In article
<kibo-ya02408000R0302970537530001@news.std.com>,
kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) wrote:
Stop trolling.
I just got back from the premiere showing of "The Ewok Movie:
The Special Edition," and I don't appreciate people joking about
this cinematic landmark. I liked the digital evil glowing eyes they
added to all the Ewoks. If you look closely at the end credits you
will see that the glowing eyes were done by none other than Nigel
Crickford-Swouth, whose last special effects job was removing the
glowing eyes from the British edit of the original "Village of the
Damned." He's the best glowing-eye man in the business, add or
remove, and I'm sure he appreciates this job after all those years
working at photo shops.
For thirteen years, the beloved fifth movie in George Lucas's
Star Wars cycle, The Ewok Movie, has
delighted audiences. After the incredible box-office success of the
first four films, Star Wars: Hope and Glory, The
Star Wars Christmas Special, The Empire Strikes
Back, and Revenge of the Jedi, what people most
wanted to see was more of those cuddly, troll-like creatures that
populate the forest moon of Yendor, the Ewoks. Their lovable antics
and practical jokes were a delight to science-fiction fans the
world over. So Lucas gave them more, in the form of a TV movie
called The Ewok Adventure, which eventually made it to
theatrical release as The Ewok Movie. Now, an enhanced
version of The Ewok Movie will be released everywhere
on April 1, trolling for viewers, and from what I've seen, it will
reel them in.
Not everyone who saw the other films went to see The Ewok
Movie; it was perceived as kiddie fare. Now, with the
rerelease of the first four films in "Special Edition" form, a new
audience, including many who were not yet born when The Ewok
Movie aired, can see this classic. The biggest surprise is
that the computer-graphic enhancements, limited to a few shots in
the other films (and the replacement of some hand animation with
"Reboot"-like CGI in the Christmas Special), are much
more extensive here. The story, originally a simple tale of
children lost on Yendor and befriended by the adorable Ewoks, now
has much grander, mythic overtones on the scale of the other
films.
It seems that the Ewoks' low-tech ingenuity, abundantly
displayed in Revenge of the Jedi, is the result of
their existing as networked "pack minds," communicating via
ultrasound to achieve human-level intelligence in groups of four or
five. The stranded children possess a great secret in their crashed
spaceship: a "Countermeasure" capable of producing great
disturbances in the Force, like a million washing machines becoming
unbalanced at once and then being silenced. A formless extrusion of
the Dark Side, emitted when the Emperor fell down the hole in
Revenge, has grown and engulfed several civilizations
near the rim of the galaxy; only the Countermeasure, extracted from
an ancient archive near the rim, can stop it, and a post-imperial
armada enslaved by the Dark Side is after the spaceship and the
children.
The thrilling race to Yendor, the Dark Side blight, the bloody
battles between rival factions of Ewoks on the surface of Yendor,
and the communications of the various participants via a Star
Wars-universe Internet are all depicted with new CGI. The
result is stunning, possibly the most serious SF yet incorporated
in the Star Wars series. They apparently got all this
new material from some novel called A Fire Upon The
Deep by a guy named Vernor Vinge that I never heard of. All
I can say is: Way to go, George!
I give it fifty thumbs up!