Review: Star Wars – Skeleton Crew
A long time ago in a suburb far, far away…
I guess it was only a matter of time before Disney found a way to make a show about Star Wars fans getting the chance to pick up a lightsaber. That’s essentially the idea behind Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, a new family series debuting this week on Disney+.
Taking the look and feel of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin productions of the 1980s and grafting it to George Lucas’ space opera, there’s not much more to the show than “what if The Goonies, but Star Wars.” But as a child of the 1980s, I have to admit that idea has a lot of nostalgic appeal, and even if the execution is a bit flimsy, there’s still a lot of fun to be had in this space pirate adventure.
Of course, even Disney can’t bend the rules of the Star Wars universe enough (yet) to pick up some kids from modern-day America and send them to Tatooine. The adventure picks up in the years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens – roughly the same timeframe as The Mandalorian – on a planet that looks like a Lucasfilm-designed subdivision. We first see our young protagonist Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) playing with Jedi action figures before heading out to engage in a pretend lightsaber duel with his best friend, Neel, who’s one of those blue elephant-looking species. When they, along with classmates Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and KB (Kyriana Kratter), stumble upon what they believe is a hidden Jedi temple, they go exploring. But what they thought was a sacred place is actually a ship that launches them into space and then hyperblasts them to the middle of the galaxy. Their only hope of surviving space pirates and getting home comes from one-eyed droid SM33 (Nick Frost) and a prisoner (Jude Law) who claims to be a Jedi but whose past might be a bit shady.
I’ve seen the first three episodes of Skeleton Crew, and it’s passable fun, especially for kids. Directors Jon Watts and David Lowery have studied the look and feel of those ‘80s Amblin films (I’m sure Stranger Things was also on the producers’ mood board) and they saturate the show with flashlight beams, deep shadows and shots of their protagonists looking to the skies in wonder. Star Wars’ collection of sand planets, ice moons and jungle stars is so well-known that it’s jarring to see what’s basically an American suburb in this corner of the galaxy, to the point where it just feels too on the nose. The idea of sending kids into space is fun, and these tykes could come from any stretch of any solar system; introducing them playing with Star Wars toys and dreaming of escaping their elementary school for an adventure in the stars makes the connection between those Amblin shows a bit too obvious.
The first episode – the longest of the three, clocking in at 45 minutes – takes a bit too long to get going, not sending the kids on their adventure until its final minutes. And while the young cast does what they can, it feels a bit too much like a (very high budget) Disney Channel sitcom as we spend nearly an hour with precocious kids who spend their days racing on hover bikes and skip school for an adventure in the woods. There’s some back story about Wim’s father, an engineer hoping his son will follow in his footsteps, and Fern’s mother (Kerry Condon), whose position in the government gives her daughter some privilege, but I’ll be honest that it never quite connects. Visually, it’s a fun episode, but it’s a lot of wheel spinning.
Once the adventure kicks in, the show picks up and becomes an enjoyable riff on Treasure Island in space. Frost has a blast as the curmudgeonly droid at the kids’ command, and there’s a fun stop at a space dock where the kids get into a few scrapes. The energy picks up considerably when Law shows up, claiming to help but clearly having a past hinted at in the show’s opening scenes. He’s charming and fun as a Star Wars version of Long John Silver, and it’s never clear how good or bad he’s supposed to be. I was a bit surprised to realize that Law hadn’t been in a Star Wars property before; he’s quite a good fit.
Skeleton Crew will probably best be a hit with younger audiences, who will enjoy watching kids their age get involved in Star Wars. Older fans will likely enjoy the new worlds and aesthetics, but so far, I’m not sure how or whether this will connect with the bigger stories being told in The Mandalorian and elsewhere. My hunch is Disney would never tell a Star Wars story that can’t connect with the films and other shows, and perhaps we’ll see Mando and Grogu flit in for a cameo or encounter a sulking prepubescent Kylo Ren. But Star Wars is a major victim of shrinking universe syndrome, where a vast galaxy orbits around a handful of characters. It might be fun to just tell stories in this universe without having to connect them to the bigger tale. But who knows if that’s what the kids want.