Watch 'Return of the Jedi' End Battle With or Without Ewoks
Are you one of those Star Wars fans who thinks Return of the Jedi would be improved by 100 percent fewer Ewoks? Or are you an Ewok lover who was horrified when George Lucas cut the “Yub Nub” song from the Special Edition? Either way, the internet has a Battle of Endor custom-made for you! In the video above, YouTube user PrometheusOfVideos edits together all of Return of the Jedi’s space scenes to create an Ewok-free vision of the climactic battle, culminating in the destruction of the Death Star II. In the video below, YouTube user Marcelo Zuniga isolates the battle scenes that take place on the ground, as the native Ewoks ambush the Imperial troops and Han Solo takes down their shield generator. The big finish: Leia informs an ecstatic Han that Luke Skywalker is her brother.
If you watch these two parts of the Endor battle in isolation, they almost feel like they’re from different movies. The space scenes ratchet up the tension with sparse dialogue and big special effects, while the sequence in the forest is dense with character and emotion. (Just admit it: That one dead Ewok gets you every time.) The exciting stuff is happening in the sky, but the heart of Return of the Jedi is on the ground — and both come together in the final confrontation between Luke Skywalker and his father, which neither of these videos includes. At the end of the day, George Lucas’s film just isn’t complete without both battle sequences. The “Yub Nub” song, however, is still debatable.
