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Star Wars Prequels' Art Director Doug Chiang Talks
inherent writes: "Recently, representatives of three fansites covering Westwood's upcoming release, Earth and Beyond Online had the opportunity to interview Doug Chiang, Art Director for the Star Wars prequels, and the designer of the spacecraft models in Earth and Beyond Online. Chiang speaks on topics like the differences between film and digital animation, advice for upcoming digital artists, and the now infamous Jar Jar Binks. The interview transcript is available at Earth and Beyond Portal"
I remember seeing pictures of Jar Jar before the film came out and even bought into the excitement of the character as all those pre-release articles came out. Hell, Jar Jar even made the cover of Vanity Fair (among others).
Of course, then I went and saw the movie and was horrified as soon as Jar Jar opened his mouth. This just couldn't be!
I kinda thought he would be more like a Chewbacca characater. He kind of looked like could be a monkey-wrenching wise-cracking type of character.
So, if you separate the Jar Jar "design" from the actual character (admitted it's very hard), he's a pretty cool looking character. At least when he's not snatching food with his tongue.
...but I agree with the sentiment. This article on Salon says things better than I could, and this one covers the values put forward in Star Wars pretty well.
I'll tell you what _did_ suck about _The Phantom Menace_.
Try that confused mess of a political subplot, something to do with Naboo and the taxation of trade routes and a Trade Federation that came from God knows where and controls God knows which and wants God knows what from Naboo--hell, does _any_ of that make any sense?
Try Johnny one-note characters like Qui Gon, Obi Wan, and Amidala: Qui Gon hardly utters anything other than gnomic pronouncements about the Force and the prophecy (I know, one can argue that Obi Wan from _Star Wars_ was little better, but Alec Guinness is ten times the actor that Liam Neeson is, and he makes Obi Wan interesting in a way that Neeson, with his monotonous delivery, utterly fails to do with Qui Gon.) Obi Wan has hardly any dialogue of importance at all; he's there to swing a lightsaber. Amidala is the concerned child queen and nothing else, aside from a few lines of painful dialogue (e.g. "My caring for you will remain.")
Try the finale of the climactic battle, which uses the "single ship sneaks in and blows up the great fortress" plot for the _third time in four movies_. That it's done by _accident_, by a character whose most memorable dialogue in the whole sequence is, "Let's try spinning, that's a good trick!", makes it all the more painful.
In comparison to all this, Jar Jar is a positive breath of fresh air. I hate to think of how dreary some of the scenes in _Phantom Menace_ would have been without him--hell, in all those interminable scenes at the beginning of the movie where Qui Gon and Obi Wan are trying to get off Naboo, Jar Jar is the only interesting thing on the screen. He's goofy and silly, yes, but oddly thoughtful at times (such as when he tells Amidala that the Gungans aren't going to give up without a fight--he's still proud of the people who banished him.)
But everyone hates him, of course. At least, everyone _here_ hates him. I guess it's all part of that attitude, so prevalent among fans of things like Star Wars and Babylon 5, that _hates_ children and everything that is perceived as childish or reminding one of childhood. I daresay that, considering that many fans are probably only recently emerged from childhood themselves (or, depending on your point of view, still there), this attitude is understandable. Jar Jar, so the conventional wisdom goes, is for the kids--therefore, the sooner he dies a gruesome death, the better.
hyacinthus.