Lucasfilm has been busy celebrating the 25th anniversary of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. In addition to releasing some fun prequels merchandise, the studio also rereleased the movie in theaters earlier this month. May 19th is the movie’s official anniversary, and the latest tribute comes from Jar Jar Binks himself, Ahmed Best. The actor, who also played Kelleran Beq in Jedi Temple Challenge and Star Wars: The Mandalorian, was featured in a new video that shows him sharing his favorite memory from the film’s set. He also shared love for the Jar Jar fans, acknowledging that those who were young when the movie came out were always supportive of the character.
“I cannot believe it’s been 25 years since The Phantom Menace,” Best began. “Thank you to all the Jar Jar fans. 25 years ago, you were the young people that always showed me love … My favorite memory from The Phantom Meance is in the submarine,” he added. You can watch him talk about the experience of filming the scene with Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson in the video below:
Ahmed Best Wants To Make a “Jedi John Wick:”
ComicBook recently got to chat with Best in honor of May 4th, and we asked where he’d like to see Kelleran Beq pop up next.
“I keep putting this out there. I want to do a Jedi John Wick as Kelleran Beq,” Best shared. And I don’t even need to say any words. I just want to do two hours of lightsabers and people in the way. I really want to do something like that because the fight that I did for Mandalorian is 1/10th of 1% of what I could do. And there’s so much more.”
“I was just talking about this, the style that influences Kelleran Beq is from Filipino martial arts, and nobody really knows very much how deep those arts are,” he continued. “Most of the Jedi are Japanese Samurai influenced, but the Filipinos beat the Samurai and they beat the Spanish. The way they move, the style that they move, and the weapons that they use are revolutionary. It’s so much so that a lot of what Bruce Lee does in Jeet Kune Do is influenced by Filipino martial arts. So I really want that to be highlighted through some kind of Jedi story.”
Stay tuned for more updates about Star Wars.
