With The Phantom Menace in 3-D hitting theaters this weekend, the polarizing character Jar Jar Binks is back on the big-screen.
However, if a certain cut scene had made it into the second trilogy of Star Wars films, actor Ahmed Best believes that Jar Jar might be a bit more popular with many Wars fans.
“In Revenge of the Sith, there was a scene that was cut where I’m walking down a long pathway with Ian McDiarmid before he is turned into the Emperor, and Palpatine kind of thanks Jar Jar for putting him in power,” he tells Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a really interesting scene, and it shows the evolution of Jar Jar from this fun-loving kids’ character into this manipulated politician. And it was an interesting arc for the character that I thought could have been explored, because the scene is really dark. But it just didn’t fit in the movie, which I understand. But yeah, George’s take on it is Jar Jar is now just a politician.”
“George [Lucas] has to make his movie. And I’m happy to be whatever in any of it. And at the end of the day, it’s the story that matters, and if the character doesn’t fit into the story, there is nothing I can do,” he said. “What ends up on the screen is what he says ends up on the screen. All I want to do is be able to facilitate his vision as best I can. That’s all I can do. I wanted to be in those movies more because I wanted to give him more. I felt like I could do a good job. And I did. I did the best job I could do.”
Regarding the Headline: Hell No!!!
By the time Episode 3 came around trying to give Jar Jar a new face/motivation/reason to care about him was about 2 episodes too late.
Talk about closing the barn door after the horses have left…
After Episode 1, the ONLY way to do anything interesting with Jar Jar’s character would have been to kill him off in a bantha herding accident – even then, it would only have really been interesting to the banthas because they’d have something nasty stuck in their hooves!
There was a “story” in Phantom Menace? I must have missed it, what with all of the advertisements for video pod-racing games and over priced action figures.
Wait, so if that scene had stayed IN the movie, Jar Jar would have been partly responsible for giving Palpatine his “unlimited power”, and this knowledge is supposed to somehow make us LIKE JAR JAR MORE? How exactly? If that were true, then Jar Jar is to blame for Palpatine overthrowing the elected galactic empire. That would make Jar Jar even MORE despicable, since we was so stupid that he couldn’t even stand up for the widely accepted principles of freedom and democracy.
Wasn’t that little bit of information already known in Phantom Menace? That Jar Jar had been manipulated into spearheading the campaign to vote Palpatine more power? That was the whole reason for making Amidala a target, to get her out of the way so that the vote of whomever replaced her could be manipulated. That it was more overtly stated in Revenge was more to show people how many dominos fell according to Palpatine’s plan, just because of that one single action.
That’s one major reason I enjoyed the novelization of Revenge of the Sith more than the movie: there were two scenes in the book that would have added so much more to the movie, I was disappointed when they weren’t in there (disclaimer: Matt Stover is a friend, and I will praise his stories from now till the end of time).
But no, it still wouldn’t make most of us like Jar Jar (or the prequel trilogy) more 🙂
Ummm…really? Really? The scene would only reaffirm that a stupid character was indeed stupid. These people should stop trying to polish the turd. It’s still a turd… sigh.
First impressions cannot be fixed in the third film appearance.
I’m sorry that the actor who played a hated character thinks he got a bum wrap. Blame Lucas for creating a character designed badly enough to be hated.
Yeah, I already saw that character arc, and felt that there was more to Jar Jar’s downfall that could have been portrayed in the movies. I don’t hate his character (note how I didn’t say I like it), and found things to like in the prequel movies. But there was definitely a mash up of racial stereotyping going on in the movie that was bad taste: the Gungans portrayed as laid-back Jamaican “natives” and the Neimodians as empire-hungry yet cowardly WWII-era Japanese.
The thing to remember about these movies is that they are Saturday morning serials for kids.
Sorry, I should have said “modeled after Saturday morning serials for kids.” Not trying to be a troll, I read it somewhere long ago.