Who should've won the battle on Endor: the Ewoks\Rebels or the Empire?
I was reading a blog today about how the Ewoks on Endor ruined ROTJ. Yeah, there was a time when I hated those silly little furballs....oh wait, I still hate them. But that's really irrelevant. What is relevant is that I want to cast my 20 cents into the fray. So here we go.

I mean on one hand, there has been talk about stormtrooper's armour increasing their survival chances; being able to block blaster bolts, rocks, arrows, toothpicks etc in combat and so forth....but hang on a minute! When was the last time anyone saw stormtrooper armour doing what it was supposed to do? In the entire saga, I have never seen Stormtrooper armour take a direct hit, a glancing shot, or a rock without its wearer being killed! Even rebel camoflage clothing on endor (princess leia anyone?) seems to be able to take laser fire better.

Then we've had GL's moral argument that the small guy, when his heart is in the right place, can defeat the big guy. Yes, it's a wonderful moral discussion, and yes we must allow for crappy 1980's film technology. But lets cast the morals aside for just a second. Seriously folks, didn't our friendly Emperor Palpatine say something like "An entire legion of my best troops awaits them!" Sounds kind of ominous doesn't it?

In Roman times, a legion meant 1000 Legionnaires, plus a number of support units like cavalry, artillery (catapults and ballistas) etc etc etc. To transfer that over (providing that people in the Star Wars universe can count) it means, conservatively, that there's somewhere between 1000 and 1500 troops standing at the back door waiting for...say 20-40 rebels and a few hundred, or even a few thousand ewoks. Then you include the sheild generator's garrison (add at least 1000 troops) and their supporting units, which included everyone's favorite vehicle of destruction, the AT-AT and its two legged cousin, the AT-ST. What your looking at here is not an overconfident bunch of fools that have underestimated the local populace but a well-supplied, fully equipped army that is prepared to take on all comers...except that their uniforms stick out in the green background.

So really, if you discount the morals that GL was putting forth, the rebels and the ewoks should have been slaughtered like cattle, and then the Death Star could've gone on to make Sushi out of the Calamari cruisers (excuse the rather poor pun).

NO WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone so far has forgotten something! Han Solo saying the following after Chewie's romp with the AT-ST: "Get down here, she's wounded!" (Chewie howls, and then Solo says...) "No Wait! I've got an idea". The scene then changes to our pal with the green lightsaber and the bowl-cut hair duelling it up with his old man.

When we finally get back down to Endor, we see a disguised Solo telling an Imperial Officer that the Rebels have been routed and they're fleeing into the woods. And here it is. Solo, being a General and a scoundrel, would've realised (big leap here) that they couldn't get into the base with brute force, so the majority of the ewoks retreat, drawing off those couple of thousand imperials that I mentioned earlier. And when a portion of those 3 squads (you can't convince me that 10 guys = 3 squads) comes out the back door...BOOM. Solo, a group of ewoks and some of the remaining rebels infiltrate the base and blow hell out of it while the rest of the Imperial garrison is outside marching further into the forest, getting flogged by landslides and logs and every other kind of guerrilla tactic in the book.

So, combining the deficiencies of Stormtrooper armour with the simple but (obviously) effective Solo ruse, the imperials were beaten not with brute force but superior tactics, luck (or the force) and good deal of stupidity on the half of that officer who said 'Open the back door.' Just quietly, that man is the real reason why the Empire lost the battle. If he just had of kept his mouth shut.....oh well, I digress.

Of course, all the above is really pointless because if you put George Lucas' moral battle back into the fray (which I think was a post production idea to cover up for the fact that Ewoks are little more than a budget cut and a stab at shameless marketing) then what you have is....well what you've seen. It's nice to hypothesize though.