Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episodes 1 / 2
"This Could Be A Real Adventure" / "Way, Way Out Past The Barrier"
Writers: Christopher Ford and Jon Watts
Directors: Jon Watts / David Lowery
Cast: Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith, Nick Frost, and Jude Law
Here at our opening crawl, it must be said that Star Wars fans are reticent.
Palpatine returned, somehow. Boba Fett crawled from the Sarlacc pit, declared himself daimyo, and hired a slow-moving biker gang. Old Ben Kenobi nearly lost the game to a parking barrier. But then, Hayden and Snips did cross sabers in the World Between Worlds. That's the one I like to emphasize anyway.
Peaks and valleys in the living Force, there are.
New Star Wars project announcements are met, rightfully, with skepticism that they'll ever bear fruit. What even is a Star War any more? Well, how about some all-ages entertainment in the Amblin tradition? Lucasfilm's latest offering, Skeleton Crew, promises rollicking truant adventure — hashtag SpaceGoonies — though I imagine Disney would prefer we use their own Flight of the Navigator as a touchpoint. Can Jon Watts, Christopher Ford (they of the MCU Spidey trilogy) and an objectively stacked crew of filmmakers — wait, the guy who did Minari?! — convince my jaded Gen X friends that I don't have them captive over a dead tauntaun, bracing for another sour whiff?
This week your Disney+ subscription offers up a two-episode premiere: "This Could be a Real Adventure" directed by Watts, and "Way, Way Out Past the Barrier" from David Lowery (The Green Knight).
Much of what you need to know about Skeleton Crew, and whether you'll gel with its sensibility, dangles precariously from a hook in the brig at Port Borgo. Not a key card on a lanyard or a fob with a digital signature, but a crude antique key: bow, shank, and bit. A metallic skeleton key, hanging in plain view, just opposite the bars to a dank earthen cell where four lost children await their uncertain fate. A dog could be coaxed into fetching that key. Or maybe a rat. If only. That's the tone. And that either unlocks something in you or it doesn't.
First, though, we've a treasure vault to blast open.
Palpatine is dead: to begin with — for now anyway — his Galactic Empire reduced to scattered contingents of warlords on the run from a waxing, if woefully disorganized New Republic. But the criminal element cares little for the particulars of regime change. What matters is the bottom line. As ever, the trade lanes — ah! the trade lanes! — are awash with smugglers and corsairs. It is an age of pirates.
The lone freighter is ill-prepared for the assault.
Massive pistons ram and puncture its hull, then fulfill a secondary purpose as airtight gangplanks for a raiding party of humans, Nikto, Ishi Tib — all armed to the teeth. Blasters blast. The pirates quickly overwhelm the freighter's crew. Brutus, a dual wielding Shistavanen wolf man, steps out from my childhood nightmares into the captured vessel and heralds his captain's arrival. Silvo (Jude Law issuing his best Idris Elba snarl into his helm's vocoder) saunters aboard to claim the freighter's purported cache, all personal-like.
Unfortunately for Silvo, the cupboards are bare save for a single gleaming chit. Faced with no reward at the tail of a massive heist with significant casualties, the crew immediately turn mutinous.
Gulp.
Following a title card, we meet Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), a human lad, timid, with big dreams. Throughout, Wim pores over the adventures of Jedi knights on a satisfyingly clunky tablet the closed captioning helpfully labels a "storypad." This is a kid who re-reads. He acts out famed duels with well-loved action figures (sorely lacking in articulation) on bed linens the color of Tatooine sand. What sets Wim apart from other Star Wars heroes is his relative comfort. Neither a slave, a child soldier, rat-tailed monk, moisture farmer, or aristocrat, Wim's socioeconomic status is best described as "My single dad has a subscription to Architectural Digest. I own a Sega Genesis, but I enjoy unfettered access to a friend's Super Nintendo."
Wim lives a charmed if mildly latchkey (not that key. Not yet) existence in a cozy and diverse suburban development, a bedtime community on an isolated planet called At Attin. Sun bathes the hilly concrete sprawl. The night sky is a gently whirling crème de menthe. If At Attin follows the typical Star Wars model of single-biome planets, it's probably … Oregon-flavor? Lots of ferns.
Wim and his even more timid pal, Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), a blue elephantine alien with human-issue shoes that presumably contain human-shaped feet — I don't know why that detail feels like a bridge-too-far for me — take a droid-piloted tram to school. At Attin presents as a bit of a math-obsessed nanny state where the sentients study actuary tables and droids do all the heavy lifting. A big aptitude test is coming up and Wim is struggling to round-peg his quixotic ambitions into the square holes of the New Republic's conformist Great Work.
Wim's daydreaming hasn't gone unnoticed at school or at home, by his disarmingly handsome nerd dad, Wendle (TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe).
"Bedtime stories," Wendle ponders from the bedroom door. "Aren't you getting a little bit old for that?" And listen. Dad is just trying his best here. He's overworked. He has no idea how much school lunch costs, so he's emptying out his pockets for the kid. We stan a single dad with a brow permanently furrowed with the anxiety he's messing it all up big time.
Wim also falls under the scrutiny of tough girl Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), a bright student with little regard for what that affords her in this grind-obsessed 'burb. She exhibits an innate knack for gaming the systems laid out before her, from a domestic droid's narc protocols to outsmarting pirates. More on that later. Right now her focus is on obtaining power converters for souping up her speeder with bestie KB (Kyriana Kratter), a meek human girl with augmented senses thanks to a sleek visor, equal parts Lobot and LaForge.
Skeleton Crew coasts along confidently in the Kids on Bikes sub-genre of the traditional coming of age tale, handlebar streamers streaming and frogs frogging. Now, these bikes have no spokes for baseball cards since they don't have wheels, but that means they should be ideal for some off-roading, right? You'd think. This same thinking leads Wim to sprawl tuchus over teakettle into what I'm going to call a gully. And in that gully, Wim stumbles upon a hatch. Given his lifelong obsession, Wim decides this must be the entrance to a hitherto undiscovered sectret Jedi temple. The portal to his very destiny. But fate is interrupted by the arrival of an Orwellian truancy droid out surveying the woods and Wim is hauled off to the proctor's office.
Fate has tricks though. Fern also finds herself in trouble with the school brass, mostly for being a total boss. In Wim, a flagrant skipper of career placement exams, Fern finds a kindred spirit, or at least a pliable, curly-haired diversion with a bonkers story about a secret temple out in the woods.
Later that day, Wim cajoles goodie-too-human-shoes Neel into joining him on the archeological dig of the century. The boys pack rope, walkie talkies, and a no-more-pretend attitude into the wilderness. Naturally, Fern and KB track them from a safe distance and engage in some light bullying, the latter only at the behest of her friend. KB and Fern are giving Marcie and Peppermint Patty here, and we'll be keeping an eye on that because KB deserves the universe. Upon negotiating claimsies rights over the find, Fern Tom Sawyers the boys into digging out the rest of the hatch.
Unfortunately Neel's stubby trunk is in no way prehensile and offers no utility in speeding this process up. By the time the door is fully unearthed, it's dark. The girls think it's unlikely there are any Jedi relics on the other side, but an old bunker like this has to be stocked with an old power converter or two.
Power converters. The currency of wistful gearheads the galaxy over.
Aside from lending the shy KB a bit of a mask in overwhelming social situations, her visor also comes in clutch for hacking old maintenance boards. She plugs in and after some noodling, pops the latch. They're in.
There's a bit of a drop and no ambient light to reassure them, but the sound of Wendle calling out for his missing son convinces Wim to take the leap now and ask for forgiveness later. Neel and the girls contemplate the sunk cost and follow.
Inside? Skeletons. Dusty nests of wires mostly. Lots of tantalizing levers and buttons. Oddly enough, most of them are positioned above their heads. Almost as if they're walking on the ceiling in this upside-down warren of industrial tunnels and control rooms. And right, we should consider the skeletons. That's a significant find. A brushed lever seals the hatch. KB surmises that it won't open again without power, and the only way to restore that is to follow the conduit along the wall to its source.
Again, a worrying number of skeletons. And rats. Or the legally distinct, many-eyed version of rats that flood this galaxy's derelict spaces. KB restores power and the full Ben Burtt suite of beeps and chirps fills the musty air. Newly alight with multi-colored control consoles and tactical displays, the space is revealed as a long slumbering space ship. A tethered headset drops invitingly before Wim's noggin. Despite Fern's insistence and his own better judgment, he can't help but smack a blinking button. Green for go.
That's when everything comes rumbling alive. The ship yawns violently into motion, righting itself from under the earth. The children manage to reach the hatch in time to peak out into the night as a panicked Wendle falters, nearly swallowed in the ship's upturned grave. The woods turn inside out under thruster fire as the children are carried up, up into the darkness. And they are not alone.
Operating on autopilot, the ship breaches the outer atmosphere and a layer the kids know as the Barrier. Some kind of planet-wide shield, similar to Scarif's from Rogue One? A mystery for another day, perhaps. Especially because the countless stars begin to stretch out. Fern, no longer bored, reels. "I never knew there were so many." Screaming, our heroes are hurled into hyperspace in a runaway ship, destination unknown.
Now we tag into episode two, the first for David Lowery.
The kids find themselves cornered by the ship's gaunt custodian, a real shiver me durasteel timbers type voiced by Nick Frost. Let's talk about SM-33. A droid, obviously. He has a rat living in his head. Not yet a Ratatouille situation, but maybe that was in the offing eventually.
Now. A peg-legged pirate droid called Smee. I hear you. I know. But this is a sweeping adventure. We're here to have fun. And there's some precedent. Not long ago I revisited a beloved part of the Legends canon from my youth, 1997's The Paradise Snare, in which the orphan Han Solo finds work as a cut-purse for a droid called F83N. Roll it over a little, I'll wait. There it is. A.C. Crispin, you were a goddamn G.
The children find the shambling SM-33 more than a little off-putting as he attempts to assert control over the situation, calling out for his absent captain. But as we say in the tabletop realm, Fern crits on her charisma check and is able to convince SM-33 she bested his former captain in bloody combat and is now head honcho. He relents. New management is fine by him.
Human-droid relations are not going so smoothly lightyears away and back on the ground. When confronted with a very shaken Wendle's assertion that the children were kidnapped via starship, two safety droids insist it is impossible. Starships are not permitted to enter or exit the Barrier. This begs so many questions about the nature of At Attin and its place in the galaxy. In fact, everyone confronted with the name At Attin moving forward reacts with dismay.
For his part, SM-33 has no record of an At Attin, though scrolling through his internal Rolodex he does know Aldhani (a little red meat for the Andor heads). Fern makes the executive decision and commands SM-33 to take them to a star port to get directions. Surely some old spacer knows At Attin and can point the right direction.
"They say of [Port] Borgo you'll rest well in a soft bed or a shallow grave," muses SM-33. Sounds like a Tortuga of the space lanes. You know, real Robert Louis Stevenson business.
Port Borgo is a sort of asteroid archipelago with a marketplace sheltered in a central cavern. If Obi-Wan reserved his dankest burn for Mos Eisley's cantina, he must never have stepped foot here. A mangy teek — a species last seen (far better groomed) in 1985's Ewoks: The Battle for Endor made-for-TV movie — ferries the castaways from their ship to the hub.
Overstimulated by the hum of a thriving black market replete with caged monkey birds and what appears to be a small red light district, the children wander their separate ways. We get a good gander at an array of practical puppets blended with digital enhancements. The seams of the Volume are still inescapable, but the filmmakers are learning how best to accentuate the space and elevate it to that vision Lucas foresaw so long ago. Neel is ready to go home, but Wim is cautiously delighted, his senses alight. You know you're in good hands when the captions say things like, "[Squelching]"
Well, mostly good hands. A dishonest barkeep attempts to upsell Wim when he catches a glimpse of Old Republic credits spilling out from his hands like so many Andes mints. Other aliens take notice and Wim is suddenly the most popular boy in the quadrant. A woman confronts Fern and KB, more than a little concerned a child is skulking around unaccompanied on such a dangerous backwater. When the children insist to these denizens that they hail from At Attin, they may as well claim home is Neverland, second star to the right, straight on till morning. To the wider galaxy, At Attin is a myth.
Soon enough, Wim's attracted more than enough attention, and SM-33 is forced to intervene, bloviating and swinging his limbs like Popeye out for blood. He's not bad for an antique. But as they make their retreat to the ship, a familiar wolf man emerges from the crowd to restore order to his port. He puts a blaster bolt in SM-33, sending him flat to the deck. Brutus and his crew — hey, Jaleel White! — have no interest in parlay, less concerned with their small stature and more with their seeming ability to enter the port despite security measures that should've atomized them before they could say "Davy Jones." Fern does not pass her charisma check this time, and the children are hauled off to the brig.
And here we find ourselves in the moment of truth. Four children locked in a jail cell just opposite a key. It's a tableau straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean.
They even attempt to send out the rat to fetch the key. The rat doesn't oblige and scampers off to poach alien cheeses, alas. Fate has its tricks though. A hooded man in rags emerges from the shadows at the back of the cell. He promises to return the children to their ship, if only they take him into their number. They don't see how he can be of any help, locked in here with them. But then, they've led sheltered lives of reliable rules and cold calculation.
He reaches out a hand and, as if by magic, the key comes free from its hook and floats aloft, closing the impossible distance, through the bars of the cell, until it rests in his palm. Mick Giacchino's score swells. Wim looks to the man in awe. Magic is real. Jedi are real. The stranger, Jude Law, puts a finger to his lips then withdraws his hood, eyes wide and more than a little mad. "Can you keep a secret?"
Star Wars, my dudes, is back.
New episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premiere on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+
