Star Wars has never stopped looking backwards. George Lucas’ first film called on the vintage matinee serials of the 1930s, with every sequel and spin-off since trying to tap into the same vibe. But it’s taken until now for someone to try and recapture the spirit of Lucasfilm’s own golden age – with Skeleton Crew not just drawing on Star Wars itself but on everything it touched in the mid ’80s; an era when family adventure films always came with the warm glow of a lightsaber even if they had nothing to do with sci-fi. Forty years later, we’ve finally got The Goonies in space.
The first episode drops us into an American suburb right out of a Spielberg movie – with a kid (Wim, played by Ravi Cabot-Conyers) running late for school and taking a shortcut through the woods on his bike. Except this isn’t California in the ’80s, it’s At Attin sometime after the fall of the Galactic Empire. The bike is a flying speeder, the school is full of aliens and the shortcut leads Wim straight to a buried spaceship.
Add in a few other kids (the rebel: played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong, the tech-head: Kyriana Kratter, the annoying best friend: Robert Timothy Smith, who also happens to be a blue elephant) and you’ve got the same basic recipe as The Goonies, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, The Explorers and every other VHS classic that influenced Stranger Things. Mix in Jude Law doing a cracking Long John Silver impression, a few gold doubloons and a treasure map, and you’ve got a proper old-school pirate adventure to boot.
The buried spaceship ends up whisking the kids into uncharted space, running them into Law’s Jod Na Nawood – an intergalactic Jack Sparrow who’s probably only out for himself, might be able to wield the Force and definitely has an enemy in every port. Crafting something that’s part coming-of-age drama, part swashbuckling actioner, showrunners Jon Watts and Christopher Ford throw a load of nostalgic and pirate-y stuff at the wall and, somehow, it sticks.
One minute, Nick Frost’s one-eyed Cornish buccaneer droid is beating up lizard men in a tavern, the next Wim’s blasting X-Wings out the sky in a misty-eyed throwback to the model kits he had hanging over his bed back home. There’s a talking owl called Kim, skeletons in tri-corn hats and a load of muppet monkeys (actually a very niche nod to 1985’s Ewoks: The Battle For Endor, also a touchstone for the series).
Yet with all its practical creature effects and vintage matte painting backdrops, Skeleton Crew feels more genuinely real than most of the other Star Wars chapters of late. There’s an extra degree of pedigree involved too, with episodes directed by David Lowery (A Ghost Story, The Green Knight), the Daniels (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Lee Isaac Chan (Minari) and more. Alfred Molina and Alia Shawkat cameo. Wim’s dad is played by Tunde Adebimpe from noughties indie icons TV On The Radio.
As wrung-through with nostalgia as Skeleton Crew is, it still somehow feels like the most polished take on Star Wars we’ve had in a long while, with a mix of old-school craft, blockbuster magic and spunky energy that’s only really ever been topped at the cinema. And probably not even then for at least three or four decades…
‘Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’ is streaming on Disney+ from December 3