PT Would Jar Jar have been better if he was not CGI?

mikeximus there are other parts about symbiosis as well. obi tells boss nass they need to help the naboo because they form a symbiont circle. thusly they need the gungans to fight the battle of naboo. like we need each other whether we like each other (jar jar) or not.

 

Right, that is why I said there is a possibility of a representation of tolerance, though I think it's pushing it. You don't have to be tolerant of the thing your intertwined with to be in a Symbiotic relationship. So if Lucas really wanted to get the point of tolerance across, there are so many better ways that he could have done it. That is why I said that I still think Jar Jar was about humor, breaking up tension during the battle scenes with humor aimed at children rather than trying to teach tolerance with a couple lines of dialogue that get lost in the mix and a concept that doesn't necessarily need tolerance.

 

This is just an excerpt from an unused plot line for ROTJ, but at 1:30 it shows a deep and disturbing insight to jar Jar's inner workings and motivations.

 

But a central plot point in Episode I is the fact the Gungans and the Naboo are intolerant of each other, and as a result are being made weaker than they could be. This isn't even subtext; it's text.

edit: I mean, of course a major point of Jar Jar's character was to be comic relief. But Lucas rarely throws characters into the mix without meaning to say something with them. There's no reason Jar Jar's character can't operate on multiple levels.

 

I actually think it would've been worse. Like a retarded muppet

 

I find this thread a disturbing over-analysis of a really stupid character, but you can't excuse something as just for kids. If you deliberately create something for a specific audience, like creating Jar Jar to play down to kids, that's the complete opposite of artistic filmmaking. Directors/artists who aren't mediocre would never create something for a specific audience, they would only to be honest to themselves and create what they want to see.

 

Over analysis? This is a star wars message board right?

 

A lot of words for such a disturbing under-analysis.

Wait, no, you're right. George Lucas didn't create Jar Jar because he honestly wanted to see the character. Your focus determines your reality.

 

The difference between Episode IV and Episode I is that when he wrote Episode IV, he didn't have a multi billion dollar marketing machine in mind. In the 1990s, he did.

 

doesn't matter.

 

It's the voice that does me in. Maybe it would've been better if he were voiced by say... Gilbert Gottfried!

 

I think with Gilbert the racism wouldnt have been so subtle

 

Yeah, because Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia weren't marketable characters at all. And having a nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker in Episode I, rather than an older combat-ready one, was certainly a decision a man focused only on action figure sales would make.

 

You really think that there's no difference in creativity when you don't have millions of people to answer to?

 

What racism? The only racism I sense is in your opinion. So if Jar-Jar's personality had remained intact, but was voiced by a white actor, are you saying that you wouldn't consider Lucas guilty of racism?

I believe it depends upon the creator and the audience. There is no clear answer to your question. If Lucas did create Jar-Jar to appeal to the kiddies, what does that say about his creations of R2-D2, C-3PO and the Ewoks?

 

I don't think R2 and 3PO were made to appeal to children, they were made to be narrators and provide comic relief. I think by the time EpVI came around there was a degree of marketing involved, yes.

 

Jar Jar was there to provide comic relief, as well. Just because something is "childish" doesn't mean it can't also appeal to adults. Artoo and Chewbacca, and their respective styles of humor, are "childish" in many ways, but as you point out, that doesn't mean they were designed to appeal exclusively to children.

As for your theory about the influence of marketing....well, there was marketing involved at every stage of the Star Wars film series. Before the film even came out, George Lucas famously secured the rights to most of the merchandising profits from A New Hope. Your contention that merchandising played a greater (and detrimental) role in the artistic decisions made for Return of the Jedi and the prequels, is so far unsupported by anything other than your own unfounded assertions. Neither of us can see into the mind of George Lucas.

 

Episode IV - $775M(worldwide) - 93% Rotten Tomatoes
Episode V - $538M - 96% RT
Episode VI - $475M - 78% RT
Episode I - $1.02B - 57% RT
Episode II - $649M - 67% RT
Episode III - $848M - 80% RT

source: boxofficemojo.com and rottentomatoes.com

With the exception of EpIII and EpV, I think a reasonable hypothesis can be made that the focus on marketing and making money had a negative effect on overall quality.

 

I like your intrepid foray into the world of statistics -- with a meaningless entree of numbers ham-handedly splodged together.

Now, regarding all this Jar Jar stuff, particularly the passive-aggressive condemnation of anything beyond, "Jar Jar was a marketing device designed to kiddify the saga and rake in the dough..."

I think this is an excellent post with an excellent quotation:

In fact, the fleshy incarnation of your avatar, the inimitable Bob Dylan, has the following remark on people and their powers of discernment and tolerance:

"People have a hard time accepting anything that overwhelms them."

I think there is much truth in that statement.

Jar Jar can work on a million levels, Jar Jar can work on no levels.

What matters is how a viewer reads into a work of art. And how deep they're prepared to look (or how wide) is proportional to their cognitive biases, education, aesthetic preferences, and life experience.

People who are uncomfortable with the idea that Star Wars is meant primarily for a young mindset, or who are resistant to the idea of change or expansion of scope / meaning, may be far less likely to see much worth or beauty in the character of Jar Jar Binks. And that's okay. But it's only one particular response.

It's a shame, though, that more people aren't on board with the notion of delving into the saga a little more deeply and looking at as a splendid, surreal, and highly idiosyncratic work of art. It's not something that was just sloughed off overnight. And if George Lucas was motivated solely or primarily by money, he could have taken an easier road many moons ago. But he didn't.

Someone earlier said that Threepio in AOTC losing his head and getting re-arranged as a battle droid -- one being in two halves -- is a trifling comedic sidebar to keep children amused; analogous to Jar Jar in TPM. What a hollow reading of the film that is! For one, a parallel is clearly made with TESB, in which Threepio is blown apart then arranged backwards by Chewbacca. Second, in a film which features several dramatic beheadings, and even a stipulation by a villain that he won't sign a treaty until he has Padme Amidala's head on his desk, herself a "split-being" character, a commentary is being fashioned through glib, wacky humour (very much a trait of Lucas in all his movies) about the violent metamorphoses happening on-screen as characters are increasingly drawn into a web of violence and confusion. What happens to Threepio is a little incredible and a little crass, but that's kinda the point.

Some of this cynicism and rancor, mild as it may be (or as immoderate as it may be), is quite reactionary and works merely to shut down any reasonable or interesting discussion: anti-intellectualism at its finest. In a more enlightened society (not really North America; or even mainland Europe), art and artists are better-respected as radical voices and teachers, or teaching aids, with something to say. Art is there to expand the mind, not to deaden it. But you could fire up the average Star Wars discussion thread and reach the opposite conclusion. And frankly, a toxic move like the racism card is something that reflects a particular set of cultural pathologies. It doesn't really engage with the material; it's designed to propagandize and de-legitimize it. You can graft these base objections onto any story, any book, any play, any movie, and you haven't worked to understand it one inch. It's pernicious ... and stupid.

That's just my opinion, mind. I'd prefer to keep dishing out new ideas on Jar Jar. It pleases me to see new connections between things, even if they're tenuous. You don't have art without a certain gauziness at play. It's part of the deal: you can never grasp it, but you can sometimes feel its outline.

Like... Jar Jar as the measure of Anakin's growing inflexibility. In TPM, lots of Jar Jar, lots of silliness. Anakin is still like a soft clay at this point: easy to impress upon, eager for new experiences, daring, inquisitive, willing to absorb and able to be sculpted in a million different ways. But in AOTC, things have begun to change, and Anakin is a lot more molded, and becoming brittle in his inability to deal with changing circumstances. He no longer naively longs for adventure or looks at the world with the same innocence he once had. He's developing the classic hardened shell of a future Darth Vader. In ROTS, Jar Jar has more or less disappeared, and so has the earlier Anakin. Before you know it, he's been banished entirely, locked away in a walking coffin; or suddenly finding himself, as Jar Jar does, to walk behind the frigid, perpetually-embalmed, encapsulated visage of his beloved. "Quiet as a tomb."

The prequel trilogy is about spiritual decline, sadness, and loss. And the seeds of rebirth.

Jar Jar is a fittingly jarring fulcrum.

Or something.

 

Thank you. I'm a big fan of Duchamp, and as different as Dada obviously is from Star Wars, there is common ground in why I enjoy them both. Fountain, for example, might be seen as puerile toilet humour, and in a way it *is* a totally juvenile f-you, an attention-grabbing, camwhoring shock-value stunt. But at the same time it is a mirror that challenges the viewer, because what we see when we look at it says more about ourselves than about the 'artist'. The lack of (or rather, deliberately crass rude gesture towards) inherently compelling, virtuoso haute-artistry is the point. There are obvious parallels with Jar Jar.

I think the problem is not so much the rejection of artists but rather a cultural mindset that confines what artists 'should' be. Artists are not allowed to be commercially successful. If they are, they've 'sold out'. We still very much enjoy commercially successful works, but purely as entertainment. If we wanted art that challenges our (self-)perception, we'll go to MoMA, thanks. Art belongs in this box (the artist as lone voice in the wilderness, David vs Goliath); entertainment which should be swashbuckling cool fun, in that box; and ne'er the twain shall meet.

 

First off, let's ignore the fact that you're basing your argument on a non-scientific ratings aggregate site.

There's still practically no correlation between the box office gross and the "quality" of the movies--especially given that you haven't adjusted for inflation. Seriously, what pattern are we even supposed to be seeing? You yourself admit that two out of five sequels seem to be outliers that don't support your point. That's not a very good case, especially with such a small sample size to begin with.

And while you're at it, explain, as I've asked, why Lucas made Anakin a nine-year-old boy in Episode I even though he acknowledged--in documented interviews before the movie was even released--that it was probably a poor decision from a marketing standpoint. (And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Lucas didn't even do extensive marketing research for the prequels like studios normally do; which makes sense, given how surprised he apparently was at the public's reaction to Jar Jar.)

 

How could you have a scientific site about something that is opinion?

Actually, there is a connection. The EpIV and EpV are both "high quality" films according to RT, Episode VI, I, and II decidedly less so. That is a trend. Lucas wrote Episode IV almost all by himself, there were no movie reviews, no pressure from fans or studios. Now, it could be argued that the "lack of quality" of Ep VI, I and II was more of a case of the public wanting to tear down something they had built, and overexpectations, but anyone looking at a situation objectively would have to understand that it's impossible for any writer to live in a vacuum and ignore the pressure around him or her. That's why sequels are almost universally bashed in general and rarely is a sequel better than the original.

As for Anakin, I don't see how having him as a 9 year old is a poor marketing decision. He was trying to create a new fan base, what better way to do that than have a main character kids can relate to? It was pretty obvious he was more concerned with the younger generation than the older generation that had grown up with the classic trilogy, be that good or bad.

 

RT is not an indicator of "quality", it's an indicator of a specific popularity, at best.

That can be easily demonstrated by the fact that the estimation of movies changes. Back in the 70s/80s, ANH was largely considered to be the "best" Star Wars film. Nowadays, it more happens to be "TESB". However, I'm sure you'll agree, neither did TESB gain any "quality" since the 80s nor did ANH "lose" any quality. The movies remained the same, what changed was the people who watched (and evaluated) the films and the context of these occurrences. The people's view on the movies changed and the movie's popularity in response.

It was a poor marketing decision because it was no marketing decision at all. It was a creative decision, because Lucas - at the time - wanted to tell the story of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader from a young age to death and - in order to strenghten a certain issue about Anakin's character - he made him 9-year old.

Not much had changed if Jar Jar wouldn't have been CGI. However, the way it is now, Jar Jar is/was a undeniable achievement in computer animation. He was the first CG character with a considerable amount of screen time in movie history, and honorable colleagues like Andy Serkis acknowledge that achievment. He was basically the first creation that showed what could be done with character animation in a live-action film.
Jar Jar has a firm place in the history of computer animation in film.

As a costume/puppet/whatever, he would have been ... forgettable.

 

The bottom line is that the movies are still for kids. Jar Jar is for kids. The humor is for kids. The humor in the PT's wasn't as subtle as it was in the OT, but, that doesn't mean it wasn't made for kids.

I've read the Making of Return Of The Jedi book, and in the book there are sessions between Lucas, Kasdan, and Marquand where they discuss the story of ROTJ. In those sessions Lucas at many different stages has to remind Kasdan and Marquand that the movie is for kids. I doubt it changed for the Prequels.

As for Jar Jar and marketing. Obviously Jar Jar was a huge focus of the Episode 1 marketing push, more so than Obi Wan and Qui Gon were. It was either Maul or Jar Jar everywhere (that doesn't mean the Jedi weren't used either). Does that mean that Jar Jar was created out of a marketing choice, or was Jar Jar a creative choice that the marketing thought they could collect on? I doubt any of us here know that answer for sure.

Is Lucas capable of making a character in his movie with marketing in mind? I would say yes he is. Is Lucas capable of putting a character in his movie with giving a rats ass about marketing? I would say yes he is. There's only a few select people in the world that know whether Jar Jar was a marketing decision aimed at kids through humor and hi-jinks, or if he was just created for the kids out of the creative process and then LFL marketing decided afterwards to push push push.

I will say this, don't forget one aspect of Lucas's mindset when he was making the OT. Lucas took a pay cut to direct A New Hope to get two things, the first being the rights to any Sequels, the second was merchandising rights. Back then in the 70's movies rarely made money off of merchandising. Lucas changed that with Star Wars, and that where he made a huge chunk of his fortune! So if Lucas was capable of thinking about merchandising even back then, there is no way anyone can say 100% proof positive that any of his characters weren't put into the movie with merchandising in mind.