The Caravan of Courage

“There were to be two ABC TV movies starring the Ewoks. The first, Caravan of Courage : The Ewok Adventure, arrived in 1984. It was aimed at children, far more so than anything in the Star Wars universe thus far. But this was George Lucas: anything made for children had to be high quality, or as close as possible on a $2 million budget. After the disaster of the Star Wars Holiday Special, Lucas had learned his lesson. He kept a close eye on the production of Caravan of Courage and came up with the story behind it: A Family crash-lands on the moon of Endor, the parents and children are separated, and the Ewoks help reunite them. It was directed by the independent filmmaker who had lured Lucas to Marin in the first place, John Korty. 

Still, Caravan of Courage suffered from one major problem of the Holiday Special — a large portion was furry creatures burbling in a language all their own—so actor Burl Ives was recruited to do a folksy voice-over. The sequel came in 1985, and it was a much darker affair, called Battle for Endor. The parents, who have been reunited with their children at the end of the previous movie, are murdered—along with a whole forest full of Ewoks—by off-world marauders and an evil sorceress. As with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a darker movie than Raiders and one that Lucas says he intended as a direct metaphor for how he was feeling at the time, Battle for Endor reflects the darkness of Lucas’s postdivorce world—a Darkness that seemed to be annihilating the innocence of the Star Wars universe. 

“The divorce kind of destroyed me,” Lucas admitted years later. He began a rebound relationship with singer Linda Ronstadt, another feisty brunette; they broke up when Ronstadt declared she had no interest in getting married or having children. He experimented with new looks, switched from glasses to contacts, and even tried shaving his beard off. It was, as he said, a classic divorce situation.”