Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985), retitled Star Wars Ewok Adventures: The Battle for Endor for the DVD release, is a made-for-TV movie set in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It is the sequel to Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, which was the first of the two (along with this film) spin-off TV movies of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
Ewoks: The Battle for Endor | |
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File:Battle-2.jpg "Ewoks: The Battle for Endor" release poster.
writer = George Lucas | |
Directed by | Jim Wheat, Ken Wheat |
Produced by | Thomas G. Smith |
Starring | Wilford Brimley, Warwick Davis, Aubree Miller, Paul Gleason, Carel Struyckler, Niki Botelho, Eric Walker, and Sian Phillips. |
Music by | Peter Bernstein |
Distributed by | ABC |
Running time | 94 min. |
Setting
The film is set sometime after the Ewoks cartoon series, but sometime between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It is now six months since the events of the first film. The Towani family's starcruiser is almost completely fixed, and Jeremitt is putting the final touches on the craft. Cindel and Wicket have been walking in the forest together, picking flowers. Wicket now apparently knows some English (Basic as it is called in the Star Wars Expanded Universe). He seems to have picked it up off of Cindel and her family. Although, according to Star Wars officials, this may be a different language she taught him, and it is only translated to English-Basic for the viewer to understand. This use of English-Basic continued in the "Ewoks" cartoon series.
Plot
In the movie, young Cindel Towani, one of the children from the first film, is orphaned by a group of brutish creatures known as Marauders. Many of the Ewoks are captured and her parents, as well as her bother Mace, but Cindel and her friend Wicket the Ewok escape. They meet up with mischievous Teek on the way, who takes them to the home of a stranded old man named Noa Briqualon who crashed on the forest moon many years ago. Noa takes them into his tree trunk home. Eventually Cindel is captured by King Terak of the Marauders and his cohort Charal, but Noa, Teek, and Wicket free her as well as the Ewoks and escape to the forest. A huge battle ensues in which Terak is killed and the rest are defeated. Noa repairs his battered star cruiser and leaves Endor with Cindel.
Cast
Main characters
- Cindel Towani - Aubree Miller
- Wicket W. Warrick - Warwick Davis
- Noa Briqualon - Wilford Brimley
- Queen Charal - Siân Phillips
- King Terak - Carel Struycken
- Teek - Niki Botelho
Other characters
Alleged Continuity Issues
Disputes among Star Wars fandom has arisen over the fact that the official star wars continuity places the Ewok Films before Return of the Jedi. The problem is that since Wicket is shown to understand what is observed as English-Basic in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, it wouldn't make sense for him not to understand Princess Leia Organa when he found her and she talked to him. According to the official timeline, he would have understood her, however he doesn't appear to. Much fan speculation has come up about this, but one possible explanation was given by the Star Wars official site. It has stated that the language Cindel spoke was a different language than Basic, and it was translated to English-Basic for viewer ease.
Inspiration
The movie was created and filmed not only due to the high success from the first film, the ewoks, and Star Wars in general, but also in part because Executive Producer, George Lucas wanted to create a film that centered around someone his own child's age to be a role model for kids. It just so happened that his child was a girl, so he wanted the film to center around the girl character, Cindel Towani. To do this, he needed a plot device to allow the film to focus on her. So this led him to the decision of having her family killed off at the beginning of the movie.
TV, VHS, Laserdisc, and DVD releases
Ewoks: The Battle for Endor was released as a TV special in the holiday season of 1985. It was then released on VHS and Laserdisc with the same name in 1990 through MGM. It was finally given a DVD release in a double feature collection, along with its predecessor, Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure on November 23, 2004 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
Alternate Versions
- In a home video release, the following two scenes were deleted: when being chased by Terak's men, Wicket races for Noa's house but Noa tells him the only chance they've got is the star cruiser. Then a scene that happened shortly after where the men went inside and burned down Noa's house.
- When Cindel has a nightmare about bad guys coming into Noa's house after her has the following scene cut in a version on television in which Cindel rushes to Noa's bed to wake him up, but instead finds Terak in the bed then she wakes up, so on TV it just shows her waking up after the men breaking in.
- Cindel's lines: "Do something, Wicket! Use your sling! You hit the ring!" have been altered to "Do something, Wicket! Do something!" for the DVD release.
Trivia
- As with the previous film, Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, this movie is a spin-off from the original Star Wars trilogy, but fans remain undecided as to whether these two films should be considered part of the official Star Wars canon.
Sequels
According to Warwick Davis, one of the main stars of the movie who played Wicket, a third Ewok film, known only as "Ewoks III" was in at least the planning stages at one point, around the late eighties, but the project has been shown to have never come through. Whether one is to ever be made still is unlikely, but possible.
Later Character Appearances
- The character of Cindel Towani went on to appear in Micheal P. Kube McDowell's Star Wars book series, The Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy, specifically in the third book of the novel, Tyrant's Test. In the novel, which is set over ten years later, Cindel grew to be an intelligent and idealistic woman, she became a reporter on Coruscant. During the Yevethan crisis, Cindel received the so-called Plat Mallar tapes from Admiral Drayson, and leaked the story of the only survivor of the Yevethan attack of Polneye. The report was meant to garner sympathy among the people of the New Republic and the Senate. It worked. Although the Expanded Universe claims Cindel decided to join the New Republic and go into journalism after witnessing the Battle of Endor, some fans speculate the Battle of Endor must've been over before she and her family crashed (see Alleged Continuity Issues above).
- The character of Wicket was also seen, many times along with other ewoks in: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, the two ewok TV movies which were: Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Advneture, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, and in an as of yet unreleased film of his own, Return of the Ewok.