'Skeleton Crew' 2-Part Season Premiere Review: 'Star Wars' The ...

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

In some ways, I’m surprised that Lucasfilm and Disney didn’t release a series like Skeleton Crew much sooner, given that the House of Mouse caters so much of its content to younger kids. It seems like a good fit. Star Wars for kids, starring kids, under the Disney banner.

The question, of course, is how much this particular show will actually appeal to the Star Wars audience, both kids and adults alike. After all, Star Wars fans are accustomed to grown-up heroes, and the few times children have been involved—young Leia, for instance—haven’t gone particularly well. There’s a case to be made that a lot of younger viewers might even prefer to watch fully grown heroes like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, rather than follow the misadventures of a group of kids their own age.

Very light spoilers for the first two episodes of Skeleton Crew follow.

Skeleton Crew has been billed as “The Goonies meets Star Wars” and that’s certainly the case in the show’s first two episodes, at least on a surface level. The Goonies was a wonderful childhood coming-of-age story about a group of kids who, when their parents are faced with the loss of their homes thanks to the unscrupulous business dealings of a wealthy land developer, set off on a perilous adventure to find lost treasure and save the day.

KB and Fern

It’s filled with swearing, sexual innuendo and some very frightening antagonists. In 1985, movies made for and about kids had a few more splinters. There were a bit less sanitized and a lot less afraid to show kids dealing with more adult situations (think of the scene in E.T. when E.T. drinks beer and Elliot gets drunk at school).

There’s a scene in The Goonies in which the boys have broken the private parts off a Roman statue replica belonging to Mikey’s mom just when she shows up with Rosalita, a Mexican woman who she’s brought to help them pack for the move. Rosalita doesn’t speak English, so she asks the boys to translate. Corey Feldman’s character, Mouth, says he speaks fluent Spanish, and follows Mikey’s mom around “translating” for her. His translation is a prank. “The marijuana goes in the top drawer,” he “translates” as Mikey’s mom rattles off instructions. “The cocaine and speed in the second.” Rosalita’s expression is a mixture of confusion and horror. “The heroin in the bottom,” he continues. “Always separate the drugs.” Cut to a scene of the boys, glueing the privates back onto the statue, the wrong way . . . .

“Rosalita,” Mikey’s mom says, “this is the attic. Mr. Walsh doesn’t like anybody to go up there ever.”

Mouth’s translation: “Never go up there. It’s filled with Mr. Walsh’s sexual torture devices.”

Jod Na Nawood

So when I hear “The Goonies meets Star Wars” in the year of our lord 2024, I know it’s only going to be surface level. I don’t expect sex jokes, swearing and drug references. And sure enough, you won’t find anything like that in Skeleton Crew.

That’s fine, though I wish the kids were a bit more raw. Kids, if you haven’t noticed, are pretty much like the boys in The Goonies when they’re left to their own devices, away from the prying eyes of parents and teachers. And Skeleton Crew’s kids do bicker and argue and play silly games like “unclaimsies” and whatnot, and make stupid choices and put themselves in dangerous situations.

(I should note here that there are 80s movies that go into deeply uncomfortable territory even for me, and yes I’m thinking about a certain scene from Ghostbusters).

In Skeleton Crew our four principle child protagonists are Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), KB (Kyriana Kratter) and Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) the lone alien of the group. The kids are all bright, restless, eager for adventure and quick to break the rules—to various degrees.

Wim dreams of leaving his idyllic, suburban home planet At-Atan (a planet that we later learn is considered no more than a myth elsewhere in the galaxy) and going on an adventure. Fern bristles at the pressure her parents put on her to stay at the top of her class and eventually follow in their footsteps. Neel is a loyal sidekick, and KB is basically the show’s very own Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The story takes place during the New Republic era, around the time of The Mandalorian, and at least one crossover character—the pirate Vane—makes the leap from that show’s third season.

Vane

Without giving too much away, Wim’s wishes of a more adventurous life come true by the end of the first episode, and soon enough our heroes are on a space adventure that takes them to a dangerous pirate port city on a faraway planet. Here, they navigate a perilous adventure that soon lands them in the brig, where they meet a mysterious prisoner played by Jude Law. This is Jod Na Nawood, a man who may or may not be a Jedi, but is most certainly a pirate and a rogue who has run afoul of his former crew.

This is where the story starts to really get interesting. Unfortunately, it’s also where the first two episodes end. It’s a shame that it takes quite so long to get to the good stuff and a shame that we have to wait a week to see what happens next. So far, I’m still making up my mind, which is better than I can say for a number of other Star Wars Disney Plus shows at this juncture.

The characters are fine but the show lacks the kind of humor that made The Goonies tick. Maybe it’s all a little too sanded down. Perhaps it’s my age, or my nostalgia for these older movies of my childhood, but I’d like to see somewhat rougher edges. I think a kid-forward Star Wars is also a bit of a tough sell. It’s rare that you can assemble a cast of kids as good as The Goonies, after all. That’s just personal taste, however.

I think what threw me off the most was just how much of a slog the first episode was to get through. It’s 45 minutes long and there’s just way too much time spent establishing the world and characters, when a lot more could have been done with a lot less to get the story firing on all cylinders. I don’t like feeling bored right out the gates, but I was definitely bored until the end of Episode 1. The second episode definitely picks up the pace and the third —which I’ve seen but won’t cover in this post—continues to accelerate.

It’s still too early to say how the whole season will pan out, and I appreciate that it’s mostly just a fun, straightforward action-adventure in the Star Wars universe and isn’t trying to be anything else. There is no Acolyte preachiness and no legacy characters to undermine like Obi-Wan Kenobi did with its titular hero. There are also no hints at some mega-villain or any real efforts to tie this story into the Skywalker saga or the sequel films. I suppose all that could change, but for now Skeleton Crew appears to be its own little adventure, tucked off in a pirate-filled corner of the galaxy with likable, if somewhat generic, heroes and one pretty entertaining pirate robot, SM-33, voiced by Nick Frost. If the series keeps leaning into the swashbuckling, I think we may be in for a treat, especially with more Jude Law.

SM-33

I do enjoy the little nods to the films of Steven Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment. I love movies like Hook and Indiana Jones and showrunners Jon Watts and Christopher Ford have certainly captured some of that magic here. The suburban home of our heroes feels like something plucked right out of E.T. They’ve managed to infuse the show with that flavor without dipping too heavily into the deep, but overly-dredged pool of Star Wars nostalgia that so many Disney Star Wars offerings obsess over. In a way, it’s trying to do its own thing while borrowing from the tropes of a bygone era of cinema. The results, so far, are mixed.

I’m also curious how the planet of At-Atan figures into all of this. The twist appears to be that the kids go out to seek adventure and treasure out in the galaxy, but discover that the big ‘X’ marking the spot is actually right where they started. There’s a very interesting mystery to unravel here and while the first two episodes aren’t perfect, I’m genuinely interested to see where it goes. Sometimes Star Wars can be deep and heavy and full of brilliant, weighty dialogue—think Andor—and sometimes it can just be a fun romp in space. Hopefully Skeleton Crew delivers where it counts, even if it is a bit jarring to have a bunch of kids taking on the lead roles.