Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Why do People HATE Jar Jar Binks?

I was just asked the other day why so many people despised the character Jar Jar Binks from "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace". The individual had obviously never seen the film or the Gungan before and had been hearing many rumors like Jar Jar is the new Sith lord in the new movie coming out. So, I sat her down, looked her straight in the eye and said: there are three reasons...

1. Many people believe Jar Jar to be a racist character. While George Lucas denies that Jar Jar is in anyway racist, there is still no hiding the fact that he sounds Jamaican, he is somewhat reminiscent of the archetypes portrayed by blackface minstrels, or he could be coined as a lazy Caribbean person. All of these accusations went straight to Lucas even by American scholars and theorists.

2. He's annoying. Plain and simple. His voice, the way he acts, and how he carries himself are almost as distracting as young Anakin Skywalker saying "Now THIS is pod racing!"

3. In the previous films, the comedy derived from character's interactions with each other. Luke with Han, Han with Chewie, Chewie with C3-PO, etc. They loved playing off each other and truly making us laugh. With Jar Jar, his comedy was mostly based off of slapstick. There wasn't much hilarity with the main characters, so Jar Jar took it upon himself to try and make us laugh... it didn't work. From stepping in poop to getting 'numb tongue', his hi jinx failed to evoke laughter from the audience unless you were three years old.

All in all, he was just an unpleasant character though, unfortunately, rather memorable. I have no disrespect towards the actor that played him, but he was just a poorly written part of the Star Wars universe who many fans want to see die. J.J. Abrams himself stated that he thought about killing off Jar Jar and putting his bones in the middle of a desert scene for all of the fans to cheer at!

1 comment:

  1. 4. He contributes nothing to the story. He seems to hang around solely for comic relief, and since he can't even do that right there's really no reason for him to be there at all. He's useless in every way.

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