Headed by the director of Spider-Man : No Way Homethe series Star Wars : Skeleton Crew is coming to Disney+. We saw the first 3 episodes. Review without spoilers.
Call us hopeless optimists, but we wanted to believe in it Skeleton Crew (ok, especially the author of these lines). Yes, it's been a while since the series Star Wars disappointor attract more or less justified hatred from self-proclaimed fans (a thought for The Acolytelittle angel gone too soon). Yes, the presence in the production of Jon Watts, the mop of the Spider-Man by Tom Holland, was hardly reassuring.
Yes, the artistic direction did not bode well since its trailers and its American-style residential neighborhoods, vaguely pimped by a filter Star Wars which we thought came out of the latest fashionable generative AI. And yes, seeing Lucasfilm “get inspiration” for its latest space adventure of Amblin's legacy (the production house of Steven Spielberg, the convergence point of pop culture in the 80s) smacked of opportunism to ride on the success of Stranger Things.
E.T. Phone Hoth
Yet, there is indeed a reason to hope. Remember: in the narrative and aesthetic chaos of the Disney trilogy, there was this scene, both simple and moving, which concluded The Last Jedi. Despite the oppression they suffered on a daily basis, the slave children of Canto Bight recounted the mythical exploits of Luke Skywalker, with the promise of a better world. One of the kids, sensitive to the Force, made his broom into a lightsaber of substitution, while a panorama of stars opened up to him.
If Rian Johnson was especially keen to distance his film from the eternal lineages and families that connect all the important characters in the saga (in short: everyone can be a Jedi), he also brought back into the world of Star Wars a typically childish sense of wonder. The idea might seem overused given the power of the imagination established by George Lucas, but it seemed like a nice way to put the church back in the middle of the village, especially for a franchise increasingly monopolized by the big children incapable of growing up, lending their toy, and undoubtedly leaving Mom and Dad's cellar.
For a moment, it is clear that Skeleton Crew seeks to capture that same magic, and he does so by dramatically filming two friends, Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) and Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), fighting with imaginary lightsabers. It's all a matter of projection, of a thirst for somewhere else, including for those who are already in the galaxy far, far away.
Only here, Wim and Neel are stuck on At Attin, a planet where bureaucracy rulesas well as normativism to the rhythm of the tram, work, sleep (all vehicles move on rails, in case that wasn't clear). Finesse has no place in this forceps introduction, where the characterization of the characters is reduced to its strictest minimum. The two boys, more or less intrepid, are quickly joined by Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), a young rebel fan of speed, and KB (Kyrianna Kratter), a geek specializing in electronics.
And at the same time, Skeleton Crew understands well that Star Wars is defined by its environmental storytelling, and gives an unexpected character to this urban setting that is anything but exoticsomewhere between Wisteria Lane and La Défense (sacred combo from hell). Everyone dreams of escaping their unenviable future in accounting or statistics, without knowing that their wish will be granted afterwards. having taken off the ruins of a mysterious ship.
Star Wars : Come Back Home
Clearly, the series is also moving forward on very comfortable rails, but its first episode traces the contours of an engaging potentialcarried by the gaze of his troop of misfit kids quickly lost in space. Since his friendly Cop CarJon Watts has never hidden his taste for children (a phrase that should not be taken out of context) and their point of view on the world, when he has not outright plundered the adolescent initiation stories of John Hughes to his trilogy Spider-Man.
Catapulted showrunner Skeleton Crew alongside his producer Christopher Ford, the filmmaker always has the merit of being an inspired director of actors. This is what we want to save: the mischief of this quartettinged with naivety, whose energy seeks an intriguing chemical reaction in contact with Star Wars and its rules.
It now remains to be seen how this unique novelty will be treated as the season progresses, because for the moment, the first three episodes (out of eight) struggling to break out of the Amblin moldshaken like a nostalgic rattle that would almost cancel the usual nostalgic rattle of the saga for the original trilogy.
With its inspirations from piracy, Skeleton Crew assumes responsibility barely disguised rereading of Goonies. This complacency would be more easily forgivable if it did not highlight the eternal problem with Disney+ series: the feeling of seeing a feature film unnecessarily extended over 5 or 6 hourswithout dwelling on anything. The bastard durations of the episodes (46, 29 and 37 minutes) aim to navigate at each finale towards the next narrative point, with an art of autopilot in which Lucasfilm and Marvel have become specialists (we have already returned to the problem in video ).
While the first chapter sluggishly begins the call to adventure of its young heroesthe second finds them a traveling companion in the person of Jod Na Nawood, played by Jude Law almost too well cast for the role. With his honeyed smile and his fake nice attitude, it is clear that this Force-sensitive character is hiding something, like a Long John Silver that even the kids grill in his falsity.
(Am) nostalgic shielding
However, this is where the series could find its personality. Far from the nobility of the Jedi, Skeleton Crew present the merciless world of Star Wars through the prism of an innocence that Nawood can only nuance, like the old sea dog of the galaxy that he seems to be. That's all the pleasure of the ghost train, of this imagination that is both marvelous and fundamentally frightening in its part of the unknown.
This has always been Amblin's trademark (E.T. in mind) and paradoxically, it is on this note of intention that the series Star Wars disappoints the most. Even at the height of a child, the staging never manages to film this enchantment. The spaceport which mainly serves as the setting for episodes 2 and 3 is just another Mos Eisley cantina, which over time has become a museum-like cabinet of curiosities, filled with inserts and animatronics to emphasize the exoticism. of his universe.
This stupidly regurgitated enumeration effect initiates what appears to be the trap of the series: the repetitiveness of ever more devitalized style effectsbetween the totems of Star Wars and those of its Spielbergian models (BMXs swapped for futuristic scooters). It is all the more a shame given the talents that summon Skeleton Crewby the brilliant David Lowery (A Ghost Story, The Green Knight) to the Daniels (Everything Everywhere All At Once) en passant par Lee Isaac Chung (Minari, Twisters).
Their personalities seem doomed to be drowned in this morass of reheated referenceswhich hides a little too much behind its supposed desire to convince a new generation of fans. We can always blame The Acolyte its writing problems, but Leslye Headland's series had the merit of taking real risks with the achievements of its universe. Conversely, Skeleton Crew does not cause no thrill of noveltypast the veneer of his amusing introduction to the Stranger Things.
Of course, it's always difficult to judge the first three episodes of a season, and Skeleton Crew has elements that make you curious, starting with the mystery that surrounds the protagonists' home planet. But it is complicated to overcome the same structural problems repeated from series to series, where the adventures follow one another to compensate for the emptiness of human relationships. A shame, when we know that these same human relationships have given the true flavor of Amblin's heritage.
The first two episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew have been available since December 3 on Disney+. A new episode will then be released every Wednesday.
