PT Jar Jar Binks - Force User Theory and the real Phantom Menace

Hi all,

The Jar Jar theory seen on reddit is a pretty compelling theory and would mirror The Mule from Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.

You can read the theory here:

https://www.reddit.com/comments/3qvj6w

You can also watch the explanation here:



The Theory states that Jar Jar is a Force user who manipulated the events of TPM either with Palpatine or controlling Palatine....and Episode 2 would have been the reveal of Jar Jar as a Sith Lord of some kind...paralleling the reveal in Episode 5. Jar Jar intentionally played the fool as in
Isaac Asimov's character The Mule from Foundation Trilogy

Because of the backlash against Jar Jar after episode 1, on entertainment tonight or access Hollywood they stated that Lucas was to tone down Jar Jar role.

Sad as this theory is brilliant and I do believe it was Lucas' intention to have Jar Jar as Yoda's evil Sith counter part.

This would explain Jar Jar breaking the fourth wall with the audience as to his incredible luck with everything to the point where if you pay attention he's too lucky to the point where you think its either a bad poorly executed character creation or a character that you are to pay closer attention too since no one can be that lucky:

Ahmed best tweeted this about the reddit article:

Even JJ Abrams had this to say:

Now imagine if Lucas would have not listened to the fan backlash and actually went through with it?

It would have been a brilliant reveal to see the "fool" pull the real strings and be the real phantom menace.

 

This is just silly. Are you expecting a reasonable discussion about this?

 

The discussion is open to anyone with an open mind

 

Not a lick of it makes any sense. A rustic, uneducated frog-person, exiled from the city of his birth for clumsiness, whose counsel leads directly to the plans of Sidious being foiled, is secretly a Sith apprentice? Recall Sidious' consternation at Amidala returning to Naboo -- an action she decided to take after speaking to Jar Jar about his people's "grand army" -- and the "theory" is totally demolished.

 

In the theory, he states that Jar Jar has used mind control on Amidala. The he was a force user.

 

That's not addressing my point at all. In the movie, when he learns Amidala is returning to Naboo, Palpatine tries to talk her out of it and Sidious expresses consternation, saying "This isn't like her, it's too aggressive" or words to that effect. He even bites his lip! This shows us that the Queen's return is not part if his plan. The grand army of the Gungans opposing the TF forces is throwing a wrench into Sidious' works.

 

Well, they were either co-conspirators or Binks is pulling Palatine's strings.

Also, Sidous wants Amidala dead...so her going back "works to our advantage" as Sidous stated to the Viceroys where Padme can be killed in battle, which Palpatine would use to garner sympathy in the senate against the Trade Federation

Its a theory, that's all...and it does explain a lot if you read it...I found the video gave me more insight.

Just remember what Richard Marquand said back in 1983, which I believe Disney is pretty much doing this with TFA to some extent.

I personally don't discount the theory, If I go back and re-watch episode 1,2 and 3 with this in mind, certain things makes sense...kind of like re-watching the Usual Suspects again...after the reveal....its not the same movie on the second watch...remember Kevin Spacey played the "fool".

I don't take the theory as gold...but I can surely see where Lucas "may" have been going with it (if that's what he was planning)

 

just no.

 

Isn't this just an over justification for Jar Jar's existence in the films? Like some fans couldn't just accept that Jar Jar existed so they went ahead and made these wild theories that make absolutely zero sense to anyone unless you WANT to believe in them very badly?

I also feel it's kind of insulting in a way to George Lucas. It really undermines the actual quality and depth of the films and turns them into a parody of themselves.

It's like saying C-3PO was the real Sith Lord manipulating everything from behind the scenes in the OT. It's just as ridiculous and insulting to the OT and characters like Palpatine and Darth Vader as this theory is to the characters of the PT.

 

This is my basic take, too.

Indeed, let me put it this way:

For fifteen years without end, we had the "Bad Cop" routine from prequel detractors: Jar Jar was openly derided, hissed at, mocked, and scorned. How could Lucas inflict such a thing on the world?

Now, thanks to that reddit user from last year, the "Good Cop" has finally shown up (incidentally, right when TFA was about to come out, and nostalgic hype, largely premised on TFA being a "return" to "real" Star Wars, was at a fever pitch): Jar Jar is actually an evil genius and George Lucas must be one himself. Let's all kick ourselves for missing it.

The "Bad Cop" routine is simple and pretty easy to understand. It sought to attack the films directly. Over and over again. And we've all seen plenty of that, to the point where such opprobrium became synonymous with the prequels themselves, and anyone who dissented from it or had the temerity to stick up for the films was branded a heretic, an apologist, or a loon.

The "Good Cop" stratagem works differently but in a mutually synergistic way as the analogy suggests. The "Good Cop" is outwardly sympathetic to Lucas and the prequels, ostensibly championing the good within them, locating and expounding on that which is peculiar, interesting, subversive, or unexpected. Jar Jar as a Sith Lord secretly manipulating everyone around him! Who knew?

Only, much like the Janus-like duality between Palpatine and Sidious, the "Good Cop" routine is a sham. Rather like the falsely-ingratiating Palpatine who infiltrates the Republic and corrupts it from within, the "Good Cop" pretends to be respectful of Lucas and the movies with enlarged reverence and false awe. It's a disingenuous act designed to continue a ruthlessly anti-prequel narrative.

What the "Bad Cop" and "Good Cop" routines have in common, aside from an underlying goal to rubbish the films further, is that they both engage in mockery -- the former overt, the latter more subtle -- and express equal measures of well-poisoning astonishment and incredulity. This doesn't really help promote dialogue and discussion. It, again, puts prequel fans on the back foot, pressurizing them to mount a rearguard defence of the films, now that the enemy has advanced and started attacking them from new angles.

We saw the beginnings of the "Good Cop" routine with the RedLetterMedia videos. They marked a transition phase. They contained a lot of outright mockery and disdain, but they delivered it in an offbeat, glibly satirical fashion. Prequel fans were placed on the defensive back then and accused of taking the videos too seriously. The attack on Jar Jar is the most sophisticated flanking action yet. Or perhaps it is the zenith. Perhaps condescending critiques of the prequels have gone about as far as they can go. Or perhaps -- above all else -- I simply need a humour transplant.

I mean, yes, it is a bit funny to imagine Jar Jar as the real mastermind hiding in plain sight. And it's Jar Jar! Even then, however, why must he be an evil or conscious mastermind? Why can't he be viewed as an unconscious tactician, aide, and "Force" administrator? There are quite a few degrees of interpretation between naive bumbler and Grand Master of the Universe.

I think the need to twist him into something dark is a reflection of the contempt people still seem to have that a pure-hearted being, who happens to be a bit awkward on occasion, could, or should, exist in this kind of story; let alone do so at the expense of the artist providing them with a "darker" installment and a "darker" trilogy overall. For as much as people like to claim otherwise when it suits them, Star Wars is srs bsns. None of us are immune from this phenomenon. Indeed, I could be accused of taking the whole thing entirely too seriously, right this instant, based on this response alone. However, psychological responses to art are complex, and it's hard to accept the surface. Call it a personal flaw, but I struggle to take things like this at face value.

In fact, if you take a good long look at the reddit essay, what you notice -- or what you might conclude if you reason along similar lines -- is that the essayist has turned their contempt outward, not unlike turning a shirt inside out. In other words, the very fact of them identifying a "malignant" Jar Jar, announced to the world and situated, as their observations are, in a rambling reddit post offering contrived proofs for an extreme claim (or set of claims), is what exposes the falsity of their argument. It's a sort of thinly-concealed narcissism: running parallel to their contentions about the dastardly brilliance of George Lucas is their own self-aggrandized dastardly brilliance. Their essay loosely purports to be an encomium for Lucas, Jar Jar, and the most hated of the prequels, but it's really luxuriating in its own vainglorious "proof" of all the formers' supposed excellence and worth. I mean, I probably shouldn't have a go at the author too strongly for this (those in glass houses?), but it stands out to me because of the naked dissimulation on the surface (such as I see it). Crack the surface, which is reed-thin (reddit-thin?), and the author shines out his disdain of the prequels like a lighthouse on a dark and clear night.

Not to go too far into murky waters, but the disdain the author shows here, if not for the prequels, then at least for good-hearted innocence, could be said to have a tinge of racist bigotry to it. It's assumptions like this -- that what you haplessly thought was relatively benign is actually the blackest of evil; focused down to the level of the individual (and which then can be generalized to entire groups and communities) -- that lie at or close to the root of much prejudice: historical and on-going. Contemporary Anti-Semitism, for example, is largely built around the idea that Jewish people secretly control all the power structures of the world, tracing back to a famous forgery from the turn of the last century ("The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"). Anti-Semitism itself, of course, is much older than this, but that forgery gives it a modern inflection. Once something dark and ugly is put into circulation, it tends to take on a life of its own and can be difficult to counteract. As Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710: "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it". I suppose the author would appropriate that quotation and say that they are presenting the truth (little "t" mind you), after fifteen years of falsehood. I would have to dissent, however. I think they've just seized on anti-prequel sentiment to disingenuously advance a cockamamie theory.

There may even be a sort of childish vendetta at work. How dare Lucas turn Star Wars into a joke and not make the adult and sophisticated trilogy everyone deserved (overlooking the adult and sophisticated nature of the world-building, story, and themes). Lucas shanked us with Jar Jar, let's shank him back. The author's discourse is therefore itself bimodal: Lucas is both praised and at the same time ridiculed, overcome, and supplanted. You're asked to buy into a slight contradiction. Lucas was apparently clever enough to sneak this past everyone who failed to notice, while he somehow achieved this amazing sleight-of-hand in spite of himself. And the corollary: it takes the efforts of a committed observer to point all this out. Therefore, as brilliant as Lucas is, he's also stupid, and his stupidity, like Jar Jar's, who could be Lucas' in-universe avatar, must be redeemed, but can only be redeemed by being viewed as malign, even unwittingly malign. At least this allows Jar Jar to live up this name: it's a jarring thesis.

One final clue to the author's belligerent and belittling attitude toward the prequels, in my view, is that their observations are premised on the notion, rendered explicit in the essay, that Lucas essentially chickened out of concluding Jar Jar's arc in an appropriate way due to fan backlash: a common bashing trope here simply given a fresh lick of paint. Once again, we are made to accept the notion, wholesale, that Lucas wimps out of things on account of fan response, perhaps secondary to worrying endlessly about profit margins. In this way, the essay also implicitly bashes AOTC and ROTS (two-thirds of the prequel trilogy from the literal-minded point of view of your typical basher/fanatic), suggesting that they are inherently less than they could have been, and that only TPM, otherwise a "flawed" (and perhaps justifiably-hated -- from the basher point of view) entry to the prequel trilogy, leaving the whole trilogy desiccated. The broad implication, once again, is that the prequel trilogy, while having a few interesting, half-developed ideas, is ultimately a failure, and has little real substance to offer to any self-respecting cineaste or conscientious Star Wars fan.

So, for trashing Jar Jar, for denigrating Lucas, for slamming the prequel trilogy, for muddying the waters of discussion, when it pretends to do the opposite, the reddit essay is not one I can intellectually get behind. And then there is the aberrant notion that sincere good cannot exist; or is better reconsecrated to evil. A part of me thinks it is nice that Jar Jar got some fresh attention, however. And even if the author's motives are hardly the most encouraging, the whole thing is still a back-handed compliment to Lucas, of sorts. It might even encourage people to watch the films more closely. I have my doubts on that front, however. And such things are perhaps better encouraged in other contexts. And above all else, I guess I find it hard to get past the "back-handed" part of "back-handed compliment", which is distinctly how it all comes across -- to this fan, anyway.


EDIT (i): I might have been slightly kinder to the author -- slightly -- in this thread on the essay last year:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/darth-binks-the-real-phantom-menace.50034495/

EDIT (ii): Looking back over my comments from that former thread, and re-reading what I wrote just now, I feel that Jar Jar is best thought of as an amoral companion: the unconscious "trickster" archetype. This is different from calling him malign. He represents more the instinctual "id" and exists outside of simplistic dichotomies like "good and evil". He is something of a lowly creature because no society can fully tolerate the "id" and what it might bring forth. Imputing him to be evil is just another way of reducing, scapegoating, and "banishing" his Otherized characteristics. How we see Jar Jar is a reflection of how we see the world, how we perceive others, and how we conceive of our agency within the world and our ethical obligations to others. Ultimately, and trying to avoid a solipsism (which is perhaps the surest way to fall into one), Jar Jar is a measure of how much compassion we are willing to grant ourselves.

 

Cryogenic Always dropping heat rocks of awesomeness

 

Too kind, sir.

For heat rocks, how about Jedi Rocks?

 

Classic





You're always welcome, Cryo.

 

Mesa is behind everything!!!!!

 

Mesa is the way, the truth, and the life.

Either yousa with us or yousa with the terrorists.


Jar Jar improves everything!!!

 

DEAD

Jar Jar for President 2016



Feel The Binks

 

Exactly.

Jar Jar >>>>>>> Trump

 

Anyday. No doubt.

 

Yes. And to be fair:

Moldy banana >>>>>> Trump

 

Another one of these jar jar sith theories? Or is this the same one as before? Either way they both equal the same level of ridiculousness.

 

Moldy Banana will change America.

 

This is eery. I actually read someone elaborate on why they think that Donald the wall builder's whole campaign is actually a strategy to get the Dems into the white house at any cost.

 

Damn. Such a crazy false flag theory......

 

And thus the circle is now complete. Once again or something along this sentiment.