Why was Jar Jar Binks not in Episode IV

I was recently wondering that given the prequels were almost entirely green screened (please no one leap in with that TPM practical effects stat) couldn't they / why don't they make special editions of the prequels?

They must still have the originally shot footage of Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, etc. Couldn't they completely wipe them out, all of them - Jar Jar and the Gungans, the racist trade federation dudes, the insect guys, etc and replace them with better rendered creations and change their voices? Then apply some deep fake to remove Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen's faces and replace their voices too and bingo, maybe we'd have something there.

Special Editions that people would actually love 😀

They seemed to be pretty accurate depictions of Neimoidian males. 

careful with your skepticism; the prequels haters spin (based on Plinkett) goes like this:

Nuke Gunray sounded somehow "Asian" to them ( ignorant of the fact that "Asia" is not a country or culture, but the largest  continent with approx 5B people and countless accents and languages). Thus, the trade federation is racist of Asians.

What is clumsily and stupidly ignored:

- even IF the Viceroy sounded "Asian", all his Neimoidian lackeys had different non-Asian accents...

- the accents were developed as genuin alien accents by the production team

- the trade federation does not reflect Asian values or culture, quite the contrary: it rather is modelled after European historic institutions like the East India Trade Company or the "Hanseatic League" (ie a middle age association of traders who hired mercenary armies and waged wars against states for trade privileges, eg against Denmark).

- if this is racist, what  about Nien Nunb who spoke modern Kenyan dialect in Jedi and looked pretty, well…., or th3 Jawas or Jabba etc - how is that not racist and the PT aliens are?

But to realize that one would need a ounce of analytical thinking, common sense skepticism and maybe a little bit of education.

Oh, I'm not skeptical at all. I found the Trade Federation characters to be accurate portrayals of Neimoidian males.

Also, Episode 1 isn't saying all Neimoidians are bad - just those particular characters. You're right about them having different accents too. 

He he, love this! This is what people miss about the prequels - the sheer level of genius which was behind it.

Not only did they get an English dude to badly impersonate the accent so people years late could become increasingly outraged, they also placed non "asian" accents in there to provide a mirror of our real world range of accents so we could challenge whether our perceptions of racism were valid. All whilst creating just one of many genuine alien accents within the films. Incredible production!

The only thing I could think of that would make sense would be to do a series similar to the idea of the Last of the Jedi book series, which actually focused on a different character, but Obi-Wan was a part of it. He left Tatooine once or twice and was part of the adventure, but for the most part he was behind the scenes coordinating while he was on Tatooine watching over Luke....

I doubt they'll do that though. They'll have Obi-Wan all over the place retconning the whole story.

Unfortunately, I think you're right. They can't just stick to using Lucas' movies as a foundation and build off of it. They have to retcon to make their stuff "work".