OT : Episode II Trailer
quote:
Originally posted by Aleck:
The Ewoks were originally supposed to be Wookiees and (despite the typical George Lucas retro-fitting of his decision-making) were changed to cute, teddy-bear-esque creatures after the success of marketing the alien characters (especially Yoda) to children. The Ewok situation is based purely on greed and marketing potential, while they at least gave Jar-Jar some character and personality (whether or not that character or personality is *appealing* is another question, but they at least were able to create something that had more dimension than the Ewoks).
I don’t think the transition from Wookiees to another race was just to sell toys.
quote[quote]The Wookiee planet that I created for [i]Star Wars[/i] was eventually turned into the Ewok planet in [i]Jedi[/i]. I basically cut the Wookiees in half and called them Ewoks! I didn’t make Endor a Wookiee planet because Chewbacca was sophisticated technologically and I wanted the characters involved in the battle to be primitive.[/quote]
-George Lucas, [i]Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays[/i]
If you look at the development of the Ewoks in the concept art for Episode VI you’ll see that they weren’t always cute. The Ewaks [sic] were originally dwarfs, but fairly ugly. They then evolved to plain, then super-cute, then the semi-cute look that’s in the final version.
I think the final Ewok form was unnecessarily cute and possibly commercially-motivated, but it could’ve been worse (just look in [i]The Art of Return of the Jedi[/i] *cringe*).
Yoda also went through a Disney-esque stage before the now familiar look was created (by Wendy Froud, no less).
As for Jar Jar Binks and the Gungans, I don’t see them as being African-American. They aren’t all silly, either. Of Course Jar Jar is, but he’s not the typical representitive of the culture. He was an outcast, an atypical Gungan specimen with traits that the Gungan social majority despised.
People just dissect [i]Star Wars[/i] to the point in which they’re inventing meaning, rather than discovering it. Some say it’s predjudiced against Blacks, Orientals, even Jews (yeah, right). That’s nonsense.