Was Jar Jar Binks originally supposed to be the real bad guy?

"If even George Lucas won't try to cash in on it, you know it's bad." TMM, re: Star Wars Holiday Special on Allspark forums





First some confession: when I first saw The Phantom Menace my response to Jar Jar was not necessarily typical.

I wondered if he wasn't really there to illuminate the, if you'll pardon the expression, darker side of the old Republic and the racist attitudes of even Jedi. To me he seemed placed in contrast to young Anakin, for his outrageous luck seemed so over the top that it practically screamed "this guy has a sense for the Force" to me. It was as Obi Wan, from A New Hope, was whispering in my ear that in his experience there was no such thing as luck.

So how did that work?

Well, Anakin: cute kid with loads of potential from a right species vs Jar Jar, who even though he flatly protested that he was sentient was dismissed, a Jedi saying that being able to talk wasn't proof.

In Jar Jar we were treated to the worst attitudes held by the supposedly best people and this seemed, at the time, reinforced by how his fellow natives seemed to be responding to the appearance of some humans in their midst.

And such were my thoughts and nothing more.





Yet some folks has taken a different take on the idea that everyone's favorite character to hate was himself a Force user at some level and they make a pretty good argument for their proposition.

As evidence shown are clips from the movie where Jar Jar's:

... antics and clumsiness actually resemble a real martial art, the drunken fist style;

... he appears to perform Jedi-like super jumps;

... he appears just in the background, mouthing the words other characters (who are not Jedi) are saying not unlike the Jedi mind control trick;

... despite being a total idiot he ends up being given charge of the army, becoming associate representative, and somehow giving a speech to a room full of folks who supposedly like democracy that results in a standing ovation and the foundation of the Empire;

... and likewise this idiot is seen as a frequent companion to Palpatine right there with important advisors and officials;

... it is also suggested that his character and name is derived from a number of Foundation and Xanth characters, notably Bink whose own mindless luck magic was eventually described as the most mystical of all;

... his antics are also compared to Yoda's while Yoda was still acting the harmless native before that reveal;

... and, I would just add, that his species is officially noted to not be long lived ... which is innocent in and of itself until one remembers that Darth Plagueis somehow was keenly interested in cheating death...

So could the virulent hatred of the character really have completely derailed plans of a reveal on the scale of Vader being Luke's father?

You can see the various clips showing these things in this video: https://youtu.be/1rHyf0FBvt4

 

Interesting take, but they later made him play the unwitting stooge by setting him up to make that ill-fated Senate proposal which gave evil what it wanted - more power.

He represented innocence and nativity, forever a child, and also represented the "at large" public always the dark.

 

Wow.
Jar Jar does have a much bigger role vs. what he is seen doing in episode 1.
Misdirection!
How do you make an elephant disappear in a theater full of people?
Misdirection Stanley, Misdirection.

 

Since this is a place for stuff about boats and ships, in order to keep the discussion in line with the spirit of the forum I am placing a picture of a fleet of ships:



Cheers

 

Deadpool on Jar Jar: http://comicsalliance.com/jar-jar-binks-is-an-abomination-say-it/

 

We may as well add some accompaniment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=XBOQcQO0IFI

 

Before docking with a Space Station, what must the Pilot of a Space Module first do ?

Put some money in a Parking Meteor . . . :idea:​

- - - - - - - - click pic for source - - - - - - - -​

 

Oh, and since everyone seems to have their own Star Wars theory here's one I dreamed up.

No, Jar Jar Binks is not the ultimate big bad ... but he still is a big bad.

Let me explain.

Trailers for the Rogue One movie seems to show Palpatine visiting a medical facility and paying homage to the patient.

For those who have seen the new Star Wars movie there is a new dark side organization of a leader and multiple individuals working under him and over them all is Snoke. Snoke, incidentally, is horrifically injured.

Likewise, in the Rebels TV show we are introduced to a secondary group of dark side force users who are not officially 'Sith' called the Inquisitors.

In earlier TV shows we find a number of Sith whose provenance (as genuine Sith) seems quite unSith like given the Rule of Two introduced into the movies in the Phantom Menace.

Yet when Yoda discusses the Rule of Two in Phantom Menace he is absolutely confident in his assessment of it.

So this brings me to my theory: Yoda was wrong.

He was not wrong in that there once was a Rule of Two that was absolute, but he was incorrect to believe that it was still the rule.

Why, if he was the apprentice who killed him, did Darth Sidious refer to the death of Darth Plagueis as a "tragedy" if it was for any reason besides rhetorical manipulation of Anakin?

Maybe because he was not the apprentice who killed him?

Suppose that one of the achievements of Darth Plagueis the Wise was that he had departed from the Rule of Two?

We know that he was basically concerned with living forever with all that guff from Palpatine's story so why would he need just one apprentice since the Rule of Two was predicated on the idea of succession among the Sith and also, in that vein, for an apprentice to murder his master seems to have been the norm ... hardly something one would call a "tragedy" if one were a conventional Sith.

Likewise, the goal of the Rule of Two seems to have been to grow the power of the Sith till the Republic could be destroyed ... and once that was achieved, or rather about to be achieved, would it have the legitimate function of ensuring political succession? If so, a system based on murder to inherit the throne, when the ancient Sith before Darth Bane had no such tradition, seems a bit awkward.

So Plagueis may have departed from the Rule of Two partly because it was simply time to do so. Not because he fancied he'd need more than just a right hand man in the form of a lone apprentice to rule.

At this point I want to bring up the fact that it seems to have been his intention to rule of the shadows as well (it's safer there), for he was advancing Sidious to become the future public tyrant before his death and likewise Sidious had taken Maul as his apprentice and trained him not to be someone to work from the shadows but to be a hammer, to be muscle for the new order.

Since he was, in this theory, no longer bound by the Rule of Two, Darth Plagueis took multiple apprentices and trained each to play a specific role in the new order. Sidious is a charismatic deceiver, the apprentice to acquire the political power. Jar Jar is trained as an infiltrator and manipulator, the internal security agent hiding behind the guise of an idiot no one would suspect. And, of course, there is for this theory at least one other apprentice and I will suggest that he was to be the muscle or maybe, more likely, some other kind of leader, perchance a military one, a strategist.

It was this third apprentice who killed Plagueis. He is Snoke. As a result of his injuries suffered while killing Darth Plagueis, who may have been asleep only when the attack began, he is not merely wounded but disfigured by a Sith who could attack him through the midichlorians within him. As a result of his injuries he would have to spend a lot of time, on and off at least, in extensive medical care.

He would also, in the old Sith traditions, be the new "Master" having killed the old one. This would help explain Sidious calling Plagueis' death a tragedy, not because he found it necessarily disagreeable but because someone ELSE did the deed.

This theory may also help to explain the seasone finale to Rebels involving a Sith Temple that was really a battle station of immense power which Sidious apparently knew about but was not able to gain control of, even though the secret to assessing it was nothing more than the very Rule of Two that it seems Plagueis had cast aside, but which Maul had realized was the key.



As for Darth Tyrannus, aka Count Dooku, and General Grevious, or Tyrannus' various apprentices (seen in the TV series), they too seem to replicate the pattern of a charismatic leader, a strategist/military leader and the muscle ... only for the purposes of leading both the Republic and the Seperatists ... a "B team" if you will.



I suppose I could try to come up with more, but this seems enough.



Oh, potential Rogue One spoiler alert, a "Snoke" is a variant of the word for snook, a kind of fish. It's said that Lucas loved giving his characters names that mean something (Vader is Dutch for father). This might work if Snoke's earlier career was as an important military leader ... an Admiral perchance?

 

Also: http://fandom.wikia.com/articles/star-wars-show-may-never-see

It seems that before he sold the franchise that Lucas ans Lucasfilms was advancing a parody show of Star Wars ... and we'll probably never see much of it.

So bask in the Robot Chicken inspired glow of what might have been before the Mouse Side of the Force took over.

 

There is little doubt Mr Lucas's ship came in when he dreamed up this Star Wars stuff.

 

Best cartoon I've seen about his selling to Disney but whining about what they are doing showed him walking with a wheelbarrow overloaded with money and the caption telling him to shut up already.