Ewoks and NutraSweet

Jamie.Zawinski
Jul 30 1985, 5:02 pm
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers

My main reason for despising the Ewoks with every fiber of my being is that by rights, THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN WOOKIES! George Lucas had originally planned that the moon (Endor? memory fails) be the native planet of the Wookies. This was even stated in that TV Christmas special they did in '78 or '79.

So why the change? Why ditch the Wookies? The same reason that the Ewoks were made abominably cute: marketing. Lucas & co. felt that the Wookies (because of Chewbacca) had an image of being a civilized, spacefareing, technological people. They thought the Masses would object to being told that Chewie was an exception, that most Wookies were primative tribals. So, they changed them. The first design of the Ewoks was a very tall, thin, hairy critter. Because this looked too much like a Wookie, they made them very short, and eventually arrived at the saccharine teddy-bear (some of the preliminary drawings looked a lot like the elfish creatures from the Dark Crystal).

Lucas said that they also had been a little worried about Vader. They thought people would object to there being anything Human under the mask at all (thank The Force it didn't go that far!)

Another interesting point... Remember the orthinoper that the Ewoks used against the Imperials? It was supposed to be a bird, but the Dreaded Deadline prevented them from getting a good looking critter... um...off the ground, so they made it mechanical.

My source for all this is one of those "Making of..." TV shows. Lots of interviews with Lucas and the people at ILM. (I think it was "Making of the Star Wars Trilogy," but it may have been "Making of Return of the Jedi").

---Jamie (jwz@cmu-cs-spice) "Anything worth doing is worth doing for a profit."

P.S.: Anyone know when/if the next movie is going to be released/begun? The Original Plan called for nine, but I haven't heard anything about SW#4 (episode 1) except that if released at all, it will deal with the Clone Wars.

M.RUBIN
Jul 31 1985, 1:19 pm
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers

Two Saturday morning cartoons called "Droids" and "Ewoks" respectively are scheduled for this fall (NBC, around 9AM, replacing "Mighty Orbots", I think). Does anybody know whether they will be animated by Lucasfilm or by some random hanna-barbarians? "Droids" is reportedly what C3PO and R2D2 were doing before the time of the existing SW movies; perhaps this is how SW #1-#3 are going to reach the screen. As to "Ewoks", I await only the episode where they meet the Smurfs and the Care Bears, and the cuteness overload makes Endor implode into a neutron star. :-)

--Mike Rubin {ihnp4, rest of AT&T}!mtuxn!newtech!rubin

William Rucklidge
Aug 14 1985, 10:14 am
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
(M.RUBIN) wrote:
> Two Saturday morning cartoons called "Droids" and "Ewoks" respectively are
> scheduled for this fall (NBC, around 9AM, replacing "Mighty Orbots", I think).
> Does anybody know whether they will be animated by Lucasfilm or by some random
> hanna-barbarians?

> --Mike Rubin {ihnp4, rest of AT&T}!mtuxn!newtech!rubin

From what I have heard, the animation for these shows is being done by Nelvana, a Toronto-based animation studio, who did (I believe) the Care Bear movie. Nelvana have also made a couple of animated specials for television: "Rome-0 and Julie-8" (a robot love story... who coulda guessed) and "Take Me Up to the Ball Game" (interstellar baseball).

-- William Rucklidge University of Toronto

Alan Marr, Sun Graphics
Aug 20 1985, 3:38 am
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers

In addition to doing "The Care Bears", "Rome-0 & Julie-8", and "Take Me Up to the Ball Game", they did "Rock & Rule", which was a full-length animated movie featuring the voices of Lou Reed and Debbie Harry. It was better than average, as movies go, and had a bit of a futuristic background.