William Shatner names “the most annoying” movie character of all time
Movie history is littered with annoying characters, whether intentionally designed to be that way or not. From Twilight’s Bella Swan and The Fifth Element’s Ruby Rhod to Scooby Doo’s younger cousin Scrappy, there are many characters who have been hated over the years for their grating qualities.
But, given the subjectivity of personality, there tends to be at least one or two people willing to bat for these kinds of characters.
However, there is a chance that from the headline of this article alone, one character in particular has come bounding into your mind. Out of all the annoying characters in cinema history, there is none more ubiquitously hated and vilified than one Mr Jar Jar Binks. If you’re somehow lucky enough to have never heard the name, let alone find out who he is, Binks was first introduced to the world in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
A clumsy but well-meaning CGI alien, known as a Gungun, and an outcast on his home planet of Naboo, he somehow ends up tagging along with the Jedis for three movies after an accidental encounter. And somehow, he never manages to endear himself to literally anyone throughout the course of the prequels. From his high-pitched grating voice to the nonsense way he pronounces his words and constant idiocy he brings to the screen, he is all around god awful, and it is still a wonder today why he was even there in the first place.
And, it seems that Captain Kirk himself is among the vehement haters of Jar Jar, which isn’t surprising in the slightest. When William Shatner was asked about his favourite films set in space, the Star Trek star unsurprisingly mentioned the iconic franchise. Along with the likes of E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien, he referred to Star Wars episodes IV-VI as “probably the best of the science fiction films of its time.”
You would be hard pushed to find someone who doesn’t agree with this sentiment, and Shatner is, of course, well qualified to make this declaration. Despite acknowledging that “technology has come a long way since then”, he makes the very valid point that “what we now take as great cinematic effects had their start with George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic.”
Still operating today, Industrial Light & Magic is the visual effects studio founded by George Lucas in 1975. It has worked on the effects of some of the most technically acclaimed films of all time, including the Avatar franchise. But as with every kind of studio, it has made a few wrong turns along the way. As Shatner points out, “But remember, the prequel used ILM’s power to make Jar Jar Binks perhaps the most annoying character ever.”
Looking back at the franchise, the prequels stand out for just how terribly their effects have aged in general. Because of the studio’s over-reliance on digital effects at a time when these things were first being innovated, there’s no real way to recover them. And so, despite Episode I being released 16 years after the last film in the original trilogy, they look a lot worse.
But even more painful than that is Jar Jar. Yes, he might look strange and fake and cartoonish due to the ILM effects of the time, but even more than that, he is just plain annoying. After all, Yoda of this era was created using the same CGI, but he’s still beloved and is far less kooky than his original counterpart. But Jar Jar is one of those characters that is so unforgivable that he still very much holds the crown of the most annoying character in cinema history. He’s so egregious, in fact, that fan theories on him actually being a secret Sith lord and true evil of the franchise still abound.
