What Jedi Mind tricks did you learn??

[Darth Macho]

So, you're saying they WERE prepping for this battle for months?  Enough time to set up the 2 traps I listed?

Because the movie certainly gives the idea that while the ewoks might not have liked what the empire was doing on their planet, the attack prompted by the arrival of Han and his team seemed to be spur of the moment as far as the ewoks were concerned....   Maybe the pile of logs rolling down the hill could have been a nasty surprise for a rival band of ewoks, but the 2 big logs swinging from the trees 20 feet above the ground would have no purpose other than to kill walkers.

Those traps didn't have to be set just for the Empire. I'm no anthropologist but I believe primitive men used to set up kill areas for hunting large prey... things like herding buffalo off of cliffs or hostile predators into preset pit trap zones. The rams could have been set to injure/kill one of those large predators I implied... or maybe they're supposed to frighten them with the noise of two logs slamming together, thus driving them into a kill area.

Their nets are huge. They live way above the ground. Their trees are large yet spaced wide. There's some big creatures living on the forest floor, and the Ewoks are deliberately setting traps to catch them.

Addendum: Of course the Ewoks had already scoped out the Shield Generator before Han & Co. showed up. The Ewoks planning a war against the garrison is quite plausible.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

So, you're saying they WERE prepping for this battle for months?  Enough time to set up the 2 traps I listed?

Because the movie certainly gives the idea that while the ewoks might not have liked what the empire was doing on their planet, the attack prompted by the arrival of Han and his team seemed to be spur of the moment as far as the ewoks were concerned....   Maybe the pile of logs rolling down the hill could have been a nasty surprise for a rival band of ewoks, but the 2 big logs swinging from the trees 20 feet above the ground would have no purpose other than to kill walkers.

Those traps didn't have to be set just for the Empire. I'm no anthropologist but I believe primitive men used to set up kill areas for hunting large prey... things like herding buffalo off of cliffs or hostile predators into preset pit trap zones. The rams could have been set to injure/kill one of those large predators I implied... or maybe they're supposed to frighten them with the noise of two logs slamming together, thus driving them into a kill area.

Their nets are huge. They live way above the ground. Their trees are large yet spaced wide. There's some big creatures living on the forest floor, and the Ewoks are deliberately setting traps to catch them.

Addendum: Of course the Ewoks had already scoped out the Shield Generator before Han & Co. showed up. The Ewoks planning a war against the garrison is quite plausible.

Sorry, that's stretching plausibility too far for me.  Primitive man was successful against really large prey without the need for all those elaborate setups.   Why spend a lot of effort on a one shot trap that might miss when you could have hundreds of archers in blinds on the trees....   One thing "primitive" people do well is use Occam's razor.  (Unfortunately a lot of science fiction writers fail at using it).

[Darth Macho]

Can't argue against the logs being impractical, but we're also talking about a culture that uses catapults and gliders in a forest. Ewoks obviously have some seriously crazy values and it isn't incongruous for them to also enjoy smashing tree trunks, or to spend weeks boobytrapping the forest just to screw with the Empire.

Anyway the battle itself was perfectly logical from a military point of view.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Can't argue against the logs being impractical, but we're also talking about a culture that uses catapults and gliders in a forest. Ewoks obviously have some seriously crazy values and it isn't incongruous for them to also enjoy smashing tree trunks, or to spend weeks boobytrapping the forest just to screw with the Empire.

The gliders could be rationalized as a survival skill, like flying squirrels...  But catapults in the forest doesn't make sense, how often would you have clean line of sight to your target?  It's almost like their culture was written by someone that didn't think too long about what real high forest dwelling people would actually use.....

Something like a wrecking ball would have been a logical weapon, could be moved between trees easily, not hard to re-target if you miss...  Would have also given some comic relief, just swing a big heavy rock around whacking storm troopers in the head...

[Darth Geek]

Can't argue against the logs being impractical, but we're also talking about a culture that uses catapults and gliders in a forest. Ewoks obviously have some seriously crazy values and it isn't incongruous for them to also enjoy smashing tree trunks, or to spend weeks boobytrapping the forest just to screw with the Empire.

The gliders could be rationalized as a survival skill, like flying squirrels...  But catapults in the forest doesn't make sense, how often would you have clean line of sight to your target?  It's almost like their culture was written by someone that didn't think too long about what real high forest dwelling people would actually use.....

Something like a wrecking ball would have been a logical weapon, could be moved between trees easily, not hard to re-target if you miss...  Would have also given some comic relief, just swing a big heavy rock around whacking storm troopers in the head...

Aaah! Don't give Lucas ideas!

[Cosmic Muse]

Probably because it was something he wanted to do originally but didn't have the technical ability to pull off at the time. 

As an amateur filmmaker you should know that just because you want to put something in your movie doesn't mean you should. Was Lucas watching way too many Bollywood movies or something before he dreamed up that hallucinatory scene? The entire movie comes to an abrupt halt for a scene that does not advance the story whatsoever. It's almost like Lucas was channeling the writers of the Star Wars Holiday special. If he wanted to create a Star Wars music video, he should have just made it a selectable extra, not added it to the movie.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Probably because it was something he wanted to do originally but didn't have the technical ability to pull off at the time. 

As an amateur filmmaker you should know that just because you want to put something in your movie doesn't mean you should. Was Lucas watching way too many Bollywood movies or something before he dreamed up that hallucinatory scene? The entire movie comes to an abrupt halt for a scene that does not advance the story whatsoever. It's almost like Lucas was channeling the writers of the Star Wars Holiday special. If he wanted to create a Star Wars music video, he should have just made it a selectable extra, not added it to the movie.

Or he realized when he got to RotJ that there wasn't all that much to "fix" or upgrade - in his humble opinion - but he'd promised that the whole trilogy as "Special Editions".  So he just threw in new stuff where he happened to think of it.

(I mean, do we really need to see the dancing girl hit the ground?  Doesn't that work a lot better when you don't see anything after she goes through the floor?)

[Cosmic Muse]

(I mean, do we really need to see the dancing girl hit the ground?  Doesn't that work a lot better when you don't see anything after she goes through the floor?)

I think the most amazing thing for me about Lucas filming a new scene with the actress who played the doomed Twilek dancer was that she hadn't aged a day in like 20 years.

[Action Batch]

- in his humble opinion -

Damn it Ducky, you broke my computer. My CPUs logic center screamed, and then shot itself.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

- in his humble opinion -

Damn it Ducky, you broke my computer. My CPUs logic center screamed, and then shot itself.

Send Lucas the bill.   

[ShadowDog]

Probably because it was something he wanted to do originally but didn't have the technical ability to pull off at the time. 

As an amateur filmmaker you should know that just because you want to put something in your movie doesn't mean you should.

Oh hell yeah!  I wasn't defending his choice by any means.  I was just trying to explain why he might have made it.  I could be wrong of course but it makes sense because I've felt the same things.  Fortunately the people I work with actually have the ability to keep me in check, not true for Lucas.

By the way, amateur filmmakers and indie filmmakers are not the same thing at all.  An amateur filmmaker is basically making home movies.  An indie filmmaker gets paid and is held to a higher standard, he's just not backed by one of the seven major studios.

[Cosmic Muse]

Oh hell yeah!  I wasn't defending his choice by any means.  I was just trying to explain why he might have made it.  I could be wrong of course but it makes sense because I've felt the same things.  Fortunately the people I work with actually have the ability to keep me in check, not true for Lucas.

I think that's the biggest issue facing the mainstream movie industry. A lot of people under the employ or seasoned filmmakers are so scared of questioning guys like George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg, who have proven in the past that they can make really good movies, whenever they make questionable artistic decisions due to their past resumes.

[Darth Geek]

Oh hell yeah!  I wasn't defending his choice by any means.  I was just trying to explain why he might have made it.  I could be wrong of course but it makes sense because I've felt the same things.  Fortunately the people I work with actually have the ability to keep me in check, not true for Lucas.

I think that's the biggest issue facing the mainstream movie industry. A lot of people under the employ or seasoned filmmakers are so scared of questioning guys like George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg, who have proven in the past that they can make really good movies, whenever they make questionable artistic decisions due to their past resumes.

Check out the great Cinester Theater iRiff of ET. It's got a bunch of great lines about that.
Uh, sir, we can't see the characters throught the trees.
Shut up! I made Jaws, dammit!

[Sharktopus]

Oh hell yeah!  I wasn't defending his choice by any means.  I was just trying to explain why he might have made it.  I could be wrong of course but it makes sense because I've felt the same things.  Fortunately the people I work with actually have the ability to keep me in check, not true for Lucas.

I think that's the biggest issue facing the mainstream movie industry. A lot of people under the employ or seasoned filmmakers are so scared of questioning guys like George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg, who have proven in the past that they can make really good movies, whenever they make questionable artistic decisions due to their past resumes.

Check out the great Cinester Theater iRiff of ET. It's got a bunch of great lines about that.
Uh, sir, we can't see the characters throught the trees.
Shut up! I made Jaws, dammit!

Spielberg founded his whole career on obscured action buffeted reaction shots of onlookers, which it's why it's so weird that Jurassic Park is just glory shot after glory shot of well-lit, unobscured dinosaurs. I'd love to see what Lucas and Spielberg could do if somebody took all their money away. It would probably be a great film.

[Darth Geek]

Oh hell yeah!  I wasn't defending his choice by any means.  I was just trying to explain why he might have made it.  I could be wrong of course but it makes sense because I've felt the same things.  Fortunately the people I work with actually have the ability to keep me in check, not true for Lucas.

I think that's the biggest issue facing the mainstream movie industry. A lot of people under the employ or seasoned filmmakers are so scared of questioning guys like George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg, who have proven in the past that they can make really good movies, whenever they make questionable artistic decisions due to their past resumes.

Check out the great Cinester Theater iRiff of ET. It's got a bunch of great lines about that.
Uh, sir, we can't see the characters throught the trees.
Shut up! I made Jaws, dammit!

Spielberg founded his whole career on obscured action buffeted reaction shots of onlookers, which it's why it's so weird that Jurassic Park is just glory shot after glory shot of well-lit, unobscured dinosaurs. I'd love to see what Lucas and Spielberg could do if somebody took all their money away. It would probably be a great film.

I agree. I think it would be a good creative challenge for them. Maybe recharge their batteries, like how Guillermo Del Toro does a small personal film in between the big studio ones.