Re: Star Wars Rants
Personally, I don't see what's wrong with either Ewoks or Gungans. Neither was particularly bad, and both served their respective purposes. Taken for what they are, the two species do well enough that no one has yet convinced me that either of them should be forgotten about entirely.
Gungans existed to serve as the only real problem on the world of Naboo. They're native, the humans aren't, and rather than try to discuss this, the gungans just hole up and keep contact with the outside world to a minimum. They're xenophobes, taking their misunderstanding of the humans on Naboo to mean that all outsiders are nothing but trouble. In and of themselves, they're a fairly advanced race with an interesting (if draconic) culture, rather like Star Trek's Klingons, if the Klingons preferred keeping to themselves rather than running about and conquering things left and right. They value honor and loyalty above all else, and to hide the weakness of fear, they act aggressively towards the unknown.
The reason everyone hates Jar Jar so much is because he was an idiot. That was how he got to be in the group in the first place: The gungans didn't want him in their city anymore because he was stupid and clumsy. He was a danger to anyone living in that bubble city. Still, that's not good enough reason for me to hate the entire species. It just demands better writing to make the character less ridiculously pointless. As it stands, he's a waste of CGI. The only things he does to help the group is to introduce the Jedi to the gungans in the first place, which could have been done by Amidala herself later in the movie (though that would have felt forced and awkward), and take them to the gungans' secret hiding place. Aside from that, he's pure comic relief, which shouldn't have been necessary had the writing on that film been up to the standard set by A New Hope.
As for the Ewoks, I'm pretty sure they don't exist purely because 5 year olds like cuddly things. Seems to me they're around to be a relatively dangerous set of total primitives, a threat to both the Rebels and the Imperials, without looking overly aggressive. They're cautious and curious, and were there as a challenge to the Good Guys to overcome, which they managed. One of the few useful things 3P0 ever accomplishes, too. Then they go on to be the army the Rebels need to back them up, and while the idea of using a small bow and arrows on stormtrooper armor is pretty stupid, the rocks and logs were pretty good ideas. Seriously, though, there was no way they could have known what to expect, and they did a rather nice job of salvaging that fight. It just went on a little longer than was necessary. As for the point about there being only one visible ewok death, my guess is that the point of that overall scene was to show that the imperial forces were overwhelmed. I didn't see anything to make me think the ewoks existed specifically to entertain younger audiences or to be annoying.
I will, however, state that I don't really take most of the specific events of the prequels to be cannon. I prefer to think of them as 'the basic idea', and fill in my own mental blanks when it comes to things like dialogue, Anakin's personality, etc. Bothers me that the 'good man' Obi-wan remembers was nothing more than a psychotic jerk with no redeeming qualities.