*playing with action figures*
Oh! I didn’t see you there. I was just- uh- having a little fun. Much like they did on the first season of Skeleton Crew! Imagine that. A Star Wars show that’s fun! What a time to be alive. Let’s talk about it.
Skeleton Crew is a fantastic new show set in the Star Wars universe starring Jude Law and, get this, some kids! That’s right, it’s obstensivly a kids show, Goonies style. That of course isn’t to say adults can’t love it, I sure did, but this show seems to try and get back to it’s Star Wars roots and move back toward their target demographic of kids and away from the toxic basement dwellers who throw a tantrum online every time a person who doesn’t look like me picks up a lightsaber. And boy howdy what a welcome move that is. This show was such a blast because of it. Seeing the very familiar Star Wars universe through, extremely sheltered, kids filled the story with heaps of wonder and whimsy that has been missing from Star Wars for some time. Don’t get me wrong, I love stuff like Andor that’s very adult and grounded or mythical shows like The Acolyte (see my review here), but sometimes it’s good just to have a silly adventure with no galactic consequences.
In fact, one of this shows greatest strengths is just how little it has to do with the rest of the Star Wars universe. There were no shoehorned cameos, no characters from other shows or movies, no connective plot threads. If you’ve never gone out and seen yourself a Star War, you’ll understand like 95% of this show. This makes it the perfect gateway drug into the universe, which is why it’s so smart to aim it at kids and hook ‘em young. That’s drug dealing 101! There are still Easter eggs that lifelong fans will get but none of them are essential to the story and really just make for good, immersive story telling. That isn’t to say that the revel of The Supervisor as a giant computer wasn’t a little disappointing though, as I personally was hoping it would be Honda Oknocka, but I’m glad they aired on the side of keeping the show self contained in the end.
This is a total side tangent but, speaking of Easter eggs only the old heads will get, wasn’t great to see Jaleel White in something again? A lot of the TGIF stars I grew up watching either disappeared into the ether or turned into assholes so it feels great when one of them makes it out alive, reputation intact. I mean two thirds of the Home Improvement kids are locked up aren’t they? So yea, it was nice to see the original voice of Sonic The Hedgehog out there working and having fun. *sigh* Fuck I’m getting old. Anyway-
I think my only real complaint with the show is how abruptly it ended. The finale cuts to credits almost the instant the action is over. I could have used a least a small epilogue scene, set maybe a week or so later, showing me the kids getting back to life and Atatin interfacing with the New Republic. Maybe even set up a season two. But unfortunately, in this nightmare age of streaming, even the best stuff is never guaranteed a next season, so maybe they wanted to keep the show self contained in a completely different sense to hedge their bets. If they are gonna do a season two, and I hope they do, they better act fast. Kids don’t stay kids long and I’d love to see these young talents reprise their role. Although, I have a pitch for Disney if they do decide to wait a few years.
So here’s what you do. You wait till these kids hit their teens, then have them come back as these characters but this time they have to save a new batch of kids that have gone missing. Maybe Wym, now in training to be an X-Wing pilot, rounds up the gang to hunt down the pirates that took the kids hostage to gain access to the mint. Could be fun!
One thing this show has in common with something like Andor is it focuses on the oft overlooked section of the Star Wars universe, the average person. Living in a universe that’s full of space nazis who follow an emperor clone and light sword wielding religious zealots with magic powers must be stressful. The adventures of ordinary folks, and in this case kids, as they eek by and try to do the right thing in the face of absurd power is always thrilling and empowering to watch, even when it’s a zany pirate adventure. Fortunately for us, we don’t have the same problems they do……right?
That is about where the similarities between the two shows end though and that gives me hope for Star Wars as a franchise. One of the great strengths of the MCU is that it can be molded into many different genres with a sprinkling of superheroes mixed in. For a long time, I thought the Star Wars universe wasn’t as malleable. But this show and shows like Visions have proved that wrong. Star Wars can do it all if you get the right creative teams at the helm. You can have your big mythological stories and your grounded political thrillers and your war film Clone Wars era stories (which I’m glad Filloni has started to move away from since, for a minute, every story happened in the same like 20 years), all set in the same universe and have it all work. Am I still excited for season 2 of Andor? Oh hell yea. Season one was one of my favorite Star Wars anything, probably topped only by The Last Jedi. But I’m also glad everything is not Andor. It’d get old real fast and it shows that the future of Star Wars is bright if it can tell many different types of stories.
But what did you think? Did you like Skeleton Crew? Are you excited for them to turn the whole show into a ride at Disneyland? Who do you wanna see in season two? Let me know in the comments below and like, subscribe and as always, dear to the algorithm.
No comments:
Post a Comment