How Jar Jar Saved Star Wars
I have a confession to make. I love Jar Jar Binks.
I’m not saying that to be edgy or iconoclastic. I really do like Jar Jar. He is a reminder that we shouldn’t take ourselves or our mythology too seriously. He also highlights the changes go through as we age. The young, hungry and angry George Lucas that made Star Wars to achieve his artistic independence became an insulated Citizen Kane-esque figure who no one would say no to.
The result was over-estimating Jar Jar’s ability to carry a major plot thread as a character. It created an unevenly-toned film. The Phantom Menace reminds me of the outright slapstick passages in John Woo’s Hong Kong gangster operas like The Killer and A Better Tomorrow.
I watched Tai Chi Master the other night with my wife and the tone of that movie was all over the place. There was a lot of Episode I in there.
Jar Jar is silly. He’s low-brow comic relief. He’s an obvious pander to 9 year-olds with his Buster Keaton antics and his fart jokes. But, he’s also an integral part of the plot. I like Jar Jar because he is an unfiltered glimpse into what’s really going on in George Lucas’ head.
And because, dammit, Gungans are cool.
Lucas is an incredibly brave man. He could have played it safe with Episode I. He was spending more than $120 million of his own money after all. He could have given us exactly the movie we, as worldly 30 year-olds, wanted. He could have pandered to us.
When the Phantom Menace came out neither me nor my friends had kids. Heck, only a few of us were married. We hadn’t surrendered our lives to raising a sprog or three.
And it affected how we viewed The Phantom Menace.
We were as far removed from the target audience as we could be.
But, I was a lonely voice back post-9/11. I always said I loved that movie. The tone didn’t bother me. I found it fascinating to re-watch it looking for where it failed. I said hundreds of times, “Stop judging it by what you want it to be. Go ask a 10 year old and ask them what they think, because they were the target audience.”
And, you know what? 9 year-olds love Episode I.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think The Phantom Menace is a good movie. But it is a movie I love, because it is a Star Wars film that takes me back to being nine without all the baggage that came with actually being nine.
When I watch Star Wars I remember how hard things were back then. When I watch the Phantom Menace I let go of my image of myself and embrace that sense of wonder I wanted to last forever when I was nine, but faded soon after.
And after the mess that was Attack of the Clones, where it was obvious Lucas was trying to make a movie that he thought the fans wanted, I came to appreciate it even more. Because it is an honest film, for all of its faults. It was gestated in the vacuum of Lucas’ personal playground without pretense.
No man would make a movie so tone-deaf to its target audience on purpose. Lucas had a plan. He executed that plan and didn’t care if we went along with him. Because, to him, Star Wars was always about bigger things than his personal aggrandizement.
Jar Jar was Lucas’ statement that worship of Star Wars was getting out of hand and that, first and foremost, Star Wars was for the children. That it spoke to adults as well was a bonus.
And by failing to deliver a film that the fan base could love it began the process of of realizing that Star Wars should never be put into the hands of people without anything to lose. It is the pressure of creating something great that creates art capable of speaking across generations.
J.J. Abrams and Gareth Edwards both felt that enormous pressure to live up to the stories that they owed their lives to. They had to bring back a fan base that was scarred by substandard films from Lucas. They had to not just make great movies, they had to make great Star Wars Movies.
That’s enough pressure to break lesser men. And it is that pressure that made both the Force Awakens and Rogue One great films in the end.
By all accounts both were a mess up until the final edit . The scripts were obviously lacking, demanding extensive re-shoots and reworking. Edwards shot footage willy-nilly and then assembled a final cut.
But, the final products were brilliant because they had to deliver. That cauldron of desperation drove Lucas on Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back.
It wasn’t there when he came up with Jar Jar as the driver for Padme’s insurrection to take back Naboo. But, without the legacy of Jar Jar and the myriad faults in the prequel films, Star Wars would suffer today from a lack of failure.
The children of Star Wars now in charge of the mythology know they can’t rest on their laurels or assume the brand alone will ensure success.
And, like it or not, we have Jar Jar to thank for that.
