Star Wars 9 shock reveal: Jar Jar Binks is evil mastermind
Star Wars 9 The Rise Of Skywalker has a shock twist — the real evil mastermind behind everything is actually Jar Jar Binks, who’s secretly a Sith Lord called Darth Ex-squeeze-Me, writes Duncan Lay.
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Well, I have to say that was a brilliant twist I didn’t see coming in Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker.
Beware, serious spoilers ahead*.
I was prepared for a big surprise because I felt they had to finish this legendary series on a high but this took my breath away — the evil mastermind behind everything was Jar Jar Binks, really a Sith Lord called Darth Ex-squeeze-Me.
When he confronted Princess Leia and said: “Mesa the biggie baddie and yousa about to be in biggie trouble!” — I have to admit, chills went up my spine.
Everything just fell into place when he flipped back
the hood of the classic Sith robe to reveal the floppy
ears and beady eyes of Jar Jar.
There we were, all thinking George Lucas had lost his marbles when he introduced the annoying Jar Jar in The Phantom Menace. His childish babble, the soppy eyes and
the exaggerated clumsiness made him the obvious target for ridicule.
Yet the movie master was playing a long game. Jar Jar wasn’t the comic relief, he was the puppetmaster, the real Phantom Menace in not just that movie but all of them.
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It was he who started Anakin down the dark path and, when Palpatine was cast into the exhaust shaft by Darth Vader, Jar Jar threw off his cloak of disguise and created the First Order.
And I have to say actor Ahmad Best produced an incredible piece of work as Jar Jar in this movie. I know it is motion capture but if he doesn’t win an Oscar, it will be an incredible injustice.
I would go so far as to say there hasn’t been a better performance by an actor with a rubber character mask stuck on top of his head. Ever.
And I hope it goes, in some part, towards making up for the hate poor Best has endured for the past two decades from Star Wars trolls.
He was merely the actor and to make him the focus for anger at Jar Jar was utterly wrong.
Today, I hope those trolls are deeply ashamed of themselves.
To watch Jar Jar stride the bridge of the wrecked Death Star before falling majestically down the stairs was to see the true depth of the character.
And his lightsaber skills were stunning. The Kung Fu School Of Drunken Monkey, where one’s moves are impossible to predict, were obviously the inspiration for Jar Jar’s Clumsy Fool style, where every trip over his Sith Lord robe and every fumble-fingered drop of the lightsaber were precisely choreographed to confound his enemies.
Naturally he had to be defeated for balance to be restored to the galaxy but his final words will stay with me — and haunt me — perhaps forever: “How wude!”
It was a fitting end for a brilliant character and a stunning series.
*None of this is true. Except the bit about the “fans” who blamed and attacked Ahmad Best for Jar Jar’s failings when he was just an actor doing his best with what Lucas gave him. There is no exhaust shaft deep enough to throw those losers into.