PT Was Jar Jar Binks really that bad?

As a standalone character he may have been more forgivable. The trouble is, when have an entire race of Gungans who have personalities or traits that aren't dissimilar to that of Jar Jar, then your care for that individual character seems to wain, especially for a CGI character. As it is, you need to accept that this bumbling character is of some use. Admittedly, he is in places. But when you have an entire squadron of Jar Jar type characters, there's a fatigue type of effect because the Jar Jar gets to a point where he blends, he doesn't stand out.

That's why C3PO and R2 are so timeless to the Saga; not only do they have their role in assisting the providing assistance to various characters, but they are different to other droids in that they almost have their own distinct personalities and functions. It's a little bit like comparing Voyager's EMH to the standard EMH that is used in Starfleet. Although both entities are the same in essence, there are development traits that separate the Voyager EMH from the norm. This is what Lucas failed to accomplish with Jar Jar. There just wasn't enough going for that character to see him as his own character because most of his antics were limited to cartoonish blips and farts.

 

No, after the movie was so popular for so long it started to be pulled apart in ways it was never meant to be and people they complained about the lack of black characters in the movie except for the bad guy who they thought was black because a black actor did the part.

Jar Jar was not black anymore than Vader was. It was just that the actors doing the voices were.

Can't agree with you on that. Jar Jar is as different from other Gungans while still being one as 3PO and R2 are from droids while being droids. It's simply that we don't see or have interactions with many other protocol or astromechs.

TPM makes a point of having other protocol and astromechs in the movie and then individualizing them. Jar Jar is a Gungan who got thrown out of their society so he's hardly some upper class member!

 

OK - thanks for explaining - I appreciate it.

I see Jar Jar as very individual too. I thought he was very different from other Gungans. I've sometimes wondered if he had been more like Captain Tarpals whether he would have been more popular, in the story and out here. Anyway, I think he clearly had some issues compared to others of his kind. In some ways he reminds me of an EU(Legends) Jedi character from the very early Republic called Zayne Carrick. Zayne's master said that his existance proved the force had a sense of humour (or something like that - can't rifle through comic collection to check at this time of night as my son is asleep in the next room.) I think that could easily be said of Jar Jar too!

 

I was a kind during the TNG run, being a couple years younger than Wil Wheaton, and I have to say that I didn't much care for Wesley and didn't miss him when he was gone. I fact, I'd say that in the grand scheme of things I was able to tolerate Jar Jar more.

 

But are the two really comparable? Threepio's character seems to work better, irrespective of him being an OT original.

 

No. End of story.

 

I like him for most of TPM, his antics get a bit much in the final battle against the droid-army, inter-cut with that awesome duel it seems a little uneven.
In other earlier scenes he can make me chuckle at times.

I know it has been said a thousand times, but the Jedis' character plays off the contrast to Jar Jar's personality, the chemistry between them is actually not bad.
You hear a lot of complaints that the style of humour should be out of place in a Star Wars film, but the style (of this film particularly) for the most part doesn't jar (no pun intended) with the character to me. I actually think he is more out of place in his few AOTC scenes, I'm still baffled as to what Lucas was trying to say having Jar Jar be responsible for Palpatine's emergency powers? Odd.

 

MESA ENJOYEN JAR JAR, HATERS GONNEN HATE.

 

I suspect we are around the same age. I have no doubt you and others felt that way.. but i didnt. Nor did I know anybody else who did back then (hense my surprise when i later discovered he was so disliked). I doubt any of my friends would have said Wesley was their favorite character - mainly just indifference towards him. The only real 'eye-roll factor' I remember being discussed back then involved the whole Data trying to be human shtick. We all loved Data, but found that aspect of his character a tad hokey - even in the 80s.

IMHO, if there is a 'Star Trek Jar Jar' it would most certainly be Simon Pegg's Scotty

 

The thing that makes Jar Jar so funny in Phantom Menace is the fact that Qui Gon and Obi Wan are trying so hard to be so calm and patient and "jedilike" in his midst. In Clone Wars he is in laugh out loud funny situations.

 

I think the point of having Jar Jar be the one who helps Palpatine gain emergency powers is:

Jar Jar is something of an "innocent", who has his innocence abused by Palpatine: the child-like outsider who just wants to fit in ..... and what better way than by "helping" his friends?

The depressing moral blindness shown by the characters in AOTC is illustrated by a line of Yoda's in TESB: "If you leave now, help them you could, but you will destroy all for which they have fought and suffered."

And Jar Jar (though by no means all by himself -- for that is the other point being made) does help destroy all for which Padme, Anakin, and Obi-Wan, and the Jedi, have fought and suffered.

It's quite the meditation on how the best of intentions can sometimes lead people astray and into darkness. And the way this sometimes comes about: craving acceptance and validation from those around you; operating on the tragic assumption that you'll be more liked, more appreciated, if you do X or Y.

It's also neat in a "barometer/yardstick" sense, poetically, because it shows how corrupt the galaxy is becoming, when Palpatine's mendacity cuts so deep, his greedy scheming not even passing Jar Jar by. Not even the wide-eyed, elastic, lowly alien sidekick can any longer be looked at the same way.

You'll notice that there are these attacks on the "innocent" time of TPM in AOTC. The film opens with a visual attack on TPM when Padme's silver ship explodes and those iconic N-1 banana-yellow starfighters are sent tumbling over the landing platform. Plus, where Coruscant seemed "safe" in the former movie, it now plays host to direct violence on the lives of galactic senators. Palpatine corrupting Jar Jar is one more example of a shift in the thematic landscape, and a rather audacious one, in my opinion, exposing Palpatine for the manipulative filch he is. All is changing, all is passing.

War and corruption eat the characters and the institutions they belong to alive from the inside out. By the opening of ROTS, we're basically told this straight: "Evil is everywhere." In ROTJ, the saga delivers a follow-up, of sorts, with the metaphor of the Sarlacc digesting people in its belly for "a thousand years" ("I will not let this Republic which has stood for a thousand years be split in two"). The Sith take the raw materials around them -- fear, greed, vanity, apathy -- and make a new social contract out of them. Empires aren't built merely on conquest; they need their dupes, too.


BTW, a slightly more esoteric take on Jar Jar going dark was once entered, by yours truly, into an old thread of mine >>

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Cryogenic, Jan 26, 2007 at 10:53 PM​

(should be clickable if you desire to read the post in-context)

To sort of fuse these ideas together, Palpatine tries to take control of the wilder, jarring elements of the movies, in order that he might tame and standardize them. The Dark Side, after all, is all about control.

There is then a conscious/unconscious "rebellion" had against this in episodes IV, V, and VI. The films are almost fighting against themselves, vying to come alive and outgrow the yoke of control.

This is all a bit baffling, but it's also one of the things I love about the whole series, and about Jar Jar. You see TPM, you get one view of Jar Jar. You watch AOTC, you get another. There are arcs to everything; but no two are the same.

And the series remains something, on some level, that is always slipping away from you, like a wriggling, wet fish. Jar Jar the energetic salmon. The cyclical nature of everything. Nothing is resolved; nothing will resolve. In part, but not in whole.

 

Very insightful breakdown. I’d say it both tracks what isn’t explained in the movie and reverberates ideas from the saga as a whole. However, at the risk of sandbagging your post—as an alternative or accessory to the above cerebralizing, allow me to offer what, in its own way, covers the same ground in a more adjective manner, addressing the immediate movie-going sensation. In short, I think Hevy answers his own question:

 

Can't disagree with that, but then I have a particular dislike for the reboots.

 

I don't like Jar Jar. Even as a kid I didn't like him. As much of a prequel apologist as I am, I don't mind when people say how much they hate Jar Jar.

That said, he doesn't ruin TPM for me, as he seems to do for some, and in my humble opinion, he is far far less annoying and more likeable than Wesley Crusher.

Your mileage may vary.

 

Yeah, Cryo. Well said.

This is a decent explanation. Takes what I think I subconsciously knew and expands on it.

This part particularly resonates with me. I've often though that AOTC gains a lot of strength if you put it in the context of a follow up to TPM, particularly.
For example, Anakin cowering at Watto's aggressive attitude in TPM is replaced by Watto being intimidated by Anakin in the next film...
"Wait, you're a Jedi! Whatever it is, I didn't do it!" and Anakin sternly inquiring about his mother "I'd like to know." "...Sure, sure, absolutely!"

Interesting.

That's a cool quote, hadn't thought of that.

Very interesting thoughts, I don't have anything significant to add, but a lot to think about.

 

Thank you -- as ever! -- HD.

That's a great example. And it's so wonderfully concise. Just enough for the point to be made.

Like most of the PT, actually.

The prequel trilogy has many stabs at socialization and domestication, in my view.

Anyway, I like the Jungian aspects of Jar Jar, as well.

It's all a dream >>>

"You had another nightmare last night?"

Republic/Empire. Dream/nightmare.

Jar Jar is just a spectre. A phantom menace.

I'm glad I've given you things to think about.

I tend to look on Jar Jar as one of the most interesting characters and design aspects of the PT.

The story is much grander with him, than without, IMO.

 

I don't hate Jar Jar, and I don't think he ruined the film, but there is certainly room for some criticism.

I think the problem with Jar Jar was execution rather than concept. TPM needed a light-hearted presence very badly, as all of the other leads were extremely serious people. You want some contrast.

What the film needed was a funny character, but what it got was a silly character. That's not the same, but it still could have worked.

I watch the various "making of" featurettes, and I hear several creators all making the same point: Jar Jar can't look like Roger Rabbit. It's strange to me that they created a character that didn't look like Roger Rabbit, but ACTED exactly like Roger Rabbit. He was photo-realistic, but he appeared to obey completely different laws of physics. I think that's why Jar Jar works much better in The Clone Wars animated series. In the live action films, he was just distractingly incongruous in a way that other CGI characters (Watto, Sebulba, Yoda) weren't.

See, for example, this entire sequence. It would have been over the top for a Buster Keaton film.

 

At least Jar Jar is only a small part, Rebels is worse. I'd take Jar Jar Binks in the movies over that.
Perhaps soon Jar Jar will pale in comparison to that slapstick.

 

It's too bad that only people like us can answer this question, when, in this case, the opinion of five-year-olds is just as important as ours. I think a lot of us were hoping for a grittier Star Wars when the PT came out because we had become adults, and we were hoping for a Star Wars that was still made just for us, even though virtually all of us fell in love with Star Wars when we were teenagers or younger. (I was 4-years-old.)

I think most young kids like Jar Jar, and he's really not that different from C-3PO, Salacious Crumb, or the Ewoks. Also, I think some of us overlook how unrealistic or simplified some of the scenes from the OT really are because we are so used to the films. I think GL could've come up with a character who would've appealed more to adults but still worked for children. For instance, I think adults would find an Oscar the Grouch-type character more fun than the Goofy-like character that Jar Jar resembles. I actually think Watto as the comic sidekick to the Jedi would've worked better than Jar Jar (at least for adults). I also agree with the complaint that Jar Jar's antics sometimes take over scenes and sometimes are distracting. I think that was a mistake. Also, Jar Jar does have a more reserved side, such as when he talks with Padme about Gungan/Naboo relations. You know things are serious when even Jar Jar becomes serious.

Personally, sometimes Jar Jar gets on my nerves, sometimes he's fine, and a few times I find him funny, but I think it's probably more important to hear what the opinion is today of someone who was five-years-old when PTM came out, if he's aged well for them, and it's probably also important to hear what little kids who see TPM today think of him -- does he work as a character for them or does he get on their nerves?

While the more selfish part of me once wished that all 6 Saga installments had the more adult tone more prevalent in ROTS and TESB (though they still have "childish" aspects to them), I now fear that Ep. 7 - 9 will go for a grittier feel to appeal to adults. I had a Star Wars I could love as a child, and I think that even if I like Ep. 7 - 9, if they don't appeal to children, I will ultimately consider that a big failure.

 

This. While I do have a preference for darker feels, if TFA is made dark just for the sake of darkness(in other words, to please a certain crowd) it will be a poor movie. It will feel fake--something a Star Wars movie is not reputed for. My top three SW films are the darkest (ROTS, AOTC, TESB) of the saga, but I never felt light ones like TPM, ANH, ROTJ suffered because of their lighter tones. Star Wars under George Lucas succeeded at creating genuinely dark AND genuinely light feels. I'm not too hopeful for the future of the saga as effective 'tone-makers' right now just based on my trailer impression, but potential failures or successes of the ST remain to be seen...

OP, concerning Jar Jar, I neither like or dislike him. He was a bit too much at times, but I understand it was necessary to create a naive, foolish character for Palpatine's manipulations to work. What I really don't like is the concept of Gungans as horse-fish(or whatever mixtures they actually are) in the tradition of spitting like gurgling babies to express approval. THAT I found too childish(and uncivilized) for my taste. Unbelievable too. I did like the idea of native people from Naboo living in secret cities underwater though.

 

This is a very unpleasant generalisation. Ewoks can be explored as a primitive culture and be twisted in a way that is not childish at all.

 

Weirdly enough the older I get the harder it is to actually understand a word he says. Good thing I have it memorized from so many viewing but still....And my six year old sister didn't like jar jar because she couldnt understand him or why he did anything he did.Yes.He is that bad. The intended age group didnt like him.

 

The evidence proves otherwise.

 

Agreed. I don't like the fact that the major battle taking place on the plains of Naboo during the movie's climax was reduced to silly slapstick.

Also, the Jar Jar inspired toilet humor aren't exactly Star Wars' finest moments....

I recently watched E1 with the subtitles on. I must confess that on more than one occasion, I learned he was saying something different from what I had thought all along he was saying.

 

I still have no idea what this means. " Ohh, maxi big da Force. Well dat smells stinkowiff."
Jar-Jar Binks, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace