Your first indication the prequels would be bad?

ProtoAvatar,

Yes, I understand they take up a lot of screen time in RotJ. However, as the other films suggest, the Empire was everywhere in the galaxy, not just held up on some backwater planet as was the case in the movie. Their main contribution was helping turn off the shield so others could blow up the Death Star. The implication from the films is that the Empire was still around, just destabilized due to the actions of Luke and Vader, not the Ewoks.

 

Actually, the end of 'Return of the jedi' strongly implied the empire was defeated - with all those fireworks all over the galaxy.

And, for a casual viewer, who doesn't read/play/watch EU whatever, the fall of the empire came largely due to the ewoks (ewoks played a large part in killing the emperor, the empire disbanded without its leader). Why? Because on-screen, the ewok's contribution to the empire's end was MASSIVE - and artistically uninspired, logically ridiculous.
You see, only hard-core fans think about what happened off-screen. What 'other films suggest' matters only to them; a casual viewer doesn't waste his time splitting hairs.

 

^ But even in the context of RotJ, the Ewoks destroying the Empire is still a over generalization.

As I mentioned before, the Ewoks did jack to kill the Emperor. If they never existed on Endor, Luke would have still gone up to the Death Star and those events would have unfolded the same way.

Again, they were a component in the destruction of the Death Star and they were able to take down the Imperial force on the moon because the Ewoks did have the advantage down there. And even then, all they really did was distract the stormtroopers so Han & Leia could destroy the shield generator.

In another topic, I always believed that fireworks (when they were introduced galaxy-wide in the special editions) was because people were happy the Emperor was dead, as opposed to the entire Empire falling.

That is the one thing that really bothers me in the Star Wars films, especially in light of the prequels. What exactly is the status of the Empire as of RotJ? The prequels deliberately showed us how the Republic became the Empire in a galaxy-spanning story. This is all, but absent in the OT.

 

Suppose for a second that the shield generator had some sort of device that prevented it from being easily destroyed and the battle had continued.

At best, the Ewoks and the small Rebel group had diverted the Imperials away from the shield generator.

The Empire still had a massive fleet of Star Destroyers close by. They would most likely be carrying thousands of troops, walkers, bombers etc.

 

Once again, Broccoli:

The ewok played a LARGE part in defeating the emperor/death star, ending the empire for the simple reason that they were featured in half the film as essential to the rebel victory!
For any non hard-core fan, they play a much greater role than some details and implications ignored in the movie.
Casual viewers don't spend hours making convoluted fan-theories to make Lucas' blunders look a little better or pondering hypothetical scenarios such as:

 

^Yes, it's really terrible for a fan to speculate. Go tell that to the people in the Trek Tech forum.

 

ProtoAvatar,

My views are not coming from a "fan theory", but from what is shown in the movie (and, specifically, from the pre-special editions that did not show the fireworks on other planets). Unless you are making the argument that people don't bother paying attention in a movie, my point is still valid in context of the movie.

Even if we want to go along with the theory that the entire Empire fell at the end of RotJ, you cannot claim that the Ewoks had anything to do with the death of the Emperor. That was purely Luke's doing (by turning Vader back).

However, you are right that the Ewoks played a part in the destruction of the Death Star. A helpful part, to be sure, but they were not the sole reason why it was destroyed or why the Empire fell as is occasionally pushed.

Also, just because a movie focuses on group of people doesn't necessarily mean that they are the cause of everything. I once was a reference for a someone looking for a new job. I gave him a good recommendation to the new employer and he got the job. That doesn't mean that I was responsible for him getting that job.

 

Broccoli:

What was Lucas' intention when he made 'Return of the jedi'?

He intended for the ewoks to play a large part (as their gigantic screen time and actions prove) in the rebel victory that destroyed the death star, killed the emperor and ended the empire (as the fireworks prove).

Thematically, Lucas intended to show how all you need is courage to overcome any obstacle - and sell a lot of toys in the process. But he overdid it. Little primitive teddy bears defeating a technologically sophisticated army is ridiculous for anyone older than 10.

So - the hard-core fans started making theories to show that ewoks weren't really so important - in this scene, you see x imperial craft, the empire is large and should have x and y - so you see, what ewoks did wasn't really so important.
But these interpretations/theories contradict Lucas' own - otherwise, fans would have more than a few 'blink and you'll miss' images and OFF-screen implications to prove their pet ideas.

As for the casual viewers, they will take from the movie what Lucas wanted them to, when he gave the ewoks so much screen time - the 'teddy bears' were instrumental in defeating the 'bad empire', so buy a cute teddy bear toy.
Given the chance to know hard-core fan theories, a casual viewer would not be interested - he would have better things to do with his time than listen to thesis excusing Lucas' failures in some movie or discussing EU logical consistency.

 

This reminds me of a hilarious "Star Wars Tales" comic about a Imperial vet being ridiculed in a bar over being defeated by Ewoks but the guy has horrific Vietnam flashbacks of the little savages ripping them apart and stuff. I believe cannibalism was also involved.

 

That's the one that got me, too. I didn't mind Jake Lloyd's casting - after all none of the leads in the A New Hope gave exactly Oscar-calibre performances, either. And the decision to give us a real May-December relationship with Padme was surprisingly, I don't know, kinky. I also really liked McGregor as Obi-Wan and Neeson was cool as Qui-Jon. It also had some of the most beautiful scenery (real and CGI) that I've ever seen in a sci-fi film.

But I found the basic set up of the plot to be just plain dull. Taxation of trade routes? Give me a break -- I thought I'd stumbled into an episode of The West Wing. And then there was the fatal mistake of trying to explain the Force using Star Trek-style technobabble. In that instant Star Wars went from being a fairy tale ("It binds the universe together") to being a Star Trek clone.

And then there was the obvious catering to children in the audience. Over on the Doctor Who board I recently lambasted people who seem to be of the opinion that Doctor Who has unacceptably skewing towards younger viewers (for reasons I don't quite understand). In that case, it's a show that was originally devised for kids and who picked up adult viewers as a side-effect. With Star Wars, Lucas came up with a concept that appealed to everybody from day one. Yet when Phantom Menace came along, he seemed to want to really skew things towards child viewers. Ignoring the necessity of Anakin being a child, there were the robots going "roger roger" and acting stupid, and of course Jar Jar. The whole tone of the film just seemed removed from the first 3 films.

The second and third films never really improved matters. I wasn't the only one who'd wished Jake Lloyd had been kept instead of the guy they hired to play Anakin and who delivered in my opinion the worst performances I've ever seen in an A-level SF film, bringing Natalie Portman down with him. And I disliked ROTS so badly that I very nearly walked out of the theatre. I have never walked out of a movie in my life. The only thing I liked about that film was a) the acronym and b) the bit at the end where Scorpius from Farscape made a cameo as Peter Cushing.

Some people were opposed to the prequel idea from the beginning (much as some never wanted to see Enterprise made because it was a prequel). I was looking forward to the idea, and Phantom Menace was a film I was eagerly waiting to see. But it and its follow-ups were such a disappointment it pretty much ended my interest in Star Wars. I haven't bothered with the Clone Wars at all, will only watch A New Hope and Empire for nostalgia's sake (which is why I was more interested in getting the original versions on DVD than the Special Editions) and if the live-action TV series ever gets made - the real one, not the sitcom - I might give it a chance. But otherwise, the PT turned me off pretty much for good.

Alex

 

I don't know where you are getting this "hard core fan" stuff as my original statement on this matter was that I felt the fans are the ones overstating the Ewoks' contribution.

I realize that it might have been Lucas's intention at the time that the Empire was defeated (however, I never bought into that even when I first saw it - this was before I was aware of EU stuff). However, the idea that the entire Empire crumbled at that point is fairly ridiculous based on what was described in this movie and the previous two. I'm not going into fan or EU theories about the ending of RotJ. I'm talking about the movie and what was directly shown on screen.

Unless you are arguing that the "casual viewer" are stupid, it is a storyline inconsistency and plot hole within the movie.

In any event, just answer me this: What did the Ewoks directly do that killed the Emperor?

 

I flipped through a magazine that had some pre-production artwork from TPM. This was, I think, before the first teaser. There was an drawing of the Huts from the pod race scene. "Mrs. Hut" had dreadlocks and a bra. Of course this was just production drawing and may not reflect the film but left a "hmm" impression.

TPM teaser opening was brilliant. My mood switched to neutral when the main theme came up and we saw the pod race.

When I saw the droid's heads come up and by the time they snap into formation I knew there was real trouble brewing. I still went to the midnight premier with an open mind though.

In the film itself it, I braced myself as I read the "exciting" opening crawl which set the tone for the trainwreck to come.

 

First - "the idea that the entire Empire crumbled at that point is fairly ridiculous" - only if you rely on ' 'blink and you'll miss' images and OFF-screen implications'.
Lucas showed this very deea down the audiece's collective throat - the fireworks at the end of 'Return of the jedi' prove this.
Is this idea insulting to the audience's intelligence? Well, in this case, Lucas insulted the audience's intelligence!

Second - the 'battle of endor' - ewoks+a rebel fleet destroyed the death star; Luke converted Vader; Vader is the only one who directly killed the emperor.
The teddy bears played an essential role in destroying the death star (and were featured extensively on-screen) - more on-screen time than Luke and his conversion of Vader.

Broccoli, as far as Lucas is concerned, the teddy bears played an essential part in destroying the death star and ending the empire.
That's what he intended to do and that's what he has shown on-screen.

 

Might be time to get back on topic?

 

Okay, I've got to jump in on this whole argument regarding just how big of a role the Ewoks played in the destruction or non-destruction of the Empire. Because of the way that SW canon has been set up, we're dealing with this issue on two different levels:
1) In terms of the 'primary' canon (the films) itself
2) In terms of the 'overall canon and constitution' of the SW universe as a whole

For the purposes of the primary canon of the films themselves, ProtoAvatar is right that the new ending of RotJ does imply that the victory at Endor constitutes the total fall of the Empire, and given that no 'primary canon' has yet emerged that is set after the events of RotJ, that implication remains un-contradicted.

However, in terms of the overalll canon and constitution of the SW universe as a whole, it has been established that the battle of Endor was in no way a representation of the complete fall of the Empire; it was the 'straw that broke the camel's back', as it were, but it was by no means the 'final blow' in the fight, and when looked at from a much wider perspective, the impact that the Battle of Endor and the Ewoks' involvement in it becomes much less slgnificant, making Broccoli's POV correct.

 

The films *are* the overall canon, the other stuff is fluff.

 

^ Umm, you have no clue what you're talking about. SW has been divided into various levels of 'canon', and most of the material which falls into the lower levels of the SW canon is recognized as being part of the franchise's overall shared mythology and universe, but the lower levels of canon have no immediate bearing on the 'primary canon', which is the films, the Clone Wars television series, and anything else that George Lucas himself has personally declared to explicitely canon and binding upon the rest of the SW universe and mythology.

 

I know all that, it's still just fluff. They killed the Evil Wizard in his castle, his evil empire fell, they all lived happy ever after.

THE END.

 

It's not "just fluff" because it has bearing and substance within the overall SW universe; if the 'extraneous material' (i.e. lower levels of canon) existed in a vacuum and had no impact, bearing on, or substance within the fabric of the SW universe as a whole, then you could call it "just fluff", but that's not the case.

 

DigificWriter, it is 'fluff' because the largest part of the audience doesn't even know it exists and is not interested in knowing; only the hard-core fan base (a minority) is interested in the EU and knows the events therein.
Lucas itself treats EU as 'fluff' - 'lower' levels of canon? Lucas is actually saying - I have no problem contradicting so-called EU history.