Blast from a Previous Time: Prequel Update from Star Wars Insider #25
A year or so ago, I picked up a bunch of my old Lucasfilm Fan Club/Star Wars Insider magazines from my parents’ house. I had a subscription for about a decade starting in the early ’90s. It’s been my intention to go through the magazines and look through them with a Jar Jar-centric focus and I’ll be doing so occasionally here.
I’m starting with this Prequel Update from issue 25 of the Star Wars Insider, which was released in the Spring of 1995. As mentioned in the article, this is the first of the Prequel Updates, which was a regular feature in the magazine throughout the production of all 3 films. All credit for the below excerpt goes to the Star Wars Insider and Dan Madsen.
While Jar Jar doesn’t get an explicit mention in the article, we can be pretty sure that when Rick McCallum says that “Doug Chiang and Terry Whitlatch” have been “working on conceptualizing George’s ideas”, Jar Jar is amongst those ideas. Terryl, in particular, spent a lot of time coming up with Jar Jar’s design, although Chiang and other artists contributed as well.
Also interesting is that at this point, the idea was still to shoot the three films back to back. The idea of filming sequels at concurrently became popularized with Back to the Future II and III. Obviously this idea was scrapped by the time that Episode I began shooting, but it really makes you wonder how different the prequels might have been if George was forced to write the scripts to all 3 before filming began. If Jar Jar had been woven into the plots of Episode II and III, and all of that footage shot, would George have been as likely to bow to fan reaction? Or would we have gotten a more consistent Jar Jar presence throughout the films, because cutting Jar Jar out or doing reshoots would have been too difficult/costly? What might have Jar Jar’s role been? Would he have gone to Kamino with Obi-Wan to investigate the mystery of the clones, or gone to Naboo with Anakin and Padme on their love adventure in Episode II? Would he have accompanied Obi-Wan and Anakin when they rescued Palpatine, or led an army of clones during the Clone Wars (he was a Bombad General after all) in Episode III? We’ll never know how things would have been different, but it is enjoyable to speculate.
Other things to note: George Lucas hadn’t yet committed to directing any of the prequels. Also the new Indiana Jones film that is mentioned here is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and it wouldn’t come out for another 13 years.
That’s it for this look at Star Wars Insider #25. I’ll continue to work through the other issues and post updates periodically.
Tags: jar jar, jar jar binks, prequels, star wars, star wars insider