Solo: A Star Wars Story

I've never heard a version of the story that he couldn't find tall actors. The decision was based on Wookiees being too technologically advanced for the thematic intent, and took place long before any casting considerations would have come up.
 
I have a bad feeling about this...

Originally I thought Alden was a good casting, but after seeing the trailer he just doesn't seem to capture the essence of Han Solo for whatever reason. Almost seems like a forced charisma. Ford is just so effortless. A natural. Hard to replicate.
 
Baloney. Han knew those spears pointed at him were sharp, and was ready to draw his blaster to show 'em who's boss. He didn't misjudge them. His mistake was listening to Luke.

But the point is, it never should've been written that way. It made Han look like a complete wuss.

Yeah, he might have taken out a few but he would have been soon overwhelmed and ended up being dinner. Luke realised his mistake with Yoda on Dagobah and played it much cooler. For mine, I felt no lesser of Han and it played out just right.
 
Yeah, he might have taken out a few but he would have been soon overwhelmed and ended up being dinner. Luke realised his mistake with Yoda on Dagobah and played it much cooler. For mine, I felt no lesser of Han and it played out just right.

One shot with that blaster--even up in the air--and they'd all have fled.

It was just poor writing.
 
Not that it has anything to do with Solo, but as far as real-world stuff for Ewoks and such...? Best I've been able to piece together from everywhere over the years is: George had hand-scribbled notes in notebooks, much crossed-out and revised from high school on. When he wrote the script for Star Wars, there wasn't anything like a fully-fleshed-out story. He took the elements of "Death Star" and "Wookiees" from the end of the story to use in this one film, because (he figured) it didn't matter. He was only going to be able to do this one, so there was no reason not to plunder.

So. Once he'd had to follow-through and do more Star Wars, once he'd gotten tired enough of it to cram the last four episodes into one (and forget about ever doing the Obi-Wan episodes), it seems to have been a perfect storm of creative and practical concerns. On the one hand, the question of finding enough tall people was brought up (but never explored, or they would have found, then as now, that there are plenty). On the other, George's ongoing fondness for making use of Little People is well known, and that factored in. On the third hand, the bit about Chewbacca having been developed far afield of the original thumbnail of his people factored...

So George decided to invert the Wookiees (literally -- "Ewok" pretty much just swaps the syllables) and make them very, very small instead of very, very tall. He further gravitated to the more teddy-bear-like designs for the visual disparity of these cute little things being what overwhelms the mighty Empire (a very brief skim of George's filmography instantly let's one know he's a fan of underdog stories).

I have many depressive 'what-ifs'. Expanding ROTJ back out into four episodes would have allowed so much more breathing room for the narrative. Keeping the Wookiees, as intended, as slave labor works. They can be technological beings, just denied access to technology by the Empire. Especially if they were transplanted to this world for the construction project. I, personally, like the idea of Our Heroes stumbling into where the Wookiees' children are being held hostage, to keep the adults in line. Left to themselves, they've gone all Lord of the Flies and capture Our Heroes. Could even still have Ewoks played by Little People as natives to this world, if you really wanted to keep them in the lore...

Anyhoo.

--Jonah
 
A shortage of 7ft tall actors would have been an issue to deal with. But I don't see that being a deal-breaker that kills the whole idea. Not for George Lucas in the early 1980s.

They could have done it with only a dozen guys tall enough. From there, they could have tapered the height down as the extras got farther from the camera. 6.5-foot guys as Wookies, wearing a couple inches of shoe lifts, etc. And the stormtroopers would have been the only good visual reference point for the height of the Wookie extras. They could have hired a group of smaller guys for the stormtrooper extras. It's not hard to find guys who are 5 or 5.5 feet tall with normal proportions. Make a batch of 85%-scale stormtrooper armor and guns for them.
 
I think it's only fitting to give Joe Johnston the last word in the Great Ewok Debate. Here's a ROTJ storyboard he did in 1982:


Johnston_82.jpg
 
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