Today is May 4th, or as Star Wars fans know it, "May the 4th be with you," an annual holiday for celebrating the Galaxy far, far away. Every year the actors and creators who help bring this franchise to life share their warm wishes to the fans and fellow colleagues. Today, Jar Jar Binks actor Ahmed Best shared a message of support to another Star Wars actor who is also known for playing a deeply disliked character in the franchise.
On his personal Twitter account, Best posted a stunning picture of Raya and the last Dragon actress Kelly Marie Tran, modeling for a photoshoot. He also added the hashtags #MayTheFourthBeWithYou and #StarWarsDay. While this could just be seen as a nice gesture between two Star Wars actors, there's actually a pretty significant connection between Tran and Best, as they have both had the displeasure of playing two of the most hated Star Wars characters ever brought to the screen.
As much as the Star Wars fandom is often seen as an inclusive, loving, and supportive community, it has a dark side. Every fandom has its outliers, people who take this stuff way too seriously or become overly possessive and protective of it, and Star Wars is no stranger to that. Even Geroge Lucas, the man who made all of this possible, has seen his fair share of hate online. When the first of Lucas's prequel trilogy, Star Wars - Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, came out in 1999, a lot of adult fans at the time who had grown up with the original trilogy felt betrayed, believing that Lucas had ruined his own franchise. Thankfully, the prequels have had a bit of a resurgence amongst the Star Wars fandom over the years, since many of the young adult fans today were children when the prequels came out, meaning they had different expectations and were more forgiving of certain aspects. While Phantom Menace was dragged through the mud by many Star Wars fans, there was one particular element that REALLY bothered some people: none other than everyone's favorite goofy-Gungan General/ Senate Representative, Jar Jar Binks.
Jar Jar wasn't just disliked by some fans, he was HATED, and of course, some of that hate spilled over to Best, who played the amphibian in all three prequel films. According to Best, the backlash was so bad that he actually became suicidal, and his acting career was effectively ruined by the experience. Thankfully, Best seems to be doing okay now and has been welcomed back into the Star Wars franchise, taking on the role of Jedi Master Kelleran Beq on the web-based children's game show Jedi Temple Challenge. After the Jar Jar backlash, it seemed like there could never be another character that would elicit such an extreme response from the fandom, that is until Star Wars: The Last Jedi came out.
In The Last Jedi, Tran plays Rose Tico, a mechanic who gets swept up in the adventure, traveling to Casino planet Canto Bite with ex-stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega). While Last Jedi had its fair share of criticism from fans, Rose really took the brunt of this. It would be disingenuous to even call what Tran experienced "criticism," since it was more of a full-on harassment campaign. Fans hated Rose so much that Tran actually had to delete her social media and retreat from the public eye for a significant amount of time.
There's a cyclical nature to all of this: the fans who hated Jar Jar and the prequels were mostly adults at the time, having been children who grew up with the original trilogy. Now many of the fans who hate Rose and the sequels are adults, who were children when the Star Wars prequels came out. So perhaps the children who are growing up with the sequels now will have a better appreciation for them as they reach adulthood, but will inevitably hate whatever Star Wars content is being released 20-years from now. Regardless, it's nice to see Best using his platform to show support for another Star Wars actor who was subject to such a distasteful and unfair backlash. It's a reminder of what Star Wars is really about: hope and love, something that some of these fans could use a reminder of.
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Source: Ahmed Best | Twitter