, later '''Senator Jar Jar Binks''' (born c. 50 ''. His primary role was intended to provide
Comic Relief - based on his gangly way of walking and his unique accent. Jar Jar's voice was portrayed by
Ahmed Best . He is almost completely
Computer-generated . Although he was played on set by a costumed Best, Best was usually edited out and replaced by the animated character, except in some close-up shots where his face is not visible.
This was the first time that such a highly detailed, photo-realistic CGI character had interacted with live actors in a motion picture. Director
George Lucas and his effects team were quick to hail this as a major technical breakthrough, but the controversy surrounding the character has to some extent overshadowed his importance to the development of movie
Special Effects .
Jar Jar Binks is a 6
Ft 5
In (1.96
M ) tall
Gungan , with long ears and eyes mounted on stalks, and he resembles something like an
Anthropomorphized Platypus crossed with an
Amphibian or a
Hadrosaurus .
Banished from his childhood home due to his clumsiness, the naïve Jar Jar is first encountered while living in the swamps of '',
Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn and his Padawan
Obi-Wan Kenobi arrive on Naboo, ending up in the swamps rather than the intended destination of the capital.
Qui-Gon saves Jar Jar's life as the Trade Federation's droid army advance on Theed and in the aftermath Jar Jar explains that, thanks to the principle of a 'Gungan
Life Debt ', he is obligated to stay by Qui-Gon's side until he dies. Jar Jar is later arrested by troops loyal to Boss Nass when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan visit Otoh Gunga and Qui-Gon uses the excuse of this 'Life Debt' to free Jar Jar from Nass's custody.
Jar Jar travels with Qui-Gon's party to
Tatooine and later
Coruscant . It is on the latter planet that he informs
Padmé Amidala that the Gungans have a 'Grand Army' (a term significant later in the Star Wars series - see
Grand Army Of The Republic (Star Wars) ), a contributory factor in her decision to return to Naboo and contest the Trade Federation's invasion militarily. After Qui-Gon and his party's return to
Naboo , Jar Jar is instrumental in Amidala's brokering a deal with the Gungans for a joint attack on the Trade Federation's occupation forces, leading her and her allies to the Gungans' underwater hiding place.
Jar Jar took part in the
Battle Of Naboo , playing a key role after being given the rank of Bombad General in the Gungan Grand Army by Boss Nass, with whom he was now reconciled.
Jar Jar provides instances of comic relief throughout the movie, including a number of comical battle scenes. For instance, Jar Jar inadvertently sends a cascading wave of
Boomers into a group of
Battle Droids which destroys a large number of
Trade Federation troops.
In '''' and the reorganisation of the Galactic Republic into the
Galactic Empire . In terms of 'Star Wars' political content, this thread can be seen as demonstrating how good people can be innocently dragged along by events and even manipulated into playing a role in matters with which they do not agree by the machinations of other, more sophisticated and cynical persons.
In '''' and is attempting, albeit unsuccesfully, to rectify it.
Many fans assumed that Jar Jar would be one of the characters killed in ''
Revenge Of The Sith '', yet no on-screen death is portrayed nor has any death of the character been depicted in the Expanded Universe. Jar Jar's appearance at the funeral of Padmé Amidala on Naboo is his final scene in the film saga.
Rumors as to a depiction of his ultimate fate (or rather, lack thereof) proliferated when the 2004 DVD version of '''' was released, featuring a newly added shot of Naboo in the celebration montage featuring a distant Gungan standing atop a pillar who shouts "Wesa free!". However, the official Star Wars website's character databank file on Jar Jar does not list ''
Return Of The Jedi '' as one of his appearances, while Gungans ''are'' thusly listed, suggesting that a conscious distinction may have been made.
However, this topic of disagreement within fandom has been largely put to rest recently as George Lucas has personally stated that the Gungan in question is ''not'' Jar Jar. He has also debunked the rumor that Jar Jar perished on
Alderaan when it was destroyed by the
Death Star in
Episode IV . The most recent claim is that Jar Jar returned to Coruscant and served in the Imperial Senate and eventually settled down with a family, presumably dying of old age. According to
Lucasfilm 's official system, this is regarded as
G-canon .
Upon the release of ''
The Phantom Menace '', the character of Jar Jar Binks became the subject of a great deal of media and popular attention, though not in the way his creators intended. Binks became symbolic of what many thought were the inherent creative and critical flaws of the film. The character was even widely rejected and often ridiculed by sections of the series' hardcore fanbase, who felt that Jar Jar was clearly and admittedly included in the film solely to appeal to younger members of the audience. In part, his character clashed with the expectations of some fans, who perceived the earlier films in the series as having a more adult tone. However, such appeal is also highly marketable, and can be taken to represent a mercenary eagerness to generate as much cash as possible, no matter how such an approach may affect the film in terms of story and artistic merit.
It is commonly argued that Jar Jar is simply a marketing gimmick designed to sell memorabilia, and shows a cynical turn in
George Lucas ' epic. Some saw Jar Jar's merchandising surrounding the film as proof that Lucas was a
Sell-out . Similar charges were leveled at the appearance of the teddy bear-like
Ewok s in 1983's ''
Return Of The Jedi ''. Others argue that the same charges could be made towards the extensive amount of
Darth Vader merchandise produced from early 1978 onwards.
They claim that such fans often seek to identify with movie characters (e.g.
Cosplay at fan conventions and premiers). Few adults wish to identify with comical characters, while adolescents, in particular, have a tendency to object to characters and motifs they identify as being intended principally for children.
Many fans object to any portrayal of excessive cuteness in the ''Star Wars'' series although this can perceived as odd given acceptance of 'cute' elements in the films made between 1977 and 1983 and argued to be another example of cognitive dissonance on their parts. Series creator
George Lucas has himself stated that he feels there is a section of the fanbase who get upset with aspects of
Star Wars because "The movies are for children but they don't want to admit that... There is a group of fans that doesn't like comic sidekicks. They want the films to be tough like
The Terminator , and they get very upset and opinionated about anything that has anything to do with being childlike." This may raise the question of whether George Lucas himself understands the market for his own work, his consistently high box-office totals notwithstanding.
It has been argued that Jar Jar Binks proved not to be terribly popular with children, and that dollar stores (99 Cents Only stores) were packed with unsold Jar Jar merchandise. It is hugely difficult to tackle this particular aspect objectively and much evidence on the topic could be counted as purely anecdotal. What is certainly true is that Jar Jar is a character designed to appeal to children who did not appeal to an adolescent market, i.e. he did not appeal to a group he was not designed to appeal to. Whether or not he appealed to the group he ''was'' designed for is a separate issue. As ''Star Wars'' was already popular with children, another issue is whether anything was gained by alienating the adolescent and adult market in an attempt to gain a market they already had.
Some of the more serious charges against Jar Jar (and consequently against Lucas, his creator) suggest that Jar Jar is a modern incarnation of racist stereotypes used as comic relief in many motion pictures of the first half of the
20th Century . Many aspects of Jar Jar's character are highly reminiscent of the archetypes portrayed in
Blackface Minstrelsy , a theater form prevalent during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Jar Jar's bodily expressions and tendency to get into trouble have also been said to remind many of
Stepin Fetchit and other similar offensive (black) stereotypical characters that persisted after the general demise of Blackface. While this is harder to counter than the above, it is also a matter of perception and many audiences have seen the character without ever perceiving a link between Jar Jar and such character types.
His dialect has been argued to sound stereotypically like
Jamaican English . Actor Ahmed Best is clearly not speaking this actual real world dialect in the film and the scale of the resemblance is disputed.
George Lucas spoke about these issues on British television in 1999. Interviewed by
Kirsty Wark on the BBC's political review programme
Newsnight on July 14 of that year he countered that criticisms of Jar Jar's mode of speaking were "...made by people who've obviously never met a Jamaican, because it's definitely not Jamaican and if you were to say those lines in Jamaican they wouldn't be anything like the way Jar Jar Binks says them." The similarity between the names "Jar Jar" and "
Jah Jah " supports the theory of connection between Jar Jar Binks and Jamaicans, because they sometimes use this similar term to refer to
God (typically
Haile Selassie I or
God The Father ).
It can be argued that any resemblance comes from an unfortunate confluence of Best's own voice and the 'broken' English the character speaks. In support of this it can be pointed out that the other Gungans featured in the movie speak in the same manner, and use the same disputed phrases, but their accents (such as that of English actor
Brian Blessed ) do not create the same accidental semiotic link in some audience member's minds. Also, in his
Newsnight interview, Lucas seemed astonished by this area of controversy and commented, with genuine seeming bewilderment "How in the world you could take an orange amphibian and say that he's a Jamaican? It's completely absurd. Believe me, Jar Jar was not drawn from a Jamaican, from any stretch of the imagination."
Jar Jar is not the only character in ''The Phantom Menace'' whose accent has been used to generate controversy. Notably, detractors claim, the greedy
Trade Federation spoke with
East Asian accents, and
Watto (who lives in a desert climate and was a trader) spoke with a
Yiddish accent. These allegations are
Controversial and not universally agreed upon. Watto, played by British actor
Andy Secombe , is counter-argued to have a specifically
London mode of speaking while a maximum of one of four speaking Trade Federation representatives can be even contended to speak in
East Asian manner. Other fans have pointed out that Jar Jar's voice and accent simply have a "nails on chalkboard" quality to them: to many viewers, Jar Jar's high pitched accent and pidgin Basic (English) words are extremely irritating just to listen to, even divorced from all plot events occurring on screen.
The plot thread in the latter two prequel films which concern Jar Jar's manipulation by other political elements and the manner in which his innocence betrays him (leading him to inadvertently cause the undoing of the
Galactic Republic ) has been interpreted by some as a shift in significance and character emphasis initiated by
George Lucas in response to the criticism he received originally. Other commentators contend that this shift was most likely planned far in advance and was always intended as a comment on, and re-contextualisation of, Jar Jar's role in ''The Phantom Menace'' by the series' creator who has a far greater history of ignoring his audience's reactions than endorsing or acquiescing to them.
As a result of all of the controversy above, Jar Jar has been one of the major springboards for
Vehement Anti-Lucas Sentiment aka
Lucas Bashing .
- In the special features of the film '' Requiem For A Dream '', Marlon Wayans can be seen imitating Jar Jar Binks between takes, obviously finding the portrayal offensive.
- The character was inspired and named by Lucas' youngest daughter.
- Ahmed Best was cast as Jar Jar after Casting Director Robin Gurland saw how loose and lanky he was during a performance of Musical Group STOMP .
- The Jar Jar CGI model was the basis for all of the Gungan s.
- Jar Jar also has a notable literary antecedent. The character Gunga Din , in the 1939 movie of the same name, based on the poem by Rudyard Kipling was an Indian "water boy" for the British army who comically tried to imitate the British soldiers but in the end saved the day by blowing a horn to summon assistance in the middle of an attack. The fact that Jar Jar is called a Gungan, and that another Gungan blows a horn to start a battle where his people help save the day, both suggest that he is intended as an Homage to Gunga Din. It is worth remembering in this context that the most famous line of Kipling's poem is the valedictory "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."
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Gungan Representative to the Galactic Senate (Part of the Naboo Senatorial Party)
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c22 BBY - c18 BBY
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-No Gungan Representative in Naboo Senatorial Party-
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Unknown (Senate later dissolved)
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