The "Other" Star Wars films.

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I should be hanging my head in shame but I just couldn't help myself.

A double feature DVD of "Caravan of Courage" and "The Battle for Endor" (I hadn't heard of the second one) just lept off the rack and landing in my shopping basket.

Own up, does anyone else own these movies?

 

Oh dear God! I watched those two back in the 80s when they were shown on t.v. (Caravan of Courage was known as The Ewok Adventure to those of us in North America). They were both mind numbingly bad and I would never willingly watch them again.

The very thought of the "Starcruiser crash!" exchange is enough to make me ill

 

I have a vague memory of watching Ewok Adventures when I was a young'un. It was horrible, even at age eight.

 

I remember the caravan of courage as awful from my childhood, but couldn't resist as I hadn't heard of the other one.

But basically it's the worst part from the worst film in the orriginal trilogy made a lot worse.

 

If I remember correctly the two films are pretty much the same as each other. If you have watched one of them and then watch the other you are struck with an incredible sense of deja vu.

Either that or they have blurred in my mind in the last 20 years.

 

So it's one full hour of Jar Jar Binks pod-racing?

 

No, that would be the worst part of the second/prequel trilogy. To tell you the truth, if they did make such a film, I think it would still be better than the ewok films.

Instead we have two seperate 90 minute instalments of a pack of annoying ewoks going around and acting like complete baffoons while aiding annoyingly "cute" human children on stupid quests complete with very lame humour, action, and effects.

Trust me on this, you have not experienced pain until you have watched a stupid kid attempting to use a wooden horse to demonstrate to an ewok how her starcruiser crashed.

Sadly, I think that the Star Wars holiday specials were actually worse. Now THAT'S a scary thought.

 

I saw Caravan of Courage at the cinema. What memories.

Those were back in the days when certain kids would go overseas and come back claiming to have seen the next Star Wars movie called "Splinter of the Mind's Eye". At the time, I thought they were so lucky, but now I'm getting a bit suspicious because it's 20 years later and that supposedly brilliant movie still hasn't come out here.

 

Splinter of the Mind's Eye is a Star Wars book that was written by Alan Dean Foster back in the 70s. I have not read it myself but I gather it was pretty good. I imagine that it doesn't hold up as being consistent with the content introduced in the sequels let alone the prequels.

 

My kids made me sit through the Ewok Adventure -- I still get flashbacks. INCOMING!! Somebody ... anybody ... send beer....

I still have the book Splinter of the Mind's Eye. It was okay. Certainly better than I, and II.

 

I was a kid when I watched "The Ewok Adventure" I thought some of the special effects were pretty good. I found a copy in a 10-cent bin and bought it. Uggh.

Splinter of the Mind's Eye was a pretty decent piece of work -- it takes place between Episodes 4 and 5, and there are some nice moments in it. Foster is a hack, but a good one. IIRC, there wasn't much in it that that I saw that contradicted the main storyline. Only a real tech freak would notice something really nit picky. ("Leia uses a Mark TWO Y-wing, not a Mark ONE! Honestly, some people . . .")

 

Well, there is the story of why Vader has cybernetics. As I remember it, according to Splinter, the Emperor took Vaders arm for Vader taking off Luke's hand.

 

Interestingly, it was "Han Solo's Revenge" (also a book) that was supposedly the film some of the kids in our school supposedly watched abroad.

 

Huh, I don't remember that particular tidbit from "Splinter". Now that you mention it, though, I'm not sure if the book took place after "New Hope" or "Empire".

As an aside, the entire Han Solo series by Brian Daley was pretty rocking -- they could do a series of TV movies on those books and I think they'd be pretty well received.

 

Yes, I remember these two films, though I'd rather not. Our very young daughter LOVED them, and we were not always able to indulge our preference and leave the room when she watched them. How could Lucas make TWO incredibly crummy spin-offs from the very worst of all the Star Wars films? "Planet of the Care Bears", I think it was. I hope he made some money from them so someone is happy about it.