Jar Jar Binks Actor Wants His Due After Andy Serkis Ignores Him In Video
Ahmed Best, the actor who played Jar Jar Binks, has a bone to pick with Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in “Lord of the Rings” and Caesar in the recent “Planet of the Apes” films.
Best’s complaint stemmed from a recent Wired video showing Serkis recounting the evolution of performance-capture acting, as A.V. Club noted over the weekend.
The problem: It made no mention of Best’s Jar Jar Binks, the Gungan from 1999′s “Star Wars: Episode I ― The Phantom Menace,” who is often considered one of the worst “Star Wars” characters. Jar Jar also had smaller roles in subsequent installments, “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.”
Andy Serkis, the world’s greatest motion capture performer, breaks down the history of motion capture technology: https://t.co/NwVWe4jE8Z pic.twitter.com/d03VEVBzpz
— WIRED (@WIRED) October 26, 2017
Best, who linked to a tweet of the perceived slight by another user, wrote in a series of posts last week that he felt “forgotten,” although with “no disrespect” intended toward Serkis.
According to the actor, Jar Jar Binks helped pioneer the process of bringing a computer-generated character to life:
I don’t know how to retweet this and not sound bitter, but I feel I have been forgotten. No disrespect to the great @andyserkis https://t.co/4F3VBPV8Aj
— Ahmed BEst (@ahmedbest) October 27, 2017
1) thread: Thanks for the love today especially the Star Wars fans. Jar Jar is bigger than just me or my performance. As much as we actors
— Ahmed BEst (@ahmedbest) October 28, 2017
2) are on the front line when it comes to the success or the failure of characters we play, what's more important is the accomplishment of
— Ahmed BEst (@ahmedbest) October 28, 2017
3) bringing the work to the screen. Jar Jar helped create The workflow, iteration process and litmus test for all CGI characters to this day
— Ahmed BEst (@ahmedbest) October 28, 2017
4) on some days the code was being written in real time as I was moving. To deny Jar Jar's place in film history is to deny the hundreds of
— Ahmed BEst (@ahmedbest) October 28, 2017
5) VFX technicians, animators, code writers and producers their respect. People like John Knoll, Rob Coleman @arfkeldo and scores of others
— Ahmed BEst (@ahmedbest) October 28, 2017
6) who I worked with for two years after principal photography was ended to bring these movies to you. There's a joke I like to use when
— Ahmed BEst (@ahmedbest) October 28, 2017
7) talking about this stuff, Jar Jar walked so Gollum could run. Gollum ran so the Na'vi could fly. Thanks for lifting me up today.
— Ahmed BEst (@ahmedbest) October 28, 2017
“To deny Jar Jar’s place in film history is to deny the hundreds of VFX technicians, animators, code writers and producers their respect,” he wrote.
In case you’ve erased Jar Jar Binks from your memory, here’s a reminder:
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.