Given that you can’t so much as change a lightsaber’s color without sparking canonical debates that rival the European wars of religion, it’s remarkable how willing Lucasfilm was to just toss ideas out there to see what would prove entertaining (and profitable) in the wake of the original trilogy’s unexpected success. While the Star Wars Holiday Special is the most infamous product of this period, a forgotten TV movie released less than a year after Return of the Jedi made it clear that no one knew quite what the future of Star Wars was, or if it even had one.
You may be surprised to learn that a TV movie called Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure exists, although you won’t be surprised to learn that a TV movie called Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure is pretty lousy. Featuring Warwick Davis, Burl Ives, and a whole lot of nobodies, what makes it fascinating to revisit on the 40th anniversary of its debut is that it’s so far removed from modern Star Wars it feels like that it spawned from a different franchise.
We open on the famous forest moon of Endor, where a husband and wife search for their children but find an axe-wielding giant instead. We then cut to Deej the Ewok, who, after a spot of hang-gliding, discovers young Mace and even younger Cindel, the survivors of what’s essentially a space minivan crash. The moppets convince the local Ewok village to help them rescue their parents, and together they set off for the forbidden fortress of the Gorax. Many shenanigans ensue.
Caravan of Courage is paced like a leaking molasses bottle and relies far too much on child actors to ever rise above mediocrity, but a few details stand out amid the Ewok hijinks. First, this is a Star Wars movie with no mention of Rebels, Imperials, Jedi, or Sith, and it’s fascinating to see a story, even a simple one, from a time before the Skywalker Saga devoured the franchise. Sure, Lucasfilm was probably just looking for a way to stretch the money spent on Jedi’s Ewok costumes, but it still hints at a franchise that pursued one-off adventures across the galaxy rather than endless Luke and Palpatine drama.
Second, while it can’t be denied that Caravan looks a bit cheap, there’s an old-fashioned charm to its blend of matte paintings, puppets, and stop-motion monsters. Sure, the Ewoks live with chickens, rabbits, ferrets, llamas, and other creatures no one bothered to give a coat of Star Wars paint, but their little huts still have more of a lived-in feel than most of the soulless CGI sets created for shows like Ahsoka.
But what’s most intriguing is that Caravan embraced Star Wars’ fantasy side to create what’s essentially a fairy tale with sci-fi trappings. An Ewok mystic uses magic to locate Mace’s captured parents, a crystal transforms into a lizard as part of a “magic test,” and Mace almost drowns in a river that supernaturally traps him beneath its surface, among other examples of magic flowing freely. Throw in the Gorax, monsters, fairies, and a few giant spiders, and if you didn’t already know what an Ewok was, Caravan of Courage would feel like a Dark Crystal rip-off.
Fans and sourcebooks later rewrote all these touches as exotic alien critters and examples of the Force working in mysterious ways, and Caravan is no longer canonical anyway. But it all hints at an alternate universe where Star Wars embraced its own weirdness, where the Cave of Evil in Empire Strikes Back wasn’t evil because of some complicated Force nonsense but because sometimes, when you’ve got an entire galaxy to explore, a cave can simply be evil. Modern Star Wars, so entangled in its own lore, could use more of that laissez-faire nonsense.
Unlike the Holiday Special, which has been expunged from polite society, Disney is content to let curious fans watch Caravan and its follow-up, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, on Disney+ under the “Star Wars Vintage” label. George Lucas, understandably feeling burned by the Holiday Special debacle, even wrote the stories. And while no one can deny that Lucas is happy to make a quick buck, his efforts imply that at least some love was put into these strange little creations. You can certainly see the original vision for Star Wars in Caravan — namely, something 8-year-olds find fun.
And so, as dopey as Caravan of Courage is, you can still picture an ‘80s kid desperate for more Star Wars wearing out a VHS tape of it. Mace, from his haircut to his orange jumpsuit, is meant to invoke a young Luke Skywalker whose shoes young fans can see themselves filling, and it’s hard not to be at least a little amused when he battles a Harryhausen-esque “boar-wolf” or encounters a gruff Ewok woodsman who, by Ewok standards, is a real ruffian.
Does this make it essential viewing today? Not really. But no matter how much some fans may complain that the sanctity of Star Wars has been forever ruined by whatever series most recently came out when you read this, remember that the franchise has forever been throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. Once upon a time, those ideas just happened to involve Ewoks wielding magic against a troublesome giant.
