| Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure | |
|---|---|
 Promotional release poster byDrew Struzan | |
| Also known as | The Ewok Adventure |
| Genre |
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| Screenplay by | Bob Carrau |
| Story by | George Lucas |
| Directed by | John Korty |
| Starring |
|
| Narrated by | Burl Ives |
| Music by | Peter Bernstein |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | George Lucas |
| Producers |
|
| Cinematography | John Korty |
| Editor | John Nutt |
| Running time | 97 minutes[1] |
| Production companies | |
| Original release | |
| Network | ABC |
| Release | November 25, 1984 (1984-11-25) |
| Related | |
| Ewoks: The Battle for Endor | |
The Ewok Adventure is a 1984 Americantelevision film based in theStar Wars universe. It takes place on themoon of Endor, and features theEwoks, who help two young human siblings as they try to locate their parents. The film premiered on November 25, 1984 onABC.
The film was given a limited international theatrical run, for which it was retitledCaravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. It was followed by a sequel,Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, in 1985.
On the forestmoon of Endor, a starcruiser lies wrecked. The Towani family – Catarine, Jeremitt, Mace and Cindel – are stranded. When Catarine and Jeremitt vanish, the children are found by theEwok Deej. After Mace threatens them, the Ewoks subdue him and take both children to the Ewoks' home. There, Cindel befriendsWicket. Shortly thereafter, the Ewoks kill a boar wolf, only to find a life-monitor from one of the Towani parents with the creature.
They seek out the EwokLogray, who informs them that the parents have been taken by the monstrous Gorax, which resides in a deserted, dangerous area. A caravan of Ewoks is formed to reunite the children with their parents. They meet a boisterous Ewok woodsman named Chukha-Trok, Kaink the Ewok priestess, and a wistie named Izrina before finally reaching the lair of the Gorax after a few mishaps on the way. The group engage the Gorax in battle, freeing Jeremitt and Catarine, but Chukha-Trok is fatally wounded. The Gorax is thought destroyed when it is knocked into a chasm, but it takes a final blow from Mace (using Chukha-Trok's axe) to defeat the creature, which tries to climb back up after them. The Towanis decide to stay with the Ewoks until they can repair the starcruiser, and Izrina leaves to return to her family.
George Lucas had allowed theStar Wars universe to be produced for television in 1978 with theStar Wars Holiday Special, which proved to be an embarrassment.[2] Lucas assumed greater control over a planned half-hour television project about Ewoks. He hired Thomas G. Smith to produce the film, after Smith had stepped down as the manager ofIndustrial Light & Magic (ILM) following his work onIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.[3][4] Lucas also hired Bob Carrau, a personal assistant, to co-write the story with him.[3]
When shopping the film around, Smith discovered that none of the TV networks at the time were interested in airing a half-hour special, butABC showed interest in a two-hourmovie of the week; the project was expanded to fill the request.[4]The producers initially conceived of the project as a cross between "Hansel and Gretel" andTarzan of the Apes.[5]John Korty, who had directed the Lucas-producedTwice Upon a Time, was selected as director.
Evolving from both a story written by George Lucas and ascreenplay by Bob Carrau, director John Korty transformed the scenicNorthern California film site, Roy's Redwoods Preserve in the San Geronimo Valley,[6] with its verdantferns andredwood trees, into the Ewoks' forest moon home of Endor.Joe Johnston, a veteran art director at ILM and one of the key concept artists of theclassicStar Wars trilogy, acted as production designer and second-unit director.[4] Prior to the film's release, he would also write and illustrate a book about the Ewoks,The Adventures of Teebo: A Tale of Magic and Suspense.[7]
Both Ewok films were some of the last intensivestop-motion animation work ILM produced, as by the early 1980s, the technique was being replaced bygo motion, an advanced form of animation with motorized puppets that move while the camera shutter is open.[8] However, go motion was too expensive for the budgets of the Ewok films, so stop motion was used to realize creatures such as the Gorax.[4]
The Ewok movies proved an opportunity for ILM to use a technique innovated for2001: A Space Odyssey called latent imagematte painting.[9][failed verification][10] In this technique, during live-action photography, a section of the camera lens is blocked off and remains unexposed. The film is rewound, the blocked areas reversed, and a painting crafted to occupy the space is photographed.
Thefilm score forCaravan of Courage was composed byPeter Bernstein. "Parade of the Ewoks", fromJohn Williams'score toStar Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983), is credited as "Wicket's Theme" and is heard when the children are initially rescued and taken to the Ewok village, where they meet Wicket. Selections from the score were also released onLP byVarèse Sarabande in 1986.[11] The release, titled simply asEwoks, contained additional cuts of Bernstein's score to the sequelEwoks: The Battle for Endor (1985).
During the shooting and production ofCaravan of Courage, all school-aged children on the cast were placed on a tight schedule, having to divide their days evenly between school lessons and actual work on the film, including memorizing lines, learning cues, and ultimately, filming. During the shoot, Lucasfilm felt that it might be an educationally-rewarding and entertaining experience for the two lead teenage actors in the film, Eric Walker (Mace) and Warwick Davis (Wicket), both 15 at the time of production, to be given their own cameras to use between takes. Calling themselvesW&W Productions, the two boys recorded their own mini-documentary of the production of the film, which was uploaded—nearly 30 years later—to Walker's YouTube channel[12] in 2014.[13]
In 1985,Random House released a children's book adaptation ofThe Ewok Adventure by Amy Ehrlich, titledThe Ewoks and the Lost Children,[14] which includes stills from the film. There was also a release of a picture book with audiotape for those learning to read.
The Ewok Adventure was first shown on American television on November 25, 1984 onABC. In its overseas theatrical release, it was renamedCaravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. The film was released onVHS andLaserdisc in 1990 throughMGM under the original title.
The film was released onDVD as a double-feature collection with its sequel,Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, on November 23, 2004. The release was a double-sided disc, with one film on each side. For this release, the film bore the theatrical release title,Caravan of Courage.
Prior to 2021, Disney announced no plans to add the Ewok films to its streaming service,Disney+. This prompted Eric Walker to start a petition for Disney to add them.[15] In March 2021, it was announced that both films would begin streaming on Disney+ on April 2, 2021.[16]
In his review forThe New York Times, John J. O'Connor noted the film's story as being almost "aggressively simple" and that "Mr. Lucas and crew do not come up with anything terribly astonishing."[17] With Marin County serving as the backdrop, looking "like some never-never land east of the Sun and west of the Moon," O'Connor recognized most of the interactions as following well-established cinematic tropes, the notable ones being between Cindel "looking like one of those little blond angels used to top off Christmas trees" and Wicket, a performance by the-then 14-year-old Warwick Davis, whom O'Connor called "the cleverest of the lot."[17]
Pointing to the main characters and plot elements, one pair of writers concluded that bothCaravan of Courage and its sequel are fairy tales despite occurring in a science fiction setting. They point to magical phenomena in both films, which is a fantasy element. They argue that in a science fiction story, the hero wants to disrupt or challenge the hierarchy of a supposed "utopian" society; whereas in both Ewok films, society is not challenged or disputed. Additionally, they argue, that while theStar Wars saga also has fairy taletropes, it adhered more towards science fiction.[5] Another author agreed that the films are fairy tales, wherein "Science explains all magic."[18]
Colin Greenland reviewedCaravan of Courage forImagine magazine, and stated that "a casual catalogue of magical folderol about various ancestral talismans carried by the questing koalas. It certainly did the trick for the eight- and nine-year-olds in the front row, but seemed to make little sense to their mums and dads, or to me."[19]
Modern reception has been largely negative, with Aidan Mason ofPop Culture Beast calling the movie, "a story without a sense of urgency" and "a chore to sit through".[20][citation needed]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 39% of 66 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure struggles with wooden performances and a formulaic plot that fails to capture the charm and excitement of the largerStar Wars universe."[21]
The Ewok Adventure was one of four films to be juried-awarded Emmys forOutstanding Special Visual Effects at the37th Primetime Emmy Awards.[22] The film was additionally nominated forOutstanding Children's Program but lost in this category to an episode ofAmerican Playhouse.[23]
Several elements from the film have gone on to appear in other works of theStar Wars Expanded Universe, which was declared non-canon and rebranded asLegends in 2014.[24]
The Gorax was reintroduced to the DisneyStar Wars canon in the second season episode "Traps and Tribulations" of the animated web seriesStar Wars: Forces of Destiny.Princess Leia Organa andJedi KnightLuke Skywalker aid the Ewoks Kneesaa and Wicket against the rampaging beast.
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