Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Its Puffin or Nuthin

I love the ewoks, but no Space Puffins for me, thanks.

Now, convorees, on the other hand....

edited 28th Jan '17 5:29:00 PM by higherbrainpattern

Star Wars stole Ruined Forever from Transformers too. Replace a Trukk with a Munkey and we'll sue!

Man, I wasn't even assuming sapient puffins. That's a whole new ballgame.

I'm not sure they could make that work in the current movies. Though I think large, non-sapient puffin-like creatures could fit in just fine with the relatively restrained, ascetic aesthetic of TFA and R1.

On record, I never quite hated Ewoks, and they're just a part of the whole tapestry of the original trilogy for me now, but they do seem like kind of an odd fit with what comes before and after that portion of Return.

edited 28th Jan '17 9:13:21 PM by Unsung

Puffins are way cuter than whatever the heck Ewoks were supposed to be based on anyway.

But the net result is the same. The Fan Dumb would hate Puffins regardless of how cute they are.

Now wait just a damn minute....

Bah, they had Rogue One for the gritty and realistic side of Star Wars. They can live with a few puffins.

edited 28th Jan '17 9:33:12 PM by Unsung

Meh. I always thought the fandom revolt against the Ewoks because they were cute was ridiculous. I'm going to hold out to see what kind of role in the plot these Puffin-things actually have.

So far, it looks like they're just pulling the old "student finds master in the wilderness accompanied only by the (surprisingly sentient) wildlife they take care of" bit.

edited 28th Jan '17 9:44:41 PM by KnownUnknown

Agree completely.

I always like the Ewoks (although I like Minions too, so I guess take this with a grain of salt).

If the puffin-aliens are sentient (sapient?) reminds me of this element in the wuxia-style fantasy novel The Grace of Kings where there's these sort of narwhal like things (although they have scales) that are like the size of a school bus, and they are sapient and the heroes have to negotiate with them for help in a battle through some other humans that sort of understand them. Like the talking bears in His Dark Materials seems like it must be some kind of Author Appeal.

Same, I get not liking the Ewoks for various reasons but "being cutesy" is not one of them unless it's that you don't actually find them cute or whatever.

Oh wow we're really rolling with the puffin thing.

I approve. Puffin buddy is best buddy. :D

I like non-conventional sentient life in fiction in general. A nice break from so many Human Aliens and Rubber-Forehead Aliens.

edited 29th Jan '17 1:01:21 AM by RhymeBeat

I like the Ewoks.

I think the reason a lot of people dislike the Ewoks isn't just because they're supposed to be cute—it's because "being cute" is more or less their entire purpose in the movie. R2-D2, for example, is certainly cute, but he also has a core role to play in the story and is a fleshed-out character in his own right. The Ewoks...not so much.

Look at the dreaded Jar Jar as well. I think Jar Jar would have been more tolerable if he had had some sort of role beyond just "Bumbling Hilarious Comic Relief Character." Nine times out of ten, I think having a character whose sole purpose is to be cute or funny is a terrible idea.^note And it also would have helped if Jar Jar was less fucking annoying.

The Ewoks do serve an actual purpose though. Their guerilla tactics are crucial to the defeat of the Empire.

They also serve several running thematic purposes of the franchise: Archaic people best highly technological foes, The Dog Bites Back (as the Ewoks being tyrannized by the Empire ends up leading to the Empire's downfall), so forth.

edited 29th Jan '17 9:21:15 AM by Gaon

Yes, but only in the sense of them being a rather blunt narrative tool. Moment-to-moment, their onscreen purpose is usually little more than "be cute."

By the same token, Jar Jar technically did have a narrative role to play, in that it was he who led them to the secret Gungan city and allowed them to rally an army. But that did nothing to salvage his character.

Jar Jar's a more problematic case. His purpose is really nebulous because he is, effectively, useless. He only helps the heroes by his idiocy triggering a multitude of Rube Goldberg Device that ends up defeating enemies.

The Ewoks are actually helping the heroes on purpose.

The Ewoks are there to be the "nature and simple determination that ultimately overcomes the technological terror and order the villains wield" embodiment in the last battle, as fitting the general themes of series.

I wouldn't be surprised if, in addition to being the cute, the Ewoks were made over the Wookies because the Wookies are established to be a race that would use tech (or at least be part of the galactic stage) and for the final battle Lucas wanted - for lack of a better word - "natives."

The Gungans are thematically part of the same thing (though, interestingly, the conclusion of that battle is basically the opposite of Endor), though imo not executed as well. As are things like Luke leaving the frontlines of the war as their best pilot to go train in mysticism in the swamp with a tiny green gremlin. Or the running thing of good guys being underequipped underdogs from the sticks who rely on gumption and destiny, where the villains (including the Republic as the PT went on) are guys with big war machines that give them overwhelming force.

edited 29th Jan '17 9:57:44 AM by KnownUnknown

Just to add that I don't have a source for it, but a wellish known bit of trivia is that the Ewoks are deliberately named as a Significant Anagram for Wookie, because they were deliberately created to fill in for a Wookie rebellion against the Empire, and are a similarly furry species.

Also, the Ewoks eat people.

I don't know if missing one pilot for a few months or whatever is worth as much as one Jedi for the rest of the war. Practically speaking, anyway— not that we really get to see many examples of it, because drama. No, Luke admittedly wasn't any match for Vader or the Emperor, but he was never going to be. Luke's strength in every movie is never being the deadliest sharpshooter or the best pilot or great Jedi savant, it's in his relationships, his connections to others. In each movie, he wins the day by putting his faith in people— trusting Obi-Wan to guide him in the trenches of the first Death Star, abandoning his training to try and rescue his friends on Bespin, telling Vader he can still sense good in him. That belief in others ends up being Luke's great strength, and something the traditional Jedi lost in the unemotional impartiality of their dogma.

Here's hoping they call back to that.

Going back to Ewoks for a second: most of their screen time is spent as the cute comic relief. While I don't think that's bad unto itself, if Lucas and company wanted to compensate for TESB's unhappy ending and the somewhat harrowing segments where we finally meet Jabba and the Emperor, I do think they might have gone a little less broad with it.

edited 29th Jan '17 1:22:29 PM by Unsung

@R Bluefish: The Ewoks are really terrifying once you remember that they actually, y'know, eat people. So I wouldn't just dismiss them as cute.

Also, their guerilla tactics are instrumental in taking down the shield generator on Endor.

Ewok is two letters off from Wookie. The reason people don't like Ewoks, I mean really don't like Ewoks, is Rooting for the Empire. The Galactic Empire isn't just a villainous force to some people, it's "badass". Wookies who supposedly rip off arms are also "badass". Little ankle biting teddy bears take all the piss out of the imperial forces, which was their entire purpose. The empire sucks and deserves to lose is the message, which angers people who hold it up as "badass". WCW made the same mistake with the nWo.

Rogue One, the biggest waste of my recreational money in recent memory, and I should have known better when I saw the commercial for it was focused on Darth Vader and The Death Star. I had friends who wanted to see and it's exactly the kind of prequel we hated the Expanded Universe for, where every last line of dialog from the original trilogy needs further elaboration.

But look at the reviews. Rogue One displayed "proper" use of the Death Star, how terrifying it should be? Say what? It made Darth Vader "badass" again after three movies made him into an annoying whiny kid?

No, the death star was used properly from the start. There were many tactical errors with it, but as a weapon of terror it's hard to get more terrifying than a mobile planet destroyer. And relative to what the empire was facing, there wasn't much worry of it's shields being breached all the way to the reactor core, even if all the material spent on it would have been better served on air superiority, or whatever the space equivalent is.

And Darth Vader being a whiny kid growing up was also the point. Tragic upbringing is classic villain backstory, and the fact only one Jedi thought taking him on was a good idea is one of the Jedi order's few instances of competence. They knew, prophecy or not, This Is Gonna Suck and only went along with it because the one idiot who thought it a good idea made Annakin's training a dying wish. They did their best, first grudgingly but gradually coming to treat him well, and he proved to be an ingrate who nearly compromised missions with his bullheadedness, murdered whole tribes with his only remorse being "Jedi aren't supposed to"(Not people, "Jedi"), sold out the Jedi over a bad dream he ended up being the cause of, murdered diplomats trying to negotiate for peace and was poetically cut to pieces in the end.

He wasn't supposed to be "likeable", only tragic. Maybe showing someone who rose out of a similar situation with more grace would work off some of the Acceptable Hard Luck Targets message the movie seemed to be promoting...oh wait, we got that that with the rogue storm trooper contrasting the privileged royalty who was an ungrateful bastard murderer. Sometimes Running the Asylum is a good thing. But the point is the intent with Darth Vader was to look at him and think "What an asshole! When is someone going to knock him on his ass!" Not "Oh the carnage, that guy's so cool!" Unfortunately his sardonic humor worked too well.

Star Wars perhaps does too good a job of making people think it's villains are "awesome", more so than it's protagonists. And when C 3 P O, Ewoks and Jar Jar are on the protagonist side, it's not really so hard to see why. Maybe if you took some of that armored black and red aesthetic and applied it more to the "hero" side? The prequels did a decent enough job by making the trade federation shifty, greedy bankers using bumbling wiry droids with coughing fits, but the problem there was after the first movie they spent the entire time fighting what would become the future villains of the franchise. Granted, it shows the empire was a fraud from the beginning, a corruption of a sovereign, representative government, but by showing people cheering it's oncoming you can't help but think they had it coming.

The new material does seem to be sticking to the path of correction. Two of the good guys in the last film had the Bobafett aesthetic (and I never got the hype for Bobafett but you can't deny it's there) and the big scary black armor aesthetic. Meanwhile less focus was on "badass" Vader than the bickering power hungry officers and politicians wasting countless resources and obliterating their own troops just to end battles faster and or take out one of their hated rivals.

The new "Vader" is anything but. As said, he's a silver spoon baby with private schooling rather than a rundown resourceful slave. His mother didn't die in enemy hands he failed to save her from, he is the enemy hands that killed his father. Instead of the heroes being bit in the ass by the slave they freed the villains are being taken down by the Tyke Bomb that freed himself. I have confidence people won't be rooting for the first order, or the empire for that matter, in the same manner as in previous movies. George Lucas's fondness for cute aliens might actually resonate with the audience this time around should they proceed to take the piss out of the villains.

edited 28th May '17 10:44:36 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

The Ewoks' narrative purpose is to help the Rebels take down the shield generator, and be overlooked by the empire due to being considered primitive.

They make a lot more sense than Wookies for that purpose, because even if the story went with low-tech Wookies, they're still larger than a human and very strong - the Empire wouldn't have overlooked them, they'd have built the shield generator on a different planet or exterminated the Wookies before beginning construction. The Ewoks look insignificant enough that it's credible for the Empire to have ignored them and decided they couldn't post a threat.

edited 29th Jan '17 12:14:54 PM by Galadriel