Like a storyteller’s toe
Gosh, it’s hard to defend how terrible — yet catchy — the theme to The Ewoks cartoon is. It’s got the strange tribal sounds to it, someone who sounds suspiciously like Tone Loc singing the lyrics, and lots of allusions to family and goodness.
But The Ewoks was probably one of the strangest, darkest cartoons I remember from this time of my life. This is the show about the cuddly bears from Return of the Jedi, yeah; however, almost every episode in some way touched on themes of death, family loss, betrayal, power or failure.
- Family member at risk of dying because of a careless mistake? Check.
- Entire planet set on fire while the living embodiment of the forest reaches into the dreams of children and communicates its pain by setting the main characters ablaze in their own dreams? Sure.
- A nuclear annihilation analogy? You bet your socks.
The voice acting was way beyond what was necessary for a licensed Saturday morning cartoon — Jackie Burroughs as Morag was creepy and note-perfect, in particular. In looking at the writing credits, the pedigree there was far above where it needed to be: Paul Dini, for example, went on to shape Batman: The Animated Series as one of the best shows of the 90’s.
If only the theme did it any kind of justice.
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