said next time, right?

 

I think that's more than just a little bit of an over-reaction, but sure, if it makes you feel better, no more rushing to skew from me.

 

How could hair/amphibian not being small?
The strange way they talk is also what ties them.... This, and the bg story MUST be different, as I said, because if they weren't, people would complain that GL was being too repetitive....

I'll agree with that part the day I say that Mace is the prequels Lando...

Yup! That was the point... Small differences when compared to the big picture, exactly as you are doing to Chewie/Binks...

They both complain a lot, they came from races which had suffered persecution, they are tall, both speak strangely, Chewie had a very loyal relation to Han, while Jar-Jar had a life debt to Qui (whom you just has pointed as a prequels Han).

Jar-Jar is equal to Chewie the same way that TPM is equal to ANH...
The similarities are subtles....

Again: GL would be carbonite-frozen if he had the 2 sidekick aliens so equal....

Come again?

 

I'm not sure that it is a non-sequitur. Given Lucas' insistence that the Star Wars 'saga' is his to do with as he pleases; that it is his because it is the product of his "unique talent" - and that 'ownership' he speaks of is to be understood as an artistic or 'moral' ownership as opposed to simply a legal ownership.

What I'm getting at with that is, it is a reasonable question, in those terms to question what Lucas, left to his own devices - ie without technical or monetary constraints. Without those constraints and the input of others what would Lucas have produced from 1977 to 1983?

I'm not sure he would have got beyond one movie in this series, and I don't think it would have been the success that it was. While some of the earlier drafts of Star Wars are.... interesting, I get the impression that what may have been produced may have been rather a schtick pastiche of space-fantasy - think Flash; but that film worked on being a schtick pastiche parody.

What I'm saying is that Star Wars was the success it was because of others as much as Lucas himself, and had those others not been involved, perhaps a story that Lucas created by his unique talent alone may not have resonated with audiences as it actually did.

The OP alludes to an early concept of Han as a green-skinned lizard-like creature - hence the question of the OP. Would that Han Solo have succeeded as Harrison Ford's did? Would a wise-cracking, NY 'salesman' persona have worked for C3P0?

EDIT - Just to say that 'is' should now be 'was' in terms of Lucas' caims to artistic ownership being conflated with his legal ownership

 

Jar Jar Binks was designed to be reminiscent of Chewbacca, C-3PO, and Han Solo, in different ways.

 

Jar Jar was there because they didn't have the double act of C3P0 and R2 together for the kids in TPM. That's also why he's superfluous in the last two films.

Jar Jar apparently did go over well with the kids but unlike the droids in the OT he was pretty dreadful for everybody else. Mind you, the droids were pretty dire in the PT as well. I'm still much happier with them than Jar Jar, and anyway he's still far more tolerable than Chris Tucker or Shia LeBeouf...

 

Jar Jar the PT'S Han Solo?

does not compute

*explodes*

 

Well...

They both are cool pirates who used their charm to kiss the girl....
They both are heros, since they saved the others at the last minute after they played the "I don't care" role...
They both own the coolest starship, in which they use to run from the bad guys while the soundtrack played is the "Asteroid Field" (the best BGM ever)...



They both suffer the greatest doom after being tortured: they were frozen and sent away, letting the audience completely desolated...
They both have all the others in a quest to save them (ignoring the main villains)
They both had commanded a squad which gets its job done by fighting: not as a result of another party being succeeded





well...... *explodes[2]*

 

I always thought the "rhyming beats" were Jar-Jar/Chewie and Anakin/Han Solo.

Think of it this way:

- The Jedi Master stumbles across an alien separated from his culture. (ANH: Obi-Wan finds Chewie in the Cantina.; TPM: Qui-Gon runs into Jar-Jar on Naboo.)
- The alien leads the Jedi Master and his team to someone who can help them. (ANH: Chewie directly introduces Obi-Wan and Luke to Han Solo.; TPM: Jar-Jar gets into a fight with Sebulba, allowing Anakin to intervene.)
- This person is the key that allows the Jedi Master to leave Tatooine. (ANH: Han takes Obi-Wan & crew in the Falcon.; TPM: Anakin wins the podrace, giving Qui-Gon the money for the T-14 hyperdrive.)

 

^^

I like those parallels, jedi-joe.

There are clearly many intriguing rhymes and resonances between the films (and inside of them).

I'm always glad to see fans engaging with the material and looking for links. Being creative.

Jar Jar was also designed to be a tribute to silent comedy legends like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Chewie... not so much. Jar Jar is a live-wire, a bumbler, a big kid in over his head.

They function very differently on the level of comedy. Though they're both quite goofy on a very Lucasian/Star Warsian level.

It's a shame that more people can't remember the child-like core of the saga, or appreciate how silly, on some levels, the whole series actually is.

 

Han running up and down the hallways of the DS screaming while chasing the stormtroopers and Chewie swinging from the vine on Endor and stealing the Walker imo.

 

I'm sorry -- were you planning another sentence, there?

 

I think he was just listing examples.