Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure

Did You Know?

• During production, teenage actors Eric Walker (Mace) and Warwick Davis (Wicket) formed W&W Productions and recorded their own mini-documentary of the film, uploaded to Walker's YouTube channel in 2014.
• Random House released a children's book adaptation in 1985 titled The Ewoks and the Lost Children, with stills from the film.
• The film was released on DVD as a double-feature with its sequel on November 23, 2004, under the title Caravan of Courage.

Plot

On the forest moon of Endor, the Towani family—Catarine, Jeremitt, Mace, and Cindel—are stranded after their starcruiser crashes. When the parents vanish, the Ewok Deej finds the children. After Mace threatens them, the Ewoks subdue him and take both to their home, where Cindel befriends Wicket. The Ewoks kill a boar wolf and discover a life-monitor from one of the parents inside it.

They consult the Ewok Logray, who reveals the parents were taken by the monstrous Gorax. A caravan of Ewoks forms to reunite the children with their parents, meeting the woodsman Chukha-Trok, priestess Kaink, and a wistie named Izrina. After several mishaps, they reach the Gorax's lair. In the battle, Chukha-Trok is fatally wounded.

The Gorax is knocked into a chasm but tries to climb back; Mace delivers the final blow with Chukha-Trok's axe. The Towanis decide to stay with the Ewoks until they can repair their ship, and Izrina departs.

Production

George Lucas, after the embarrassment of the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, took greater control over a planned half-hour Ewok television project. He hired Thomas G. Smith, who had stepped down as manager of Industrial Light & Magic after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, to produce the film. Lucas also brought in his personal assistant Bob Carrau to co-write the story. The producers initially conceived it as a cross between Hansel and Gretel and Tarzan of the Apes.

John Korty, who had directed the Lucas-produced Twice Upon a Time, was chosen as director. The story evolved from a story by Lucas and a screenplay by Carrau. Korty transformed Roy's Redwoods Preserve in Northern California's San Geronimo Valley into Endor. Joe Johnston, a veteran art director at ILM and key concept artist for the original trilogy, served as production designer and second-unit director; he also wrote and illustrated a book about the Ewoks, The Adventures of Teebo: A Tale of Magic and Suspense.

The Ewok films were among the last intensive stop-motion animation projects at ILM, as go motion was too expensive for their budgets. The films also used latent image matte painting, a technique innovated for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Reception

John J. O'Connor of The New York Times described the story as almost aggressively simple and noted that Lucas and crew did not produce anything terribly astonishing. He observed that Marin County's backdrop resembled a never-never land, and that interactions followed well-established cinematic tropes, particularly between Cindel and Wicket, played by the then-14-year-old Warwick Davis, whom O'Connor called the cleverest of the lot. Some writers concluded that both Caravan of Courage and its sequel are fairy tales despite their science fiction setting, pointing to magical phenomena and the lack of challenge to society's hierarchy.

Another author agreed, stating that science explains all magic. Colin Greenland, reviewing for Imagine magazine, called it a casual catalogue of magical folderol that pleased young children but made little sense to adults. Modern reception has been largely negative; Aidan Mason of Pop Culture Beast called the movie a story without a sense of urgency and a chore to sit through. The film was one of four to receive a juried Emmy for Outstanding Special Visual Effects at the 37th Primetime Emmy Awards, and was also nominated for Outstanding Children's Program, losing to an episode of American Playhouse.

Legacy

The 1984 TV movie introduced elements that later surfaced in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, a body of work that was reclassified as non-canon Legends in 2014. Its sequel, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, follows Cindel after her family is killed by Sanyassan Marauders, who also kidnap many Ewoks. She teams up with Noa Briqualon and the Ewoks to defeat the marauders. The ABC animated series Ewoks, set before the original trilogy, includes an episode with Izrina, Queen of the Wisties, as well as Chukha-Trok and some of Wicket’s relatives.

In the Legends novel Tyrant’s Test, part of The Black Fleet Crisis trilogy, an adult Cindel works as a reporter on Coruscant and leaks the Plat Mallar tapes during the Yevethan crisis. The Illustrated Star Wars Universe places the film between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided lets players encounter the Gorax species. The Gorax later reappeared in Disney canon during the Forces of Destiny episode “Traps and Tribulations,” where Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker help Ewoks Kneesaa and Wicket fight the beast.