Ewoks: The Battle for Endor

• 1. A Weekend Viewing

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  Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, a 1985 American television film set in the Star Wars universe, took root in a weekend viewing. The weekend before he sat down to plan a new story, George Lucas had watched Heidi with his daughter. That evening left a mark on everything that followed. What does a tale about an orphaned girl have to do with furry forest dwellers and space raiders? How did a television budget shape the creatures that fill the screen? And what became of this small adventure after it left the broadcast schedule, through home video, streaming, novels and games?

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• 2. Story Sessions

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  Two four-hour sessions with George Lucas produced the story, according to co-director Ken Wheat. Lucas pushed one idea in particular. The little girl from the first Ewok television movie would become an orphan living with a grumpy old hermit in the woods.

  Ken and Jim Wheat wrote and directed the film. They had been thinking of adventure films they loved as kids, such as Swiss Family Robinson and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. That led them to suggest space marauders. Lucas agreed, as long as the marauders stood 7 feet tall.

  Joe Johnston, the production designer and second unit director, joined the second day's session. So did Phil Tippett, the creature supervisor. Both contributed assorted bits and pieces to the brainstorm.

  The working title was Ewoks II, and cameras rolled in the middle of 1985 in Marin County, California. Lucas served as executive producer. His hands-on role came mainly during design and editing. Wilford Brimley did not get along with the Wheats, so Johnston directed Brimley's scenes.

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• 3. Cindel and the Marauders

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  Nearly six months after Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, the Towani family is close to leaving the forest moon of Endor. Jeremitt Towani, played by Paul Gleason, is putting the final touches on their star cruiser. Then a Marauder group led by Terak attacks the Ewok village. Carel Struycken plays Terak, and Siân Phillips plays his witch-like sorceress Charal. Jeremitt, Catarine and Mace are killed defending the village, and many Ewoks are captured. The raiders also take a power cell from the cruiser, convinced it holds some magic over the stars.

  Cindel Towani, played by Aubree Miller, flees with the Ewok Wicket W. Warrick, played by Warwick Davis. On the run, they meet Teek, a small, fast native of Endor, played by Niki Botelho. Teek leads them to Noa Briqualon, a human played by Wilford Brimley. Noa is angry at the uninvited visitors and throws them out. He soon proves kindhearted. He lets Teek steal food for Cindel and Wicket, and he invites the pair inside when they try to build a fire outside for warmth.

  At the Marauders' castle, Terak orders Charal to find Cindel, assuming she knows how to use "the power" in the stolen cell. Meanwhile Noa, Cindel, Wicket and Teek become friends. Noa, it turns out, is rebuilding his own wrecked star cruiser and lacks only an energy cell. He had landed with a friend named Salak, who vanished while searching for another cell. One morning Cindel wakes to a song her mother used to sing. She follows it to a woman who transforms into Charal and delivers her to Terak. Cindel cannot activate the power, so she is imprisoned with the Ewoks. There it emerges that Salak was killed after telling Terak about the power. Noa, Wicket and Teek sneak into the castle, free Cindel and the Ewoks, and escape with the energy cell.

  The Marauders pursue them back to the ship, where Wicket leads the Ewoks in its defense. The Ewoks are nearly beaten when Noa installs the cell, powers up the ship and drives the raiders back with its laser cannons. Cindel runs to save Wicket and is captured by Terak. Noa and Terak face off, and Wicket arrives to kill Terak. Charal is left trapped in bird form. After the goodbyes, Cindel leaves Endor with Noa on his starship.

  Other Ewoks in the cast include Tony Cox as Widdle "Willy" Warrick, Daniel Frishman as Deej Warrick and Pam Grizz as Shodu Warrick. Matthew Roloff plays the Ewok with crutches. Johnny Weissmuller Jr. appears briefly as a card player.

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• 4. Stop Motion and Paintings

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  In the early 1980s, Industrial Light & Magic was replacing stop motion with go motion. Go motion used motorized, articulated puppets that moved while the camera shutter stayed open. That captured motion blur and removed the harsh staccato movement often associated with stop motion. The Ewok films were among the last intensive stop-motion work the studio produced. Their budgets made go motion simply too expensive. Stop motion therefore brought to life the condor dragon, the blurrgs and the boar-wolves.

  The same films gave the studio a chance to hone a new technique called latent image matte painting. During live-action photography, a section of the camera lens was blocked off and left unexposed. Artists crafted a painting to fill that missing space. The film was then rewound, the blocked areas were reversed, and the painting was photographed onto the original film. Because the painting lived on the original film, no generational quality was lost.

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• 5. Score and Alternate Cuts

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  Peter Bernstein composed the score for Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. Varèse Sarabande released selections on LP in 1986 under the simple title Ewoks. The record also carried cues from Bernstein's earlier score to The Ewok Adventure.

  Two scenes were deleted from a home video release. In the first, Wicket races for Noa's house while chased by Terak's men, and Noa tells him the star cruiser is their only chance. Soon after, the men go inside and burn the house down. A third scene was cut from the television broadcast instead. In Cindel's nightmare about bad men entering Noa's house, she rushes to wake Noa and finds Terak in his bed. The broadcast shows only Cindel waking after the men break in.

  For the DVD release, Cindel's cry of "Do something, Wicket! Use your sling! You hit the ring!" became "Do something, Wicket! Do something!" The end credits changed too. On the original broadcast they rolled over the final scene, but every home-video release places them over a black background after it.

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• 6. Broadcast to Streaming

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  ABC premiered the film as a television special on the 24th of November 1985. A limited international theatrical release followed in 1986, but low box office receipts ended that run. The film reached home video in late 1987 through MGM/UA and was reissued for retail in 1988 and 1990. MGM/UA Home Video also put it out on VHS and Laserdisc in 1990 in the United States.

  In 1986, Random House published a children's book adaptation titled The Ring, the Witch, and the Crystal: An Ewok Adventure. Cathy East Dubowski wrote it, drawing on the film's storyline and imagery.

  On the 23rd of November 2004, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the film on DVD with its predecessor as Star Wars: Ewok Adventures. One film sat on each side of a single double-sided disc, with no bonus material.

  In January 2019, Disney and Lucasfilm made the film available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video in standard definition. By December 2019 it was gone from that service.

  Before 2021, Disney announced no plans to bring the Ewok films to Disney+. That prompted Eric Walker, who had played Mace Towani, to start a petition. In March 2021 Disney announced that both films would begin streaming on the 2nd of April 2021.

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• 7. Emmys and Critics

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  At the 38th Primetime Emmy Awards, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor and the CBS documentary Dinosaur! both received juried Emmys for Outstanding Special Visual Effects. The film also earned two nominations, one for Outstanding Children's Program and one for Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Miniseries or a Special.

  Aidan Mason of Pop Culture Beast wrote that the film "manages to improve on the original" and felt much more like a Star Wars film. He still criticized the acting.

  John Corry of The New York Times took a cooler view. He argued that the film was wonderfully well done, yet left no residue once it ended. In his words, "Mr. Lucas and his colleagues find their inspiration in their own technology, and there should be other places to look."

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• 8. Legends and Canon

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  In 2014, the Star Wars Expanded Universe was declared non-canon and rebranded as Legends, and several elements from this film had already found homes there. The animated series Ewoks, which ran for two seasons on ABC from 1985-1987, was retroactively set before the original Star Wars trilogy.

  Tyrant's Test, published in 1996, is the third book of Michael P. Kube-McDowell's Black Fleet Crisis trilogy. It is set over ten years after the film and shows Cindel as a reporter on Coruscant. During the Yevethan crisis, Admiral Drayson gives her the Plat Mallar tapes. She leaks the story of the only survivor of the Yevethan attack on Polneye, which wins sympathy among the people of the New Republic and the Senate. The Expanded Universe timeline says she chose journalism and the New Republic after witnessing the Battle of Endor.

  The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, by Kevin J. Anderson in 1997, set the film between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It also explained that Charal was a Force-sensitive witch from the planet Dathomir. In 2002, HoloNet issue 49 carried the article "Moddell Starship Search Abandoned." The search for Salek Weet and Noa Briqualon was called off after Salek's father, Jimke Weet, went bankrupt funding it. Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, a 2003 online game, lets players find the base of the Sanyassan Marauders on Endor. A 2004 sourcebook, Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, says Terak's son Zakul took over the Marauders after Terak died.

  Canon has borrowed from the film too. Blurrgs appear in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars from 2008 and in The Mandalorian. The Mandalorian was the first live-action Star Wars television project since The Battle for Endor. In 2024, Teek turned up in one episode of the Disney+ series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. That series takes place shortly after Return of the Jedi, in the same time frame as The Mandalorian, and works as something of a spiritual successor to both television films.

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