Return of the Jedi gets a lot of flack from Star Wars fans, and the Ewoks are often a focal point of criticism. This came as a surprise the first time I came across it; in my pre-internet childhood, they were pretty much accepted as another element in the beloved saga, coequal with the others. I never fully went over to the “Ewoks suck” camp, but I definitely swallowed the “weak point in the original trilogy” attitude through my teens and early 20s, which was the last time I really actively engaged with Star Wars.
I’ve recently been having a Star Wars renaissance, brought on both by cautious excitement for Episode VII and by my discovery of the wonderful Star Wars Minute podcast (which just so happens to be smack dab in the middle of the Ewok scenes at the moment), and it was with trepidation that I rewatched Jedi, expecting the Ewok scenes to be as lackluster as everyone seems to think. I was doubly surprised—not only were they not as bad as I’d feared, but they in fact strike me as one of the strongest things about Jedi.
This post will begin in the first section by looking in to four of the common criticisms leveled against the Ewoks, and will continue on in section two to discuss the reasons I find Ewoks to not only be undeserving of the hate, but to indeed be deserving of your love.
One small note: This article refers specifically to the portrayal of Ewoks in Return of the Jedi; I have not watched the cartoons or the TV movies. But isn’t judging Ewoks on either of those is like saying Wookiees suck because of what we see in the Holiday Special?
I. Ewoks Don’t Deserve Your Hate
Most of the anti-Ewokism I’ve seen has fallen generally in to four overlapping categories: First, that Ewoks are too cute to be taken seriously; second, that Ewoks’ design was too transparently driven by merchandising concerns; third, that Ewoks are primarily played for slapstick value; and fourth, that the shield generator assault in the battle of Endor is so unrealistic as to undercut suspension of disbelief. I will address each of these in turn below.
A. Complaint: “Ewoks are too cute to be taken seriously.”
This complaint actually appears to be two complaints, though they are often stated in the same terms. The first is that Ewoks’ cuteness in some way undermines suspension of disbelief. Ewoks’ cute fuzzy faces or childlike movements, the argument goes, are so obviously designed for cute factor that they don’t look real.
Ten seconds on google images should be enough to show the error in this reasoning. Plenty of real wild animals are as improbably cute as Ewoks or even more so. We have copious real-world evidence that adorableness or fluffiness is not “unnatural” or “unrealistic.”
The second and maybe more common version of this complaint comes from a sense that the cuteness of Ewoks is in some way tonally inappropriate. The existence of cute, fluffy creatures turns Jedi in to a “kids’ movie” and undercuts the gravity of the action.
This one calls for some soul-searching. Why exactly is having cute creatures in a movie about space battles tonally a problem? I don’t pretend to know the minds of every fan out there, but I think a big part of this is the same mix of elitism and insecurity that gives us ever darker and grittier comic book adaptations. Nerd culture fears that society as a whole sees our interests as juvenile, and so there is a pressure to excise anything that looks like it could appeal to a younger audience.
This is a trend in nerd culture that I am more and more exhausted with. And I think it’s one that actually backfires. From a step or two back, media that makes a big point of saying “this is serious business” honestly comes across as just as juvenile, if not more so, than more tonally balanced works in the same genres and media.
B. Complaint: “Ewoks are no more than a cynical ploy to sell toys.”
The second big complaint is that Ewoks were only put in the movie because they could sell Ewok toys. This complaint is somewhat often combined with the cuteness complaint discussed in the previous section.
My response to this is twofold. First, I am not at all convinced by the claim that Ewoks were in the movie “only” to sell toys. From the early drafts of Star Wars, long before it was clear that the eventual film or films would be a box office success, let alone a merchandising success, early versions of the Ewok sequence existed, albeit with Wookiees in place of Ewoks, and I tend to believe the official history that the the pint-sized-Wookiee Ewoks were created because Chewbacca’s characterization in the first two movies made Wookiees in to a tech-savvy spacefaring race.
And while I’m sure some thought to merchandising went in to the Ewoks’ design, the same can be said for any character or vehicle design in the entire series, or at very least from Empire on. The fact that someone thought “hey, this would make a great toy” does not mean it can’t also be great on-screen; indeed, the two are often one and the same. I don’t see any way the things that make Ewoks good toys (see the previous section on “cuteness”) undermine their validity as part of the story.
C. Complaint: “Ewoks are played only for slapstick.”
The third big complaint is about the way the Ewoks, and particularly the shield generator assault scene, is played primarily for laughs. This is probably the one area I will come closest to conceding, at least for certain shots. (As much as I am a Star Wars originalist, if I could get a Special Edition cut that left everything else intact but cut the self-inflicted-bolo-to-the-head shot that would be my definitive Jedi in an instant. Incidentally. if they wanted to take out the Gonk-droid-torture scene to boot, I’d be fine with that, too.)
But on the whole I don’t feel like the slapstick is played too hard, or like it is that tonally out of line with the rest of the series. The Star Wars movies, on the whole, have some pretty funny (and, let’s be fair, frequently corny) moments. It’s all in keeping with the films’ pulp roots, and to me it’s a part of their charm.
Even at that, I’m not sure the Ewoks are as slapstick as all that, anyways. Do we take Ewoks less seriously because they’re played for physical comedy, or do we see what they do as physical comedy because we don’t take them seriously? Imagine the whole battle of Endor, but put someone else in the shoes of the Ewoks, using mastery of terrain, expertly-set traps, and bravery to take down technologically superior foes. I think it looks so goofy largely because we don’t expect that of cute teddy-bear looking guys, and to some extent because of limitations of the medium (it may help to imagine their spears and arrows actually connecting and doing some damage to the stormtroopers, though it’s also a disturbing image if you take it too far).
Except for the g-d bolo shot. That is some stupid, stupid shit there.
D. Complaint: “Ewoks’ effectiveness in combat with the Imperials is unbelievable”
The fourth big complaint is that the defeat of an entire legion of Imperial infantry and armor at the hands of the Ewoks is so unrealistic as to make suspension of disbelief impossible. I think there are two things worth noting on this point.
First, the entire trilogy is about underdogs facing up to long odds. It’s also unlikely that a motley crew of six civilians can cut a swath through a heavily-patrolled military facility, effect a jailbreak, and make it outwith only one casualty. Or that two wings of starfighters could destroy a giant battlestation. Or that a half-crippled freighter could survive an asteroid field and then sneak away right under the nose of an enemy capital ship.
Second, the odds aren’t so terrible at that. For one, the goal of the assault wasn’t to put the entire legion to rout; it was to get in to the shield generator, through a less-defended approach, place the charges, and get out. It’s also not like the Ewoks were acting alone; aside from taking out a few of the walkers, their main role seemed to be as a distraction while the better-armed rebels actually infiltrated the base. And the capture of the AT-ST by Chewbacca was an obvious turning point, both diminishing the disparity in firepower and giving element of surprise.
So while the plan was a long shot, it wasn’t an unbelievably long shot in the context of a film series all about long shots paying off. As a certain wise (-cracking) smuggler once said, “never tell me the odds.”
II. Ewoks Do Deserve Your Love
So as I lay out above, I’m not fully convinced by most of the arguments why Ewoks suck. But what really surprised in my most recent viewings was that it doesn’t stop there. Not only do Ewoks not suck, I actually find that I really like them, for several reasons that had never occurred to me at the height of my youthful Star Wars fandom.
A. As sapient aliens at pre-starfaring level of development, Ewoks add depth and variety to the Star Wars universe
Until the first Ewok appearance, the original trilogy had shown us a galaxy where any sapient alien race was a member of a high-tech, spacefaring culture. Sure, there were a few possible exceptions, but none developed well enough to be sure (Tusken Raiders are never fully established as a separate culture rather than a pirate fringe, and we never see definitive evidence that Wampas are fully sapient).
Ewoks show us for the first time a fully developed pre-spacefaring culture in the Star Wars universe. They tell us this isn’t some fully-colonized galactic monoculture, that there are still frontiers, and that sapient life exists at different levels of technological development. In a trilogy of films that excels at show-don’t-tell world-building, it’s yet another way we’re shown this is a real, lived-in universe, where for every thing we see happening on screen there are countless more happening just beyond the bounds of our story.
B. Ewok culture is anthropologically interesting and demonstrates skilled worldbuilding
What we get of Ewok culture is another great example of show-don’t-tell world-building. A lot of what gets called silly by other fans is fascinating to me. There’s enough unspoken detail to let the imagination run wild with what one might learn of Ewok culture given time to study it further. Every adult Ewok we see wears some kind of head-covering; is this indicative of some cultural taboo, and if so is this why Wicket freaks out when Leia first takes off her helmet after the speeder bike chase? The Ewoks throw two wild parties back to back; is this an everyday thing in the Ewok village, or is it required by Ewok notions of hospitality, or is it required to hold a feast before battle and after victory? We learn just enough about Ewoks to wonder what we don’t know, which is the hallmark of Star Wars worldbuilding at its best (and a big part of why the original series is so much more enjoyable than the let’s-go-back-and-explain-things prequels).
B. Ewoks represent a refreshing narrative of indigenous empowerment
This to me is the big one. The narrative trope of “low-tech indigenous populations use the element of surprise and mastery of terrain to repel more ‘advanced’ outsiders” was certainly drawn from the well of adventure movie tropes that Lucas loved so much to go back to. But in this film it’s played slant. In previous adventure movies, such stories were almost universally told with the natives either in a villainous role or at very least as chaotic neutral, ultimately no more than another force of nature to get in the way of the heroes.
Jedi flips that script. And importantly, it does so without resorting to the kind of “noble-savage” fatalism or “white savior” narrative later films would put in place of the “savage natives” trope; this is no Dances With Ewoks, where the good-guy outsider comes to the aid of the put-upon natives; the Ewoks come to our heroes’ aid, of their own agency.
And finally, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I do just find Ewoks to be a lot of fun. Are they cute, are they goofy, do they occasionally border on corny? Yes on all counts. But is that so wrong? Call me childish, but I still enjoy some cuteness, some goofiness, and yes, even some corniness in my space opera. I know there are fans out there who mark Ewoks as the beginning of the end for Star Wars, but for me it was the perfect finale to a trilogy full of occasionally silly, occasionally corny, but always greatly enjoyable moments. Between the stodgy medal ceremony at the end of A New Hope and the wild party at the end of Jedi (I said wild party; that special edition mournful pan-flute can go die in a fire as far as I’m concerned), I know how I’d choose to celebrate the beautiful mess that is Star Wars.
