The Awesome Power of Jar Jar Binks (no, really)
Meesa say… ahhh nope… can’t do it.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn in December of 2015. I’m reposting it here as part of moving my writing to my own platform…
So it turns out that Jar Jar is probably a SITH LORD!!!! What the WAHHHHHH? I know right? Watch this movie... Boom!! Mind blown.
I was a bit of a Star Wars Junky at the time of Episode I. Working on the Fox Studio Lot every morning I saw a giant mural of Luke and Vader locked in combat on the side of the sound stage I walked past. I had an office full of Star Wars toys and posters. I'd read dozens of the books in the universe. I could quote whole sections of the movie, etc. etc. The Monday morning after Episode I, I walked into my office and literally push all the toys off my desk and shelves into a box and was cured.
There's a ton of whacky conspiracy theories surrounding the Star Wars universe, and I usually try not to pay attention, but this is just too important to ignore. If it's true, it would have been a tremendous plot point and set him up for a spectacular reveal of a character. He could have blown all of us out of the water! He could have said "Here you go haters! there was a reason that Jar Jar Binks was a buffoon! Now shut up and watch the movie!"
Instead, he backed down, and compromised his original vision.
Why the hell didn't George Lucas just tell everyone to screw off and stick to his guns? Yes he had A LOT of pressure... from the public, the internet, and eventually from studio execs worried only about the bottom line. He had an idea for a character that was absolutely critical to his vision for a universe that he created! Yes that character was a horrendous racial stereotype, deeply offensive to anyone paying attention to American history. BUT, he had a chance to recover from it by transforming that character into a villainous arch enemy. Imagine a scene where Jar Jar throws off the stupid accent and reveals himself to the Jedi with a confident, predatory grin just before an epic light saber battle with Yoda!! Luke I am your father times a million!!
Everyone compromises on their vision at some point. Unless you're a megalomaniac, it's a natural part of life. My first, most important compromise happened while I was cutting the grass during the first summer of my freshman year in college. I was a music major at the University of Kansas. I really just wanted to be a musician, and play music, but my father (the one footing the bill) didn't think that a music degree was going to do me any good in the future. "You'll never get a good job!" "You'll end up cutting grass!" One particularly hot day in the summer of my freshman year, I realized that I hate cutting grass, and I changed my major to business. I had compromised my vision.
Having the courage to stand up for your vision can be incredibly hard. In hindsight, I've always wondered what my life would be like if I hadn't caved in to the pressure from my father. He was relentless. Every conversation I had with him eventually devolved into a lecture about "getting ahead in the world" and that "college was the key" and that "there's no careers in music". I now know that those ideas he grew up with just didn't apply to the world I was coming out of school into. I didn't know it then, but what you do in college doesn't necessarily have anything at all to do with your career. Am I mad at my father? Not at all... in hindsight, that compromise of my vision put me on a path to who I am today, and I kinda like that guy.
On my way to being a "grown up", I've learned to compromise on a regular basis. You have to learn that skill if you want to work with other people... but another skill I've learned is how to look ahead to try and anticipate what my compromise might mean. Anyone who knows me knows I'm definitely not always right, LOL!! But I believe strongly that how I react when I'm not right is a huge component of who I am.
Ultimately compromising your vision shapes your self perception and how you're perceived by others... I'm going to assume that this Jar Jar theory is true, because I love the idea, and it helps me reconcile some of my feelings about just how awful Episodes I, II, and III were. George Lucas started with vision for a character. Some of the decisions about that character were horrible, BUT the long arc for that character would have provided a cinematic moment that would have been a huge part of his legacy as a filmmaker. Buuuuuuuuut... instead he compromised his vision AND his legacy, a decision that has shaped who he is today.
How have YOU been shaped by compromising your vision?
