Shot by Shot Reviews of Film and TV

If a show aims for the widest audience, it is in danger of alienating every audience group by not appealing to any. The problem is Skeleton Crew can’t seem to decide whether it is Pirates of the Caribbean, with kids, or Star Wars (barely), with kids, and as a result, it fails at both by mashing the two together like a car crash. A fitting example appears early in the very first episode where a pirate ship comes alongside a vessel and spikes its hull with boarding tunnels. Not only is the idea idiotic, but worse still, unimaginative, and that’s a crime when dealing with the Fantasy genre.

A group of four adolescent kids discover a shipwreck and accidentally activate it, shooting them off into the stars far from home. They must find their way back in a treacherous galaxy filled with rogues and scum who think the children might lead them to a legendary treasure. There are a dozen ways this story outline could be made into an effective and enjoyable Star Wars story. Skeleton Crew just doesn’t use any of them. In fact, it seems to deliberately avoid every reasonable avenue, choosing the least Star Wars option instead, which also happens to be the least fun. In all its 8 episodes, there is only one point that has merit, and that is when the children arrive at a planet similar to their home. They discover a world of squabbling factions and there encounter a girl surviving amid the hostilities. The brief glimpse of promise teased in their interactions with her is sadly a solitary thread of substance in a tattered rag of a shoddily plotted episode.

According to an interview with the show’s creators, they pitched it to Jon Favreau while he was acting in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Upon watching this show, I do not understand why it was pitched as a Star Wars show and not as something in the Guardians of the Galaxy, some Marvel Universe, or even The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Unless it was rejected by them all and the writers thought – why not Star Wars? Even then, as I have stated already, there are a number of ways it could have been done right. There is nothing more painful in a movie-going or TV-watching experience, even more than something badly written or executed, than a display of an abject waste of resources. It is apparent that whatever the story that would have been dreamed up it would have had some of the most talented make-up, special effects and visual effects artists, set designers, and costume designers, and on and on. So, for all those hundreds or thousands of hours to be spent on something so vapid breaks my heart.

That yet another Star Wars project is disappointing is becoming par for the course. Thankfully, Season 2 of Andor is around the corner, so it isn’t going to be a long wait for some real Star Wars filled with intrigue, action, brilliant acting, and writing, as well as good direction. I’m glad because I’m left hungry, with Skeleton Crew being the latest in a long line of Star Wars without any meat on the bone.