Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985)

These banners get worse and worse. Anyway, this one features two of our AI-generated Ewoks against a copyright-free photo of Muir Woods by Billy Huynh. Thanks, Billy! You’re really talented and your work is gorgeous.

Also, the film’s title does not contain an exclamation point, but it should. The B in “battle” should be capitalised. It isn’t. Life is short; let’s go get a cinnamon roll. And talk about this weird-ass movie.

We open up with our old friend, Matte Painting of Endor, and pan down to Muir Woods. Cindel and Wicket are skipping through a field, literally, that’s how this movie starts. Sometimes Wicket hands Cindel some flowers. Skippy skippy skip! The credits roll over b-camera footage of ferns and stuff. Dad is repairing the family spaceship. Cindel tells Wicket that they’ll have to say goodbye eventually. Wicket demonstrates his skill with a sling. Wicket’s eyes move but don’t blink. It’s still creepy.

Suddenly a fog machine starts fogging, so you know shit’s about to get real. Some, like… Mad Max-inspired ogre-looking dudes in space-derelict fashion (rags, but with washers sewn on for decoration) come boiling out of the forest, shooting guns and stealing Ewoks (aided by the fact that these Ewoks still live in their treebottom village), and chaos ensues. Our first hint that this film has been made with a bit more time and money to spend than the previous one comes when we see that the ogres have stop-motion monsters with them.

Sidenote! The monsters are called “Blurrgs” and they were originally designed for the Star Wars trilogy. They look like a piranha crossed with T.rex and I cherish them.

It’s fine, I’m fine, everything is fine.

Some Krull-looking motherfucker with a particularly detailed ogre mask (art direction: “Cornelius from Planet of the Apes, but he’s been dead for twenty years”) oversees the chaos as the music goes full ominous. Hello, this is our big bad. We eventually learn his name, but as with all character names in this movie, it’s just another example of 80s fantasy nonsense. Let’s call him Mmorge.

Hey, remember the life monitor that Cindel wears? The one that was briefly a plot-point in the first movie? She’s still got it on and thus we learn, along with her, that her mom’s, uh, dead. Cindel finds Mace (aww, the Ewoks gave him his gun!) and her dead mother. We are five and a half minutes into this 94-minute-long movie. Some poorly choreographed chaos ensues. Mace tells her to run and shoots at the ogres. The baddies shoot back and… a tree? Explodes? I guess? Cindel checks her life monitor and… well, now Mace is dead too. The lead of the first movie has been killed off six mins and eight seconds into the sequel. Fun fact: he was only on screen for 33 seconds.

Side note: I would love to find out what the heck happened here. Who made this decision? Why? And, since Mace is literally in the central position on the poster for the film, at what point in the process was this decision made?

Cindel runs to her dad, who’s being threatened by a woman in a feathery cape and a breastplate and some of the ogres, who are pulling the ship apart. Mmorge appears. “I want the power. You will give it to me now,” he grunts, and takes the power cell that fuels the ship. Dad gets shot in the back as he tries to run to Cindel. The woman in the breastplate toys with an apparently magic ring and transforms into a raven? She’s important, so let’s give her an 80s fantasy name: Corvidia.

Why am I renaming named characters? Honestly, their actual names are incredibly unmemorable: the ogres are “marauders,” the big bad is Tarek and the sorceress is Charal. These are such boring, lazy names! So I’m rebranding them with appropriately boring, lazy names. We make our own fun here.

Cindel and her dying goddamned dad hide about five feet from the bad guys. The actor tries his best to emote through some mediocre parable about birds going home, and the Eowks taking care of her. Then he sacrifices himself to help her escape. Nine mins and 52 seconds in, and Cindel’s entire family is dead. Can’t fault the film for efficiency.

Corvidia captures Cindel and pushes her into the prison wagons being dragged off by the special effects, along with all the Ewoks. Why are the ogres capturing Ewoks? We will never learn. At least they live closer to the Ewok forest than Gorax did.

“I failed them. They’re all dead,” the five-year-old child says as she strokes her life-monitor bracelet and thinks about her dead family. The elder Ewoks help Cindel and Wicket escape. None of the bad guys notice at first, despite a fish-monster basically stepping over them. They run and the ogres chase. Our heroes – two children, I am going to repeatedly point out – find and scale a bafflingly tall cliff and then hide in a cave. The baddies who are chasing them shoot at the cliff and get murderated by a rockslide.

Okay, so this cave is very high up. How did they get up there?? It’s also full of bones, always a good sign. Which they use to… build a fire. Apparently this is not impossible. Wicket builds a glider. Or maybe it’s the abandoned glider from the first film that… somehow… wound up in this cave. Who knows. Naturally, while collecting bones, Wicket “adorably” wakes up some stop motion! It’s… a dragon thingie. Oh, this monster is cute. Wicket fights the dragon instead of making friends with it. It grabs Cindel and flies off with her. Wicket gives chase on his glider. Where is the dragon going? Who cares. It drops Cindel and Wicket uses the power of narrative convenience to defy the law of gravity and gets under her, using the glider to break her fall, and they crash into the forest and emerge totally unharmed. They were like a hundred feet up in the air, but okay.

So it was night when the dragon took off with Cindel, and now it’s day? Or just poorly edited. Anyway, they hide in a hollow tree and are sad.

SMASH CUT TO oh, it’s definitely day now. A tiny furry hand reaches into Wicket’s pouch and tries to steal something from him, then chitters and zips away. Okay, real talk, I love this weird little dude. His costume is actually good and he’s played with a lot of zest. Also, his character is that he throws things at people and runs away really fast. He’s basically every D&D character I’ve ever played. His name is Teek. I like him enough that I won’t rename him. He leads them to a house in the woods.

Nothing bad has ever happened to two children who find a house in the middle of the woods. Naturally, they go inside.

Cindel, a five-year-old, says things any five-year-old would say like “I guess the people who lived here moved away and left all this junk behind.” Enter a cranky old dude. He yells at the five year old child to leave. Because he doesn’t like strangers. And he doesn’t want any friends. No, really, that’s actually what he says as he throws a filthy five-year-old child out of his hovel.

LOOK I KNOW, this is a kid movie and kid movies rely on tropes like “grumpy old person is actually secretly kind-hearted” but this is a five-year-old child on a fairly unfriendly planet and it bugs me on a fundamental level that the writers imported this lazy-ass trope from mediocre contemporary family comedies without a second thought. SHE IS FIVE YEARS OLD.

Not to mention that it was established in the first film that Wicket is a child too?!

So the two young children sit outside and feel bad about being hungry and alone and scared. Teek sneaks food to them. The old dude – his name is Noa – relents when he sees the two young children trying to build a fire. I know this is a kids’ film but Christ, it’s weird and upsetting. Not as upsetting and weird as Wicket’s terrifying, unblinking eyes, but we covered that in the first Ewok movie. Noa invites them in, but makes them sleep on the floor. Teek gives Cindel – a five year old child  - a pillow and a blanket.

Cindel has a nightmare, and Noa wakes her and tries to comfort her. It’s not like her entire family just got murdered and then she was kidnapped by some ogres and a woman who can turn into a bird, and then she escaped and nearly got eaten by a dragon, which then dropped her from about 100 feet up in the air, and then an old man yelled at her. Oh, wait. Noa takes pity on her and lets her sleep in a real bed. SHE’S FIVE YEARS OLD, YOU HEARTLESS SHITHEEL. Even if she hadn’t just had all that shit happen to her, she’s FIVE and you were making her sleep on the floor without even giving her a PILLOW.

The next day Noa heads out and tells Wicket and Cindel to “run along home.” LOL joke’s on you, Noa; Cindel’s family died half an hour ago. Wicket wants to rescue his family, though. Cut to: a castle.

Yes, a castle.

We find Corvidia kneeling before Mmorge, who’s lounging on a throne, and trying to use… magic? To make the power cell they stole… do something? Mmorge yells for a bit and then waves around some sort of blueprint. I am going to guess that the ogre people crashed on Endor decades ago and Mmorge has the general sense that they can get off the planet if they have a power cell, but that’s as far as his understanding goes. I mean, it'd be nice if the film took the time to establish any of this, but at least there’s not 50 minutes of walking like there was in the last movie. Mmorge tells Corvidia to get Cindel back, since she is clearly the only person who can make the power cell work. His prosthetics don’t move well.

Noa gets home and Teek says the kids have left. Noa’s like YEAH KIDS ARE SO ANNOYING, and we’re suppose to be all “aww, he doesn’t really believe that” but again, this dude is being an asshole to A FIVE YEAR OLD. She reappears and gives him flowers so they can make a pie. Aaaand, found family activated.

Next day, Noa heads out again and tells the kids to do chores. The kids are like, sure, and then follow him instead. Noa’s big secret? He’s trying to make his own derelict spaceship work. Why is this a secret, Noa? Why does he live in a house that’s not, like, next to his spaceship? Why doesn’t he live in his spaceship? We don’t know and will never learn.

Noa’s backstory is that he and his friend crash-landed on Endor and the friend went looking for help and never came back. Because this film is slightly better structured than the first one, that detail is actually salient to the plot.

Noa, who is now gentle and kind-hearted and understanding for no established reason other than that Cindel brought him flowers, tells Cindel to remember good things about her dead family. Cindel sings a song her mother used to sing to her. Corvidia, who has found Noa’s house without any trouble whatsoever, overhears and squawks ominously. Later, Cindel wakes up to hear someone singing her mother’s song. She goes outside to find a beautiful young blonde woman with a white horse (a classic 80s fantasy image) singing. Wicket wakes to find Cindel gone and wakes Noa to go find her. The woman’s magical ring glints, in case we had any doubts about who she is. She magics into evil black-haired not-young Corvidia, and her horse is now black too. She grabs Cindel and gallops off. Her costume is both incredibly cheap-looking and also awesome. Noa, Wicket and Teek set off to rescue Cindel. Noa brings a gun.

Artist’s reconstruction.

Corvidia approaches the castle. It’s a castle. It’s just a big fucking castle. In the middle of a field in Endor. Filled with Mad Max ogres. Mmorge yells at Cindel to make his power cell work. He wants Cindel to use her “magic” to make the power cell make power. Cindel, who again is FIVE YEARS OLD, is like I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Mmorge takes Corvidia’s ring for some reason, and throws both of them in the dungeon.

Noa, Wicket and Teek head towards Castle Endor. Why has Mmorge imprisoned Corvidia; I don’t understand. Cindel explains to her that the power cell doesn’t do anything unless it’s plugged into something. Out of the mouths of babes, etc. Corvidia is like, yeah, that’s what the other dude said, and points to a skeleton chained to a wall. RIP, Noa’s buddy. But, see? That plot point actually paid off? And it’ll pay off again later on? Ewoks[:] Battle for Endor, you spoil me.

Noa and crew arrive at the castle, which is guarded by a moat that… boils? Is acid? Contains a monster? It will literally never be clear what the issue with the moat is. They jam a stick into the water; the water bubbles; they pull the stick out and we see that it’s… slightly shortened? Maybe? Oh no, how will Noa and his friends get into the castle? He manages this pretty easily, actually, mostly b/c Teek is not useless. Wicket does touch the water but doesn’t get boiled/eaten because… well, I guess the water isn’t acidic, anyway.

An ogre falls into the water. Nothing happens. Seriously, please, what is the thing with the water.

Our heroes have made it inside and searching for the Ewoks and Cindel. They avoid ogres. The castle’s interior set is basically every set from every 80s fantasy film ever but it looks like it was built out of more than just construction paper and rubber bands, SIDEEYE FIRST EWOK MOVIE. Mmorge chills on his throne and glowers at his minions. Man, to be the leader of a pack of villains in a fantasy film. Your only jobs are to maraud and to grimace. Sometimes you get to yell.

Our heroes do the “two kids in a trenchcoat” trick to sneak past the ogres and it works.  The ogres guarding the Ewoks gamble while Teek steals their keys. Some brief hilarity ensues when an ogre sits on Teek’s hand. It sounds like one of the ogres yells fuck at one point. You and me both, buddy. Noa releases Cindel and the Ewoks. Corvidia is like, and moi? Cindel won’t let Wicket release her; she grabs the keys and throws them down the drain instead. Sorry, Corvidia.

The escaping Ewoks accidentally shoot an ogre in the foot, alerting the baddies to their plans. Mmorge raises a sword and yells “after them!” as one does. A bunch of ogres step on the wounded foot of the shot ogre, lest we forget that this is a kids’ film about cutely bumbling Ewoks. Noa blows up a wall to get them out of the castle. Bold. The Ewoks… have a lot of guns now. They shoot liberally while Noa creates a zipline to get the Ewoks out. He spots his dead buddy, so we can close the file on that particular storyline. Cindel grabs the power cell. Corvidia, who is invested in this power cell for no reason we know, gets very upset. Why are all the guns in this film wrapped in cloth? Anyway, some ogres fall into the moat and whatever is meant to be going on with that…. Goes on. They yell and the water bubbles.

Maybe it’s related to the water that tried to eat Mace in the last movie. Maybe the water on Endor is sentient and hostile?

A school of young Blurrgs can skeletonize a baffling Krull rip-off in less than one hour and thirty-four minutes!

Mmorge releases Corvidia and gives her ring back to her. She transforms into a bird and he… takes her ring from her again? Maybe to force her to continue to help him? Dude, she’s already on your side for reasons we don’t understand and will never know! This is so confusing!

Anyway, Mmorge puts the ring on a cord and wears it as a necklace as he leads the charge against the Ewoks. You might be like, Anne, why are you telling me this; who cares. Weirdly, this detail will matter a lot in a few minutes.

Mmorge has a lot of minions. Some questions I have include: what do these guys do when they’re not chasing Ewoks. What do they eat.  Mmorge has a horse and a sword. Where did they get horses. Why doesn’t he have a gun. I know that he can’t ride a Blurrg because this film doesn’t have the budget, but honestly, where do the horses come from.

Noa leads everyone to his spaceship. Why? He tells the Ewoks to hold off the bad guys while he gets the ship going. What is his plan? Is he going to fly off with all the Ewoks or just abandon them to the massively overpowered (yet comically inept!) ogre monsters who live in a CASTLE that’s within walking distance of the forest they Ewoks live in? The fuck, movie.

(I think it’s so they can use the ship’s gun on the ogres, but again, I’m just not sure!)

Whatever. The Ewoks have enough time to make weapons, including spears with knapped tips, and bows and arrows. Just a really quick reminder that the ogres ALL HAVE GUNS. Which the Ewoks also had, about five minutes ago. Whatever. Fighting happens; the baddies are routed. We all know what an Ewok battle (for Endor!) looks like; despite being outnumbered and massively technologically overwhelmed, they win. They also fall over a lot.

The ogres run away. Mmorge grunts and waves his sword around. Wicket gets caught in a snare. Cindel leaves the safety of the ship to help him and Mmorge grabs her. They worked so hard on his mask but they forgot it’s a speaking role. His face just… like… wiggles when he talks. Noa rushes out to save Cindel and fights Mmorge, who’s packing a sword, with a stick. Corvidia lands on a nearby branch and squawks. Mmorge is just about to kill Noa when Wicket hits him with a rock from his sling.

The rock Wicket slings hit’s Corvidia’s ring, which Mmorge is still wearing on his neck. And… he turns to stone. Corvidia flies away. That’s it. That’s how these two villains are disposed of. One’s a rock and one’s a bird. The (almost) end.

No one asks any questions about wtf just happened.

Anyway, fast forward to some indeterminate time later. The ship is all fixed and Noa and Cindel are leaving Endor. Noa says some actually nice things to Wicket and Teek. Cindel tells Wicket he’s her best friend. She promises to come back (apparently a third film was planned and then binned!) Everyone says goodbye and Cindel and Noa fly off into the matte painting. Wicket and Teek wave us into the credits.

So, uh. On the one hand, this is a much better film than The Ewok Adventure. It has, like, momentum. Multiple Checkovian guns go off. Characters kind of develop. Things happen! It’s not 75% filler!

On the other hand: this is like the bastard child of Star Wars and every mediocre-ass 80s fantasy film EVER. The bad guys, with their post-industrial derelict grunge aesthetic, are Krull meets Escape from New York. They live in a castle. There’s a dragon. There’s a freaking sorceress who uses a magic ring to turn into a raven. How is this a Star Wars film, like for real.

And, oh yeah, the main character from the first film, to which this is a direct sequel, has 33 seconds of screen-time and dies immediately. There’s WTF and then there’s WTAF, and this is that times one billion. Why? Who made that decision? And who put him front and centre on the freaking POSTER FOR THE MOVIE.

Did they commission the poster art before they made the movie? If I had to engage in totally unfounded speculation, I’d guess they had the artist create the posters for both films at the same time, and then totally rewrote the second movie before filming it. I’ll bet you a shiny nickel that the film was conceived with both kids as the leads and then they wrote Mace out. Guys, Mace was not the problem with the first Ewok movie.

So, this is not a bad film. It’s not a great film. It’s not even a very good film. But it’s better than The Ewok Adventure, and it’s at least as not-bad as any number of kids’ movies I’ve seen over the years. But I keep harping on the whole “Cindel is FIVE, why is Noa, an adult, being such an asshole” thing because it’s such lazy fucking writing.

Movies for children can lean on tropes in a way films for adults shouldn’t, because kids respond to storytelling in different ways than adults do. But that doesn’t mean that kids’ films can be permitted to get away with lazy writing or storytelling simply because their target audience is young. The folks making the movies can – and annoyingly seem to - hold themselves to lower standards because, they think, the kids won’t care or know the difference. But youth is not a synonym for stupidity. Basic, decent storytelling matters, no matter how young the audience is. This is not a great movie by any means, and it has loads of issues, but the basic story works. It makes sense. Plot elements are introduced early on and then brought back at important points. Characters develop. Motivations are clear. Like, this shit is storytelling 101. That’s all good!

But Noa is established as a human adult on an alien planet who has no issue being unfriendly to a five-year-old child. This is not a populous and friendly planet; this is an isolated moon without civilisation as Noa might recognise it, populated by bear-people, at least one giant monster and his giant monster dog, and a castle full of ogres and fish-dinos. There are tree-eels and dragons and very unfriendly bodies of water. Has Noa even seen another human since his buddy wandered off, long ago enough that all that’s left of him is a skeleton?! Does he not have questions about WTAF a five-year-old child is doing wandering around?

Come the fuck on, Bridget. DO BETTER.

Monsters: pirhana-dinos! Ogre-monsters! Teek! A dragon!

Mullets: Corvidia has some proper Jareth-hair going on. Cindel’s hairstyle still defies the imagination.

Representation: There are two (living) female characters in this movie, one of whom is a child and the other of whom is a villain. It’s very white; any POC actors are buried under costumes and prosthetics. The marauders are, problematically, given brownish skin-tones. Not great, Bob.

Star Wars Fun Fact: Corvidia is supposed to be a “Nightsister” which is some sort of Sith thing that got retconned in like two decades later.

Thanks for going with me on this journey back to Endor. See you next time!