Space 1999! The one George Lucas decanonized

 

Title: Ewoks: The Battle For Endor

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (2/5)

 

For the next installment of this feature, I’m up to a major reason I’m doing this now. Three years back, it was May the 4^th, and I had only recently bought the Star Wars Special Edition on Blu Ray after years swearing I wouldn’t get it unless George Lucas pushed it into my cold, dead hands. I was just aware that fans had been making it a tradition to watch the franchise in a marathon on that date, plus a young family member was visiting. I considered watching the original trilogy, either on Blu Ray or the massively overplayed VHS tapes I had been watching since junior high. Instead, I did the most subversive thing I could: I threw on the Ewoks TV movies. This year, on the day I’m starting this review, I did it again, and now I’m recounting the experience just in case you’re still fond of them.

Our story begins with a girl Cindel and her family, living as happy castaways on the Forest Moon of Endor with the Ewoks. Things go downhill when reptilian marauders capture many more of the Ewoks for slaves (actually the “soft” interpretation) and kill her brother and parents. The girl narrowly escapes the leader of the raiders, who is obsessed with finding a power source for their decaying technology, and teams up with her best Ewok friend, Wicket. Together, they survive a dragon-like predator and other hazards of the alien world long enough to meet a stranded old space traveler and a creature called a Yuzzum that can move at superhuman speed. With their new allies, they set out to infiltrate the marauders’ fortress and free the Ewoks, but they must overcome their leader and a powerful witch with her own plans. Will the Ewoks triumph? Will the girl and the old guy build a working ship? Were you expecting ambiguity from a Star Wars spinoff???

Ewoks: The Battle of Endor was the second of two made-for-TV movies based on the Ewok characters from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, following Caravan of Courage the previous year. The live-action TV movie coincided with the Ewoks and Droids animated series, as well as increasingly desperate efforts by Kenner to revive the original Star Wars action figure line. The cast included Warrick Davis reprising his role as Wicket and the late Wilford Brimley of The Thing as the old man. The production was also joined by Joe Johnson and others in the ILM crew, who provided extensive stop-motion creature sequences among other effects. Unlike the “Star Wars Holiday Special”, the Ewoks TV movies received authorized release on VHS, and were referenced in books such as The Illustrated Star Wars Universe. However, George Lucas specified that they were not “canon” during the production of the prequel trilogy, and the spinoff fell into out of print/ bootleg status in the following decade. In 2019, the movies received their first streaming release on Amazon, and in early 2021, they were made available on Disney Plus following an online petition.

For my personal experiences, the two Ewok movies are part and parcel with my conflicted feelings about the Star Wars franchise. To me, the most fascinating thing about the original movies is that they were based on mythology, and it always followed that there doesn’t have to be, shouldn’t be, and perhaps cannot be a “canon”. My own further ideas on this vein materialized as what I have (at least in my own head) termed “assumed mythology”, broadly the kind of stories people might believe and tell within a posited world rather than its literal “history”. (Then that led to my Exotroopers series, so I’m not exactly in a position to criticize.) I have increasingly felt that it was this spirit that drove the franchise’s 1990’s renaissance, which is where its footprint in my memory really centers, and that almost everything since has been pushing in exactly the opposite direction. That was how I came upon this strange broken branch of the saga on second-hand VHS, when I was in college and already tiring of the later “expanded universe”, and I choose the second of the pair in no small part because it’s the one I still own an tape of. I feel like I need to emphasize, it’s an authorized copy! And I have a picture of it! With the Truckstop Queen!!!

The foremost thing to be said is that, if anything, the second movie is an improvement over the first (in form for the franchise). Where the original movie followed the form of a wilderness-survival story, here we have a more complex plot and a conflict with antagonists who are willful villains rather than creatures doing what is evidently natural in their own habitat. It is also impressively grim, with violence that doesn’t feel toned down either for TV or the expected younger audience. The sequel also deserves some credit for the raiders, who feel uniquely suited to the Star Wars universe. It’s clear that they landed on the planet at some point, and they still have remnants of technology, albeit in a condition that makes the Millennium Falcon look like an A-Wing fighter. The leader himself is subtly terrifying, closer to the dark Jedi C’Baoth than any other character in the mythos (also more than a little like Megavolt!). He has clearly long since sunk into some combination of psychosis and/ or senility, with a further fixation on technology he has either forgotten how to use or never understood in the first place. Many of his misapprehensions seem to rise not from simple ignorance but an effectively animistic view of machines as sentient entities to be commanded rather than used or fixed, an attitude the rest either share or have learned not to challenge. He would be either pathetic or comical, if he didn’t torture, kill and even tear apart potentially useable spacecraft to get what he thinks he needs.

On the other hand, the problems very much carry across both movies. The costumes, sets and especially the effects look painfully cheap compared to the actual trilogy. Far worse is the inexplicable slow pacing of many of the action sequences, including the final battle, which in many ways magnifies the issues with the violent content. Then there is the acting, which somehow actually seems to get worse from the cast members who should know what they’re doing. Davis in the main Ewok suit moves more like he’s playing hopscotch than navigating a forest full of creatures ready to kill him, while Brimley seems to have been instructed solely to act grumpy and cute at the same time. The deeper waste is that we rarely if ever get a balance between the controversial “cuteness” of the Ewoks and the poise and dignity they were clearly meant to have had all along. With almost 3 and a half hours of screen time to answer their detractors and satisfy their true fans, all we get is shot after shot of Ewoks looking cuddlier than ever.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I would have gone with a sequence I knew of before I had any idea what it was from. As the finale approaches, the old man and the Yuzzum have infiltrated the marauders’ actual castle to rescue Cindel. It’s easily the most well-realized setting we see in either movie, and in itself is the best indication we get just how long the marauders have been around; either they built the fortress themselves, or they have had enough time to refit or rebuild it to their own needs. (Who else could have constructed it if they didn’t is one more question that’s more interesting without an answer.) They find two guards who are more concerned with playing cards. We get several closeups of both, and the makeup/ effects actually are on par with the original trilogy, enough so that I first sighted one of them in a cherished Lucasfilm art book without further explanation. The Yuzzum moves in to steal the keys. Cindel calls out impulsively, and a guard responds only with a bellow to silence her. We also get a shot of the witch, currently locked up after displeasing the leader, who only watches silently. After several missteps, the creature finally puts one of the metallic cards in the sleeve of one of the guards. Naturally, it falls out, just as he is gathering his winnings, and the loser draws both of his guns. It’s a tense, atmospheric scene we could have used more of in the trilogy, never mind a spinoff like this.

In closing, I can only return to the question of “canon”. For a long time, the Ewok movies have been a leading exhibit for unfavorable comparisons with the prequels and sequels of more recent years. On that front, I must call for a return to sanity. Whatever else you say about the newer movies, it’s literal light years ahead of this. The real counterpoint is that defining “canon” isn’t a license to tell people what to like. The would-be Star Wars TV universe was a disaster of Death Star magnitude, but plenty of people have enjoyed it and still do. That should be the real test of time, and it’s why the best of the franchise holds up, whether it’s currently “canon” or not. And if you still like it, let that be your expanded universe!