Well, that explains why those movies did so well in France then!
Animated band scene? Do I want to know?
What’s not to hate about Jar Jar Binks?
I still like the idea of Jar Jar becoming a Sith Lord.
“Jar Jar eesa deaded. Isa Darth Binky.”
Followed by a drawn out and hilarious death scene.
“What a pathetic waste of Gungan Life.”
What in the what? You never saw the newer versions that Lucas butchered? The whole who shot first thing? Jabba being able to stand up? The stupid CGI band scene?
What has been seen cannot be unseen.
Nope, I’ve successfully avoided it all, mainly due to the outraged fan discussions here on this very board.
Until now. I could stand about twenty seconds of that clip. Hurl.
Jar Jar never bothered me much. Anyway, how could he ruin the movie after Jake Lloyd did?
He was introduced as comic relief at a time when not-particularly-stressful things were occurring. “Oh, no, Obi Wan’s being chased! um… I bet he survives…” “Oh, no, Anakin’s in trouble! um…”
That’s the thing I never got - the hate for Jake Lloyd. I always thought he did a pretty good job. He acted naturally in the role of a nine year old. He even manages to deliver some pretty bad lines in as convincing a manner as anyone could have.
Now the concept of portraying a legendary villain as a normal nine year old was questionable. But that wasn’t Lloyd’s idea. He wasn’t miscast as much as he was well cast in a part that was misconceived.
Yeah, I know it’s a necropost, but I missed the first round.
When I saw the movie, I’d already heard the debate about JarJar, so my reaction wasn’t fresh. I could see why people had the reactions they had regarding racism, even though I didn’t agree. I attribute it to oversensitivity, but I also acknowledge that oversensitivity to a grievous problem is natural. Perhaps Lucas should have been more aware of this sensitivity. In any case, I didn’t hate JarJar, nor did I love him.
I think he’s an attempt to portray a culture that speaks a creole language. I like that idea. Perhaps they failed, or perhaps we can’t even hear an attempt at a creole without piling on a lot of our preconceptions about them and the people who speak them.
I agree with a lot of what Yue Han said.
That’s true if JarJar was speaking a pidgin. I interpret it as a creole, which means they’d speak it to one another; it would be their native language and not a second/foreign one.
I think the real problem was touching on the racial issue with a character who isn’t well-loved and is poked fun at. As for him not being well-loved, that may be his appearance, but I think it was just failure to achieve the desired (lovable) effect. Oops.
I haven’t seen the picture in 10 years. I wonder if I’d have the same reaction today.
The thing is that there are a hundred things wrong with “The Phantom Menace.” As bad as Jake Lloyd is, you cannot honestly say Natalie Portman is any better; her performance is just jaw-droppingly terrible. ALL the actors are bad, really. The story makes very little sense, the cinematography is boring, the dialogue stilted, the effects cheap-looking, and the characters quite often don’t make any sense at all.
Jar Jar gets special hate because he’s both especially, intensely irritating with his racist, clownish buffoonery, but also because he is totally irrelevant to the story. Jar Jar’s only purpose in the tale is bringing the Jedi to the Gungan city - something that could have been done some other way - after that he is purely a tag along and one who is inexplicably but unforgettably in the way at all times. Contrast him with C3PO in “Star Wars” who is also an irritating pain in the ass - think about it, he is intensely unlikeable - but is vastly less intrusive and actually helps propel the plot several times.
The Phantom Menace would be a dreadful movie without Jar Jar but it’d be more like, say, a movie like “Oblivion” or “Elysium,” a bloated and dull sci fi movie with lots of sizzle and no steak. (In a lot of ways The Phantom Menace is actually much worse than those movies but I can’t think of a better comparison.). But imagine “Elysium” exactly as is is except cast a really bad actor as an actual clown, cavorting in some racial stereotype next to Matt Damon almost the whole movie. You’d detest him, too.
Total agreement. And I’ll give some of the same credit to Hayden Christensen, too: he was directed to do a whiny teen-ager performance. He has said he didn’t want to do it that way. If this is true, then he can be absolved for much of the blame.
A wise person said to me: If one actor in a movie is bad, it’s the actor’s fault. If all the actors in a movie are bad, it’s the director’s fault.
(A real killer example: Alice in Wonderland, 1966. A cast studded with top-level stars – and every single one of them turns in a leaden performance. We know they’re capable of much, much better. How does this happen? Bad directing!
Great username/post combo!
People whine about the acting in TPM being stilted. But the thing is, that is what Lucas wanted. I swear I read an article about that. I mean, when you have Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor coming across as stilted and wooden, you’ve got to know something is going on.
I never got the hate for Jake Lloyd or Hayden Christensen, either. But Jar Jar, I totally get the hate.
Anent the charge of racism in Phantom Menace:
If it were just Jar-Jar, I’d agree with what Yue Han wrote thirteen years ago. But it isn’t.
I mean, first you have the Trade Federation guys, with their Mickey-Rooney-in-Breakfast-At-Tiffanys accents and their Chinese robes. What are they doing? Economically exploiting another planet. Launching a sneak attack.
Then we meet the Comical Negro Sidekick Jar-Jar.
Then, the slaver, Watto. Whose name ends with an “-o”, and who has a big nose, stubble, wears a wife-beater, and speaks in an Italian-by-way-of-Brooklyn accent.
Once is bad luck. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern.
Meesa no hatin Jar Jar Binks. Me thinkin someone’s gotta be takin up the slack for Threeso not bein so much in the movie. Where else you havin the comic relief?
I also love that in the recent alterations to Jedi, he winds up getting the last line WEESA FREE haha take that haters.
(Yeah, they tried to backpeddle and say it’s just some random gungan, but you know that’s not what they intended)
Watto’s Italian? That’s a new one. He’s usually said to be a Jewish stereotype.
You want they should have named him Shapiro?
You want maybe they shouldn’t have named him Shapiro?