I am often asked about my reaction to Jar-Jar Binks (Ahmed Best).

Having grown up in the 1970’s and 1980’s I can assure you the Star Wars Saga was a really, really big deal.  It’s hard to describe that time when George Lucas’ epic space opera/western/fairy-tale/fantasy-adventure ruled the world without using phrases such as “life-changing,” “epic vision,” and “totally radical.”

It was so popular that dance clubs were playing disco versions of the theme (a common practice at the time, but reserved still for just those films that were popular enough), and we all envisioned Tony Manero hustling to that beat (Mazel Tov! to anyone who “got” that reference).

Yet many adults in my life during that summer of 1999 felt put-off by The Phantom Menace.  To them it felt slow, over-plotted, wooden, and yes even a little boring.  Everyone could pretty much agree the Pod Race was great, and that final lightsaber duel was equally fun.  But that sense of magic and awe was gone, and they couldn’t understand why Lucas would ruin his story with this videogame-looking imitator.

Here is how I always answer their criticism:

For a very unfortunate, but good, reason I could not attend an early screening of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.  I even missed opening weekend.  Instead I went on an afternoon in the middle of its opening week.

For a school day, the theater was well-attended. Some parents had even taken their kids out of grade school that day and brought them for an early movie.  One such young boy and his father were sitting just in front of me, and I enjoyed the kid’s quiet comments (and that he was doing his best to stay, well, quiet).  He was very excited and so was his father.  My own children were still years ahead of me then, but I could remember how it felt to sit down for my first screening of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and so I better understood their anticipation.

The movie started and I quickly became very involved with the worlds onscreen. Lucas and his extraordinary team had created something of a visual masterpiece.  I did hear the boy gasp during the pod-race, whisper “oh no” when Darth Maul attacks Qui-Gon in the desert, and even laugh during Jar-Jar’s Buster Keaton-esque ballet with bombs in the final battle, and during Binks’ Harold Lloyd moment on the turret of a tank.

And then Darth Maul re-enters the story yielding that double-bladed, red lightsaber. When he ignited that sword, the Jedi activated theirs, and the music swelled with that rich, ethereal chorale, the young boy turned to his dad and in an uncontrollably loud voice proclaimed “Dad, this is so cool!”

That boy felt what I had felt at his age, and it was what my disappointed friends had expected to feel again.  When the film did not give it to them, they decided it was a bad movie.  But that’s not fair.  It had been sixteen years since Return of the Jedi and we were not children anymore.  To be that much older and still expect the same reaction of course brought disappointment.

I am neither a filmmaker nor a critic, but I am a champion of Film. Overall reaction to The Phantom Menace and its critical problems have slightly improved over the past fifteen years, but it’s still very trendy to trash the entire prequel trilogy.  Critical opinion, while sometimes immediately accurate, does often change with time.  What was once thought of as awful can someday be seen as beautiful.

Which brings me back to Jar-Jar Binks. No, he’s not beautiful.  If you want to see a fully-realized CGI character, watch Andy Serkis as “Gollum” in The Lord of the Rings (2001 – 2003; dir. Peter Jackson).

But with Jar-Jar I’ve met very few people who shrug their shoulders with a simple, yet ambivalent, “eh, he’s okay” reaction. It’s pretty much either hatred or humor.  Either way you felt something for a completely imaginary CGI character.

Think about that for a moment. You felt something for a full-motion animated character, and it wasn’t a traditional animated movie.  Within a live-action film, nothing like it had ever been attempted before (James Cameron’s T-1000 could be the closest relative, but that character was deliberately one-dimensional and still primarily realized onscreen with a human actor).  Using Ahmed Best’s talented and careful movement as inspiration and guide, Lucas got an emotional reaction from us.  Good or bad, we felt something.

Our ability to respond to and accept Gollum could not have been so successful if Jar-Jar had not come first.

I think of the Star Wars Saga as one movie.  I’m a big fan.  Back in that theater during the summer of 1999 and within that boy’s reaction to his father, George Lucas, Ahmed Best, and the production team can find the greatest reason to feel proud of their accomplishments.  Because, yeah, it really was so cool.