Star Wars Skeleton Crew - Premiere - Review

There is no doubt that since the release of the first episode of The Mandalorian, the quality of Star Wars has varied quite a bit, with some shows doing exceedingly well and others not so much. If there was one show that had the odds stacked against it, it would be Skeleton Crew as there has never been a show that focused on kids before, outside of Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures. Billed as an 80s adventure in the galaxy of Star Wars, I did have an interest in the show, but the entire thinking of Goonies, but in space was not a big draw for me. Does this new show offer up a fun adventure or is its targeting computer a little off?

This review will be spoiler free, though a basic plot outline will be explained

The opening moments of the show were perhaps some of the coolest bits I have seen on any Star Wars show in a while, which also helps set the tone for one side of the action. Now for obvious reasons I won’t say what happens, but you won’t be disappointed. Once that is done though, we snap to Wim, a young boy who has dreams of adventure. Wim lives with his father, who seems to not have any time for him as he is always working, but Wim is ok, as he dreams of being a Jedi. His best friend is Neel an Ortolan kid who lives nearby and the two of them love hanging out and just being kids. Wim is one of those kids who doesn’t do what he is told, or pays attention to things around him, and as such he stays up late reading stories about Jedi. This results in Wim oversleeping, which means he misses the bus to school and opts to take a shortcut through the woods that he saw someone take the day before. Sadly this shortcut ends up with him in a ravine and stuck, but whilst trying to get out finds what he thinks is a Jedi temple.

Because Wim was out of school, he ends up in trouble and needs to see the principal, and while waiting he encounters Fern, a young racer who is rebelling against her mother and eventually news comes out of Wim’s potential discovery. With Wim convincing Neel to follow him to really uncover the discovery in full, he finds that Fern and her friend KB has already tried to dig it out. The four form a partnership and while most are attempting to restore power, Wim does what he has been doing up to this point and that is touch everything, even after being told not to and it causes the ‘Jedi temple’ to blast off. There is much more that happens in between those story beats and much, much more that happens after them, but I won’t say any more, so you can discover them for yourself.

What I did like about the story is that it did move at a nice pace, there was not waiting for things to happen, and no pointless events happening just to fill the time either. But honestly, the thing I liked most was the opening moments from the two episode premiere. Now there was nothing wrong with the rest of the episode, but when your main characters are kids, they have to do something special for me to want to invest in them. This is where things fall apart for me with them, they each have a stereotype applied to them and it makes them less interesting because of it. Wim is the only one I will talk about, but he dreams of adventure and when people tell him not to do things, he does the opposite. So when he is told about growing up, he gets pouty and does a typical kid thing, which usually means touching things. Because that character trait is established almost right away, I could tell that whenever he was left alone or told to do something, he was always going to get in trouble. That alone made for him to be less entertaining to watch and while yes, for younger audiences that might be fine, but for those grown up, this may not be the draw they are after.

Those stereotypes are something that annoys me, there was no reason for any one character to behave in a predictable way. While it is entirely possible that the show will let them grow out of it, they are after all only kids, it just feels cheap for it to be that way. It could just be that I am well past my own childhood that it’s not clicking with me, but I suspect that I won’t be alone in that.

Perhaps the one aspect of the twin episode premiere that I gelled with from the outset was the look, from Wim’s bedroom and his data pad, to the ship and the first place they visit, there is just a lot to see and enjoy. The home planet, its name shall remain a mystery for now, has this calm and tranquil look to it, as if the people that live there could want for nothing. There are a few nods to other things around, like the droid driver of the school bus being a RX-Series, who thankfully has better luck driving that, then a specific R-3X model. Once the kids leave the planet, they visit a space port that is just loaded with characters, some of them look familiar and some of them look entirely new. I must say that it was great to see a Shistavanen, who we haven’t seen in live action since they were cut from the 1997 edit of the original movie. While the locations and people within them are great, I do love the design of the Onyx Cinder, which is the name of the ship. I have always loved Star Wars ships and some of them jump to the top of my absolute favourite list and this is no exception. While we only see a little of the ship in these episodes, it is a lot larger than we see and I can’t wait to see what more is discovered on it. I do also want to call out the music in the show, it feels like Star Wars but also like something you might have heard in an 80s adventure movie.

Star Wars Skeleton Crew has the bones of a grand adventure, but I can’t help but feel the series is going to get bogged down by keeping the kids to the stereotypes they have assigned them. I do love the look of the show, and the music sounds great as well, so no matter if the story is nothing special at least it looks and sounds like Star Wars. The big question is will this convince non-Star Wars fans to watch, maybe and I say that as a Star Wars fan. The show doesn’t require you to understand anything about the series 47 year history and that is a good thing. With how the premiere episodes ended, there is clearly more mystery about and I hope that they play into that more, I just hope that they can give the kids a chance to grow beyond what they are now.

The Score

8.0

Review access provided by Disney

The Pros

Has an incredible visual style to it, that is part 80s adventure film and part Star Wars

The opening moments of the first episode were some of the coolest I have seen in a while

The Cons

The kids have been given stereotypes and its not interesting to watch

Wim touching everything had better not become a running theme