TheoOdo said:
...Perhaps a subtitled Admiral Ackbar or newly voiced Ackbar could be used to explain that the planet the Death Star II is orbiting is in fact Kashyyk and not Endor.
The enslavement of the wookies can be explained visually, if as the imperial cruiser in which Han, Luke, Leia and Chewie are riding arrives it flies over a clearing in the woods in which wookie slaves are toiling in a quarry, surrounded by stormtroopers. Chewbacca looks out on them on growls mournfully.
Everything else can be explained via subtitles (Chewbacca, on principal, would not be subtitled) and using the occasional grab from the radio series to fill in gaps of dialogue from 3P0 and Luke. A simple *growl* subtitled as something along the lines of "You should not have come back, exile" or something to that effect could be used to explain Chewbacca's relationship with this particular group of wookies.
I guess for monolingual people, the idea of two different individuals carrying on a conversation, each in their own native tongue, doesn't seem so odd. But for those of us who know two or more languages, the idea is so awkward, words fail to explain it. Imagine seeing an American and a Mexican having a long indepth conversation with one another, the American speaking in plain and fluent English, and the Mexican speaking in plain and fluent Spanish, but yet they seem to be communicating with each other just fine. ???? As far as I know, this only ever happens in the first Star Wars movie and even more so in fanedits of the other ones.
I have always felt that the scene with Han and Greedo talking was a bit ridiculous, and later the same stupid, bizzare, retarded idea was used again in the Han Jabba conversation. Utterly ridiculous. If Han knows Huttese, why the hell would he just not speak in Huttese, or if Greedo know Engish, why not speak it. Speaking multiple languages myself, it is really hard to speak in one language, then suddenly switch to the other. I cannot even imagine having such a conversation as Han has with Greedo.
This issue was thankfully fixed in Return of the Jedi, where we have Leia speaking to Jabba in Huttese, or with Threepio translating. Fanedits brought the dumb idea back by having Jar Jar speaking in his language, while everyone else spoke to him in English. Makes even less sense, how would so many people know Jar Jar's dumb obscure language? When two aliens are having a conversation in a single language, this subtitle idea works just fine. The idea of having Ackbar explain things in subtitles while everyone else listens and understand him just fine, to me, is creating an even bigger problem than we already had.
That said, while I don't mind Ewoks too terribly, the Wookie idea is really cool. But I think it would be close to impossible to get it to match up with the original footage in any kind of a reasonable way. Convincing Wookies would also be quite a challenge. Also, how would you get shots of Chewie growling mournfully? Or of Chewis having a conversation with his former tribes men?
I have always thought of the Wookies as more of an advanced race than animal skins and spears. Probably I picked this up from the EU books were they are said to be fantastic mechanics and pilots. Even in the Holiday Special they are not depicted as primitive, despite the fact that they live in trees.