Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.
And I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're getting into that Star Wars. That Star Wars gunk. I got a question. We were sort of chatting about this before we hit record today, and I feel like we've got to recreate this moment. I was wondering, you remember when the Force Awakens came out and there were some Star Wars fans
who were very angry about various things. One of the things they see that some people were angry about was that I believe the people who now owned the rights to all the Lucas Star Wars properties had declared that a bunch of extended universe stuff, so a lot of the Star Wars books and all that was no longer canon. It didn't really happen in the Star Wars universe. And what I was, what I'm now wondering, is were they also angry that the events of the Ewoks movies didn't happen?
Or were there people who were like just furious spamming the internet with spoilers for the movie? Uh? Because like Wilfred Brimley didn't really live in that hut in the woods, and the like the the beaver teeth Ewok creature didn't really run and fast forward and all that.
Teak you mean Teak, Joe Teak. Don't act like you don't know Teak's name.
Well, I was confused about Teak because it sounds in the movie like they're calling him Teak. But when I looked him up on the internet, people were calling him things like Tege, like his name had a J in it. So I'm very confused now. But you're right, my ears, my ears heard Teak.
Oh okay, well, yeah, he's Teaked to me. And I guess that comes down to my feelings about canon when Star Wars, which I think i've I've expressed here before, is like I'm kind of like, build your own cannon, you know, you know, for the purposes of enjoying it all, Like just accept what you want and and you know, be happy about it.
But I have to have a corporation tell me what really happened in the Star Wars universe.
Uh, you know, I mean I can see where it's valuable for storytelling purposes, and I understand why they they did it when they took the multi tiered Lucas cannon system where it's like, you know, a class cannon and be like the film we're discussing today, I think was technically C cannon, and instead Disney came in and just said, all right, we got cannon and we got legends, and canon is what is, you know, the official story that
we're building new stuff off off. But of course they often go back into legends and draw things out, pick out characters and events and weapons and things like that, and bring them in, bring them back into the fold. And so I mean, you know, so I feel like I feel like there's not too much to get upset about. But but I'm I try to be more easy going with the Star Wars universe.
Well, obviously C and C canon stands for cool as hell, because this movie is really really cool.
Yeah, and it's fitting that we're recording this shortly before Thanksgiving because after we picked it, I realized, oh, this was the thing Like this came out like on Thanksgiving or for the Thanksgiving holiday on ABC television back in the eighties, back in nineteen eighty five. So really we're partaking of a holiday tradition right now.
Right, So, once again, like last week with Boggy Creek two and the legend continues, we're covering a sequel colon subtitle film without covering the original. So the movie we're talking about today is the made for TV Star Wars movie Ewoks Colon The Battle for Indoor. But that's actually a sequel to another Ewoks movie. I don't think I've seen this other one.
Yeah, I mean I can give you the very brief rundown of the first one, Caravan of Courage, which came out the year before eighty four on ABC Television around Thanksgiving, and it had a pretty simple plot. Basically, it followed Sindel. That's a little girl, the little like super blonde Shirley Temple girl that is in both movies, followed her and her family and their adventures after they crash landed on
the forest moon of Indoor. Indoor, for those of you who don't remember, is of course, the pivotal location in the second half of the Return of the Jedi. This is where the Empire puts their shield generator to protect the second Death Star that they're constructing.
Wait, sorry, so this is a moon, right, This is not a planet. It's a moon of a planet.
Right, Yeah. Basically Indoor is a gas giant and this is a habitable moon, like a like a Hella habitable moon. It's lush. But anyway, they crashed there. I think there has always been some confusion about whether these films take place before or after Return of the Jedi. Like, I think they're sort of supposed to be taking place before, but then there are questions like, well, how does Wicket already know English or basic or whatever you're calling it, you know, or does he forget it and then have
to learn it again from Princess Leah. But at any rate, on one end of the other a Return of the Jedi, this occurs. They crash there. The the parents are kidnapped by a giant creature called a gore Ox, which is is actually something that that McCrory designed for Return of the Jedi, but it didn't get used. It's like a giant ogre thing.
So Corey, who we talked about in Boggy Creek. Wow, yeah, connections again, man.
Yeah.
So, so basically, the Ewoks and the kids have to go on a journey to save their parents from this monster. They pull it off, and that's the movie. It's it's it's fun. It's a fun little film. But that is all you need to know for this one.
Now, if that is, if that is the Aliens of the Ewoks canon. Battle for Indoor is the Alien three of the Ewoks canon because it starts off basically killing all of the beloved characters from the previous film.
Yes, it does.
Like Base Basically, it starts off with the family hanging out with the Ewoks, getting their their ship ready to go so they can leave Indoor, and then a bunch of marauders show up, these humanoid warlike creatures with battered like just you know, their blasters are just held together with like dirty gauze and dirt.
You know.
They come and they raid the village. They take Ewoks and the human children hostage, and all of Sindell's family except for her are killed by the marauders. So it's just really a brutal start to a kid's movie.
Do you like Paul Gleeson? I hope not, because he dies in the first few minutes.
Yeah, and a centeray. Paul Gleeson didn't play the dad in the first one, so he was cast in the role. Paul Gleeson for those of you who don't remember, he was the principal in The Breakfast Club.
That was like his big role.
He was in some other things too, but yeah, he's in it for just a very short stretch and then he's dead.
Classic jerk authority figure of eighties movies.
Yeah, but the.
Movie also, so the movie, it sort of begins like Alien three, it kills all the beloved characters from the previous film, but then it also sort of begins like Conan the Barbarian, because it starts with basically space thulse doom, just rating an Ewok village and then taking a bunch of prisoners. It even some of the shots look kind of similar, though in a slightly cheaper and less dramatic, less Wagnerian way. I was thinking about how the the
bad guys in this. I like that the look of them is kind of simultaneously like skeletal orangutan, but it's also sort of insectoid, right. They've got they've got faces that are a cross between like an ant and an ape.
Yeah, these the Marauders have, I think, ultimately an interesting character design. In later works, I think they are also referred to as the the Sanni asens. That's supposedly their species, but in here they're just basically they're the marauders. We'll probably just keep referring to them as the marauders, but yeah, they're a little bit, a little bit apy, a little bit reptilian. They ultimately make for really cool space orks. You can think of them as space orcs.
I guess works. Well, wait, maybe before we get too deep into the plot, I'm sorry if I threw off the sequence here. Maybe we should like give the elevator pitch and look some trailer audio, a little bit of background, and then we can fully break down what happens in this beautiful adventure.
All right, Well, here's the pitch. A young girl loses their family to brutal space marauders and a witch on the farthest moon of Indoor. We'll get into the witch in a minute. She teams up with a tribe of ewoks, an old hermit, and a rabbit like speed demon creature to survive. Or if you'd rather, you can look at it the other way and say, this is a movie about a grumpy old man who rediscovers his zest for life thanks to a little girl and her two stuffed animal friends in space.
In space, it is Wilfred Brimley on the dank Moon of Indoor. Yes, let's hit that trailer audio.
Somewhat at the end of the Galaxy, two friends were about to say goodbye.
That's until the forces of evil threatened their lives. Don't look just run fast, run, and together they face an incredible adventure beyond imagination. You my little one alcohol study.
All right.
I like how we got some roars in there, because there are a lot of creatures to roar in this film.
Yeah. Oh, there's some really good, big nasty creatures that are ridden like like you know, like Hannibal's elephants, but they look more like Tyrannosaurus rex tadpoles, you know what I mean.
Yeah, the blurgs.
Yeah, is that what they're called.
Yeah. Yeah, they're a lot of fun. Because this is an example we were talking about things that were rejected from Cannon and then brought or brought back in because this was the show up in this film for the first time. And yeah, they're big t rex guppy mounts
that the Marauders are using. They would later be brought back in the Clone War series, and then they were brought back in the first season of The Mandalorian, so they they effectively made their jump back into live action Star Wars in Cannon.
Okay, I want to know how this thing got made? Ewok's the Battle for Indoor. We're so this came out after the original trilogy, right? It came out after Return of the Jedi. Right. That's okay, So the whole the whole original trilogy had already been released. Fans are already familiar with the dank forest Moon of Indoor. They're already familiar with the Ewoks, the QDs space Bears. How do we get to this? Was George Lucas involved at all?
Yeah?
Like he was the He was definitely behind it. I believe he is the story credit on both of these films. And you know, I'm not I'm not pretty to the full breakdown or the full Wikipedia entry on how it came to be. But I mean, basically, this was an attempt to continue dipping into the Star Wars universe, very specifically Indoor and the Ewoks, by telling smaller stories with
them in a way like that's the same brilliance. Well, I don't know if it's brilliance here, but I would say that the brilliance that you see in the Mandalorian where they're like, let's tell smaller stories in this universe. Like, this is a big universe with a lot of cool stuff in it. Let's carve out a smaller area and tell something there.
Sure. I mean, that's a great way to expand on a setting and a world you've created. That's very nice. You don't always have to be blowing up whole planets. You could just have like a little spy stories set within that universe or western Yeah.
Yeah, and this also it's.
I don't know what it is in this case, it's Conan the Barbarian set in that universe.
Conan and the Barbarian for kids, I set in that universe. Yeah, it's And again I think it also is important well you know that. Yeah, there's room enough to tell not only different size stories, but stories with different audiences in mind.
So ultimately, like the Star Wars universe is vast enough, you can tell the story of Rogue One, which is you know, I think more of a spy story, yeah, and war story for older fans set in the universe, and then you can tell this story, which is skewing a lot younger.
Yeah, Rugue. One's more like John Lecare in space and this is this is Conan the Barbarian meets Et, but it's a little bit cheaper in space.
Yeah.
Now, one thing I want to drive home about these films, especially for anyone out there who maybe isn't isn't my age or older, you have to realize that, Okay, this came out in eighty five, that's one year after the Caravan of Courage movie that we just mentioned, two years after Return of the Jedi, and there would not be another Star Wars movie on TV or in cinemas for
fourteen years. So to put that another way, three Star Wars movies come out before the two ABC television Ewok films, but nine films came out afterwards as of this recording, So if you're my age, these films were just not things you could ignore. These at the time comprised forty percent of the Star Wars cinematic experience, so that's one of And also, as our producer Seth brought up like they were on TV, so there's a good chance that you or someone you knew taped them, so suddenly it
is a repeatable experience. And I'm certainly one of those kids who who definitely had repeat viewings of the Battle for Indoor. I probably saw it more than I saw Empire or Jedi growing up.
Wow. So did you also have the thing where it had certain commercials that had been taped along with it and you just memorize those commercials like the holiday special with the Lady Garment Workers Union commercial and Towbar.
I don't remember it, So maybe we were savvy and edited those out. I don't know, or I meant, I can't imagine they actually presented it without commercials at the time, but I don't remember the commercials. I think I would because I fondly remember some taped VHS commercials.
Okay, so we're living in a world where this is forty percent of Star Wars canon or at least whatever C canon or whatever he's calling it. So who actually directed this thing?
So it's a team two brothers directors and writers here, Jim and Ken Wheat. And there's some fun connections with these two because they had previously worked with great On Clark on his nineteen eighty film The Return. They wrote the screenplay for that.
I haven't seen that. But if The Uninvited is any indication Graydon Clark is somebody whose career is worth exploring.
A couple of other films that they wrote the screenplay for or involved in the evolution of the screenplay writing were A Nightmare on Elm Street for The dream Master and The.
Fly To Oh wait a second, Wait a second, So I forgot Grayton Clark directed The un not the Uninvited, The uh without Warning, the first house cinema movie we did. That completely slipped my mind. I'm sorry.
Yeah, everything comes back to I apologize. He's the Alpha and the Omega he is so So those are two notable films, definitely not kids films, but then another. They also wrote a screenplay titled Nightfall that went on to become a film called Pitch Black. So anytime you watch a Riddick movie you will see their names in the credit because they were involved in the original screenplay.
Oh that's really funny, you know. I wouldn't say Pitch Black is a great film, but when I actually went back and watched it, it was much better than I was expecting. It has plenty of charms that still hold up.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of some of the like the cuts and the edits in the it feels it feels very to me anyway, it feels like music videos at that time. Yes, in a way that can be jarring. But that being said, I think it's a solid space monster movie with a little a little maybe the Machies mo is is ratcheted up to a level that is not not my go to level, right, but but I enjoyed it.
But it also is an early indication. You get that glimmer of why Vin Diesel would turn out to be such a big movie star. I mean he is. He's just imminently lovable, even when he's playing a really bad dude.
Yeah.
And of course the cool thing about Riddick too, is it. I mean the first film was that it was pitch black, was a necessary precursor to Chronicles of Riddick, which, as you know, is my favorite Vin Diesel film.
I know your love of Chronicles of Riddick. We actually watched this one together and the what are the they called the necromongers in it?
Yeah, where the bow and armor.
They look kind of like space Kurgans. It's good, but okay, we've been we've been burying the lead here. Okay, So the really important thing about this movie personnel wise is the big W. B. Wilford Brimley.
Yes, that's right. Wilford Brimley plays his character Noah in it. This is the grumpy old man that is key to the film. Brimley is is interesting casting in this and it is It's it's kind of weird to think about Brimley as a cinematic icon because when you think of him, you think of oatmeal, you think of cowboy hats, you think of these rugged everyman rolls. Perhaps that's the thing.
That's the thing here is that I feel like I mostly know him from the big science fiction films that he was in, namely John Carpenter is the thing, but also he was in Cocoon. He was also in some horror movies here and there as well. And granted he had some huge roles in some totally non weird films like Sidney Pollack's The Absence of Mallein for example. He's really great in that.
He's in the firm. He plays like a like a bad henchman for the evil lawyers.
Yeah, he so it's weird.
He's like he's great at playing like a rural, grumpy rural dude or like a grumpy lawyer dude. Like, it's weird how a character actor you know, will fit two molds that in real life.
Or maybe a little further removed.
I don't know, but yeah, in this he's clearly intended to be some sort of Heidi's grandfather sort of character, a grumpy old man whose heart is melted by a little kid. And he's the This is interesting. He's the rare Star Wars character who wear spectacles.
Oh, I did not think of that. That's an interesting point. Yeah, is there another no one cares to mind?
No. I mean there are characters that sometimes wear strange goggles and whatnot, you know, sort of sci fi goggles. But in terms of someone who's just straight up wearing glasses, I can't think of one offhand.
It's like a class of two. It's Wilford Brimley and Maskatana.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Maybe there's some extended universe stuff where he his eyes. Because the thing is his
character is stranded on the planet as well. We come to learn that he and his buddy with Sarah Crash landed on Indoor some unspecified number of years ago, Like it seems like maybe like twenty twenty five years maybe but maybe in that time his eyesight went bad and he had to like find like ancient ruins on the on indoor and find eyeglasses that had been constructed by a long dead civilization I don't know, or maybe he just wore eyeglasses I don't.
Know in the Pyramids of Indoor. Yeah. Yeah, Well, so you say he's like Heidi's grandpa kind of character. He absolutely is that. But I would say the actual closer analogy within the Star Wars universe. And this is going to sound strange at first, but he's the Han Solo character in this movie. He's the person who is in initially gruff and grumpy and self interested, but comes through in the end because he made friends and he saves the day.
Yeah no, I think that's fair. Yeah, he's he's kind of the Han Solo, an older rounder Han Solo with but certainly it has that journalist flare rather than you know, he's not a specialist. I would I would think if he was a Dungeons and Dragons character, his class would be action grandpa, because yeah, he's good at just fixing stuff and tinkering with stuff, but he's also really good with a with a walking stick, and a grappling hook gun.
That's right. Yeah, yeah, so he's walking stick guy. But then at the end he busts out some real martial arts.
Yeah, he's able to hold his own against an alien warlord that seems to be about eight feet tall, so you know he's he can come through in a pinch.
Now, this movie also has we mentioned. I guess this might be the only character that is carried over from the actual films. It has Wicket the e walk who. I don't mean to be mean about this movie, because I did really enjoy it, and you know, I'm sure it's great for kids and all that, but something looks a little bit wrong with Wicket in this movie. In Return of the Jedi, Wicket the Ewok is cute. In this movie, he has Manson family eyes. I'm not sure
exactly what's different it. I guess it's the same costume, but he has this terrifying blank stare that I don't recall from Return of the Jedi.
Huh, I don't know. I didn't pick up on that as much.
In this by beep beep, beep, beep beep, we have an incoming message from Seth. Seth has has knowledge we don't have about wicked eyes. Guys.
I'm very very very sorry to interrupt, but I know this just from watching too many documentaries about the many small changes that have taken place in the updated versions of all the Star Wars movies. You know, one of the big things they did for a Return of the Jedi was no, no, I'm sorry, is that even the right name of.
That movie, which was the third movie, Return of.
The Jedi, Return of the Jedi. You got it that, I have those correct in my head. Return of the Jedi. One of the big changes they made was they went in and very subtly made all of the Ewok's eyes less creepy. From very subtle blinks. They gave them life,
so they weren't actually looking like a little buttons. So, Joe, this is fascinating to me because you might actually have a vision of the Special Editions now updated in your mind their eyes look less creepy, when in reality, maybe this version of Wicket is the true version of Wickets.
Oh my god, what this is what we.
Actually knew perhaps back in the eighties pre Special Editions.
I don't know though, Oh thank you, Seth. Well, now I consider myself just fully shamed because I'm on record not Well. Then again, I don't like a lot of the stuff they did in the remasters, but a lot of the changes they made, for example, an Empire are good, you know, like the new Wampa and all that. That's good stuff. So maybe this is one of the good ones too.
Could be well, yeah, if it's done right, you wouldn't notice, right, and so that this is one you don't notice, So it makes sense.
But is Wicket in this movie still Warwick Davis?
Yeah, it's totally Warwick Davis. Warwick Davis is is is wicked and and always will be. But but it is interesting to watch him in this film knowing as Warwick Davis because in in when he's playing Wicket, there's really not much to the role, right, I mean, there's it's a physical role. You know, he's doing a fair amount
of tumbling and whatnot. But considering Warwick Davis's place in you know, his subsequent career, he feels kind of wasted in this because of course he would go on to to be you know, he would be Willow, you know, the star of that Lucas fantasy film. He would be the Leprechaun and the Leprechaun horror films. He was in the Harry Potter movies playing various I think gobblin creatures. So he has all these other roles, sometimes not even playing a magical being, just playing a person.
You know.
He has proven himself to be a you know, a good actor, a solid So it's it's interesting to watch this and know that he's you know, there's there's this, there's this future acting talent just sealed in this suit.
I mean, he does a lot more with this role than you would than you would expect to be possible, because, to be fair, Wicket, there's not much on the page for Wicket in this story we were watching. Rachel commented halfway through the movie, Wicket is a yes man, and that is absolutely true. Wicket mostly in this film is just there to be like yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes, this is true.
But he also is kind of like he has his Jack Burton moment at the end because he comes through. Oh yeah, it's needed, he comes through. Oh yeah, well he comes through more than once. There are a few times where he proves himself, you know, the fighting powerhouse of our adventuring party here.
M hm. So despite the scary glassy eyes and the lack of substance for the role on the page. I think Warwick Davis does a great job playing Wicked in this.
Now, another person of note in this film is the witch Charyl I believe her name, is played by Sion Phillips, probably the most seasoned actor in the whole production. She's She's a Welsh actor, probably best known for playing Reverend Mother guyas Helen Mullhem in David Lynch's Dune.
You remember her, Oh yeah, you will? You will feel Mike, I'm jabbar.
Yeah, yeah, she's Yes, she's fabulous in Dune, a weird movie we should probably come back to, because even even if you strip away the dune in Dune, there's plenty of just additional Lynchian weirdness in that film. But yeah, she's great in that. She was also in Iclaudius, she played Cassiopeia in Clash of the Titans, and she also just did a ton of British TV work, seemingly, you know, most of it historical sort of stuff.
So I have a question about this character. She shows up, she's wearing like a metal corset, and she she looks kind of like, what's that there's a character in Mortal Kombat who she kind of reminds me of. I'm not quite sure what she was called, but she's got like long hair and she's evil.
Well, confusingly, the character you're thinking of in Mortal Kombat is Sindel, oh, which is also the girl. Yeah, Sindel. Sindel is the girl. Sindell is the evil version in Mortal Kanbat.
Okay, but yeah, so she looks kind of like that. But then she's a witch like she she has sorceress powers, and so that makes me wonder in the context of Star Wars, does that mean she is a force user?
Yes?
So okay, yeah, So this is where it gets complex and geeky again because within the context of this film alone and It's time, she just seems to be a magical witch thrown in. She's the Witch of Indoor, get it, you know? Biblical?
Oh yeah, exactly, So she should be calling up the prophet Samuel to give a give an omen for the battle.
I guess. So, I mean it's kind of what she does. That's kind of a role here. We can sort of see the inspiration here, but subsequently it has been retconned, I think to understand that she was a.
Rogue Night Sister.
So Night Sisters are female practitioners of the Force, female force sensitive individuals who use the Dark Side and are capable of great magic. In many cases. They're native to the planet Dathomir, which is also the planet that Darth Maul's species comes from, and basically in the Clone Wars animated series, and I think some in Rebels I don't
recall exactly. Mainly in Clone Wars we see these Night Sister characters showing up and playing an important role and at times working with or working against the interests of the Sith.
But so there, Well, she's got power is that no other Force user ever has in Star Wars like she can transform into animals. Anakin Skywalker couldn't do that. Even I don't think Yoda could transform into an animal.
Now, I mean this is but it does feel in keeping with Night Sister magic. Like the stuff that the Night Sisters do in the Clone Wars series are more or more like straight up magic, you know, like bringing things back to life, necromantic acts, that sort of thing. That being said, I do admit like in this film, she feels, she feels like something other than the Force even if she's ultimately using the Force.
I don't recall anybody in this film mentioning the Force. You wouldn't know the Force exists, right.
Yeah, she's she's like a straight up witch in this film. And I say that Phillips isn't given a ton to do with this role. But but she's good. I would have liked to have seen more from her character, but she still she plays a great witch. She has a really awesome costume, and the effects are really nice when she transforms into a because she already has like a
rave any feathery cloak and all. And she has this magic ring that seems to contain the magic she uses, or focuses the magic she's using, We're not sure, but it plays an important role later on in the film.
So she's one of the main villains. But then the other main villain is the leader of these marauder aliens. I was when we were watching it. I kept calling him thulsav Room. So he's the guy who leads the bad guys who show up at the village at the beginning and screw everything up, and he wants power and he wants there's like a I don't know how to explain the plot, but I guess we'll get into that
in a minute. But there's this piece of technology from a spaceship that he wants because he thinks it'll give him power. So he's the same species as these other marauders, meaning he looks kind of like a reptilian insect orangutan skeleton type creature, but also with certain angles his silhouette and his face hair because he's got this cool beard. He looks like James Randy looked in the eighties. Did you notice this comparison picture of the amazing Randy like
on Johnny Carson in the seventies or eighties. It's it's this guy. It's Terrek.
Huh.
I didn't get that as much as I got kind of a faint like George C. Scott vibe from him.
Oh wow, that's a very different direction.
But yeah, this is this is Terrek, the towering warlord of the Marauders. I also say that, even though all the Marauders tend to look pretty good, clearly Terrek, when you're the ruler of a group of marauders, you're gonna get more screen time. You're also going to get more of that FX budget. So while sometimes the guys in the background are look maybe you know, they look all right. Terrek looks really good, like the makeup effects are really well.
Done on him.
Yeah, I agree.
And he's played by the towering Dutch actor Carl Strucken, who would who went on to play Lurch in both nineties Adams Family movies as well as the Giant on Twin Peaks. And he's been in a ton of stuff. And I think he did the voice of Terrek as well. I was looking at the credits to see if they were doing that thing where they have a different voice
actor for a very physical role. But I think this is Stroken doing the voice as well, and it's his deep, you know, giant voice, and it's it's quite effective.
You know. Where he really looks great, even better than in the movie is in this poster you showed me for the movie that you found where it's like holding a big sword. He's like this the Darth Vader in the original Star Wars poster, towering over everything, looming in the background. Though, I have to say also, and I know you you pointed this out as well, this poster is extremely misleading about what's in this movie.
Yeah, And apparently this was like the home video video version of the poster too, like this, this was not just pre product stuff like this. They were like, it's good, put it on the VHS and send it out, because it does have a whole bunch of weird things that clearly show that it was created prior to the completion of the movie. Like, I don't know where to begin here. For instance, it has a giant teek. It's got multiple space ships in the background, even though there's only ever one it has.
There are space battles in this movie, but yeah, it makes it look like there's going to be.
Yeah.
It also shows a han solo looking character with a blaster on the front that I think is supposed to be the dad from the first movie. But yeah, it makes no sense here because he played even the dad in this movie plays no real role.
Yeah, whoever this is, this is not somebody in the movie. Yeah.
And then you have you have Wicket Antique there standing battle ready. But then you have a Sindal there holding a big old knife, like a big dagger, like she's ready to jump into combat and start stabbing a maroder in the neck.
That is not indicative of what happens in the movie and she it looks like I don't know. I wondered if also in this depiction they're trying to make it more ambiguous that she might be a boy.
Yeah, yeah, I can see that too, like if.
They were like, oh, we need to make sure that boys want to watch this, so don't want to give them the impression that the main character is a girl.
I'm glad the Blurg made the cover too, though the Blurd's in the background totally.
And there are these mountains that I don't recall being in the movie, these like snow capped peaks. Is that in the film?
I don't think so, I don't remember any mountains. Now there's like.
A cliff at one part, but I don't know we can get into that. Okay, well, maybe we should just give a brief outline of the whole plot, so you know the shape of the thing. So we've talked about how it starts at you know, this Conan, the Barbarian beginning the villages rated the humans Sindel the little girl.
By the way, I don't know if I mentioned this already, but I had to look it up because they've got this actress name to Aubrey Miller playing Sindel, the main character, the girl, the blonde girl, and clearly they wanted Drew barrymore right. This came out two or three years after ET,
and they were like, let's get Drew Berry Moore. But maybe they couldn't afford her or something, so they were like, well, get us the Barry Morris kid you can find, And I think that's how we ended up with this main character here.
You know, there's apparently a fan theory that Sindel grows up to be Captain FAsMA from the sequel trilogy. What. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing canon or anything here, but some fans put that together and I think they what's your name, Gwendolyn Christie, She's also yeah. They was like, yeah, they're both blonde. Maybe the math works, I don't know. And also this does seem like the kind of experience that might harden you towards a life serving the first Order, so it kind of makes sense.
I don't know.
Oh right, So the idea is she's exposed to these roving bands of marauders. She's like, it's just chaos out here. We need order, we need orders, So she's sign up with the Empire, try to bring law.
Order to do this traumatic experience. Yeah, and what direction do you go in? She ends up going going that direction. So I don't know, I don't think it's I don't think anybody's gone so far as to do a treatment of that, uh in a you know, in novel form or anything, or short story form, but that would it would be interesting to see how that might be stitched together.
Yeah, okay, that's very interesting, though my mind is set
on it. So, Sindel her human family, they're living with the e walks there, Paul Gleeson, her dad, is working on this spaceship, trying to repair it or something, and then they get attacked by the marauders and then just all the humans except Sindel are killed and uh and and so the leader of the bad guys, thulsav Room, he obviously wants some kind of canister from out of Paul Gleeson's spaceship and when he you know, he he tries to get it and he's like, the power, I
have the power. And then this is also where we meet the sorceress. And then Sindel and her Ewok buddies are captured by the marauding creatures and Wicket promises to take care of her. He says, Wicket, take care of Sindel. So he speaks in the third person and invokes his own name. He's like a very cute teddy bear, Bob Dole. And then the Ewoks escape the marauders who have captured them.
Wicket and Sindel get away, And this movie very much continues on the theme that's established in the Return of the Jedi that while the Ewoks may look extremely cute and like living teddy bears, they are also highly resourceful jungle gorilla warriors. They're like the Vietcong of Indoor. They know how to use the environment. They set traps, you know, they've got very clever tactics for the landscape.
Yeah, when they are fighting on their own terms, on their home turf, they just can't be beat. They can take out the Galactic Empire as long as they're fighting within the forest of Indoor and using guerrilla tactics.
Yes, so Wicked and Sendel escape. And this escape sequence involves what appears to be teleportation. Do you remember the spart where they're just running through the woods and then it just cuts to them most of the way up a cliff.
Face.
I don't know if something was edited out there or if they're like, ah, people get the point.
It feels like that was this cut for time a little bit there. Yeah, but it's otherwise a great escape sequence because there's like this, you know, they cut a hole through the bottom of this cart. They have this cart that is being pulled by a blurg and the cart seems to be made out of blurg bones and hide.
So I was like that, and yeah, then they're on the run and two marauders are after them, and they managed to like duck into a cave and like Wicket basically like straight up like murders, the two marauders that are after them like the well, now I guess he does. And I think the marauders, through their own reckless islands, managed to dislodge some boulders that then fall on them and you know, make them fall to their deaths.
Yeah, that's right. They get knocked off of the pass of Carodras.
Yeah.
Then they encounter a dragon condor and they have to battle that and she gets snatched away by it. Yeah.
They go into a cave and is Wicket trying to build a hang glider. I think he's just building one out of bones and hides and stuff. Very cool.
Yeah, I mean that's the other thing to can mind about the Ewoks, Like, yes, they're using like stone age technology, but they have mastered non powered flight, Like they can build a functional glider and just go for it.
Yeah. So he builds that, and then they accidentally disturb a dragon. And then what is the deal with this dragon's chest? It looks like it's wearing a vest of some kind. Do you remember this?
I don't remember the chest to the drag. I mainly just remember it's you know, he has kind of like a snaky condory head.
Uh huh. Well, okay, So the dragon grabs Sindel and flies off with her, and then Wickett has to rescue her, which he does by like making the dragon drop her and then flying down and catching her after she's been dropped in a physically implausible scene. But it works. You know, it's fun.
Yeah.
But one of the things that I noted this maybe extremely brief monster science note. When they watch the dragon flying away, there's this part where they show a planet looming over the horizon and it takes up literally half the sky. I guess that's supposed to be the gas giant that this moon is a moon of Yeah, but I was like, that just looks too big. That is
implausibly big. Though it did make me look up. And I think we've sort of talked about this on the show before when we were talking about the moons of Jupiter. But there are moons you could stand on in our Solar system where if you look at the planet that this is a moon of the planet, would look much bigger than things we're used to seeing in the sky.
For example, if you stand on the surface of the innermost major moon of Jupiter, the Galilean moon Ioh, which is very yellow, sulfurous hell, lots of volcanoes erupting all the time, you stand on the surface of Io and you look at Jupiter, Jupiter would not take up half the sky, but it would be very big compared to like stuff we're used to seeing, like the Sun or the Moon. You can usually, I think cover up the Moon if you extend your armfully and you can like
cover it up with one finger. To cover up Jupiter from the surface of Io, you'd probably have to use your whole hand. So it's bigger, but it's still not the whole sky.
Right, I guess I didn't notice as much. Maybe, I mean I didn't think about it. But I've been playing this game No Man's Sky a little bit.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's funny.
Yeah, fun beautiful game. You're exploring planets landing on it. But there's a lot of that in this game, yes, where you land on some strange, beautiful world and the horizon is just ridunculous. Yeah, like gorgeous. But yeah, if you start thinking about the relative size and distances involved, it's a bit much at times.
But so in Sindel, they're out in the woods here after they've escaped, and then then they meet the real star of the film, which is a tricksy beast with scruffy fur and beaver teeth that runs on fast forward. And this is Teak, who we've already alluded to. Teak is just the best Teak is.
Yeah, he's awesome. My wife thinks he has frightening teeth. I don't think he is fright He has very He's very rabbit like, both in his dental mechanics but also in just his overall form. He's this kind of like little rabbity fella that runs around at speeds that must make him the fastest creature in the Star Wars universe.
Here's the real question. Is Teak an ewok?
I don't think so.
No.
I look, according to Wookipedia, his species is Teak.
So maybe the new season of The Mandalorian, we'll have a baby Teak.
Oh Man.
I would love for Teak to show up again in some form or another. I feel like he was an absolute joy. It's, you know, very much a It's an interesting story with Teak because it's very much a little person in a suit, very well done, very well acted. The suit is in the like the puppetry that that moves, the facial features is is just very well done. I
totally bought Teak as an actual creature in this. But the some of the lore apparently is that Wilfrid Brimley apparently can be difficult to get along with and for starters. I don't think he liked the directors on this, and so if somebody else had to direct him in all of his scenes. But on top of this, Peak was going to originally be either exclusively a puppet or it was going to be a puppet more of the time, and Wilfrid was just having none of this. He's like,
I am not acting the opposite a puppet. You get a person in here in a suit, I'll act against a person, but get that puppet out of here.
That's just perfect. Well he's like a puppet. That's witchcraft. You know. He doesn't like it at all. But anyway, this alludes to the fact that the Teak and Wilfred Brimley are a duo. In this movie. Teak leads Sindell and Wicket the e walk to the home of Wilfrid Brimley. Again. The character's name is Noah, and we meet Wilfred Brimley and he's very ornery and he tries to send them away. He's like, you can't stay here, get out of my house, and the little girl's just like, well, he's just a
mean old man anyway. But he makes them depart the Kingdom of Brimley. So they sit outside being sad and pathetic. They're like, we're cold, we're hungry, and he's like, well, I'm a mean old man and I don't care. But then his heart, with some urging from Teak, his heart eventually melts and he lets them into the house and they share a fire and then he becomes he becomes nice grandpa instead of mean grandpa. Yeah.
I was watching this movie with my son and he was initially not having any of this. The this Noah character is like, Yeah, this guy's awful.
He is mean. I don't like him.
But then yeah, he has a rapid change of heart, and then he's all in for the rest of the movie.
Speaking of the resourcefulness of the Ewoks, one of the things that I really enjoyed was there's a scene where Wicket makes a fire with a bow drill.
Yeah, it's weird. The domestic scenes in this film are some of my favorites. Like they just warm my heart in a way that I can't fully explain. But just the scenes where they're just setting around eating or cooking or playing music together, like these are just, I don't know, they're just they're just totally warm experiences. Yeah, I think I like those more than anything else.
There's a lot of puppets eating food or I don't know if they I guess the facial puppetry of of Teak and stuff that I guess that would still be puppetry even though there's an actor playing Teak. But like the uh, there's the scene where they're eating a pie made out of flowers. I didn't fully understand that, like they gathered flowers. They're like, we're making pie, and okay. But then so after all this, you get these nice
domestic scenes. They share a fire, they eat flower pie, and then we finally cut to the Castle of Pain. It shows these these stone towers. I don't know what castle they used to film this at, but it's this nasty castle where the skeleton orangutan insect creatures live and the raven sorceresses there, and they're all hanging out trying to do some kind of magic spell on the canister
from Paul Gleeson's spaceship. But I didn't really understand this either, But maybe it wasn't supposed to make sense.
I don't know.
I probably thought about it way too much because I think what we have here is that the Marauders at some time in the past themselves crash landed on Indoor, and at this point they no longer I suspect that the Marauders were more of a primitive society on their home world, like maybe they had achieved you know, like iron age or or maybe Bronze age technology before they got sucked up into galactic affairs, you know, forced to be a warrior, cast by some group or another, and
just thrown in over their head given technology that they don't really understand but figure out how to use effectively, like the blasters that they have, you know, that are all just again held together with dirty gauze. There are a couple of scenes of one of them setting around drunkenly tinkering with some sort of electrical contraption and electric
uting itself in the process. So yeah, you get that sense that they sort of know how the technology works, they know it well enough to use it, but they don't understand other concepts. So at some point in their past they might have understood that they need a power sell to give them the power to return to orbit and return to galactic affairs. But at this point, you know, maybe it's generations afterwards. All that has survived is this idea that if they get a hold of a power cell,
that is the power. And so Terrek believes that he no longer understands it in in terms of technological power, but in terms of like personal cosmic power, personal magical power.
Through the decay of the lore over the years, what was initially a technological utilitarian need has become a religion. We need this object of power in order to give us basically the magic to do what we want.
Right, And as far as the castle goes, I interpreted that as being like ruins that they found, like those are the ruins of some even you know, some previous Indrian civilization that was snuffed out or expired.
Okay, yeah, I guess that would make sense. So they're trying to work their magic and it's not going well. And then as we come back to Wilfred Brimley, Sindel and Wicked and Teak and they're in the problem. Well, actually, they find out that Wilfrid Brimley himself has a crash spaceship. Seems that there are a lot of crash spaceships around here, and he's been trying to repair it. Right, is he's been working on it for all these years?
Yeah?
Yeah.
Basically, Again, the comparisons between this movie and No Man Sky are tremendous because you land on a planet No Man Sky and they're just crash spaceships everywhere, and that's kind of how it is here. Yeah, So he has a crash spaceship, but he has he's been working to repair it, but he does not have a power cell.
So and then in the process of discovering this, the characters just get more and more sappy toward each other. Wilfrid Brimley gets all sweet and he opens up to the child and the e walk. He gets Sindel to sing a song at one point, and I don't mean to be mean to this child actor, but it is so bad, like Wickett can barely pretend to clap at the end of the song. Another thing I noticed that. So you mentioned that the cart made by the Marauder creatures looks like it's made out of bones, and you're
right about that. Maybe it's made out of the Blurg bones. Sometimes Wilfrid Brimley's hut in the woods also looks like it's made out of bones like that, Like that's stone age mammoth bone hut we talked about in an episode not too long ago.
Well, I mean, it seems like there are various megafauna on the planet that can be butchered and made into houses.
But it's the forest moon of Indoor though, like they're not hurting for lumber.
Yeah that's true. Yeah, why there's wood everywhere. Why build anything out of a bone?
Yeah, interesting, I wonder. But anyway, so one morning you get the third act kicks into gear because one morning Sindell is lured out of the house by something that she thinks is the sound of her mother's singing, and then Wicked and Wilfrid Brimley go after her, and Sindell comes across this weird fairy type lady in a flowing white dress who's out in the forest with a white horse. But of course it's a trap. This is the Sorceress,
the witch from the beginning. She snatches Sindel and rides off on a horse to the Castle of Pain.
Yeah the horse turns black and then process oh.
Yeah, yeah uh. And then thulsav Rooum wants Sindel to use her magic to make the stolen canister work, and she of course doesn't know how to do this, and then he has a meltdown and throws her in a prison cell. But there's a there's a rescue scene that kicks off. So Wilford, Brimley, Wicket and Teak they they sort of gear up and they go to the castle on a mission of rescue. There's a grappling hook infiltration. This whole infiltration scene with with Teak, I think is really fun.
It is, it's it's it's a lot of fun because you got you got the grappling hook going in. It's you know, Teak is your stealth specialist flying ahead. There's a oh, there's a there's a wonderful scene where where once they are inside and just getting in is pretty exciting. But then they they all three stack up on top of each other and put a cloak over themselves to pretend to be one marauder to in order to pass unnoticed through their drunken meat hall.
Yeah. Well, the bad guys are doing this thing where I guess this sometimes happens, especially in kids movies, where the bad guys are all hanging out and they're having a big old feast and they're eating and drinking and they're just constantly emitting non stop, growling, maniacal laughter, and it makes you wonder, what are they talking about? What's so funny? It's just non.
Stop Yeah, yeah, I don't know what they're talking about. I mean, clearly they're talking about. I mean, there's that one guy who's working with electrical equipment, so maybe there's a lot of like insider techie humor on his end, but everybody else is just drinking and laughing.
Yeah. But then Wilfrid Brimley, Wicket Antique free the Ewoks and Sindell from the Castle prison. The escape sequence reveals that Ewoks once again, they're pretty handy with blasters in a pinch, and everybody escapes via a zip line, and then they do the thing they do, the thing that Kevin McAllister does in Home Alone, where the bad guys try to come on the zip line after them and they cut it so they fall into the moat.
Yeah, the acid moat?
Oh is it? Is it acid or does it have some kind of creature in it? I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be piranhas or if the liquid itself was harmful.
Oh yeah, they're a little they're a little vague on that point.
There's something in there that bubbles and messes you up. Oh, and there's a great line I love when they're reunited. So we find out that Wilford Brimley had a friend that he crash landed on this planet with and and his bones are there in the Castle of Pain. And when they when Sindel and Wilford Brimley meet back up, Sindel says to him, I'm sorry about your friend. They killed him for the power thing.
And there there is Serah's bones, like just bones just basically it's been a high school science display.
Yeah, like really dry bones, like they look fossilized. So I don't know along Wilfred Brimley supposed to have been there, but yeah.
Now and when they're when they're freeing the ewoks, an important thing is that there's a second there where the witch. The Witch is locked up too, we've learned, and all this of the Witch is is is as much a prisoner as they are in many ways, like Carrot keeps asking her to release the magic and she can't do it. And there's this confusing scene when they're still locked up where the Witch is like like talking to a Sindel and says, well, why didn't you release the magic when
you asks you release the magic? Did you try waving your hand over it or something? And it seems it's a confusing sequence that, more than anything in this film, forces me to do a lot of mental gymnastics to make work, because if she she's like this magical being, like where does she come from? Like the night Sister excuse like that seems to work for a lot of this. You can say, well, she's a you know, a forced sensitive individual from another planet like everybody else in this scenario.
She got stuck on this planet or got stuck with the Marauders at some point or another. But she clearly knows about spaceships. She that's revealed later. She you know, she's she, I guess, knows about a wider universe. So doesn't she realize this is a power cell? The best I can do to understand this is maybe she's just been in with the Marauders so long. She's like she's gone mad. She's like bought into Trek's madness, into thinking that the power cell has magical properties.
I don't know.
That is an admirable retcon rob you. You've come as close as a person could.
Come, because otherwise it's a real I say, it's a real weak point in this particular script. But at any rate, they Seendel refuses to let Wicket free. Her says no, she's evil, and swats the keys out of his hands, and then go down to the sewer, and then and then Once the good guys have escaped, the Marauders come back. They act for a second like they're just gonna gun down the witch in the cage, but instead they free her and they're like, yeah, come with thus, and you're
gonna we're gonna get this thing back. She transforms into her raven form, but after she does so, Terrek takes the magic ring off of the ravens claw there and puts it on a necklace around his own neck. Presumably this means she cannot change back into her human form until she gets that ring back from Terrek. Oh.
Okay, I didn't understand that at the time. Now I do. That makes sense. But Terrek also seems to maybe is he getting power from the ring or something? I don't know. Is it like is it like the one Ring?
I don't think he gets anything out of it. No, until in the very final scene with him, he gets it in all the wrong ways, which, well, right, we'll touch on.
So the Marauders then chase our heroes. They chase Wilfrid Brimley, Sindell, and the e walks an Teak, and the heroes are going to remember Wilford Brimley has a spaceship that's up on cinder blocks in his yard. They're going to that and Wilfrid Brimley is going to do something with the power cell. I think he's going to repair his ship, and I don't know they'll escape or something. But there's of course there of course has to be an Ewok battle, just like in Return of the Jedi, and there is one.
So the Ewoks battle the marauders in the woods and they use traps and they use the environment and it's much like the Return of the Jedi scene.
Yeah, it's marauders versus e Woks, and it's pretty good. Lots of traps going off, and then eventually Noah gets the ship's defenses running, so he starts busting out. First of all, there's like this enormous blaster cannon on the side of the ship that folds out and starts taking
down enemies. And then there are also these two what seemed to be open air gunnery positions, Like they're not completely enclosed, so either that's a flawed in the whole design or they're only intended for use steering, like while the ship is in an atmosphere or something. But at any rate, they've got like three gunnery positions now, I think, adding to the use of traps. And they have a catapult, which of course ends up firing an Ewok at a Marauder at one point, right, he gets in on the action.
There's a wonderful scene where he starts a little fire underneath one of the Blurg's feet. He starts a Blurg stampede.
I mean, since he is essentially the flash, he would think he would be pretty useful in a fight. He can like fast forward run to any position.
Oh yeah, he wraps he fast forward vine wraps the Marauder to a tree at one point.
Yes, there are lots of vines that That also makes me think about how the spaceship is not only so, the spaceship that's up on cinder blocks is covered in vines that look very flammable. When they start shooting the lasers, it looks like, I don't know, it looks like a fire hazard. But of course, the as you might expect, it's a yubnub. The humans and the Ewoks win the
battle against the Marauders. And yeah, but then the bad guy Trek He even after the battle is over, he captures Sindel and he tries to bargain with Wilfrid Brimley. He's like, give me the power, defy me, and she
is doomed. And then Wilfrid Brimley and Tulsa Thulsa room duel, so it's Soared versus Walking Stick, and for a second it looks like Terrek is gonna win, but then Wickett uses his sling and hits I guess the jewel on the ring on Terrek's necklace that he got from the witch, and for some reason, hitting that with the sling or the stone from the sling makes Terrek get just crispified. He just sort of like burns up and turns into an ash husk.
Yeah, it's a great petrification scene because it's like it hits the ring. And then Arrek has this moment. You know, he's wanted power this whole time, he wants magical power, and now he's gotten it, and you know, not from the source he was after, but here's the power, and it just just fries him like a charp oil, like just chah charborl like it, like you just put him in the microwave too long, just turns him to this smoking ash and stone and it's it's a pretty great sequence.
And then afterwards, like the wickets trying to get too close to it, and Noah's like, don't, don't, don't, don't even look at it, don't get close to it. It's just like just an unwholesome affair.
It doesn't taste as good as he smells. But then of course they fly away, Wilford, Brimley and Sindel evacuate the planet. The Sindel is now a child of space, and I don't know what happens after that. Maybe they go on adventures, or maybe Sindel joins the Empire.
Yeah, like that would make sense if you go the Captain FAsMA direction. I think they were going to do a third one of this. I've seen rumblings about that that originally there was going to be a third e Wok movie, but it never never came to fruition. So one can only wonder.
And so that's the end. Yub nob yub nub.
I care and just Teak stay behind.
I don't remember.
I should know that.
I think take stays. I think Teak is a child of Indoor like the Ewoks, and should not leave.
If Teaks had been made to fly they would have been born with power cells.
Yeah.
Also, what happens if Teak is on board a ship traveling at warp speed and then he runs at full speed back through the hallways.
Oh, that's one of those good relativity questions. Man, I wish I'd thought of this ahead of time. We could have worked that out.
That's homework, homework for your listeners who want to do some deep thinking there. So in terms of you know, deep thinking about this one again, I think my main area of contemplation is just about the role of different species at different technological levels within the galactic community of Star Wars, because just in this film, just think of all the different technological levels we encounter, Like there's there are the e Walks, which again seem to have just
peak Stone age technology at their hands. We have them who again probably didn't have a tremendous technological achievement level before they were seemingly thrust into galactic affairs. So you almost kind of I almost have to pity the Marauders, you know, because did they how much, say, did they have in the current state of their species. You have the possible medieval level technology that we see in that castle of some I guess forgotten or extinct species that
may have lived on Indoor at one point. You've got people like sind Sindell's family and Noah who are part of the space faring community at large, but having crash landed, having lost some of their technology, are well on their way towards just being a living at a lower level of technological achievement, you know, like Noah has become an old man in a hut cooking over fires instead of a spacefaring adventurer.
Well, this makes me wonder if maybe Indoor at the time of the Star Wars movies is in a dark age kind of like after the late Bronze Age collapse, where you'd had these big empires that were developing urban centers and trade and technology, and then something happens, some
kind of environmental collapse. Maybe there's a collapse of you know, just a confluence of different factors, you know, military invasions, famine and that kind of stuff that leads to civilization level collapse and then a lot of knowledge of how to do things is just lost.
Yeah, and the Marauders may have played some role in that, either as you know, as a faction or you know, mercenaries who were brought in to be a part of this this this situation, and of course eventually the Galactic Empire itself does show up, you know, they they show up in Return of the Jedi, but they have a very strategic and surgical interest in the Moon of Indoor. Like they they are seem to be only interested in establishing a shield generator base to protect the second Death Star,
which is being built within that system. Otherwise, I don't think they particularly care what the Ewoks are doing. They don't care if there happen to be a band of marauders on the other side of the moon doing their thing. They don't care if there's some other random shipwrecked individuals. They have a task to take care of. So anyway, that's some just additional stuff I was thinking about, as well as just wondering how fast Teak is in relation
to everything else. I will say that this, of course is a topic that gets a lot better treatment in other works, you know, I mean, it's part of the whole prime directive thing in Star Trek.
I know. Ian M.
Banks gets into the affair amount in his culture novels. It's, you know, once you start populating a fictional galactic community with different species at different technological levels and then interacting with each other, You're going to get a lot of these questions, you know, and a lot of it. A lot of the reason I think that we contemplate that is, of course, we see examples of similar interplays having happened
on our own planet in human history. What happens when, you know, from when one more technically technologically advanced society interacts with another one, you know, typically, uh, it's it's not a good situation, especially for the lower technological level society. But you see some interesting scenarios happening, such as the cargo cult scenario that we mentioned previously on the stuff to Blow your Mind episode in our interview with Werner Herzog.
You know, uh, you know, the idea of people encountering a higher technological level society, a higher technological system, and then being changed by that, but also surviving that encounter as well. So, yeah, there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of deeper thinking here to consider in terms of you know, very very technological level interaction in a galactic community.
Really, don't we all just want the power? We all just want the power thing. That's the power thing. Give me the power thing.
All right.
Well, you know, in terms of where to watch this film, I really wish I could tell everybody that you can just just sign up for Disney Plus and watch a you know, a nice remastered cut of the of both Ewok movies alongside all the other awesome Star Wars content there. But the thing is you can't. Yeah, you can't get it on Disney Plus. I think you can still pick these films up on DVD and a cool double pack.
I was looking around, and yet you can. You can buy them, and some of the prices are not unreasonable if you if you know where to look. But I had to watch this on Russian YouTube, so that sadly might be your only option.
Yeah, as long as we're admitting bootleg experiences, I watched this movie a while ago on one of those versions that tries to avoid copyright detection by like putting it in a window within a window and having like fish swimming around it all the time and weirdly zooming in and moving on stuff. So so so kudos to the people who put that amount of effort in to steal movies.
But I mean, check around when you're listening to this, hopefully, But if you're listening to this, though, like months later, Disney Plus will have added these films. I hope that they do, or that some other legitimate means of watching it will be available I think at some point on Amazon Prime. Yeah, yeah, I mean I would I would have I would have bought these suckers earlier if I could.
So.
Yeah, good luck finding it, But people want it enough that it's going to continue to be available one way or another, hopefully legitimately available in the near future. All right, Well, on that note, we're gonna go ahead and finish up this episode of Weird House Cinema again. Weird House Cinema is our special Friday episode. Our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind are still very much science and culture and those are still publishing on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
This is a little extra fun that you get at the end of the week to listen to if you want, or you can skip them, or you can note what the movie is, go watch the movie, come back. You know, there are multiple ways to enjoy Weird House Cinema or not. Of course, we want to hear from you. Are you enjoying what we're doing here. Do you have recommendations for the future, but especially if you have thoughts on the Ewok movies, particularly the Battle for Indoor. Did you watch
it as a kid like I did? Did you have have a well worn VHS copy of it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, your thoughts about how it fits into the broader Star Wars universe.
Everything is up for grabs, huge things.
As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radios, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.