Nostalgia is killing movies (and TV), which we know. Yet it’s not quickening its own extinction how you might typically imagine nostalgia destroying a “Star Wars” story. The new series, “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew,” created by Jon Watts (Marvel’s “Spider-Man” trilogy) and Christopher Ford (“Cop Car”), for example, isn’t a shameless remix of other Lucasfilm stories like “The Force Awakens,” nor is it laden with fan-service callbacks like “The Rise of Skywalker.”
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Instead, “Skeleton Crew” wishfully pines for the 1980s of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin coming-of-age epoch—the era of wide-eyed wonder, awe and imagination for kids, pre-teens and teenagers ala “The Goonies,” “E.T.” and the likeminded “Explorers,” essentially borrowing the magical tone of those films for a “Star Wars” story.
Theoretically, that’s fresh and novel for the galaxy far, far away—we haven’t seen these narratives solely told from the perspective of protagonist children before other than some parts of Anakin’s story in “The Phantom Menace.” But in practice, that’s all that “Skeleton Crew” offers: appropriation for a halcyon era of cinema and little else. Worse, the exceptional Spielberg-ian tenor of marvel and amazement is absent, leaving behind a mostly hollow, fairly unremarkable, forgettable product.
The” Skeleton Crew” story isn’t more complicated than the trailers already depict: four children in the “Star Wars” residential suburbs (eye roll) of the uncharted planet of At-Atan, Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), KB (Kyriana Kratter) and Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), discover a hidden space ship—complete with SM-33 (voiced by Nick Frost), a decrepit first mate droid—which autopilots off into space and quickly finds them lost without a trace.
There’s a bigger problem: once a crown jewel of the Old Republic, At-Atan isn’t on any star maps and is essentially cloaked and purposefully hidden from the rest of the galaxy, and travel is restricted and carefully authorized. This means the children’s parents, Wim’s dad, Wendle (Tunde Adebimpe) and Fern’s mom, Fara (Kerry Condon), can’t just jump in a ship, blast off and look for them—things operate much differently on the highly-governed At-Atan, which is essentially just a myth to the rest of the galaxy.
The kids find themselves on a waystation for pirates—many aliens and dangerous run-ins—and help rescue an imprisoned Jedi named Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law). However, something is amiss from the start and Jod does not appear to be who he says he is, and the kids (and audience) quickly suss this out. Jod is Force sensitive and is revealed to be a man called Crimson Jack, but he’s more of a grifting scoundrel than guardian. After a quick detour to an Observatory Moon to visit Jack’s old friend Kim (voiced by Alia Shawkat) a keen Owl-like alien who has an affinity for galactical navigation, the kids and Jack glean the coordinates of where their home might be.
Some betrayals and an X-Wing New Republic fighter brigade later, and Jack is forced to strike a mutually beneficial deal with the kids: he’ll get them home safely and in return, well, hopefully, he gets some reward. But what Jack is really after is the legendary treasures of At-Atan that he would surely love to plunder.
But “Skeleton Crew” doesn’t have a lot of wonder or joy and is honestly a little flat and dull. The worst criticism you could give is that you could probably watch the entire first two episodes on 1.5x speed and not miss a thing.
Furthermore, that acceleration would be merciful, honestly, because the real culprit of what makes “Skeleton Crew” tedious is its plotting and pace, and this is because, like usual, the series is made by people who make movies, not TV, and don’t understand the forms rhythms.
Perhaps adding insult to injury, very few of these children seem to possess any genuine charisma. Ryan Kiera Armstrong is the only one who registers and shows a glint of someone who may stick around for years to come, but unfortunately, her character is a one-note grump, so her capacity seems diluted.
And yes, “Skeleton Crew” has a propensity to include more aliens, monsters, old-school puppets and that Mos Eisley Cantina-era of creatures, and that’s neat and all, but it doesn’t make a good series.
Most filmmakers treat series television like long-fives-hour movies, and that generally means they write a film but essentially pen the lazier, more extended version of every scene because they have time to let it “breathe” and give more time to “flesh out characters.”
And the truth is, it’s indulgent and boring for audiences familiar with traditional television’s stride, which is dense, and always much faster than most filmmakers give it credit.
The story of what I’ve described so far would be the first act of any movie (25-30 minutes typically), but in the hands of the “Skeleton Crew” filmmakers, it’s three episodes that run nearly 95 minutes in total (taking the long credits into account).
Worse, Jon Watts’ inaugural pilot, which Ford and he co-wrote—they penned about 75% of the entire eight episodes— is interminable, poorly paced and especially tiresome. Despite a host of remarkable directors—Watts, David Lowery, the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), Jake Schreier, Bryce Dallas Howard, Lee Isaac Chung—none of them seem to help a narratively flat and uninvolving series (at least so far).
Honestly, let’s bring back the era of pilots that need to be green-lit before an entire season of television is made. Because you can be 100% assured if “Skeleton Crew” was created for HBO, FX, or any company that actually understands TV and makes it on the regular, it would not get a series order, would either go back to the drawing board and be rehauled or just not move forward and get blasted out of existence like Alderaan. The Force is not with this one…at all, sadly. [C-]
“Skeleton Crew” starts streaming on December 2 on Disney+.
