If you love Star Wars, particularly if you love Return of the Jedi, you'll be embarrassed by The Ewok Adventure (or as it has been since retitled, by Lucas apparently, in light of the existence of a sequel, Caravan of Courage). The Star Wars Holiday Special? Yeah, that sucks harder than this, but it can also easily be divorced from the Star Wars universe. One can marginalize it, put an asterisk next to its name. You can effectively resist being affected by it. That's far more difficult with The Ewok Adventure, which cuts pretty close to the bone and exists fairly comfortably within the Star Wars universe. A complete Star Wars collection could resist including The Star Wars Holiday Special, which was never really about Star Wars anyway. (If it could be justified at any extent it's as a commentary on the Star Wars culture.) But The Ewok Adventure is Star Wars through and through. If you ask me, it needs to be considered official Star Wars canon.

In a way, even though it's worse, The Star Wars Holiday Special is preferable in that it could hardly diminish one's enjoyment of the original Star Wars films. Quite the opposite really; you get an itch to rewatch the originals and restore your faith in humanity. The Ewok Adventure, however, is bad in an entirely non-ironic and unknowing way. This is Star Wars and it's bad Star Wars, and watching bad Star Wars you get to actually wondering if you liked Star Wars to begin with.

One of the key reasons that The Star Wars Holiday Special could be separated from official Star Wars canon is in its violation of the defined internal logic of the series. Humans were not called "humans" before or after The Star Wars Holiday Special. For that matter, aliens were not called aliens. Wookiees were called Wookiees and Hutts were called Hutts (although Ewoks were NOT called Ewoks), but I don't think that the terms "human" or "alien" were ever used. They didn't seem to think making those sorts of distinctions were necessary. Television, virtual reality porn, stuffed Banthas and such did not exist before or after The Star Wars Holiday Special. In fact, when the citizens of the Star Wars universe wanted to communicate electronically to one another they used radio or hologram. Which makes sense in a retro-futuristic ‘40s serial, non?

The deviations of The Ewok Adventure are fairly minor in comparison. We learn here that the Ewoks can very easily speak English. One of things that I love about the Star Wars series and loathe about the Star Trek series is that the alien species in the former were forced to be truly alien whereas the alien species in the latter were basically humans with funny make-up. Yes, the Star Wars aliens were pretty much all bipeds. But even as such, they rarely had human facial characteristics. They could not breed with other races and generally speaking could not communicate with one another in the other's tongue. Chewie and Han understood each other very well, but Han never spoke Wookiee and Chewie never spook English. Not the case, of course, on Star Trek where every alien in the galaxy speaks like a classically trained stage actor and can usually make babies with other humans.

The difference doesn't as much indicate that Star Wars has more imagination than Star Trek: a race of giant dogs or walking teddy bears could hardly be argued to be inventive. But it does indicate that Star Wars has greater scope. The non-English speaking aliens of Star Wars suggest that there is more to the universe that we know of and more than we could possibly comprehend. Star Trek has never been able to transcend its academic braininess, but the willful ignorance implied by the balkanized races of Star Wars lends itself easily to nothing more or less but a rather medieval religiosity. It cuts deeper as a result.

There have been examples of English speaking-aliens in the Star Wars films; that they usually don't speak English was more of a general guideline than a rule and the exceptions (General Akbar (the catfish alien) and Yoda) could all be justified as special cases. With the Star Wars prequels, Lucas made the horrible horrible horrible decision to have pretty much all his new alien races speak English; accented English at that. This secularized and banalized the Star Wars universe, assimilating it into one big ugly glob. The decision also provided grounds for several understandable charges of racism on Lucas' part. Giving the Ewoks the capability to speak English is a mistake, I think. Either they can speak English or they can't, and if they can, then why didn't they attempt to communicate when joining the rebellion against the Empire in Return of the Jedi?

The Ewoks are taught English by a cute blonde girl who has found herself stranded on the moon of Endor with her cocky teenage brother after their parents are kidnapped by a giant troll (called a Gorax). This English lesson seems to signify that there has been some sort of communication between the human (read: English-speaking) foreigners and the natives, that they are on the same wavelength. A familiar scene, definitively subverted in Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout. Watching the Ewok fumble through some English phrases, aboriginal actor David Gulpilil's ice-cold reading of the word "water" stood out in my mind.

Notably the humans don't have to learn any "Ewokese," as it is called in the subtitles provided on the DVD. The Ewoks of course help these honkies find their parents, despite the brother's ingratitude, and despite the fact that they offer nothing in return other than the introduction of higher (read: Anglo) civilization. Despite their utter lack of charisma, the humans are the focal point of The Ewok Adventure simply because they are human (read: white and English-speaking) and probably because they are children. The audience is expected to identify with the stranded due to nothing more but these cosmetic factors. Their whiteness, for lack of a better word, is really the only thing that is going for them, and that whiteness proves to be enough. The Ewok Adventure makes an implicit argument for the superiority of the Anglo way of life. The brother learns to love the Ewoks, when asked by his father at the end of the film, what are those things, he responds, "They're my friends!" The decidedly racist undertones of The Ewok Adventure, embodied in that scene of the little girl teaching them English, threaten to counter this alleged message of brotherhood.

Yes, The Ewok Adventure is racist. It's racist against Ewoks. Especially Ewoks that don't speak English. I am not joking. I believe that the cinema is more a reflection of society than an active formative agent. When I attack racism in film, it is not out of concern that such views will manifest themselves into reality. When I attack racism in film, it is because I find its inclusion discomforting and not in a particularly interesting way. That's as categorical a statement that I am willing to inscribe at this point. In Return of the Jedi, we saw that Lucas had used some inherently racist concepts but coded them into the Star Wars universe. They were made politically correct, or I think a better term for it would be "politically neutral.” When adopting the icon of the Turkish sultan with Jabba the Hutt, he didn't want to make any commentary toward Turks specifically; rather he just wanted to use a visual lexicon that suggests a culture of excess. The Ewoks have always been intended to be "noble savages.” Not specifically any American Indian tribe, which would again signify an entire subset of naivety and even cultural marginalization. Rather, he just wanted a visual lexicon that would suggest that Rousseau-ian ideal; that purity of essence untouched by the modern world.

It worked well, but indeed the sword cuts both ways. The nobly savage Ewoks have their noble savagery threatened by becoming Anglicized by these painfully mediocre children. It has the emotional effects of racial oppression, and the emotional effects are, of course, pretty much all that ultimately matters. Fortunately enough, the English-speaking Ewoks don't speak English fluently or frequently enough to build a complete bridge between the two civilizations. On the whole, the Ewoks retain their Ewok identity, that is to say their mystery and alienness. They have effectively resisted complete Anglicization, and we have little reason to doubt that those few English words will be forgotten or at least seriously underused within the coming year. The English speaking is then a flaw in the film, but the essence of the Star Wars experience is kept in tact.

Other deviations are far less drastic. The Force is never mentioned in The Ewok Adventure; however we do have an Ewok shaman who is knowledgeable about magical artifacts. He doesn't seem to be able to "do" magical things, mind you; he simply understands the pre-existing magical environment of the moon of Endor. The central difference between the Force and Ewok shamanism is that the former can be found internally. To be one with the Force requires merciless self-examination. Ewok shamanism downplays the role of the individual. You can hope to understand your environment, but you cannot hope to manipulate it. Or become one with it.

The existence of Ewok shamanism does not counter the existence of the Force, and in fact helps the Ewoks retain their identity. If The Force is indeed Eastern, Ewok shamanism is tribal, that is to say specific to a certain time and place. The human characters in The Ewok Adventure are never really converted to Ewok shamanism in the way that Han was converted to the Force in Star Wars. The religion is positioned as something that is simply too complex and too broad for an outsider to really grasp in its entirety. The core of Ewok civilization then remains protected from redefinition by external forces. It stays out of our reach, unknowable and mysterious.

There is a scene where the cocky teenager tries to remove a rock by blasting it with his blaster. He is worried that it doesn't have enough juice. Some fans have seen this as the filmmakers again rewriting Star Wars arcana, as there was never a moment where the blasters in the original series ran out of juice. Well, I seem to remember that the Stormtroopers put their blasters on "stun" in Star Wars when attempting to apprehend Princess Leia. Despite a throwaway line about this capability in Empire Strikes Back, I think, it was never used again. And with good reason: those laser rings looked goofy as hell, and the last two films in the trilogy sought to rise above the ‘40s serial format rather than sink to it.

Anyway, even though the blasters never ran out of juice in the original trilogy, it does not necessarily follow that they are unable to. The Alliance, even in being privately financed by some sympathetic members of the former Republic, no doubt had more funds and more means toward charging blasters than a lone crashed starcruiser that had carried a family of four. I won't argue that this "does it have enough juice" business isn't a very very cheap attempt at generating suspense, but I certainly could think of worse deviations from the Star Wars universe. Wookiee porn and stuffed Banthas, for example.

The Ewok Adventure has that "used future" aesthetic that was celebrated in the original Star Wars trilogy. It was released on television in 1984, a year after Return of the Jedi and it fits quite snugly into that visual universe. The anachronistic details in hair and dress styles are somewhat noticeable but minor. They aren't broad enough to mount a condescending attitude toward the material, and they fit with similar details in the original Star Wars trilogy. The boy has a Michael Jackson/Marty McFly goose down red vest and his permed blonde sister wears a pink exercise band over her forehead. Meh.

The special effects are unquestionably dated, on the other hand. They are about as dated as those in Return of the Jedi however. Lots of guys in expensive rubber suits, a little puppetry, and some cel and stop-motion animation. We see an attack by the troll's pet dog, portrayed through stop-motion animation. After the Ewoks kill him he collapses just inches away from the camera lens, which has been set at ground level. I'm not sure that I completely understand what distinguishes a good special effect from a bad special effect. Is the judgment contingent on how well it convinces the viewer that what they are seeing is real? Or may we judge the special effect as just one more creative element of the filmmaking process, thus allowing for them to be abstract?

For what it’s worth, the stop-motion animation in The Ewok Adventure isn't that much more unconvincing than the computer generated animation in Lucas' prequels and is much more attractive when taken on its own terms. You're hyper-conscious about the fact that what you are seeing is stop-motion animation, but it doesn't really feel cheesy as much as earthy and homemade. Grungy maybe, a special effect for a cultural environment that encourages you to let it all hang out. (The great Empire Strikes Back portrayed the Empire in classical and awesomely sparse terms, there wasn't a shirt tail untucked or a facial hair beneath the lower lip. The Empire aesthetic was of course ironically co-opted in the sanitary Star Wars prequels.)

The original Star Wars trilogy had used stop-motion animation before and they used it sparingly. It was used with the walkers, some long shots of the moving tauntaun on the Hoth planet, the garbage monster, not much else. They understood enough to be a little embarrassed about it. The cel animation in The Ewok Adventure is used to portray a race of fairies that are made up entirely of light, an ends that follows pretty closely to the means. Still, in that limited context it convinces. So do the puppetry and the costumes. It's not that they do much with them; rather, they convince just in being in front of the camera, captured through the production process.

One of the most attractive things about the Star Wars films is how the filmmakers disregarded the elaborate special effects, and concentrated on all the things that had nothing to do with special effects, thus pushing them into the background and allowing them to simmer and crystallize into environment and atmosphere. You got the feeling that you were seeing a film that was set on Tatooine or Hoth in the same way that you would see a film set in Venice or New York. The Ewok Adventure is a little more fly-by-the-seat-our-pants, a little more setpiece-centric. But it is very much in the same ballpark as the original trilogy. The moon of Endor and the Ewoks who live there take on a history and future distinctly their own. We feel like mere visitors there.

I mentioned that The Ewok Adventure is certainly a Star Wars film, but is not a particularly good Star Wars film. Putting aside the racist undertones inherent in using these entirely acharismatic humans as the protagonists of The Ewok Adventure, the decision obviously doesn't work on a superficial narrative level. The lack of likable leads prevents the audience from becoming involved with the material. We don't really care if they find their parents or not, and without us caring the film quickly goes flat.

But I wonder if The Ewok Adventure would actually be improved by strongly defined, interesting human characters. The major reason that I feel that The Ewok Adventure houses racist attitudes is because these human characters are so painfully mediocre. I'm offended by the implication that we would sympathize with them simply because they are human. And that the Ewoks would aid their quest (at great cost to themselves) for no other reason than because they recognize the superiority of the human race. However, it is because the film is rather incompetent that we can even recognize those racist undertones. It is because the film is rather incompetent that the racism never quite manifests itself and the integrity of the Ewok culture remains in tact. Had we liked these characters, The Ewok Adventure would become genuinely humancentric, which would mean marginalizing and trivializing Ewok civilization. Imagine: a movie called The Ewok Adventure where the Ewoks are reduced to furry little Uncle Toms helping out the humans, who are the people that we really care about. What an insult! If there was ever a film that demands for the Ewoks to take center stage, it would be the one called The Ewok Adventure!

And so, without likable human characters, the film is dull but manages to retain the essence of the Ewok culture. With likable human characters, the film is watchable but the Ewoks become defined only in reference to the foreign characters and thus the film defeats its own purpose. What if we were to eliminate human characters altogether and just tell a story involving Ewok characters? How could such a thing possibly be executed successfully? The problem is that we are attracted to the Ewoks because they are alien, but a world filled with nothing but aliens leaves us humans with nobody to relate to. The experience will then soon degenerate into one of cerebral detachment. Whichever way we go, there seems to be a trade-off between audience involvement and an authentic visit to the moon of Endor. We can't have both, but one isn't worth shit without the other.

The reason that Return of the Jedi worked as well as it did was because it was never supposed to be about the Ewoks, it was about Luke Skywalker and the Rebellion. These are human characters, and the Ewoks' home planet simply played host to their second and third act. In this relationship, the Ewoks could comfortably be Ewoks without alienating the audience. We got the feeling that they have existed before Luke and Leia landed there and they will exist afterwards, and we have only met them because their paths had crossed with Luke and Leia, who we had been following through two films already. That works. The Ewok Adventure does not.

Most of this review seems to have consisted of me mounting a consistent but weak defense of The Ewok Adventure without ever explaining why it sucks in absolute terms. Basically, the humans spend every frame of the film chattering at one another. When they aren’t chattering, the Ewoks are chattering, or the omnipotent narrator is explaining the story to us. The film is pre-digested; we don’t have anything to figure out on our own. I felt underwhelmed through out; there is so little meat on the bones that we end up sucking the marrow. But does it suggest a lack of creativity on my part that I cannot for the life of me think of a way that this material could be executed any more successfully than it already has been? The Ewok Adventure may very well be the best possible Ewok movie and it is still a colossal failure. The very idea of an Ewok movie is impossible to execute successfully. Impossible, it's a real catch-22, you're utterly fucked no matter what direction you go. In the rush to cash in on the most marketable of the Star Wars monsters, Lucas and company don't seem to realize that they are farming sterile ground.