PT Why is Jar Jar annoying to you?

Good on him. While I thought JarJar should've been tweaked a bit I'm somewhat fond of the character. He's a lovable buffoon. Hating a lovable buffoon is a bit odd to me. Smacks of a bullying attitude.

 

C3PO is much more tolerable, in my opinion. And at least he wasn't shoved that much in the audience's faces like Jar Jar did.

 

I don't know why Jar Jar is annoying to me. I didn't even know that Jar Jar is annoying to me.
Someone will have to enlighten me.

 

Except that he didn't.


George knew only too well that, whilst positioning Jar Jar as a character that children would inherently be attracted to, he was also well aware that this was unlikely to be the case, generally, with adults. And indeed, that was the point.


Firstly, let me just preface this by saying that I love Jar Jar, and always have. If I had been on these boards back in the days of TPM, then I would most certainly have defended the loveable Gungan to the hilt.


Jar Jar is based on a character from one of Akira Kurosawa's films. As many fans are aware, Kurosawa has been a rather large influence on Lucas' telling of the SW story. The Kurosawa film which Jar Jar's character is influenced by, was the cinematic re-telling of an old, revered Japanese Kabuki play. Kurosawa, however, decided to add a character to his film that was never in the original Kabuki play.


This additional character was a 'fool'. And this is the character whom Jar Jar was based upon.


At the time of Kurosawa's movie release, his film received a critical mauling; guess which character took most of the flak...? The paying audience—who historically had always loved this particular Kabuki play, through the years—were exceptionally disenchanted with Kurosawa's addition to their beloved piece of theatre.


Does that sound familiar to you, at all?


Lucas would have known all of this. And yet he went ahead with the inclusion of Binks anyway.


So the question you have to ask is: WHY?


For me, Jar Jar is an allegorical figure.


He is a highly ambivalent character. And that is exactly the point.


All of the adults in TPM seem to dislike Jar Jar—even Qui-Gon at first, but I'll come back to him—either immediately, or built up over time (in the case of the Gungans). So, is it any wonder that the adult movie-viewing audience would feel the same...?


However, the children in TPM—Anakin and Padme—are the ones who form a bond with Jar Jar and accept him for who he is, and, in the case of the Queen, realise that he could be of great help to the planetary citizens of Naboo.


Unsurprisingly, the children in the audience seem to love him too. Jar Jar captures the vulnerability, awkwardness and naiveté that children feel and try to hide for fear of being ridiculed. Lucas has commented on Binks being frog-like in appearance; eminent psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Carl Jung, remarked that the frog is animal symbolism for the child.


Jar Jar represents the clumsy child inside all of us. The part of us that we fear showing to the cynical adult world we now inhabit.


Psychologically, when we deny these aspects of our character, we usually project them onto others in a negative way. Jar Jar, whose bumbling qualities drew ridicule from his own society, evoked similar responses from members of our society as well. And this is exactly what we fear will happen when we expose the 'Binks' inside of ourselves.


Qui-Gon's part in this should not be overlooked, either. His initial response to Jar Jar is one of annoyance, and he puts the Gungan down. However, Jinn is a practitioner of the Living Force, and therefore lives in the moment. His understanding that the Will of the Force is trying to talk to him, with regard to Binks, is what enables him to see past the 'fool' and accept that the Gungan may be of greater importance in the larger order of things.


Whilst he does not see the ultimate importance of Jar Jar, he sees that the Force potentially has a plan with regard to him, and he listens.


He states to Kenobi that they may need a guide to get them through the planet core, and yet once underwater he states that the Force will guide them. So the Jedi Master's motives for bringing the Gungan along clearly run deeper than appearances would have us believe.


When we get to the crucial moment in the story of TPM, Jar Jar's having been around the Queen so much forms a vital, symbiotic link and enables her to forge an alliance that wins the day—thereby reinforcing one of the larger themes of the movie.


Were it not for Qui-Gon's use of the Living Force, there would have been no Gungan army at Padme's disposal.


Obi-Wan describes Jar-Jar as "another pathetic life-form". Boss Nass banishes him from the entire Gungan society, for being clumsy—a trait that one often associates with children, and which children themselves can identify with. And even Qui-Gon is shown to start out indifferent to Jar-Jar: "The ability to speak does not make you intelligent, now get out of here."


However, ultimately, Jinn is able to see Jar-Jar's potential worth through The Force: "This Gungan may be of help".


Jar Jar is representative of innocence and naiveté—traits that Palapatine would crush in an instant.


He is there to teach us a lesson about the way seemingly worthless creatures actually have worth.


That, in fact, ALL creatures have worth.

​

-JR

 

I can't because he hasn't.

 

The only times he annoyed me was when he was in TCW, and when they made him a general and representative......yeah those two things were SILLY and in TCW he needed to be killed. Should have been force choked to death by Maul.

 

To me he was the epitome of the PT movies. And I'll leave it at that.

 

He's not to me. He's the best. And I'm proud to say so!

 

He's fine.

Great character

 

He did misjudge, if that's the right term. He hoped Jar Jar would be popular with the general audience, not just little kids. He said in an on-set documentary during production that how Jar Jar is received is key to the whole film. He personally loves Jar Jar as a character & he's not an infant. Saying all he wanted all along was kiddies alone to like Jar Jar is just spin designed to make it look like George's plans all fell into place perfectly. The fact that JJ was reduced from a main character to a cameo after TPM says it all.

 

For me it is because his terrible lines make my face turn inside out from the cringe.

 

Guess thats why TPM is my favorite PT film then. Cause I've always liked Jar Jar. He does make me laugh. I'm with Frank Oz on this one I think he's a great character. If there was a Jar Jar fan club I'd join it…lol.

 

He breathes. He walks. He talks. A foolish character made to appeal to the little kiddies at the expense of the story and other characters. A forced, slapstick comedy (if you can call it that) instead of a natural flow of comedic elements or moments in a movie. I despise him. Lucas started to get the hint when most of the public rejected him and had him briefly in AOTC. Finally just a cameo in ROTS. I wish he was killed off by Anakin in the last movie.

"ohhhh Ani…Ani….Ani….!!!!"

"Hello Jar Jar."

Lightsaber slash.

 

You guys are more evil with your hatred of Jar Jar than Darth Sidious ever could be. Says a lot more about you than it does Jar Jar.

 

No personal attacks now…..

I do have a warped sense of humor. And proud of it

 

I like the prequels and before I re-watched them after seeing TFA I always felt Jar Jar as a character wasn't that bad however, after watching the films again though I do dislike not because how he looks speaks, that he is CGI or walks it is his character that is flawed. Too often he gives up or tells the other characters to give up any time they encounter a problem and because of blind luck he achieves glory. That to me is not only a bad character but also sends a bad message. Maybe I am reading too deep into this as he is a comic relief character but honestly take away his voice and make him a human in our world I would still dislike him because he succeeds with blind luck with no real effort and is quick to give up.

 

It's not spin, thanks very much, and I didn't state that his intention was for ONLY children to like Jar Jar—certainly there are plenty of adults that genuinely love Jar Jar; I am one of those that do—but that Lucas was very aware of the fact that some adults would, in all likelihood, react to Jar Jar in the way that many of the adult characters in the movie do.


This did not stop a majority of the audience from going to see TPM again and again—up until TFA, TPM was the highest grossing SW film, remember.

Except that George ALSO stated that it was always his intention to reduce the role of Jar Jar in the next two movies, to accommodate for the increased roles of the droids—specifically Threepio—and also to reflect the trilogy's descent into tragedy.



-JR

 

Lucas would've loved Jar Jar to be better received by audiences of all ages.

It was the 4th highest grossing when you adjust for inflation, which you must. Now it's the 5th. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

Have never heard him say that it was always his intention. Source? If he did it could just be another example of Lucas-spin.

 

No I believe George scaled down the character for the fan backlash. I think the fan backlash was wrong. But that is why George did it.

 

Indeed. Lucas knew what he was doing when he ventured to develop a character like Jar Jar.

Solid response (and a splendid post earlier), but you missed Darth Downunder's other distortion.

GL did not say that "how Jar Jar is received is key to the whole film", but that "Jar Jar is the key to all this", primarily referring to the battle sequence at the end of the film. "Key to the whole film" is an unwarranted leap; and obviously not true since Jar Jar doesn't feature in every scene (and some of his more understated scenes don't or didn't necessarily require such forbidding use of CGI; which is obviously where the real challenge in realizing Jar Jar with late-1990s computer tech lay).

I mean, what GL says, divorced from its more pragmatic context, is true in a broader metaphorical sense, but I'm not really going to allow DD that one, since prequel detractors only embrace metaphorical meaning when it suits them (i.e., next to never). The mystical interpretation is that "this" is an anagram of "sith"; and Lucas is making a very telling comment about just how essential Jar Jar is to the entire cosmic drama he was setting out to tell (and no, this has little or nothing to do with any debased reddit theory, but is a profound statement when the "meta" aspect of his remark is glimpsed).

People don't really get it, but with Star Wars, George is gaming humanity. He has always had experimental tendencies and couldn't help but express them through the work of art -- deceptively simplistic space fantasy -- that ended up taking over much of his life. Lucas literally built about five different film companies to one day create the prequel trilogy. Lucasfilm's raison d'etre, which his other companies sprang from and remained intimately connected to, was really to secure Lucas' independence as an experimental filmmaker, and the prequel trilogy was (and is) his magnum opus. After it was complete, he folded.

Yes. And even the droids weren't going to feature as much as they did. Originally, Artoo and Threepio were to sit out the Battle of Geonosis in Padme's ship, watching it from afar. But then Lucas came up with the droid factory sequence and decided they should have their own adventure and ultimately join the fracas.

The deeper -- yet also very plain -- truth about Jar Jar is that he is an aberration. One that is very appropriate to find at the start of the Star Wars saga. Shmi, Watto, and Qui-Gon aren't in AOTC very much, either, compared to TPM (and none of them make it to ROTS). The ships change and become more pointed. We get a clone army and a clone war. None of this can be deduced by watching TPM alone (which also speaks to the shallowness of watching TPM in isolation). The entire film functions largely as an overture; and, I might add, has a more pronounced fable-istic quality than the following five in the "Anakin Skywalker" cycle (though a more fable-istic quality bubbles back up in ANH and ROTJ: roughly the "middle" and "end" of the AS storyline).

Jar Jar fits the bucolic aesthetic of TPM very well. But he's also, well, Jar Jar. The clue is in the name. He's not meant to be there, he's not destined to endure. Just as he was banished by his people, so he is soon to be banished from the wider galactic drama. In a brilliant twist on his "helper" persona in TPM, the Emperor has one further need of him, and then he's more or less done. That's all as it should be, in my opinion.

As I said before, at this stage, people don't want to understand anything beyond their narrow view. And as you say, OBIWAN-JR, the reduction of Jar Jar's literal presence also reflects the tragic trajectory of the prequel storyline; which has a far more grandiose construction than the OT that inspired it. Jar Jar's absence begins to say more than his presence; which is a measure of how Star Wars and all art works generally. It is almost like the loss of God, or a certain conception of God, from the human realm. The galaxy rapidly evolves; and not necessarily for the better. The earlier truths and essential nature of being that Jar Jar embodies are lost. Jar Jar even, in a sense, nullifies himself.


He is a very different character to any other in Star Wars; and that's what people really fail to grasp.

Jar Jar does not follow all the rules: he defies them.

 

Am I the only one that feels the hatred of Jar Jar just exposes some of the ugly side of human nature? I can get not liking a character but the hate comments I have seen on the forums over the years against Jar Jar are quite an eye opener to say the least. I'm just glad the character has got some love over the years even from those involved with the films such as Frank Oz.

 

Its annoying that its possible that his arc was ditched due to being so unpopular (which is understandable response from the audience) if he was meant to be fooling everyone and was the palps master that would of been one hell of a twist, if it would of worked that another thing.... I know people are quick to dismiss the theory but I think that is a knee jerk reaction, its within the realms of possibility and after just watching the clone wars series there were several times that raised an eye brow in that there were moments that could easily be read at hinting at the said theory...

 

I don't think people can really say George thought or did this without proof. Maybe he DID scale back jar jar because backlash, but without proof it's just speculation. Jar jar shouldn't have been made but some people over reacted WAY to much. Just like with the ewoks. When you wish dead on someone for making great films but then does 1 tiny thing you don't like with THEIR OWN WORK...it's like jesus Christ get over yourself and seek help.

Jar jar had a few funny moments but being a general....no...a ambassador?! NO! The poop jokes...no...just no.....but to say he ruined star wars...man you people must not love star wars much if 1 goofy clone will make the franchise die for you. The only way star wras dies for me is if they replace the good music with something like little wayne, or they use cheap cgi like dragonball super is.

 

I just never enjoyed Jar Jar's onscreen antics, while he doesn't "annoy" me, his speech pattern does make me cringe.

I think TPM would of been better off being Jar Jarless

 

To me the character felt like it was from another genre. He looked cartoony, he acted cartoony. I hated the voice, I hated the slapstick. I managed to to kind of grin and bear him until the final battle in TPM when I finally said to myself, " I really hate what they've done here."

I actually found him much more palatable in TCW, and actually developed a little bit of a softspot for the goof. TCW felt like a much better fit for that character.