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Will star wars ever be free of token cute/comedic relief characters like jar-jar Binks, ewoks, etc?
Jar-jar wasn’t well received and George reacted as if people had insulted his first love.
Ewoks were introduced to appeal to children.
Which got ridiculous.
“Emperor’s best” elite troops defeated by bug eyed teddy ruxpin toys.
And the trashing of canon.
Vader wanted more power, became a sith: episode 4.
Vader wanted to save Padme, became a stupid dupe: episode 3.
Already accomplished pilot when I met him: episode 4
Pod racing plastic toned kid whose great piloting accomplishment was “do a barrel roll”: episode 1

R2-D2 was cute. And the Jawas. Some people find Yoda cute.

Star Wars (A New Hope, Episode IV, whatever, for those into bizarre revisionism) was popular because it stole some ideas from classic sci-fi that the general public wasn't familiar with, had a few (a very few) new ones, and actually had special effects that convinced you that the Secondary World was possible ... even real. The Empire Strikes Back was popular because it was a great film, largely because George Lucas was in the middle of a divorce and had little, if anything, to do with it.

The rest of it was mostly crap. Did George Lucas even see the first two films?

Anyway, J.J. Abrams treatment of Star Trek has been respectful without being slavish, and it hasn't really been filled with PC junk; typically he and his writers are interested in a good story more than a political line (although, Person of Interest was unfortunately in weird territory from time-to-time in Season II.)

We'll see. One out of three original Star Wars movies were good. The rest were awful. That's not a very high bar.

Will star wars ever be free of token cute/comedic relief characters like jar-jar Binks, ewoks, etc?

I really hope so. As a tangent, I have always maintained that one of the main reasons why the Nolan Batman series was such a huge success is partly because Nolan got rid of the camp in Batman. No nipples on the suits, no silly jokes, no silly villains (Mr Freeze Arnold anyone, or crooks on rollerblades and hockey sticks), etc. Getting rid of the camp, and adding a dollop of realism - as much reqlism as can be expected from a superhero movie - did a lot of good. For instance the second movie in the serieswas more or less a terrorism movie (in the vein of The Siege) with a gangster sub-theme thrown in ....just that the protagonist dressed up as a flying rodent. Keep the script, take out Batman references, and put Bruce Willis in while changing it to Die Hard, and the script would still have worked!

Back to Star Wars ...make it gritty and real. As real as one can make something set in space and featuring force wielders. Get rid of talking teddy bears and long-eared idiots. Recipe for success ...assuming of course that the script is gold.

Will star wars ever be free of token cute/comedic relief characters like jar-jar Binks, ewoks, etc? Jar-jar wasn’t well received and George reacted as if people had insulted his first love.
Ewoks were introduced to appeal to children. Which got ridiculous. “Emperor’s best” elite troops defeated by bug eyed teddy ruxpin toys.

Good points. The series peaked, I think, with "Empire Strikes Back". From that point on, story line, dialog, and plot were sacrificed to marketable toys and special effects for the purpose of special effects. (What the heck was the point of that whole long-running pod race scene in Episode I?)

At the time, the Ewoks were created because even after all the money made the idea of them being Wookies was still too costly.

Notice that Yoda in Episode 3 (?) was with the Wookies.

But yeah, they sell better as teddy bears. And in the movie the word “Ewok” was never uttered.