Ewoks and NutraSweet
Jamie.Z...@cmu-cs-spice.arpa
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
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
> 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?
>
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
UUCP {ihnp4 utzoo decwrl uw-beaver}!utcsri!utai!wjr
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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.
---
"Extraordinary how potent cheap music is." Noel Coward