Nobody likes Jar Jar Binks, least of all Star Wars fans
Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd.. All rights reserved.
It’s easy to forget that Star Wars was aimed at children from the start. The original trilogy featured R2-D2, C-3PO, Ewoks, and many other characters designed to delight young people and make great toys.
When George Lucas returned to the Star Wars universe in the late 1990s to film Episode I: The Phantom Menace, he felt he needed to create another character that kids could relate to. Unfortunately, he chose a dim-witted, bumbling Gungan named Jar Jar Binks, who speaks in broken English and feels uncomfortably like a clumsy Jamaican cliché.
Here is an example of Jar Jar’s wisdom: “You better not count on me. Better dead here than even deader in the core. Goodness good!”
Jar Jar Binks was invented just for merchandising
Lucasfilm felt that Jar Jar would be the breakout film and produced mountains of Jar Jar merchandise. He even found himself on the cover of ROLLING STONE. But the critics didn’t like Jar Jar much, the kids didn’t like Jar Jar much, and the Star Wars fans liked Jar Jar the least. They even created an entirely new version of the film, dubbing its dialogue with the words of a wise old man.
George Lucas got the message and effectively dropped the character from the sequels after Episode I, but the damage was done. Jar Jar Binks has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the prequels.
To be fair, they look pretty good today when compared to the recent sequels.
This translated text comes from the list “The 50 Worst Decisions in Movie History” our colleagues from the USA