168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is approaching the space opera a little differently. It feels as if every new Star Wars thing either tries that and ends up searching for an audience or is so cloyingly loyal to the established lore that it is closer to bashing action figures together than telling a story. But Skeleton Crew seems t꧑o have found a gap in hyperspace - it's Star Wars if it was ma🧸de by Spielberg in the '80s.
Except it wasn't made by Spielberg in the '80s, it was made in the now by a team of high profile directors led by showrunners Jon Watts and Christopher Ford. I sat down with the pair to ask th🥀em about the show, starting with this desire to do something new yet completely traditional within Star Wars.
"When [Dave Filoni, COO of Lucasfilm] would talk to us about the Star Wars creative process that he absorbed from working with George Lucas for such a long time, it was all about never trying to make something that felt like Star Wars," Watts tells me. "You try to go back to the core influences that influenced George. For us, it was like going back to an era of movies where kids stories were taken seriously, plus pirat൲es. We went back and watched pirate serials from the '30s and trying to build our own database of inspirations."
Skeleton Crew Is A Classic Adventure Tale
This love for classic adventure films is backed up by the names dropped with comfort - obvious picks like Treasure Island, but also The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood. A lotไ of Star W𒉰ars promo can feel like an attempt to hitch the new project to something more established, but Skeleton Crew seems to be trying to stand on its own feet as an entry into the Star Wars canon, not a superfluous addition riding something else's coattails.
But this instant connection I draw between Skeleton Crew and Spielberg is not just the inspiration from classic adventure stories. Skeleton Crew revolves around a cast of mainly children - after wandering into what they think is an old 🔥temple on their home planet, four kids get trapped inside what turns out to be an old pirate spaceship. It blasts them off to a distant pirate po⛦rt, while the robot First Mate is the only survivor and treats the kids as he would a pirate crew.
The kids are the leads here - even the big name presence of Jude Law doesn't materialise until the end of the second episode. They're trusted a lot in Skeleton Crew, with many scenes just the four youngsters riffing between themselves, occasionally interjected 🍌by the not-always-helpful android. In an industry where Marvel has cast two 27 year olds as the 'Young' Avengers and is yet to start filming its first movie, it feels like a throwback to have actual children in starring roles, and that helps ground Skeleton Crew as a more personal show.
The Young Cast Steal The Show
"They weren't stars, they were just real kids, and they were taken seriously. And I think that's what we're tapping back into," Ford says when I mention the classic '80s movies like The Goonies. In fact, The✅ Goonies 𒈔had a major influence on Skeleton Crew, as its director Richard Donner had some crucial advice for Watts ahead of the show. "He said, 'When you're casting kids, you don't cast them to play a role. You cast them because of who they are'.
"We wrote this with an idea of these four archetypal characters in our minds. But then you have t🅘o put that aside a little bit when you start doing casting, because you see a lot of kids that are really good actors, but you're kind of waiting for someone that just embodies the essence of the chꦬaracter to walk into the room, and then that becomes the character... You believe in the kids, and you believe that they can lead and carry the story."
It's not just the children Ford and Watts are placing a lot of trust in though. As has become typical of modern Star Wars shows, the series is packed with excellent guest directors. Of the three episodes I saw, the first was hel🎃med by Watts himself, and the next two by David Lowery (best kꦏnown for The Green Knight). Across the first season, episodes will also be directed by the Daniels (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Bryce Dallas Howard (several previous Star Wars shows), Lee Isaac Chung (Twisters), and Jake Schreier (Beef, also the upcoming Thunderbolts). I asked the duo, Watts especially, what it was like to surrender the reins so much.
“I was given so much freedom at Marvel to go out there and do my thing,” Watts says of the Tom Holland 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man trilogy he directed. “I wanted to afford the same luxury to our directors. But we also all grew up watching the same films and h♒ad the same references, so everyone was already on board tonally as to what the show should feel likﷺe. So it was easy for us to get out of their way and let them do what they do." Ford agrees, adding, "It worked out so well, almost just naturally, with everyone's schedules, that we got to perfectly cast each director to the episode that fit them. I think we just got lucky.”
The sense I get from the pair is an affection for Star Wars because of the way they reacted to the stories when they were younger, and the storytelling potential the universe has, not just nostalgia for Halloween costumes. This idea that Skeleton Crew is a show that just happens to be Star Wars as opposed to being right in the centre of the crucial canon and explaining plot holes or exploring lore-essential events should serve it well when Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Skeleton Crew launches on Tuesday, December 3, exclusively on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Disney Plus.