Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/27/that-time-wilford-brimley-helped-save-the-ewoks.html
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That time Wilford Brimley helped save the Ewoks
… from die-a-beetus.
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I have a weird soft spot for this movie. For the longest time it was my only real exposure to Star Wars (combined with the Ewoks and Droids cartoons). I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, but I always used to get excited when I’d catch it on TV.
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Don’t forget Caravan of Courage too!
I watched these Ewok movies way too much as a child.
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Caravan of Courage is, erm, not very good.
But I genuinely loved The Battle For Endor, and have since I was a kid. I made a VHS tape off the TV, which somehow got half-erased. But I watched the second half of the movie alllllll the freakin’ time.
It was never clear where they fit into canon even before Disney bought the franchise (especially since Wicket learns to speak English, and he obviously doesn’t have the language in Jedi). But it does introduce the Dathomirian Night Witches, which are featured in the Clone Wars, and that weird Piranha-Dog thing that was also in The Mandalorian — so clearly, it must still be canonical.
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There are two Ewok movies. This one is the sequel to Caravan of Courage AKA The Ewok Adventure. The first one was released theatrically in Europe, but was a TV special in the US. It may have been the first stereo TV broadcast. (At that time, TVs did not receive stereo, but the movie was played simultaneously on FM stations using a technique called “simulcast”.). Viewers were supposed to turn off the sound on their TVs and listen through their hi-fis.
The first one starred Eric Walker as Mace Towani. I suspect George Lucas hated his performance, as he is brutally killed in the opening scenes of this one.
When Disney bought Star Wars it was announced that the theatrically movies would be cannon. So the first Ewok Adventure is cannon, at least in Europe, but not this one.
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Wow. I loved the Ewok movies as a kid; they’d shamelessly plug their upcoming timeslot on TV, and I made sure to circle it on the TV schedule in the newspaper. I suspect that if I watched them now, I would have to cringe myself out of existence.
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Yeah, Battle for Endor is the superior of the two—but folks still gotta watch CoC to see how Cindel and Wicket’s friendship began!
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We taped Battle for Endor off the air and watched it frequently as kids. It helped that my sister was pretty much a dead ringer for Cindel minus the curls, so she identified strongly with the the character.
Not gonna lie, I still kind of love the character of Teek.
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Ahhhh . . . that must have been the one I watched. No way I would have spent money to rent the sequel, but if it was on TV I would have watched it.
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These were major, major primetime movie events on tv for me.
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I think it is clear that he must have learned English (or rather, Galactic Basic) from C3PO, as he is the only known being in the galaxy to speak that and the Ewok’s “primitive dialect” (of what?).
Ewokish or Ewokese?
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No doubt there were sophisticated city dwelling Ewoks that spoke the prestige standard form of the Ewokese and Wicket and friends spoke some rural dialect of it which was looked down upon.
Frankly it’s kind of irresponsible parenting that Cindel’s parents let her play with them unsupervised. It’s like encouraging your toddler to befriend the local dingoes.
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I only saw them each a couple of times back in the day when they came out and a rerun. I am sure they are pure schlock by today’s standards, but I was 100% in at the time.
Let’s rewatch the trail-
woah… hold up. Are those Blurrg’s from the Mandalorian??
Looks up wookiepedia - holy crap - they are! And evidently in The Clone Wars too and I missed them.
Huh - learned something new today!
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Does George Lucas ever “hate” an actor’s performance? He barely seems to acknowledge the need for actors or their performances.
I liked the line in this trailer about “The Visual Genius Of George Lucas,” which probably means Lucas had only minimal involvement with the project. But still, Lucas is a “visual genius”… not so much a storytelling genius, directing genius, or even editing genius. His skills in these areas seem rudimentary at best.
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The problem is that (recall this BoingBoing post about Marcia Lucas saving Star Wars’s bacon in the editing booth) George thinks he’s an excellent editor, and that it’s his favorite part of the moviemaking process.
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