But guys, one of the Executive Producers is Greg Weisman! When has Greg Weisman ever let us down?
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Holy cow; I had forgotten that. Maybe he should have hired a director. I donât understand why the games had people like Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell, and thenâŚwell, thereâs the movie. OTOH, some of the acting talent in the games were porn stars, so, um.
Well, for balance, Star Wars Episode I was written and directed by George Lucas.
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Mm. I can see that. I personally disagree with the notion that it manages to ruin the entire film, but I can at least admit it was, if not a flaw, then at least something of an unexpected and potentially jarring development for the third film.
Would something else have worked better for the film? Who can say?
The real focus of that film is the final showdown with Vader and Luke, and I think the idea with the Ewoks was to add in an unexpected element to the general conflict that also offered the audiences a bit of relief from the constant atmosphere of tension.
The Rebels are trying to sabotage the defense grid on the moon, but they hadnât counted on botching their initial approach and getting separated in the deep wilds. Then, while trying to regroup they encounter the indiginous population they likewise hadnât counted on, and they certainly didnât count on getting captured by them, nor on having to have C-3PO and Luke awe them with âgodly powersâ. And then the Ewoks help them take out the Empireâs overwhelming forces and technology.
Does it all get a little silly in the end? Yeah, it kind of does, especially with the goofy celebration scene and the song. But I think thatâs the point (albeit taken a bit too far by the end). Take out all the scenes with Ewoks and you end up with one giant blob of continuous large-scale conflict between the Rebels and the Empire, instead of breaking things up with smaller conflicts and periods of rest between, both for the characters and for the audience.
The Ewoks give us the scene with Leia making First Contact. They reunite the Rebel strike team with Leia at their village. They give us C-3PO as a god and R2-D2 almost being roasted over a fire. They give Luke a chance to tell Leia that theyâre siblings. They give the Rebels a place to rest and regroup before their big attack, and they also give them a fallback point after they succeed.
And although itâs a little sappy, they manage - despite their primitive technology and diminutive size - to be a pivotal part of ending the reign of the overwhelmingly powerful Empire. Which is right in line with other sappy moralizing rationales for absurd things, like Vader allowing Luke to fly into their security perimeter despite -knowing- theyâre there with a stolen obsolete code on a mission to destroy the Empire, or Obiwan -letting- himself be struck down for no reason at the end of A New Hope, or Luke running off to Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back and doing absolutely nothing useful to help anybody, instead just losing his hand and nearly falling to his death, only surviving because he gets rescued by the very people he tried (and failed!) to rescue himself!
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I found the splitting up of the conflict in Episode III/VI in to a series of concurrent events to be determent to the impetus of the story. Just when something had built up a head of steam, the action cut away to a different scene. The Ewoks, were, to my mind, simply another distraction. Still, each to their own.
I dunno. The same splitting of things into concurrent events occured in the previous two films as well.
The opening of A New Hope is necessarily pretty linear, but once theyâre on the Death Star and split up, the action jumps between Luke and Han rescuing Leia, 3PO and R2 staying hidden and supporting them from afar, and Obiwan sneaking around disabling the tractor beam.
The Empire Strikes Back pretty much opens with this same juggling, and it stays present the whole way through. First weâve got the whole Luke-Lost-In-The-Wilds back and forth, and then when Hoth is attacked we jump back and forth between Luke and the other pilots fighting with Imperial Forces, and Han and Leia running around inside the base tending to last minute needs and then trying to escape. Once everyone is clear of Hoth, weâve got Luke going off to seek out Yoda, weâve got Han and Leia and company evading Imperial ships and ruthless bounty hunters, back to Luke training on Dagobah, then back to Han and Leia heading to Cloud City, et cetera
And all throughout, weâre constantly cutting away to see how the Imperials are holding up, to overhear their next nefarious move, to glean more information about the mysterious Darth Vader and his even more obscure master, The Emperor himself.
Splitting the action between concurrent events is the modus operandi of the entire series - the storytelling is structured like a novel, following several different but ultimately interconnected threads and jumping between them whenever is convenient.
Mythbusters did prove that logs can destroy an ATSTâŚor armored vehicle. I forget what they decided.
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I found it particularly distracting at the end of Jedi, with the intercutting of the duel, the space battle and the attack on the force field generator. It just seemed to me that all three threads got short changed. I have similar issues with the escape in Mad Max II where the action is interrupted for the explosion at the oil well. But anyway⌠Ewoks⌠shudders.
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