Star Wars DVD: What's different?

[Ranger REG]

You're a Purist if you want Han to shoot first.

 

[Kai Lord]

Too bad he didn't invoke "artists' right" to remove the Ewok and insert the tree-climbing Wookiee of Kashykk, as originally scripted but could not be done in the early 80's.

Wookiees on Kashyyk were never scripted in Return of the Jedi. It was George's first *idea* for what would become the Endor battle, but he wanted the Stormtroopers to be defeated by a primitive culture, and wookiees had been established as being quite technologically proficient. So he decided not to go through with that and changed them to ewoks.

He specifically addresses the origins of the ewoks in an interview with Leonard Maltin at the end of the 1995 THX laserdisc release of Return of the Jedi.