Revisionist History Of 'Return Of The Jedi'

While recently listening to a podcast debating the merits that episode one of the Star Wars saga, The Phantom Menace, is better than Return of the Jedi, the sixth episode, a repeated argument between those debating the topic was that similar to many of the childish jokes and immature characters like Jar Jar Binks found in The Phantom Menace, the Ewoks of Return of the Jedi were created for children.  The only problem with this "argument" is that it isn't true.  Although the introduction of the Ewoks might have certainly been beneficial from a financial standpoint as it would sell a lot of toys to child viewers, that certainly wasn't the reason for their inclusion.  Instead it is a different financial reason.

In reality, the moon of Endor, where the Ewoks were found to be inhabiting, was supposed to be the home of Wookies, which is the same species of alien as Chewbacca.  The only problem was there weren't enough actors to have a clan of Wookies join the third act battle and the costumes would cost too much to create.  Instead, George Lucas changed the Wookies to Ewoks, resulting in numerous dwarves being used and little costumes being much less expensive to make.

So in reality, George Lucas' wasn't yet the hack director who turned a beloved space opera franchise into a child's Saturday morning cartoon political soap opera.  He was still just a writer making things up as he went along, who was limited by technology and budgets because he didn't yet have a computer smart enough to build all the characters for him.

Don't blame the Ewoks on children.  It isn't their fault.