People always forget, Jar Jar actually had a story purpose. He was supposed to be the one to nominate Senator Palpatine to leader of the Galactic Senate. I think the intention was to get an easily persuaded idiot into the position so he would vote for Palpatine, not unlike the episode of Blackadder (3rd series) where Blackadder tries to get Baldrick to be the MP from a rotten borough so he will vote for the Prince. I think Lucas just lost focus and really played up the comic relief, which he is not good at, and ruined the character.
If in fact Jar Jar was written into the movies specifically to do that, it’s just amazingly terrible writing.
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Why do you even need a named character to do this? How on earth do you write this so badly that it’s necessary for a comic relief character to be a key person in the rise of a guy who becomes the Emperor of a galaxy?
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Does the nomination process even have to be on screen? Why can’t it be a throwaway line by just about anyone or, if you need a named character to do it, soimeone with some gravitas?
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The notion of Palpatine becoming the big cheese obviously cannot have started purely from Jar Jar, or else the thousands of people in the Senate would have laughed at an idea he pulled out of his ass. Clearly it was a popular idea. So back to #2; anyone could have said it, or no one at all, or Palpatine could have added it to the agenda himself, or one of his minions, or (1000 better ideas.)
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And wouldn’t there be more opportunity for drama if it WASN’T an idiot who nominated Palpatine?
Jar jar also serves the purpose of getting Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan from one side of Naboo to the other; he has more than one purpose. But, again, why? Why land them thousands of miles from the target of invasion at all? You could have skipped that, not had Jar Jar, and boom, the movie’s better and ten minutes shorter.
Here’s the thing. The guys (and I do mean males, it seems to be mostly a male thing) who hate Epi 1, are the ones who loved The first film, aka Epi 4 aka a New Hope.
Because when you watched a New Hope, you saw it with a sense of wonder. Nothing like that had ever been done before.
Of course no sense of wonder with Epi 1 for the fanboy. You went hoping to recapture the way you felt when you first watch epi 4 and you felt betrayed.
But you cant recapture a childlike sense of wonder.
Kids who watched Epi 1 without watching Epi4 liked it just fine.
That doesnt mean Epi 1 doesnt have flaws. And no, it’s not very good. It is Ok, but not terrible. Critical reviews and box office have show it’s a OK film.
Nugent thinks it was inevitable that fans wouldn’t like the new films. By then, “Star Wars,” “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” had become so iconic that returning to that well “came to feel like trying to make a series of sequels to ‘Crime and Punishment.’ ”
Not to mention that it just reinforces the “EVERYONE is STUPID” stench that permeates the prequels. Does Queen Amidala really have no one more qualified to be her senate stand-in while she is off adventuring than this bumbling rustic hayseed? NO ONE? Naboo had exactly zero qualified or even semi-qualified civil servants? Hell, even some intern fresh out of college would be a better choice. It stretches that bounds of plausibility well past the breaking point.
Seems to be mostly a male thing? I thought women disliked the movie equally, though I have no cites to prove that. Do you have citations indicating that men and women viewed the movie differently?
Anecdotal datum: My wife thinks it is horrible. Loved Eps. IV-VI.
The idea was that we get to know Jar Jar as a lovable idiot who stumbles into creating huge disasters by accidents or clumsiness. Sometimes this works out, usually it makes things worse. He’s a Clouseau. There would have been a bigger plot point of maneuvering him into the Senate and a position where he would be “convinced” to propose Emergency Powers for Chancellor Palpatine (after reviewing, that’s what he did, not nominate), which would have been the ultimate disaster for the Republic. If it had been done right then that’s not a bad idea. Problem is, Lucas is not that kind of writer. It needed more of a clever “heist movie” type writer to pull that off. Anyway, it turned out for naught, as they realized Jar Jar was such a hated character they cut most of him out in the second movie and just let him do it with no buildup. Could they have just had an anonymous character do this? Sure, but that subverts the Law of Economy of Characters. If you have a specific plot point that needs to be hit, why introduce a random character to do it when you can take an existing character and have him do it.
Keep in mind, we were supposed to like Jar Jar. The rejection caught Lucas by surprise.
What is comes down to is that Lucas is indeed a shitty writer. American Graffiti appears to have been an accident. Even Star Wars was largely saved by the editing. Check out the deleted Tattooine scenes with Luke in Toshi Station to see what we narrowly avoided.
I was 12-years-old when TPM was this hyped-to-Tartarus-and-back event. It was the very first Star Wars I’ve seen on the big screen. The orginal trilogy was just this sort-of-OK thing people 5+ years older than me held in high-regard. I more-or-less watched them all for the first time in short succession.
I. Was. Bored. To. Ennui.
The original trilogy had gotten a bit better when I understood more of its themes. TPM got worse.
Well, it was called “Star Wars,” not “A New Hope.”
Kids can be amused by pretty bad movies; I’ve heard kids say they liked “The Emoji Movie,” which is widely considered one of the worst movies of modern times.
It is fine to accept kids will like bad movies.
My favorite movie when I was 11 was King Kong vs. Godzilla.
I was 9 when it came out, and I had already seen the original trilogy and loved them, and I loved TPM. That said, I find it an okay film, but boring.
I do actually enjoy Episode II for cheap entertainment purposes.
Really? All of the female Star Wars fans and ‘not a fan but have seen all of them’ dislike PM, it doesn’t appear to be a male thing. Is there something supporting your claim that dislike of PM is ‘mostly a male thing’?
There’s probably something to this. I was 12 when I saw the original Star Wars in the theater in 1977, and it truly blew away my young brain.
Thus, I was 34 when I saw TPM, and, at a certain level, there was no way that it could possibly live up to my childhood memories of the original film.
That said, one of my core beliefs about the issues that TPM has is that, when he made ANH, Lucas didn’t have children of his own. The film is certainly inspired by movie serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, which were particularly appealing to kids, but Lucas was seeing them through the eyes of an adult.
When he began working on the prequels, Lucas had three children of his own. Particularly on TPM, he used his kids as inspirations, and he seemed to be writing things in the film (particularly the humor) to appeal to his kids. Also, his kids appear as actors in one of the scenes with Anakin and his friends, and, IIRC, the name “Jar Jar” was based on something that Lucas’s son said.
Interviews at that time (particularly in reaction to the often-negative fan reaction) had Lucas saying, “look, these are movies for kids.” Which, really, they always were, but this time around, he had three specific children that he was writing for.
This “for kids” idea holds up much better in Anakin doesn’t decapitate a Tusken raider or murder all the padawan kids later.
Lucas wanted it both ways. For kids and still awesome enough to impress adults.
The first movies awe both adults and kids. The new ones might drop jaws of kids, but adults are disappointed massively.
Watch the Harry Potter movies. They entertain, enthrall, and engage adults and children.
Jar Jar and Dobby–separated at birth?
We all know Dobby is just Vladimir Putin as a young man.
Note: I am currently watching Attack of the Clones. Wow, the opening set(the one where Padme is sleeping and the Jedi watch her) looks fake. I get special effects, but why not build full sets?
Watching more of Clones.
Oh, the digital sets! They are horrible! The goggles do nothing!
It’s unacceptably bad. Every person looks like they are superimposed on a fake background, which they are. Terrible.
Even if they manage to get the backgrounds looking right or you are able to tune the fake background out, there’s a more subtle problem with scenes like that. The actors don’t interact with the background at all, because they can’t - they’re just standing in front of a green screen. It’s not really blatant, but when actors are in real environments they react in subtle ways to what’s around them. Maybe they duck under a doorway or their gaze rests on someone walking by, but they will do things they don’t do when it’s two people in front of a uniform sheet. This is one effects problems that old movies and with bad effects like spray painted styrofoam rocks and extras in weak costumes didn’t have - the environment may not look real, but the actors looked like they were part of it.
IIRC, it was a particular thing that Lucas discussed in regards to TPM.
I’ve always thought that that was one of the core problems that the Prequel Trilogy had. Lucas loved the idea of virtual sets, and virtual actors, and used them to excess.
As you note, one of the criticisms of the trilogy was the acting performances. Jake Lloyd aside, you had a collection of actors who were well-regarded for other roles, or would become so. Natalie Portman’s won an Oscar, and even Hayden Christensen, prior to AotC, received strong reviews for his performance in “Life as a House.” But, in these movies, those skilled actors are on a green screen set, acting against characters who’ll be inserted via CGI a year later, reading stilted dialogue*, and they’re working under a director (Lucas) who has a well-known reputation for not giving his actors much in the way of useful direction**.
Given all of that, it’s no surprise that their performances were flat.
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- Lucas was a primary writer of the scripts for all three prequels. Harrison Ford has admitted that, during the filming of ANH, he told Lucas, “You can type this shit, but you can’t say it!”
** - Lucas has admitted that, beyond “action” and “cut,” the only direction he really knows how to give is “faster” and “more intense.”
I really like the movie “Awake” with Hayden Christensen. It’s proof he can act, too.