This post is part of Mashable's You're Old Week. Break through the haze of nostalgia with us and see what holds up, what disappoints, and what got better with time.
To be a Star Wars fan in 2018 is to be alive at the greatest moment in the franchise's history with a new film every year and more to come.
But before there was Rogue One, before there were Finn and Rey, there was a little girl named Cindel, an evil giant named the Gorax, and even Wilford Brimley, working hand-in-hand with Ewoks to defeat whatever evil tormented the residents of the forest moon of Endor.
In the mid-1980s, following the conclusion of the original Star Wars trilogy, ABC aired a pair of made-for-television films that focused on the cuddly creatures who helped topple an evil galactic empire: The Ewok Adventure: Caravan of Courage (1984) and The Battle For Endor (1985).
And I loved them.
These films were, for a time, as important to me as the original trilogy. They were real stories about something in the Star Wars universe that went beyond the meager read-along children's books I had and whatever weird adventures I imagined for my favorite characters while playing with the extensive line of Star Wars toys.
I was too young to be overly cynical about the idea that teddy bears helped defeat the big, bad evil Empire. For all the talk of prequels and sequels and the franchise's future (which mostly went over my head as a kid), Return of the Jedi was, as far as I knew, the conclusion to Star Wars so to get anything was a blessing.
Expansion of the Star Wars universe
While George Lucas didn't write the screenplay for either Ewoks film, both were based off of stories he conceived (he was also an executive producer on them). And the wee Ewok Wicket, portrayed by Warwick Davis, was the direct tie between the original trilogy and these films, which were said to have taken place a few years before the events of Return of the Jedi.
Both films aired on ABC (though they received theatrical releases overseas) and would be receive Emmy nominations for "Outstanding Children's Program" and both were awarded Emmys for visual effects thanks to the work of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).
Unlike the much-maligned 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, these films were of high enough quality that Lucasfilm didn't attempt to fire every copy directly into the sun, initially releasing the films on VHS and, then as a double-feature DVD release in the early 2000s.
Though the films are again out of print (probably thanks to the Disney purchase), it's pretty easy to wrangle yourself an affordable copy off of eBay or other auction sites, something I was more than happy to do.
Caravan of Courage
Part of the appeal about these films for me as a child -- I was five-years-old when Caravan of Courage debuted in November 1984 -- was the way they expanded the Star Wars universe beyond what I already knew.
Caravan introduced us to the human Towani family, specifically little girl Cindel and her adolescent brother, Mace, as well as new creatures like the Gorax and the terrifying boar-wolves.
Stranded with their family among the Ewoks, Cindel and Mace's parents are abducted by the evil giant Gorax and the two kids team up with Ewoks both old (Wicket) and new for a rescue.
There are plenty of slow spots, just Ewoks and some kids wandering around (and around) on their way to the Gorax's home for the final confrontation. The payoff isn't all that much more exciting but the Gorax gets knocked into a deep canyon and the entire family is reunited and human and Ewok embrace in the kind of happy ending you'd expect.
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But that was totally okay by me. As a kid obsessed with Star Wars, I just wanted more Star Wars. More stories, more creatures, more adventures. That these films didn't involve the main characters didn't bother me so much.
Sure, I would have loved more Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia again and the duo of Cindel and Mace were hardly worthy stand-ins (especially Mace, who spent much of this film whining) but I was totally okay with more Ewoks. It was something!
The Battle for Endor
And then, a year later, we got another film, The Battle for Endor, a second (much better) Ewok-centric film, one that picked up more or less where Caravan ended and was faster-paced with a more coherent story and more action.
Besides more action and more enemies, Battle also continued thematic elements that felt more fairy tale than science-fiction. Whereas Caravan had a giant, Battle had a dragon and Charal, a witch who could turn into a raven thanks to a magic ring.
Oh, and somewhere along the way, Wicket learned Basic (the Star Wars equivalent of English).
It was darker, too, dark enough to warrant an advisory to parents before the movie aired.
While one Ewok is killed in the climactic battle of Caravn (RIP, Chukha-Trok), Battle opens with wholesale slaughter: The bad guy Marauders kill Cindel's brother Mace and their parents, along with some Ewoks, in what was probably one of the more openly grim Star Wars scenes at the time.
Captured by the Marauders during this scene, Cindel and Wicket manage to escape and find salvation in the mischievous, speedy Teek and his keeper, Noa, played with grizzled intensity by the great Wilford Brimley.
Not to spoil a 33-year-old movie, but things turn out okay for our heroes. The good guys save the captured Ewoks and defeat the evil Marauders in a pretty lengthy battle scene. Then, Noa and Cindel make an emotional departure to the stars during which Cindel sheds more tears than she did upon seeing the body of her dead mother at the beginning of the film.
As absurd as all this sounds, it was still perfect to me at six-years-old. Yes, I could spend 1,500 words picking apart these movies and mocking the crazier, sillier elements of them. It'd be a hell of a lot of fun!
But that's ultimately not what these movies are about for me. They felt like real Star Wars film to six-year-old Marcus and I accepted Cindel and Noa as characters in that universe, as real to me as Admiral Ackbar or Max Rebo.
I was sad to see this story end and could only hope for more stories, whether they had to do with the Ewoks or something else entirely. But as the credits rolled, I didn't know I had entered a new stage of Star Wars fandom, one in which new Star Wars stories would be sparse and I'd have to hold on to even these TV films as something to cherish.
Revisiting the films
Lean years for Star Wars fans followed. A pair of cartoon series (Droids and Ewoks) failed to gain traction and were canceled. Beyond a handful of video games and books, it would be years before the Star Wars universe would rev up to full steam again.
In the early 1990s, thanks in part to Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn trilogy" books, the official Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) got a big boost and would eventually become such a sprawling mess that when Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, they wiped the canon clean (except, it seems, for the Gorax!).
Recently, I watched the films for the first time in at least 25 years and was struck not just by how much I still remembered, but how fondly I remembered the films.
While these films no longer hold the same esteem in my heart that they did, it was a fun exercise to revisit them and remember how they kept Star Wars alive for me during a time when it looked like there'd never be new films.
Yeah, Caravan of Courage was pretty slow and plodding and, after having lived in Northern California for a few years, the lower production value revealed how much the Ewoks home looked a lot like Marin County.
New characters and focusing on kids robs these films of the deeper meanings and mythologies of the official Skywalker saga Star Wars films that enthrall us. And, yet, nothing in either Ewok film is as bad as Jar Jar Binks, the nadir of Star Wars characters.
Though, it should be noted, Wicket the Ewok speaking broken English in Battle for Endor comes really close to Jar Jar territory. That said, the rest of Battle still holds up as pretty solid, especially for a made-for-television movie.
Those more on-the-nose fairy tale elements (a giant, a shape-shifting witch) feel a little out of place for the Star Wars universe and the climactic battle is a derivative of the final battle in Return of the Jedi, but it's certainly no worse than most of the first two prequel films (The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones).
That the films happened outside of the main Star Wars storylines also allowed for a little detachment and, even rewatching as an adult, far less scrutiny of how pieces fit into the overall Star Wars universe. It was easier to relax and just let the films unfold without worrying about how these films affected the Star Wars universe.
Even now, with a new Star Wars film rolling out every year (and more movies and television shows on the way), the Ewok Adventures will remain part of my personal canon. They're hardly perfect but they don't try to be anything more than they are: fun, Star Wars-themed romps to entertain without any larger expectations.
And, perhaps just as important, if I ever have children, I'll absolutely be cycling these films into viewings when I introduce my kids to the Star Wars universe.
They weren't just favorite childhood films; they also shaped what the Star Wars universe means to me: a never-ending series of adventures that will always be about the characters and stories told, no matter the medium. And I can't wait to pass these adventures on to the next generation.
Topics Star Wars
