J.J. Abrams thought about killing off Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars: Episode VII

J.J. Abrams thought about killing off Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars: Episode VII
(Image credit: YouTube.com/MurdockMotion)

There are few Star Wars characters — or, for that matter, few movie characters — more despised than Jar Jar Binks. The clumsy, gibbering alien, who made a splashy debut in Star Wars: Episode I in 1999, was so widely hated that an editor painstakingly cobbled together a widely distributed recut of Episode I that eliminates Jar Jar almost entirely.

Jar Jar doesn't appear in the original Star Wars trilogy, which means his whereabouts in the decades after Star Wars: Episode III are unknown. But Jar Jar haters will appreciate the canonical solution proposed for Episode VII by director J.J. Abrams: Jar Jar is dead. "I have a thought about putting Jar Jar Binks’s bones in the desert there," said Abrams in an interview with Vanity Fair. "I'm serious! Only three people will notice, but they'll love it."

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Scott Meslow

Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.