Star Wars: Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985)

The second of the Star Wars spin-off films made for television in the wake of Return of the Jedi, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor finds Lucasfilm learning from past mistakes while still capitalizing on the family-friendly appeal of the Ewoks. While sharing many of the same characters, budgetary restrictions, and tonal imbalances of its predecessor, Caravan of Courage, The Battle for Endor nevertheless refines the approach to produce an engaging fantasy adventure that plays into the same fairytale conventions that the Original Trilogy, especially A New Hope, brought back into the popular discourse. To be sure, this is still children’s entertainment first and foremost, and there’s still a strange discontinuity between the fantasy adventure world of the film and the Star Wars universe as presented in the Original Trilogy. But as far as low-budget children’s fantasy entertainment goes, The Battle for Endor is more competent than the first film, and seems of a piece with other family-friendly 1980s fantasies like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal and The Neverending Story. And as an extension of the Star Wars universe, it’s no less Star Wars than anything Disney has conjured over the past five years.

Picking up several months after the events of Caravan of Courage, The Battle for Endor finds Cindel Towani (Aubree Miller) and her family living with Wicket (Warwick Davis) and the other Ewoks of Endor. Her father, Jeremitt (character actor Paul Gleason taking over for Guy Boyd), is nearing completion of repairs to the family cruiser and are about to leave the forest moon behind. But before Jeremitt can put the finishing touches on the ship, a gang of Marauders, led by the evil King Terak (Carel Struycken, best known as the Giant from Twin Peaks), raid the Ewok village to steal the ship’s power source, capturing the Ewoks and killing most of the Towani family in the process. Only Cindel is left alive and her and Wicket escape the Marauders and make their way into the forest and eventually to the home of the hermit, Noa (Wilford Brimley), and his speedy, white-haired creature companion, Teek (Niki Botelho). Eventually, Cindel is captured and Noa, Wicket, and Teek have to venture to Terak’s castle to rescue her and retrieve the power source to power Noa’s starship and finally leave Endor behind.

George Lucas has never been coy about borrowing from fairytales and classic adventure stories in crafting the Star Wars saga, and his approach to the story of The Battle for Endor is no different. In fact, Lucas apparently based elements of the story off of the beloved Swiss children’s series, Heidi, with Cindel as a stand-in for Heidi, the orphan girl who joins her crotchety old grandfather and ends up in a series of adventures in the Swiss Alps. But to make Cindel the Heidi of Star Wars, Lucas had to eliminate her family and pair her with a cranky old man, Noa. Although I doubt Lucas had contempt for the Towani family as they appeared in Caravan of Courage, whether intentional or not, their removal from the narrative of The Battle for Endor is one of the film’s greatest strengths.

For one, this narrative choice shifts the focus from Cindel and her arrogant brother, Mace (Erick Walker), to Cindel and Wicket, the beloved Ewok from Return of the Jedi, which is a notable upgrade (Mace is a disastrous character and Walker’s performance is petulant). As well, making Cindel an orphan carries on an important tradition within fairytales and fantasy adventures; it lets The Battle for Endor draw out some of the most important themes in these sorts of children’s narratives: the creation of family, the innocence of children, and the need for courage in the face of evil. It’s not that these themes couldn’t be present in a film where Cindel’s family lives, but if Caravan of Courage is any evidence, the presence of the family bogs down Cindel’s journey and draws focus away from the more fantastic elements and the Ewoks.

Perhaps most importantly, Cindel’s isolation as the only member of the Towani family allows her to create a surrogate family with Noa and the Ewoks. In children’s narratives, it’s often more emotionally satisfying for a child to create a chosen family than to return to their original family. This is because the element of choice allows the viewer to grow closer to the chosen family members as the character does, aligning the viewer with the character. In contrast to a narrative where family dynamics are already established, the expository relationship facilitates an emotional attachment to the characters that is harder to establish with child actors (and with poor performances and poorly-developed family members, as in Caravan of Courage). Thus, it’s more satisfying for the audience for Cindel to grow to love Noa and Wicket in The Battle for Endor than it is for her to return to Jeremitt and Catarine in Caravan of Courage because we’ve spent more time with Noa and Wicket than we ever did with her parents.

Cindel’s isolation also allows for The Battle for Endor to mimic The Wizard of Oz in structure and content. Few films are more connected in the popular imagination than A New Hope and The Wizard of Oz. During A New Hope’s original run, numerous critics referred to it as the new Wizard of Oz and the two films are likely the most seen films of all time (if one takes into account home viewing). As well, A New Hope contained elements of The Wizard of Oz, such as its narrative about a poor orphan on a farm escaping to a larger world and the quest to save this world from a villainous tyrant, even if it echoed Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress to a larger degree. This is largely because The Wizard of Oz is an example of the Hero’s Journey, which Lucas tapped into when crafting A New Hope.

The Battle for Endor goes even further than A New Hope in echoing The Wizard of Oz, with deliberate reference points and an entire climactic sequence that seems to copy the older film, beat for beat. Not only is Cindel clearly a Dorothy character, but she is captured by Marauders about two-thirds of the way through the film much as Dorothy is captured by the Flying Monkeys. It’s then up to her three companions, Wicket, Noa, and Teek—echoing Dorothy’s three companions, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion—to infiltrate the villain’s lair and rescue her. Terak’s castle is a more generic castle than the Wicked Witch’s in The Wizard of Oz—it’s essentially a standard fantasy version of Jabba’s Palace—but the infiltration sequence is largely the same as the one in The Wizard of Oz. Wicket, Noa, and Teek infiltrate the castle, disguise themselves in one costume (which is an absurd image), and break into the dungeons to free Cindel.

The key difference between The Battle for Endor and The Wizard of Oz is that there is no perfect stand-in for the Wizard, even if Cindel’s eventual return to space with Noa mirrors Dorothy’s return to Kansas in the balloon flight with the Wizard. However, both The Wizard of Oz and The Battle for Endor subvert an element of the Hero’s Journey in their approach to the magical item at the centre of their stories. In The Wizard of Oz, it turns out that Dorothy had the ruby slippers the whole time, with the ability to return home whenever she wanted. It’s a quest to receive a magical power that was present from the beginning. In The Battle for Endor, Cindel doesn’t have the ship’s power source the entire time, but the power source itself has no true magical powers. Terak is mistaken about its supposed power, and in fact, it’s the ring that the witch Charah (Irish stage actress Siân Phillips, who was also in David Lynch’s Dune) has that possesses magic powers. Terak’s misunderstanding of the true source of magic is his undoing, as Wicket unleashes the ring’s power with a blow from a slingshot, which destroys Terak.

It’s no masterstroke to copy some of the fantastic elements of The Wizard of Oz, but as Lucas built the successes of A New Hope on the foundation of The Hidden Fortress, The Battle for Endor copies The Wizard of Oz in order to emulate its success. It’s not nearly as appealing a work, but it contains some of the same earnest appeal, with its straightforward emotional approach that allows the characters to authentically earn our affection. The Wizard of Oz is arguably the best children’s fantasy film of all time, and so it’s smart filmmaking to steal from the best.

This sort of approach is indicative of the entire film’s more conventional take on fantasy storytelling. While Caravan of Courage drew on Journey to the West and other fantasy adventures, it also tried to wed those elements to Star Wars worldbuilding and unconvincing science-fiction family storytelling, like something out of a mediocre episode of Star Trek. The Battle for Endor is no more ambitious than Caravan of Courage, but it’s more focused and the straightforward fantasy elements play better when in a narrative that draws heavily on The Wizard of Oz and Heidi.

The filmmaking is also more confident this time around. To be clear, The Battle for Endor does not have a radically larger budget than Caravan of Courage. As in that film, production designer Joe Johnston and the special effects team use matte paintings, California locations, and tinted frames to conjure the fantastic world of Endor. Again there are stop-motion monsters that move in herky-jerky motions, since the budget was too low to accommodate the more sophisticated GoMotion animation system that Lucasfilm had developed. Some of the costume work is hokey, especially the Witch Charah’s costumes, which look like Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers.

But there are moments of visual wit and competent action construction. The opening Marauder raid on the Ewok village is more impressive than any battle in Caravan of Courage. The shot of Jeremitt’s hand slipping from the tree signifying his death is more visually sophisticated than Mace’s hand stuck in the monstrous tree, for another instance. It helps that Terak and the Marauders are more tangible villains than the Gorax. They rely on costumes and actual performances instead of outdated stop-motion. Perhaps the most successful moment in the film occurs when Noa, Wicket, and Teek sneak into Terak’s castle. The guards are playing a card game and Teek tricks them into shooting each other by slipping a card into the one guard’s sleeve, knowing it’ll provoke a fight when the other finds out. It’s not an overwhelmingly clever sequence, but it’s funny and satisfying; it achieves the kind of light-hearted adventure that you want of a children’s fantasy film.

The Battle of Endor also does what Disney has learned to do with their sequels and spinoffs: repeat best practices from the Original Trilogy. So, much as The Battle of Endor mimics The Wizard of Oz in order to create a satisfying children’s fantasy narrative, it repeats moments from the Original Trilogy, especially Return of the Jedi, to satisfy in its action sequences. Beyond the Endor setting, this tactic becomes most obvious when Wicket and Cindel escape the Marauders and are attacked by a giant pterodactyl-like beast in a cave. The sequence is almost an exact recreation of the Rancor attack in Jabba’s Palace. We get Wicket brandishing a bone like Luke Skywalker does, an over-the-shoulder shot of the monster advancing on Wicket, and rocks and skulls tossed in defense.

As the film progresses, the repetitions continue to stack up. As previously mentioned, Terak’s castle is like a low-rent version of Jabba’s Palace. The final battle against the Marauders is also similar to the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi. We even get a repeated surprise attack with Ewoks brandishing spears and bows, cheering as they throw rocks and shoot arrows at their enemies. Another moment in the battle has Noa furiously working to fix his star cruiser like Han Solo working on the Millennium Falcon in the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back. When Wicket and Noa get into the cruiser’s gun turrets to fight off the Marauders, the film repeats the scenes of Han and Luke in the turrets of the Falcon after escaping the Death Star in A New Hope.

The mere presence of Wilford Brimley is even a repetition of sorts, as Brimley serves much the same purpose as Alec Guinness in A New Hope. Although I don’t mean to say that Brimley is up to the level of performer that Guinness is, he is a confident actor who balances against the more fantastic elements of the story and world.

One of the greatest weaknesses of Caravan of Courage is that it has no steadying presence in terms of human performances. Aubree Miller is adorable as Cindel, but she’s too small and inexperienced to set the film’s tone, nor should she be expected to. Thus, the film defaults to having Mace be the normalizing presence for the viewer, the person who we experience the story through. But he’s a disastrous character, so the effect is ruined. In contrast, Brimley is a strong performer with an affable affect that registers strongly with both children and adults. He doesn’t condescend to the material, even as he doesn’t play wide-eyed wonder at the special effects on display. Instead, he simply serves as a rockbed of support for Aubree Miller, Warwick Davis, and Niki Botelho to play off of. They don’t need to play it too serious since Brimley is anchoring that aspect of the film.

It’s no great achievement to simply go back and repeat successful elements of the previous films, but it’s also hard to hold repetition against a spin-off like The Battle for Endor. The whole point of these Ewok films is to spin out the success of Return of the Jedi in the absence of true sequels; they were meant to keep children engaged with the Star Wars brand and to capitalize on the popularity of the Ewoks. The operating principle is much the same as Disney’s own in approaching the sequel trilogy and spin-off stories: go back to what works and don’t rock the boat too much. So although the respective levels of prestige and budget couldn’t be more different between The Battle for Endor and The Force Awakens, the former almost proves to be a dry run for the latter. It shows that even as far back as 1985, the Star Wars franchise was a tale of recursion, reflecting back on itself even as it sought to broaden its world.

6 out of 10

Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985, USA)

Directed by Jim and Ken Wheat; written by Jim and Ken Wheat, based on a story by George Lucas; starring Wilford Brimley, Warwick Davis, Aubree Miller, Paul Gleason, Carel Struycken, Niki Botelho, Eric Walker, Siân Phillips.