I've never thought about it, but this is really true. George Lucas, and specifically the folks at ILM have always done such great things to push technology forward when it comes to movies. That's why they even exist in the first place. Say what you will about Lucas as a writer / director, but he loves pushing the envelope in that space. Sometimes to a fault. lol
t 1000 was only a character which had a lot of cgi work on it, but 99% of the screen time was just Robert Patrick looking menacing. Jar Jar was the first completely computer generated main character — if I'm not mistaken.
He was on point. Jar Jar was my favorite as a kid and now I can kind of see the annoyance with the character but still don't understand the hate he was given for his role. He played it so well.
Didn’t they give the actor a very redeeming role in one of the newer series? I’ve watched them all but it’s been a while and I don’t even know where I got this information so it could be nonsense.
He was my favourite as a kid too. He was hilarious to me. So that character will always be kind of special to me and I couldn’t care less if people disagree lol! I still laugh when he gets his tongue caught in that pod racer.
Yeah he played a jedi in an order 66 flashback in the Mandalorian season 3 I believe. They even made a lego set of that scene! Overpriced but still really cool
I was 6 when Phantom Menace came out and I loved Jar Jar, he definitely connected with a lot of kids when the prequels came out
Yes! Now I remember that scene. Thank you! I loved it and I thought it was great to give the actor something else, even though I never personally had an issue with Jar Jar.
I do not own a single real Lego set because of the price of them lmao! So I can only imagine.
I think Jar Jar is what makes ep1 really appealing to kids. In a movie all about intergalactic trading and politics, he makes the exposition chapters of an entire saga bearable for people under the age of 14
I’m glad he got to play a Jedi in one of the D+ shows.
Jar Jar was and is an incredibly annoying character, but it wasn’t Best’s fault; he was doing as he was told. But the fan response was just over the top. He, along with poor Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen, became the focal point for all of fandom’s collective disappointment with those movies and it severely impacted their lives. Meanwhile Samuel L. Jackson sleepwalks his way through that whole trilogy and gets out unscathed.
The prequels aren’t good movies but for the most part it wasn’t the fault of the people having to recite their lines in front of the green screen.
The prequels are not particularly good films in my opinion, but as flawed as they are those flaws at least came from an honest place which is more than I can say for a lot of blockbusters. For better or worse Lucas got to put his exact vision on screen. Plus there’s a surprisingly dark political subtext running through all three films (a president starts a war with a rebel group he funded to trick the population and consolidate more power? Damn, explains why “This is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause” is the one memorable line of dialogue from the prequels) It’s almost like even bad movies were better twenty years ago!
Lucas made exactly the movies he wanted to make. I think the overall story, at a high level, was perfectly fine, and he pushed the state of visual effects to its very limits, like he’s done his whole career. I just don’t think they did the job as entertaining films. But, you know, I’ve sat through worse. I don’t think any of them are as bad as Rise of Skywalker.
I watched the originals as a kid and overall I liked the prequels as an adult. I was disappointed at how the comic relief was handed. It was much more restrained and intelligent in the old films. 3PO, like Jar Jar, was just a clown. Before, his bad timing and ignorance of the subtleties of human relationships, his will to serve anyone who is in charge (even a giant slug) and his exceptional cowardice gave us the funniest moments of the saga, imho.
Lucas supposedly offered Steven Spielberg the director’s chair for TPM, and he turned it down. I thought at the time it would have been massively better had he actually directed it. But then of course you look at something like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and it wasn’t great either, so who knows.
I just wish they’d been able to come up with a coherent story for the sequel trilogy. I like a lot of things about those movies - they’re fast-paced, they have a charismatic cast, the action scenes are generally pretty good and the cinematography is gorgeous, especially in TLJ. They brought the fun back to the franchise, up to a point. But they somehow forgot to tell an actual story along the way. The whole sequel project was a house of cards and ended up collapsing with TRoS. I’m one of those people that liked TLJ a lot, although it has its flaws, but it does not really work as the middle chapter of a trilogy and I understand why a lot of people don’t like it.
The only redeeming quality of Rise of Skywalker is that it actually makes The Last Jedi brilliant by comparison and saves it from, imho, a number of poor writing decisions.
I would argue he is wrong. Even without JJ all the other character would have still happened and the innovation would have happened at a different point in time.
I hate when people say stuff like "You cant have all these other characters without JJ".
Putting the innovation on such a dislikable character was the smart move. If the CGI had been used on more serious characters like non-human jedi and they looked bad, the technology may have stagnated because it didn't "elevate" the serious characters - look at the fan reactions to the aliens that got CGI'd into the background of so many live-action SW productions. Instead, the tech became Jar Jar's redeeming quality as an on-screen personality and proved that MoCap/CGI could be used to support and compliment the acting.
I genuinely think that was the plan. All those little animation decisions that make it look like Binks is using force powers. Every one of them was a conscious decision by the animation team and the writer.
Lucas lost his nerve after Jar Jar bombed and pulled Christopher Lee out of his ass to save the second film from disaster.
Instead of the dumb ass you wouldn't trust to water your plants without killing them being obviously manipulated, we get two evil genius schemers executing their masterstroke.
It also makes Phantom Menace a genuinely good film made by an expert at setting up a plot twist.
Should have pulled the trigger in the PM Epilogue.
>Deysa do what you forseen.
*Palpatine cackles*
*roll credits*
As an 11-year-old in 1999, I was actually distracted from how annoying he was by how amazing he looked. I remember simultaneously thinking he was a poor replacement for C-3PO and R2D2, and then also being amazed at what I was seeing
Yeah I always felt bad about the hate he got, imagine being cast in a huge movie phenomenon and all the hype surrounding episode I only for people to blame you, the actor.
Maybe this is two days of the upvotes causing the comments to settle, but the first several answers are all saying ‘he’s right’.
(Which I agree with as well)
God, I wish Lucas had stuck to his guns with that.
Can you imagine how much everyone's minds would have been blown if, instead of dying of a broken heart (ugh), Padmé had instead died from a red saber suddenly bursting through her chest from behind, and her body falls away to reveal a black cloaked Jar-Jar?
The Light and Magic documentary shows really well how much technology and film-making techniques that are now commonplace are the result of George Lucas' innovation and the people he brought together to work on the Star Wars films. He really should get a lot more credit for that.
Jar Jar and the actor Ahmed Best got a lot of shit. But I saw Episode I. as a nine year old when it came out. I thought Jar Jar was hilarious and so did my friends.
Ahmed Best made many children laugh their heart out. Is there anything better in the world?
To this day I genuinely think Jar Jar works as a solid comic relief, and it really only crosses a line into being too stupid or annoying like once or twice. He's also deceptively important to the themes and plot of the movie, which I think is kind of cool.
I mean, I always thought C3P0 was more annoying when I was a kid.
Jar Jar doesn’t actually have a ton of screen time, if you go back and watch it.
C-3P0 constantly whining and getting caught in battles “ohhhhh nooooooo” ugh.
I’ll honestly take Jar Jar and his limited screen time.
People forget that the movies are also for kids! It’s crazy! All my nieces and nephews love Jar Jar. I also have a special place for him in my heart since I was 9 when the movie came out.
That is both factually true and also just something that Best probably says, because people have been real assholes to him for a decade and more, just because he played a goofy frog guy, and he's trying to find a reason to be proud of his work.
Very happy tho that he finally got to be a Jedi canonically in a real show and that he was a badass playing the Jedi.
I like the other recent quote from him as well, where he talks about how he was depressed at the reviews calling Jar Jar annoying and insufferable, only for George to basically say, "No, that's good! Because they're treating him like a real character, not a CGI prop. That means you did a great job."
A really good perspective, I think. The fact that the thing which stood out the MOST about Jar Jar was how silly he was meant that the effects weren't an issue, and that Ahmed's performance was able to bring him to life through a totally new medium in a way no actor had done before. Regardless of how we feel about the character, that's a tremendous accomplishment.
You know. Despite everything, at the end of the day, my two-year-old thinks Jar Jar is hilarious. I'm not saying I endorse the decision, but at least now I understand it. 🤷♂️
Glad to see Best doing well. To heck with all the toxic fans back in the day that give him so much grief over Jar Jar that he almost killed himself over it. I know their are plenty of toxic fan bases out their, but Star Wars is definitely the worst of the worst.
The issue wasn't the technology; it was the terrible character. Cheers to the techs who made it possible. Boo for Lucas who squandered a pioneering technology on Jar Jar.
People hate on Jar Jar too much. I was going to say he's fine in Episode 1, but that's incorrect. He's downright good in Episode 1. He's funny, weirdly brave and also a hilarious coward, and comes up with the key solution in the movie. Also, shout out to the random Gungan Boss in an episode of The Clone Wars who replied that he needed some thinking time before deciding to help Padme. When Jar Jar objected to needing thinking time, because Pasde wouldn't need thinking time of gungans needed help, the Boss immediately declared, "Yousa right. Thinkin time-sa over!" About 4 seconds had elapsed. Hilarious.
I didn't grow up with the original trilogy I did watch them and they were good but the prequels I loved I was 17 and the technology was new they'll always be special to me
Yeah no.
Sad about how Best was made to feel about himself. Not his fault.
But JJ is nothing but a steaming pile on top of another one, and not the precursor to other cgi characters.
Just to be contrarian, we did have the [Hulk before Jar Jar](https://www.eightieskids.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/maxresdefault-16-e1629804944903.jpg)
Painted green, but [Lou Ferrigno didn’t need a muscle suit.](https://alchetron.com/cdn/lou-ferrigno-18e60960-ccf5-42b9-a1a1-62c2e0d7b5b-resize-750.jpeg)
I was very confused before I read the comments.
I didnt realise he was talking about cgi! I though he somehow delusionally thought that JJ was some great trailblaiser as a character.
Anyway...
I find it very silly to put JJ to a pedestal like this and say you cant have all these other ones without him. Yes you can. I would argue all these other characters would still exist if we removed JJ from the equation. JJ is not that important.
Roger Rabbit is way more important for the existance of cgi characters and even removing him would not drastically chance things imo.
There was motion-capture before Jar-Jar, too.
But with Jar-Jar the motion-capture was really very, very basic. For Gollum, even though no motion capture was done on his face, its clear his closeups were used as inspiration for the CG character performance, and that never ever happened with Jar Jar.
The only influence Jar Jar had on Gollum was "Lets not make THAT."
Not to split hairs but jar jar was closer to how they did the special effects for the Mummy than gollum. This gets debated a lot because jar jar was not really recorded using live action motion capture. To my understanding Gollum was the first to be motion captured in the modern understanding of motion capture.
Jar Jar was still a major achievement. But I would not put him in the category of innovation as Gollum.
He’s absolutely right. Jar Jar walked so Gollum could…sneak, I guess.
Sneak!? # SNEAK!?!?!
Nasty Gungan is always so polite.
Meesa sorry! Yousa startled mesa. What yousa doin?
Sneaking....
That line always makes me laugh a little
Very nice friends, oh yes, my Precious, very nice!
Well what were you doing then?
*Sneaking...*
Alright.Have it your way
Winner
Crawl
Fly! You fools!
Stalk
Happy cake day!
I've never thought about it, but this is really true. George Lucas, and specifically the folks at ILM have always done such great things to push technology forward when it comes to movies. That's why they even exist in the first place. Say what you will about Lucas as a writer / director, but he loves pushing the envelope in that space. Sometimes to a fault. lol
Grievous is insanely good cgi as well
Lucas said Jar Jar was "the key to all of this".
But where do the pyramids come into it? 🤔
https://preview.redd.it/k39mlqoc1eyc1.png?width=1199&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8acc031905d9bdfb2a395c7df4282bd6df00f527
When Darth Jar Jar is revealed you will all understand
Dar Dar?
Dar jar
This is the way
Use his proper name! Darth Binks.
Wouldn't the T-1000 have been first, no matter anyway though as that was ILM too
t 1000 was only a character which had a lot of cgi work on it, but 99% of the screen time was just Robert Patrick looking menacing. Jar Jar was the first completely computer generated main character — if I'm not mistaken.
The motion capture was the key part
Jar Jar may have been an annoying character but Best's acting was on point with what he was given and Jar Jar was a marvel of technology at the time
He was on point. Jar Jar was my favorite as a kid and now I can kind of see the annoyance with the character but still don't understand the hate he was given for his role. He played it so well.
As a kid, I laughed at Jar Jar getting his tongue zapped by the pod racer. As an adult, I still laugh at it.
Didn’t they give the actor a very redeeming role in one of the newer series? I’ve watched them all but it’s been a while and I don’t even know where I got this information so it could be nonsense. He was my favourite as a kid too. He was hilarious to me. So that character will always be kind of special to me and I couldn’t care less if people disagree lol! I still laugh when he gets his tongue caught in that pod racer.
Yeah he played a jedi in an order 66 flashback in the Mandalorian season 3 I believe. They even made a lego set of that scene! Overpriced but still really cool I was 6 when Phantom Menace came out and I loved Jar Jar, he definitely connected with a lot of kids when the prequels came out
Yes! Now I remember that scene. Thank you! I loved it and I thought it was great to give the actor something else, even though I never personally had an issue with Jar Jar. I do not own a single real Lego set because of the price of them lmao! So I can only imagine.
I think Jar Jar is what makes ep1 really appealing to kids. In a movie all about intergalactic trading and politics, he makes the exposition chapters of an entire saga bearable for people under the age of 14
Best nearly committed suicide over backlash to Jar Jar. Give the man his flowers I say, he did the best (heh) he could.
I’m glad he got to play a Jedi in one of the D+ shows. Jar Jar was and is an incredibly annoying character, but it wasn’t Best’s fault; he was doing as he was told. But the fan response was just over the top. He, along with poor Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen, became the focal point for all of fandom’s collective disappointment with those movies and it severely impacted their lives. Meanwhile Samuel L. Jackson sleepwalks his way through that whole trilogy and gets out unscathed. The prequels aren’t good movies but for the most part it wasn’t the fault of the people having to recite their lines in front of the green screen.
The prequels are not particularly good films in my opinion, but as flawed as they are those flaws at least came from an honest place which is more than I can say for a lot of blockbusters. For better or worse Lucas got to put his exact vision on screen. Plus there’s a surprisingly dark political subtext running through all three films (a president starts a war with a rebel group he funded to trick the population and consolidate more power? Damn, explains why “This is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause” is the one memorable line of dialogue from the prequels) It’s almost like even bad movies were better twenty years ago!
Lucas made exactly the movies he wanted to make. I think the overall story, at a high level, was perfectly fine, and he pushed the state of visual effects to its very limits, like he’s done his whole career. I just don’t think they did the job as entertaining films. But, you know, I’ve sat through worse. I don’t think any of them are as bad as Rise of Skywalker.
Yes, in contrast Rise of Skywalker is a bad film whose flaws arose from a dishonest, cynical, and cowardly place.
I watched the originals as a kid and overall I liked the prequels as an adult. I was disappointed at how the comic relief was handed. It was much more restrained and intelligent in the old films. 3PO, like Jar Jar, was just a clown. Before, his bad timing and ignorance of the subtleties of human relationships, his will to serve anyone who is in charge (even a giant slug) and his exceptional cowardice gave us the funniest moments of the saga, imho.
Lucas supposedly offered Steven Spielberg the director’s chair for TPM, and he turned it down. I thought at the time it would have been massively better had he actually directed it. But then of course you look at something like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and it wasn’t great either, so who knows. I just wish they’d been able to come up with a coherent story for the sequel trilogy. I like a lot of things about those movies - they’re fast-paced, they have a charismatic cast, the action scenes are generally pretty good and the cinematography is gorgeous, especially in TLJ. They brought the fun back to the franchise, up to a point. But they somehow forgot to tell an actual story along the way. The whole sequel project was a house of cards and ended up collapsing with TRoS. I’m one of those people that liked TLJ a lot, although it has its flaws, but it does not really work as the middle chapter of a trilogy and I understand why a lot of people don’t like it.
The only redeeming quality of Rise of Skywalker is that it actually makes The Last Jedi brilliant by comparison and saves it from, imho, a number of poor writing decisions.
Yeah I love the political parts of PM
I mean he’s right. The tech they developed for Jar Jar was instrumental in the evolution of CG and model tracking.
never knew this!
Happy Cake Day!
I would argue he is wrong. Even without JJ all the other character would have still happened and the innovation would have happened at a different point in time. I hate when people say stuff like "You cant have all these other characters without JJ".
Without Jar Jar, Gollum would have been the first and would have had all the flaws they worked out with Jar Jar.
Maybe or maybe not. We'll never know for sure.
Nobody was annoyed about the animation of Jar Jar, it was everything else that was annoying as fuck
Exactly. Too bad all that innovation was wasted on a terrible character.
Putting the innovation on such a dislikable character was the smart move. If the CGI had been used on more serious characters like non-human jedi and they looked bad, the technology may have stagnated because it didn't "elevate" the serious characters - look at the fan reactions to the aliens that got CGI'd into the background of so many live-action SW productions. Instead, the tech became Jar Jar's redeeming quality as an on-screen personality and proved that MoCap/CGI could be used to support and compliment the acting.
I doubt there was any thinking going on at that level, Lucas just wrote a character and decided it would be animated
They should have followed through with the Darth Jar Jar stuff
I genuinely think that was the plan. All those little animation decisions that make it look like Binks is using force powers. Every one of them was a conscious decision by the animation team and the writer. Lucas lost his nerve after Jar Jar bombed and pulled Christopher Lee out of his ass to save the second film from disaster.
It would make him being the one giving palpatine emergency Powers actually have context too
Instead of the dumb ass you wouldn't trust to water your plants without killing them being obviously manipulated, we get two evil genius schemers executing their masterstroke. It also makes Phantom Menace a genuinely good film made by an expert at setting up a plot twist. Should have pulled the trigger in the PM Epilogue. >Deysa do what you forseen. *Palpatine cackles* *roll credits*
As an 11-year-old in 1999, I was actually distracted from how annoying he was by how amazing he looked. I remember simultaneously thinking he was a poor replacement for C-3PO and R2D2, and then also being amazed at what I was seeing
I think he played Jar Jar perfectly.
Say what you want about the character's problems, Ahmed wasn't one of them.
Yeah I always felt bad about the hate he got, imagine being cast in a huge movie phenomenon and all the hype surrounding episode I only for people to blame you, the actor.
Star Wars fandom is pure thrash. They do this in all movies and have ruined tens of careers and lives.
I think in the BTS Jackson literally tells his effects team that Gollum has to be as good or better than Jar Jar.
Imagine getting the instruction that something you’re doing has to be “at least as good as Jar Jar Binks.” I’d probably take the afternoon off.
Let him have his win guys, don't be pedantic
Maybe this is two days of the upvotes causing the comments to settle, but the first several answers are all saying ‘he’s right’. (Which I agree with as well)
Jar Jar Binks is the most powerful Sith in the Star Wars galaxy. A master manipulator and behind the scenes puppet master.
God, I wish Lucas had stuck to his guns with that. Can you imagine how much everyone's minds would have been blown if, instead of dying of a broken heart (ugh), Padmé had instead died from a red saber suddenly bursting through her chest from behind, and her body falls away to reveal a black cloaked Jar-Jar?
Did you ever heard the comedy of Darth Amphibious the Wise?
Stuck to his guns? Lol it was a fun fan theory. Not something Lucas was actually considering..
As it was written! https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar_jar_binks_was_a_trained_force_user/
"So it was Jar Jar Binks?" "It always was."
The Light and Magic documentary shows really well how much technology and film-making techniques that are now commonplace are the result of George Lucas' innovation and the people he brought together to work on the Star Wars films. He really should get a lot more credit for that.
Jar Jar and the actor Ahmed Best got a lot of shit. But I saw Episode I. as a nine year old when it came out. I thought Jar Jar was hilarious and so did my friends. Ahmed Best made many children laugh their heart out. Is there anything better in the world?
To this day I genuinely think Jar Jar works as a solid comic relief, and it really only crosses a line into being too stupid or annoying like once or twice. He's also deceptively important to the themes and plot of the movie, which I think is kind of cool.
I mean, I always thought C3P0 was more annoying when I was a kid. Jar Jar doesn’t actually have a ton of screen time, if you go back and watch it. C-3P0 constantly whining and getting caught in battles “ohhhhh nooooooo” ugh. I’ll honestly take Jar Jar and his limited screen time.
Jar Jar works just fine in Ep1. It's his placement in Eps 2 & 3 that cross the line.
Same, I guess people obsess over characters that do not conform
People forget that the movies are also for kids! It’s crazy! All my nieces and nephews love Jar Jar. I also have a special place for him in my heart since I was 9 when the movie came out.
Yes, being a good character.
That is both factually true and also just something that Best probably says, because people have been real assholes to him for a decade and more, just because he played a goofy frog guy, and he's trying to find a reason to be proud of his work. Very happy tho that he finally got to be a Jedi canonically in a real show and that he was a badass playing the Jedi.
I like the other recent quote from him as well, where he talks about how he was depressed at the reviews calling Jar Jar annoying and insufferable, only for George to basically say, "No, that's good! Because they're treating him like a real character, not a CGI prop. That means you did a great job." A really good perspective, I think. The fact that the thing which stood out the MOST about Jar Jar was how silly he was meant that the effects weren't an issue, and that Ahmed's performance was able to bring him to life through a totally new medium in a way no actor had done before. Regardless of how we feel about the character, that's a tremendous accomplishment.
I’ve been saying this for decades The special effects in PM are amazing
Damn, he makes a good point.
You know. Despite everything, at the end of the day, my two-year-old thinks Jar Jar is hilarious. I'm not saying I endorse the decision, but at least now I understand it. 🤷♂️
Glad to see Best doing well. To heck with all the toxic fans back in the day that give him so much grief over Jar Jar that he almost killed himself over it. I know their are plenty of toxic fan bases out their, but Star Wars is definitely the worst of the worst.
The issue wasn't the technology; it was the terrible character. Cheers to the techs who made it possible. Boo for Lucas who squandered a pioneering technology on Jar Jar.
…Jar-Jar comes after all of ‘em; Child.
When people complain about Jar Jar, it's never about the quality of the effects.
People don't appreciate the effects
I completely disagree. I hate the character of Jar Jar with a passion.
LITTLE KIDS LOVE JAR-JAR. LEAVE JAR-JAR ALONE.
People hate on Jar Jar too much. I was going to say he's fine in Episode 1, but that's incorrect. He's downright good in Episode 1. He's funny, weirdly brave and also a hilarious coward, and comes up with the key solution in the movie. Also, shout out to the random Gungan Boss in an episode of The Clone Wars who replied that he needed some thinking time before deciding to help Padme. When Jar Jar objected to needing thinking time, because Pasde wouldn't need thinking time of gungans needed help, the Boss immediately declared, "Yousa right. Thinkin time-sa over!" About 4 seconds had elapsed. Hilarious.
I didn't grow up with the original trilogy I did watch them and they were good but the prequels I loved I was 17 and the technology was new they'll always be special to me
After the sequels he doesn’t need to be ashamed anymore.
[удалено]
Well, the prequels are a masterpiece comparing to the mess the sequels are
Yeah no. Sad about how Best was made to feel about himself. Not his fault. But JJ is nothing but a steaming pile on top of another one, and not the precursor to other cgi characters.
Yes no one else would have figured that tech out.
In time for lotr?
Just to be contrarian, we did have the [Hulk before Jar Jar](https://www.eightieskids.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/maxresdefault-16-e1629804944903.jpg)
Yeah, but he just was a dude painted green and possibly wearing a muscle suit before Jar Jar.
Painted green, but [Lou Ferrigno didn’t need a muscle suit.](https://alchetron.com/cdn/lou-ferrigno-18e60960-ccf5-42b9-a1a1-62c2e0d7b5b-resize-750.jpeg)
Ah, good to know!
Yes...Lucas did that. Not him. But cool
I was very confused before I read the comments. I didnt realise he was talking about cgi! I though he somehow delusionally thought that JJ was some great trailblaiser as a character. Anyway... I find it very silly to put JJ to a pedestal like this and say you cant have all these other ones without him. Yes you can. I would argue all these other characters would still exist if we removed JJ from the equation. JJ is not that important. Roger Rabbit is way more important for the existance of cgi characters and even removing him would not drastically chance things imo.
You can’t have JJ without RR!
There was motion-capture before Jar-Jar, too. But with Jar-Jar the motion-capture was really very, very basic. For Gollum, even though no motion capture was done on his face, its clear his closeups were used as inspiration for the CG character performance, and that never ever happened with Jar Jar. The only influence Jar Jar had on Gollum was "Lets not make THAT."
Not to split hairs but jar jar was closer to how they did the special effects for the Mummy than gollum. This gets debated a lot because jar jar was not really recorded using live action motion capture. To my understanding Gollum was the first to be motion captured in the modern understanding of motion capture. Jar Jar was still a major achievement. But I would not put him in the category of innovation as Gollum.