When we think of the Star Wars franchise, the movies that typically come to mind are Episodes I-IX.  Many will also remember Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).  That makes eleven films.  Would you be surprised if I told you that there are more?  I am not referring to anything animated, related to LEGO, or the hilariously bad Star Wars Holiday Special (1978).  Instead, I am going to bring to your attention two entries into the pantheon of tales set long ago in a galaxy far, far away: Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure (1984) and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985).  Since I only do one piece of cinema at a time, I will start with Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure.  Either way, by the time you get to the end of this and the next review, you will understand why they are best forgotten.

Instead of the humanoid teddy bears we came to love in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983), we start in Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure with Catarine (Fionnula Flanagan) and Jeremitt Towani (Guy Boyd).  They have crash landed on the forest moon of Endor, and their children, Cindel (Aubree Miller) and Mace (Eric Walker), are missing.  Before they can be found, the Gorax, a huge monster, snatches them and takes them to its lair.  Nearby, there is an Ewok that is also looking for his offspring.  Before continuing, I should point out that it is really difficult to relate to you the names of these furballs.  The main one to remember is Wicket W. Warrick (Warwick Davis, voiced by Darryl Henriques).  He is the one character from the previous film that is held over in this one, and his dad is out on his hang glider (yes, you read that correctly) searching for his young ones.  I suppose I should point out that there is a narrator (Burl Ives), but he is little help.  While Papa Ewok, to borrow Smurf parlance, soars above the trees, he spots a metal object on the forest floor.  This is unusual for an Ewok since their technology is basically that of the Stone Age.  Thus, after collecting his wayward kin, they go to investigate.  It turns out to be the Towani crash site.  Going inside the ship, they find Cindel hiding in cupboard (can I call it that?).  As any little girl might, she finds the Ewoks to be cute and cuddly, and makes fast friends with them.  Mace comes along soon thereafter and is not comfortable with their familiarity his sister.  Nonetheless, the Ewoks manage to overpower him, despite him having a blaster, and take the Towani kids back to their village.  Mace wants to leave as soon as possible to go look for their parents, but Cindel has become sick and is not well enough to move.  He makes the Ewoks understand her predicament, and they give her medicine, you know, because they can identify the malady and have the proper remedy.  It is not enough, however, and Mace joins their hosts to look for more of the correct substances.  Once Cindel recovers, they attempt to escape.  Their intent is to begin their quest to find their parents, but it is interrupted when they are attacked by a different monster.  As before, the Ewoks come to their assistance.  With this new threat vanquished, Mace finds a bracelet (he refers to it as a “life monitor”) on the beast.  It is, apparently, a clue that Catarine and Jeremitt are alive.  Upon returning to the village, an Ewok shaman (I guess?) is able to divine the location of the Catarine and Jeremitt.  This is when the Ewoks learn that the Gorax has them, which is not great news for them.  No Ewok has ever returned from the land of the Gorax.  All the same, they agree to go with Cindel and Mace, taking along with them trinkets to help recruit other Ewoks they meet.  There are a number of misadventures along the way that need not be enumerated.  The one I will touch on is when they meet a race of fairies called wisties.  They look like fast moving fireflies, and one of their number, Izrina, decides to accompany them.  In any case, it all brings them to the cave in which the Gorax lives, and where Catarine and Jeremitt are being kept in a cage.  One of the Ewoks distracts the Gorax while the others manage to free the Towani parents.  They then murder the Gorax by tripping it, Looney Tunes-style, into the seemingly bottomless pit they had to cross on their way into the Gorax’s lair. In any care, everyone returns to the Ewok village for a celebration, with the Towanis being invited to stay until they can repair their ship.

There is not much else to say about Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure.  I am not even sure what to say about it from a Catholic perspective.  I could mention the fact that the Ewok’s essentially use divination to discover Catarine and Jeremitt’s location, but that seems a silly point on which to spend any significant amount of time.  The Divine comes from God alone.  There is no magic that can give people such knowledge.  If this does happen, it is only because God has granted special insight into something.  It does not happen as a result of spinning what looks like a giant, glowing dreidel.  And there I go, scrawling a few sentences on nonsense.  What is less nonsensical, but still cheesy in its delivery, is the final line in the film as delivered by the narrator.  Basically, he says that love is the strongest force in the universe.  I suspect these words were added in order to make the movie fit better as a Star Wars flick.  I imagine they worried that people would see this and think, hey, where are the Jedi.  Well, they said the word “force,” no?  Anyway, what I will wrap this section up with is yet another reminder that God is love.  Therefore, God is the most powerful force in the universe, though you do not need to watch this movie to understand this concept.

There are a few other features of Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure that underscore how poorly conceived of a film it is, ultimately.  One is the fact that the majority of the animals are not disguised as anything than what we would recognize them to be.  A llama is a llama, and a ferret is a ferret.  Oh, and it was written by George Lucas.  The guy got lucky because I am not sure he possesses the level of skill with which society has credited him.