Mark Hamill Speaks Out On Horrifying Ewok Realization
Among the enjoyable elements of Star Wars is that you may have watched the movies a hundred times, and when seeing it for the 101st time, a question suddenly crosses your mind, that you haven’t thought of before. Something like this must have happened to the fan, who created this meme:
As funny as this question seems, it is not without warrant. The animated short Forces of Destiny: “Ewok Escape,” which is officially canon, shows us how Leia receives the brown dress that she is wearing while staying at the Ewok village before the attack on the second Death Star and then again at the end of the movie during the victory celebration: While on their way to the Ewok village, Leia and Wicket come across two stormtroopers, who threaten two other Ewoks. Wicket and Leia manage to knock the two Imperials out and, as a sign of gratitude, they give her the dress, nicely wrapped like a present.
But this doesn’t answer the question of how the dress came into being. According to the book Star Wars Costumes: The Original Trilogy, the concept is that the Ewoks make the dress for her and the actual costume is deliberately stitched in a way to make it look as if tiny little paws and fingers have created it.
But still…
“Ewok Escape” gives no indication on how long Leia stays in the tree village before she gets the dress, but as the rebels are on a tight schedule to blow up the shield generator, it couldn’t have been that long. Maybe too short to stitch a new dress?
Mark Hamill did actually reply to this tweet by stating:
On a surface level, Mark’s reply seems odd as he undoubtedly knows that the Ewoks had actually planned to cook and to eat Luke, Han, and Chewie at the banquet for C-3PO, if the golden god had not interfered with a little help by the Force. The furry bears are not necessarily man-eater, but carnivores. As Return of the Jedi itself, the two made for TV movies Caravan of Courage and Battle for Endor, and to some extent even the animated series from the '80s have shown, Ewoks are skilled hunters and not afraid to go against much bigger and dangerous foes. At the victory celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi, they play drums on some stormtrooper helmets, although it’s never indicated if at that point there are still skulls inside them. (The hollow sounds the helmets make imply rather not.) So it surely couldn’t be the idea that Ewoks might actually eat people that led to Hamill’s terrified answer.
So what he doesn't want to think about, might be the idea that his “sister,” the Princess of Alderaan, was wearing a dress that could be given to Leia, because its former owner had been eaten by the Ewoks, which actually is a disturbing thought.
Of course, this wasn’t the intention when Episode VI was shot, as the Ewoks were presented as lovely little teddies and not as cruel man-eaters. And there are other explanations for where this dress might have come from (apart from the Ewoks being really fast tailors). One theory says that the dress did belong to Cindel Towani, the little girl from the two Ewok movies, and she left it there when she flew away from Endor. Both movies are basically non-canon now, but before the sale to Disney, they were set to have taken place around 3 years after the Battle of Yavin, thus a years prior to the events of Episode VI. Cindel was 5 at that time, so the dress wouldn’t have fit her.
But of course, humans could have landed on Endor maybe long before that, and maybe there was a woman of Leia’s height among them that had such a dress. And maybe when she left Endor, the dress stayed back for unknown reasons, and the Ewoks kept it in case they might need it someday. Or maybe that woman even died on Endor and the Ewoks buried her and kept the dress as a way to remember and to present it to someone someday, whom they deemed worthy to wear it again.
Or maybe the teddy bears did just eat that woman…
Which brings up another question: if they intended to cook and to eat Luke, Han, and Chewbacca, shouldn’t they have undressed them and shaved off Chewie’s fur first? Burning clothes and fur on fire - what a terrible smell that would have been…
Source(s): Cinema Blend