THE EWOKS DID NOT DEFEAT THE EMPIRE.
NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE SAY THIS AND NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES THEY SAY IT IT WILL NEVER BE TRUE.
The Ewoks provided a temporary distraction which allowed Han and Leia a chance to disable the shield generator. The ground weapons taken out by the Ewoks were not the Empire’s most fearsome ground weapons, they were weapons that were poorly suited to the terrain and they were not designed to anticpiate the manner of attack that they faced (felled tree technology).
If it took Han and Leia hadn’t gotten into the generator facility- which would not have happened if Chewbacca hadn’t managed to comandeer an AT-ST -then the Ewoks would soon have been slaughtered.
You’ve got a good point, esp. with regard to weaponry. But Lucas’ ideas about weaponry are not well thought out. The obvious logical successor to the tank is a heavily armored hovercraft that can go hundreds of kph, turn on a dime, go hundreds or thousands of meters into the air on occasion, etc. But Iain Banks I think went one better in his Culture novels with his “knife missile,” a weapons about the size of a suitcase that can hover/fly at extremely high speeds, so much so that it’s about like a bullet, and stab/cut throats/whatever to opponents, and do it all very efficiently because it’s INTELLIGENT. It doesn’t need programming. (Most low-level AIs in the Culture were slightly smarter than human beings, the high level AIs being godlike).
It would simply have been a slaughter. Lucas’ plodding target vehicles are just not what you’d expect from an interstellar empire. Then again, the whole story is a medieval fantasy set in an interstellar empire, so whadja expect?
What I wrote isn’t some fan theory; It comes directly from the movie’s dialogue.
Re: A force User levitating himself: Luke is essentially doing that when he is doing his handstand on Dagobah. There is no way he could remain in that pose without the Force holding him up.
But it’s an interstellar empire that explicitly rules by fear and is constantly pointed out to be overconfident and arrogant in it’s perceived superiority.
The Rebel Alliance was the only real military competition the Empire had, and in the only engagement we saw that put the Rebels against full AT-ATs, the Rebels still had a bad time of it–I doubt the Empire really sweated the loss of 2 or 3 vehicles.
I suspect most of the time, the vehicles are used more as symbols of military might than for actual combat.
Are you sure? (I don’t really care, you just sound so into this whole thing that I think it would be cool if you were reading this post and you vapor locked.). Yub yub
Wait. What if George Lucas HIMSELF said it???
Wait. This is a vast military/universe empire that has figured out how to travel at the speed of light (or faster) to get to one side of the universe to the other in short order, they can design, and create a death star that not only can vaporize a planet in milliseconds, but it seems to have the ability to zip around the Universe at warp speed as well (what good would it be if it just sat in one spot?), and yet they decide to commit ground troops to a wooded planet full of hairly bears from Munchkin Land with incorrect weapons technology?
Wood. Hmmm… Fire? That should do it! Or they could fall back on 20th century technology and use a hydrogen bomb or two to get rid of the varmints.
OR… How about they just crank up the fire power on Death Star II and just <poof> the bears?
Do you actually believe that one of those imperial cruisers couldn’t zap a hole in Endor on its own? And why would the Empire even bother with ground forces when they could blow a planet to smithereens? There are so many logical holes in the Star Wars movies, you can’t take them seriously. Just enjoy them for what they are.
Yub yub.
You can’t prove this. In fact, your last paragraph states that the Empire was not equipped with the proper weaponry for “felled tree technology”. So, how exactly was the Empire going to slaughter the fuzzy bears? Yub yub?
I’m sorry. You don’t need to reply to this. I just thought your post was hysterical…
There are some pretty big holes in the movies. Amusingly, you’ve failed to successfully identify a single one.
The Stormtroopers weren’t deployed to the planet to fight Ewoks. They were deployed to fight Rebels. The Empire didn’t care about Ewoks before then. Possibly, they didn’t even know the furry little bastards were on the planet.
And the reason you have a ground army and a Death Star at the same time, is the same reason we have a ground army and a nuclear arsenal at the same time. Sometimes, you don’t just want to destroy something, you want to take it intact. The Emperor wants to rule the galaxy, not just blow it up, and he can’t do that if the only weapon he has turns planets into asteroid fields.
It was good. A solid B, 4/5, thumb-somewhere-between-borderline-and-way up. I thought the other two were good as well. Not spectacularly awesome, but good. Entertaining. Worth my time.
To be fair, I’ve never had much interest in overanalyzing movies to death. Temple of Doom was ruined by Willie, full stop. South Park Bigger Longer And Uncut was mostly pretty funny, even the worst parts were still watchable, and it allowed me to leave SP on a high note. The Fast And The Furious was a buddy/crime story with lots of nifty vehicle stuntwork, worth a look if you’re into that sort of thing. I’ve never understood what was such a crime against humanity about Ewoks (and if you think the Stormtroopers are an “elite” force, you really haven’t been paying attention), I liked the fact that there were multiple facets to the story, I thought the way Luke played Jabba like a $3 koto was brilliant, and the unmasking, where the face of evil could not be any more ordinary…beautiful. And say what you will about Jar Jar Binks, at least he does stuff, unlike the outrageously overrated Boba Fett, who I barely even noticed.
Honestly, I remember not a whit of this from the time the movie was actually in theaters, and I don’t see what pointing all all the things that Officially Suck about it now accomplishes. Not to belabor the obvious here, but shouldn’t we be looking ahead? Like MovieBob? (Seriously, he’s a genius.)
See? Now this is what i’m talking about… I really wasn’t teying to identify any holes myself, and yet someone comes to the defense of the movie… Cracks me up!
Just so we are on the same page, I agree that the Stormtroopers weren’t deployed to fight Ewoks. I don’t recall ever saying that they were. What I did say was that the Empire deployed ground troops on a planet full of fuzzy bears. Which they were. The empire wasn’t deployed to fight the bears, but i never said they were. The Bears just happened to be on Endor.
And since you bring it up, yes they were fighting the rebels on Endor. So again, why not just blow the planet? This isn’t out solar system, with 9 planets and a bunch of moons we are talking about. This is the entire universe. To blow away every planet that had rebel bases on it would still leave too many planets to count in a thousand lifetimes. I cannot see the empire being sentimental about saving a planet to squash a rebellion. Honestly, do you? Why on Endor would they care what was on Endor, what life forms there were, etc? If they didn’t know anything else about Endor, they knew it housed a rebel base, that is a good enough reason for the Empire to obliterate it.
Didn’t Alderon, a peaceful planet (that looked amazingly like Earth) with no weapons and no threat to the Empire disappear for the purposes of the Empire?
You can’t compare an earth-bound army and how it is deployed with an imaginary Universe-oriented ruling system with a death star. You are trying to equate a nuclear bomb with the death star. No, that dosn’t work. A nuclear weapon discharged on Earth contaminates the earth. A planet obliterated by the death star just leaves a vacant spot with a bunch of rubble where a planet once was. It’s one freakin’ planet in the UNIVERSE. It won’t be missed.
The idea that you have sounds nice, but that assumes there are a finite amount of planets and a finite amount of stars. The Empire ruled the Universe, correct? Not just one galaxy. And even if it did rule just one galaxy, like the Milky Way, assuming there are planets with life as there are in the Star Wars movies, zapping one planet teeming with life like Alderon meant nothing to their over-all strategy.
Yes, you cannot exactly rule an empire with no people and nothing to rule, but I think we can all agree that getting rid of all planets in even one Galaxy would be an impossible task. There would be plenty to rule.
If I’m in charge of the Empire, Endor is gone, and so is every bear, Rebel, tree and whatever else is down there. And if for some reason you think it has a big stash of Unobtainium, I am confident that the Empire would have other weapon systems that could obliterate life on a planet without blowing the planet apart.
Where are Saddam’s WMD’s? Get the nerve gas! Ewoks and Rebels = Kurds! (My apologies to any Kurds who may be offended, it was only meant as a joke about Stsr Wars, not the tragic things Saddam did to the Kurdish people)
Another reason why Ewoks are badass: Why was it the Ewoks had all this weaponry and training on hand in the first place? Because they constantly fight Wars with the other Ewok tribes of Endor!
At this point, I’m not sure if you’re trolling, or just completely ignorant of the actual plot of the movie.
Endor was an Imperial base, not a Rebel base. It was a backwater planet with a primitive population of no consequence that the Imperials built a base on to project a shield generator that protected the second Death Star from attack.
The Rebels landed a small strike force with the objective of disabling the shield generator. As it happened, C3P0 happened to look enough like some sort of Ewok god that they were able to convince the Ewoks to help attack the Imperial base.
From what we saw, the initial surprise attack was successful, however, most of the successes were one-shot items, mostly involving heavy logs. It was apparent that as the engagement went on, the Imperials were regrouping and regaining the momentum. However, since the point of the attack was just to let the infiltration team into the shield generator, it was a success, the shield came down, and and the Imperials apparently just flat out gave up off-camera when the Death Star blew up, because plot.
BECAUSE IT WAS THE FUCKING SITE OF THE SHIELD GENERATOR THAT WAS PROTECTING THE DEATH STAR!!!
When Han and Leia disable the shield generator, the Rebel fleet is immediately able to fly into the Death Star and BLOW IT THE FUCK UP. Why, tell me WHY, would the Empire say “Let’s go down to the Endor and blow shit up down there! That way we can HELP the Rebels blow up our Death Star!”!?!?!?
I forgot that Endor was an Imperial tool. I had it backwards, thinking that the rebels were on Endor and that’s why the Empire sent their ground troops.
Sort of makes my answers look pretty bad. Sorry about that. :smack:
You, sir, are a bit stressed. Granted, I screwed up the purpose of Endor and forgot the shield generator on Endor was put there by the Empire to guard the Death Star.
I don’t know why I forgot this, but i honestly did. Which makes my answers backward and wrong for the most part. I was not and am not trying to work you up.
So, i hang my head in embarrassment. sort of. Because no, the Empire would NOT blow up Endor. They had a reason to keep it around.
But if they put the shield on Endor, is it reasonable to conclude that the Empire knew of the Ewoks?
If so, they could have easily erased them from Endor. (at the expnse of the movie, I understand, but still)
But if you go with the idea that the Ewoks were not known by the Empire, the Empire still had to know what the planet looked like on the ground, as they built the shield generator on the planet, right?
If this is the case, why did they deploy weapon systems that were so ill-suited for the planet that held their shield generator?
(If this was answered in the movie, just tell me, and i’ll go and blow the dust off of my vcr. And the tape itself, if I can find it. And I’ll see if I can get the damn VCR to work so I can watch the movie again!)
Not ALL of my answers are bad or incorrect. However, i did forget that Endor had the shield generator that was protecting the death star. So, my apologies to those that thought I was just being a tool. But that is just one point. Important, yes, but it doesn’t change all of my answers.
And FTR, I am not interested in chewing up a 30+ year old movie. I liked it when it came out, and it entertained me. I just disliked the Ewoks as a concept.
Yes. They knew about the Ewoks and easily could have razed them from the planet but there was no reason to and this is why they have to be teddy bears and not Wookies.
The Ewoks were diminutive and primitive. The Empire never gave them a second thought. They probably killed a few when they first scouted the site, just so that the rest would know to fear them and not get in the way. Add a couple of AT-STs to stand by, looking super scary around the perimeter of the facility, and the primitives are sure to keep their distance. The AT-STs were not suitable to give chase through the forest but there was no anticipated reason for them to do so. The Empire didn’t need to root out the Ewoks because they were not viewed as a threat.
If they were Wookies- even if they were not technically advanced Wookies like Chewbacca- the Empire would have had cause to engage and suppress the population which would have been a drain on resources.
The Ewoks have to be cute teddy bears for the premise to work.
The Empire’s undoing on Endor comes from them not viewing the Ewoks as a threat and it has to be plausible that they would not view the Ewoks as a threat.