Jar Jar Binks- Why is he so hated?

It is more than sad ... 20 years of stubborn grudge for just a character in a movie.
It was (kind of) funny in 1999. It started to be boring in 2000. Nowadays, all of it has become pathetic and laughable.

The world is divided in two: the ones who forgive, and those who dig for near a quarter of century (and still dig)...

 

MJ wanted to use make up (prosthetics), Lucas wanted to do it with motion capture

 

Jar Jar is nice, nice for the kids, nice for my wife and sister. And I don't hate him.

There are a lot of others things much worse than Jar Jar in the prequels.

 

Frank Oz posted on Twitter that he loves Jar-Jar.

Admittedly, Ahmed Best himself posted on Twitter that he considered suicide because of Jar-Jar. But still, not everybody hates Mr. Binks.

 

Jar-Jar is to me probably the most enigmatic character in the series. I walk the line between, this character is nothing of consequence, and, this is the most important character in the series. When you start to examine the way the character relates to the rest of the series some really strange things begin to surface. Like, when you think of characters in exile, you think of, Yoda, Obi-Wan and in the ST, Luke. And these characters are all the catalyst of large-scale change by way of interaction with the protagonist. But the OG, as it were, exile was Jar-Jar. So he's going into the same category as the three Jedi. You could argue that he caused the most massive large-scale change via the vote for the clone army which resulted in the Jedi purge and the fall of the Old Republic.

You add that Jar-Jar does seem in several scenes to be exhibiting some kind of force connection. That the first person he happens across is Qui-Gon, who was the Jedi to reveal the "living force" and was known for his run-ins with the dogmatic Jedi. You have the entire Battle of Naboo sequence of Jar-Jar's amazing "luck" even though the Jedi maintain, no such thing as luck. I remember also a video I watched once "Jar-Jar uses the force" and there were scenes in the movie that, really looked like that was going on. Some of them I thought, the animators had to have done this on purpose.

Then when all is said and done, he just vanishes from the story. If a person were to ask, "Hypothesis?" I'd propose evaluation of the hypothesis that Jar-Jar is more than what he appears to be. Probably being unaware of it himself, but in fact being a kind of, hand of the force, which is being used by the force as the impetus driving the will of the force. He's definitely a "fool" archetype, and that's the generally motif of the fool - shows up out of nowhere, no one takes him seriously, the 'high and mighty' treat him with contempt, and in the end, he "accidentally" causes them all to fall into chaos creating large-scale change while he just whistles and disappears from the scene.

One of the functions of the fool is also to reveal the true nature of those with whom he comes in contact, by the way he is received and treated by them. It's by showing how people treat those the feel "under" their station. Ill-receive them, speak unkindly of them, try to manipulate them and it reveal such characters as being, "bad guys". Receive them well, and it reveals "good guys".

I don't know, it's interesting at any rate.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 5, 2018, Original Post Date: Jul 5, 2018 ---

It's horrifying to think about how these people in the PT and now the ST must've been so happy to have got these roles, to be a part of this story. How happy their friends and families must've been for them. And then the sun went down, and out came the monsters. But hey, where there's monsters there's always monster-hunters. It's a universal law.

 

The crazy thing is that now people are taking this Ahmad Best infortunate event ( I have nothing against Jar Jar ) like it was the fans who did it while there was no social media in 1999.

I remember clearly JJ Abrams saying he wanted to see Jar Jar's bones in Jakku's desert because he hated him, that Simon Pegg hated the prequels and Jar Jar and the list could be very long.

In fact, the real quote of M.Best is : "20 years next year I faced a media backlash that still affects my career today. This was the place I almost ended my life. It’s still hard to talk about."

He said Media backlash not fans. What happened to M.Best has nothing to do to what happened to Mrs Tran ( which I both condemn strongly ).

 

It's like with Jake LLoyd as well...what he is still going through is a lifelong issue and people have spun that so much that even he has said it too.

 

Couple of thoughts about Jar-Jar. While rewatching TPM I've noticed something. When Jar-Jar talks to Qui-Gon when they first meet something struck me - he told him that he has a life debt toward Qui-Gon. There was also some talk regarding him on SW Twitter recently when people told that they appreciated how faithful he is towards his friends. A high alien, life debt, faithfulness... He was absolutely intended to be a Chewbacca erzatz for the Prequels. But then, the fans came, dished the dirt on poor Ahmed Best and his role with each consecutive film got smaller and smaller... Combine that with his apparent faithfulness and you get a depressing picture of a guy who gets completely rejected by the people he considered as friends... Yikes.

 

makes his final days as depicted in Aftermath even more poignant.

 

He was a sad attempt for Star Wars to appeal to kids. He was also very clumsy and stupid which is the opposite of what Star Wars is portrayed to be with the heroic Jedi and the notorious sith. George Lucas himself even said that he didn't make the character himself and that his kids did.

 

I think people hate him because he's mind controlling them to think he's an annoying fart-joke-having-kids-appealing silly character, so he can practise his evil Sith ways in peace.

 

I have read so many excuses on why Jar Jar was hated by the fandom. To be honest, I found them either shallow or ridiculous.

I don't hate Jar Jar. But I"m beginning to develop a deep dislike of the fandom and its shallow reaction to him as a character.

 

I read that too.

His son Jett actually came up with the name.

 

I'm mostly apathetic about Mr. Binks these days, but I think the reason he is not well liked is because of his incompetence and his voice. Just a silly character overall imo.

 

He's hated for his incompetence and his voice? I have never heard anything so shallow in my life.

 

Anyone who loves slapstick humour will recognise that Jar Jar Binks is a homage to the work of Buster Keaton. Beyond that, his character is a role model to the awkward kid in class who is ostricised for the way they look and/or speak. Factor in the performance of Ahmed Best and the groundbreaking work by ILM in bringing the character to life and it's easy to see that there is much to love about Jar Jar. I have never understood why a vocal minority of fans felt the need to vent their collective spleen about the character but, given the recent news that the actor who played the character was brought so low by the online hatred of such fans that he almost committed suicide, I think there are people who really need to take a long, hard look at how they behave.

 

I think it was because some of the older fans (by some I literally mean a small amount) either disliked the fact that he was for the younger children or found him out right annoying, and the idea of him being a dis-likable character just kinda spread. I honestly enjoyed watching him in the movie when I was really little because was the comic relief. Like yeah he might be not as smart or as great looking of a character, but we can't deny that he was a perfect amusement for the younger children watching the movie.

 

I despise Jar Jar Binks because, at least in TPM, he is ALWAYS goofy and ridiculous. It never stops. In the OT, characters said funny things and there was some light comedy here and there. It was spread out among several characters. Jar Jar is literally a clown walking through the movie doing slapstick all the time. When there is a battle going on around him and people are dying, he is still juggling and doing slapstick. They took all the comedy and put it in one character, put that character in a significant amount of scenes, and had him be ridiculous in every one of those scenes. That is why I hate the character. I have no issues with Ahmed Best and wish him nothing but well.

Also, as far as Jar Jar being there to entertain children. It's unnecessary. Children, myself included, were entertained by the OT without the need for a character like Binks.

 

Jar Jar suffers from being the Scape Gungan (Goat). His behavior attracts ire and enmity because he was a comedic device that got too much screen time. He then is used as Scape Gungan who made a major electoral decision to give the Supreme Chancellor emergency powers to create an army; which in point of fact makes the Galatic Empire posssible. Poor Jar Jar when he recieved such hatred in TPM was then throw under the proverbial airbus in AOTC. His tragedy is he serves as the Scape Gungan, while the true architect of invidious power is Palpatine and Anakin not Jar Jar is the true failure. Anakin knew what he was doing, Binks was a pawn; but because Ani is more beloved as a character, Binks must sink in Degobah waters of deep disdain because he is obnoxious, even though at times Ani and his “not fair,” rants wasn’t much better. It is easy to pour judgment on Jar Jar, because he’s annoying, and is not a main tier character, he cannot be so easily forgiven as Ani, Padme, or even Obi and his “another pathetic life form,” retort.

 

Even if Jar Jar was meant to be a scape goat, fool with a purpose, underdog character with a serious role to play, his execution was terrible. The same could have been accomplished without the constant slapstick and ridiculous sounding voice and manner of speech. Redub him and edit out juggling bombs and stepping in poop and he would probably be fine.

Someday when I have time I will rewatch TPM with a notepad to see if there are ANY scenes in which Jar Jar doesn't do something intended as humor. There probably are a few but I suspect almost every scene he is in will contain something, even small in the background, where he does something intended to make the audience laugh.