Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15574 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-11-23
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 177 minutes

Customer Reviews

Why???
Man, I was really looking forward to this. "Ewoks on DVD? Sweet beans!" Ah, no. Instead of a standard DVD boxed set of the thirty-eight episodes in the series, we get, after years of waiting, a couple of poorly edited episodes stuck together and billed as a "feature film" just a few years after the same stunt was pulled on VHS. Hmmmm . . .

Seriously now: does ANYONE prefer these cobbled-together "movies" with about five separate plots to the ordinary method of NOT BUTCHERING the original episodes and packaging them together by season with the opening theme song and closing credits intact? Maybe if they made both versions available, but NO. We get stuck with the same crap that we can still get on VHS.

And as if this abominable amalgamation wasn't bad enough, they're not even releasing all the episodes in this format. Someone, PLEASE help me wrap my head around this logic. What possible reason can there be for not releasing all of the episodes, especially when half of the ones they are releasing, screwed up though they may be, were just released a few years ago? What is this, some kind of sick mental game? Will they wait until DVDs are obsolete and then start selectively releasing episodes AGAIN?

Come on, Lucasfilm, you're better than this. Almost EVERYBODY ELSE gets this stuff right; why can't you?

Looks like I'll just have to sit back and wait for "next time," whenever that may be.

Ewoks cartoon on DVD, sort of...
Don't take my rating wrong, I don't hate this cartoon, what I hate is the way Lucasfilm has handled the property. Basically what this release is is 8 episodes from the first season of the show cobbled together to form two very unbalanced animated films. What we do get is basically 8 episodes of the show with new adult Wicket voice-overs. What we don't get is the opening theme song, original end credits, and I have a feeling original music (though I guess I'll never know since this will probably be the only release in this format.) At least the "chapters" are labeled with the original episode titles. I know this sounds nit-picky and in the vein of the "complainers" of the ill done reissues of the Original Star Wars trilogy on DVD, but come on. What is the purpose of releasing an old saturday morning cartoon, almost certainly because the fans demanded it for nostalgia purposes, and then heavily editing it so that it has almost no feel of how it originally aired?

You know, for kids!
This DVD release will mainly appeal to young children who have never before seen the Ewok cartoons. For the nostalgists, they will miss the opening Ewok theme song, lament the cobbling together of eight episodes to create a two-part "feature" and the lack of a more definitive DVD release of all the Ewok cartoons.

Young viewers uninitiated to the Ewok cartoons will probably get a lot of joy out of these cartoons. They will not worry about what isn't included on this set. These are basically bright, good-natured adventures centering mainly around a young group of Ewok friends led by Wicket, the young Ewok from "Return of the Jedi". We also see more of the Ewok village and the characters who inhabit it.

The piecing together of four episodes is slightly disconcerting at times, but it is basically just eight episodes played out in a row, grouped together by similar themes. These are some of the earlier episodes and many of them were written by Paul Dini, a renowned comic book writer. The Ewok "villains" are never too frightening and are mainly portrayed as bumbling fools.

These are quality cartoons written and made with care. Complaints have come because those who remember them fondly are simply not getting enough of them with this release. They have a point, but if you are not willing to wait for a more complete release (this edition also lacks any Bonus Features) then this release can be quite satisfying, especially if they are to be given to children.