Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

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Very cute!
It's all too easy to forget how much Star Wars derailed from the Original Trilogy during the 80s with the Droids and Ewoks shows. This Skeleton Crew seems very much in the same spirit of 80s Star Wars and therefore feels very fitting. I still hate it - and I hated Droids and Ewoks too - but who knows, maybe this will be fun as some throwaway entertainment. I stopped taking Star Wars seriously, or holding out any hope for it, after the Prequels.
 
*click on thread to see what the latest--*
Steve Urkel is in this!!??
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I see 'suburbia' being brought up in videos and posts as being a step too far for Star Wars.

Yet Star Wars has always been our world transposed to a fictional galaxy long ago.

Han Solo was a western gunslinger wearing a vest and carrying his gun in tied down quick draw holster. Imperial officers were space Nazis with uniforms inspired by the Imperial Japanese navy. Tusken raiders were Bedouin armed with rifles derived from jezail muskets.

As in the third season of The Mandalorian, the pirates in Skeleton Crew have matchlock inspired blasters and 18th century inspired dress, and I think there were even a few cutlasses. This recalls the expanded universe comics from the late '70s where pirates were unmistakably pirates, with cutlasses, eye patches and head scarves.

Same goes with the strong emphasis on samurai, which is now particularly evident with Ahsoka's clothing and the dojo aboard her ship.


If that's all too far fetched for a galaxy far away and long ago, there's one much bigger suspension of disbelief you had to get over in 1977, and with every film and series since. I'm not referring to sound in space, but the fact that characters speak modern English which is an impossibility. (Though Lucas did stipulate that no English text should ever appear on screen).

Gravity never (or rarely?) changes from planet to planet, and most worlds are breathable for humans and countless other species.


Star Wars felt right from the start because, while it was an alien universe, so much of it was familiar and relatable. It was always soft science, i.e., fantasy, just like the Flash Gordon cliffhanger serials that Lucas wanted to remake. It was made for children, and for adults, like Lucas, who wanted to relive the nostalgia of childhood.


The original Star Wars grew from Lucas' nostalgia for watching re-runs of cliffhanger serials in the 1950s. Skeleton Crew is covering both ends of the spectrum by presenting a story for children, while also capturing nostalgia for the movies of the 1980s. It looks to be an interesting concept, less dull and dry than The Acolyte.

But will 'suburbia' and BMX bikes end up as jarring as the Mods on their scooters and the Hells Angels bikers in The Book of Boba Fett? Are the familiar call backs too familiar, because they're closer to our own history than the wild west or the era of samurai?

We'll find out next month.
 
But will 'suburbia' and BMX bikes end up as jarring as the Mods on their scooters and the Hells Angels bikers in The Book of Boba Fett?
Yes.

No need to wait a month when we can clearly see it in the trailer and it doesn't work.

The family in Ewok Adventure seemed to live in a spaceship, not a home with a large nicely manicured lawn and a long driveway.

People in Star Wars live in weird environments, like the Lars' desert house. Or even the opulent City in the Clouds.

This isn't Star Wars. It's just wrong.

You know what else wasn't even seen in the original trilogy? Friggin' KIDS. Other than some baby Ewok puppets. That's part of why I hated Episode One. All the dumb weiner kids. Especially the girl with braces. What a way to destroy any last semblance of immersion into an alien world. Would it have killed you to CGI her braces out, the way you did Sebastian Shaw's eyebrows, George???
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But will 'suburbia' and BMX bikes end up as jarring as the Mods on their scooters and the Hells Angels bikers in The Book of Boba Fett? Are the familiar call backs too familiar, because they're closer to our own history than the wild west or the era of samurai?

We'll find out next month.
Nice try Asta, American/Scandinavian style suburban areas have no business being in Star Wars, and you know it...
 
The family in Ewok Adventure seemed to live in a spaceship, not a home with a large nicely manicured lawn and a long driveway.

People in Star Wars live in weird environments, like the Lars' desert house. Or even the opulent City in the Clouds.

Nice try Asta, American/Scandinavian style suburban areas have no business being in Star Wars, and you know it...

People in Star Wars live in environments that reflect our own. We've seen a lot of high rise accommodation, but just not the suburbs until now.

Suburbs should be no more out of place than giving jezail muskets to Tusken Raiders, purely because they augment the idea of Middle Eastern nomads.

The subterranean Lars homestead, as strange as it appeared in 1977, was a found location: Matamata-Al-Qadimal, a thousand year old Berber settlement, dug into the ground to escape the desert heat.

Mos Eisley was composed of adobe and stone buildings that are familiar to us as towns found in our own world's deserts.


Star Wars is familiarity through and through, from its repeated dialogue to its props, locations and costumes.


Broomhandle Mausers, Sterling submachine guns, M34s and Lewis guns ought not belong in Star Wars, but they're there in 1977, and we have to accept them as part and parcel of this odd recycled universe.

Star Wars defied logic from the outset.

Harlan Ellison ridiculed it for doing so back in 1978:

 
People in Star Wars live in environments that reflect our own. We've seen a lot of high rise accommodation, but just not the suburbs until now.

Suburbs should be no more out of place than giving jezail muskets to Tusken Raiders, purely because they augment the idea of Middle Eastern nomads.

The subterranean Lars homestead, as strange as it appeared in 1977, was a found location: Matamata-Al-Qadimal, a thousand year old Berber settlement, dug into the ground to escape the desert heat.

Mos Eisley was composed of adobe and stone buildings that are familiar to us as towns found in our own world's deserts.


Star Wars is familiarity through and through, from its repeated dialogue to its props, locations and costumes.


Broomhandle Mausers, Sterling submachine guns, M34s and Lewis guns ought not belong in Star Wars, but they're there in 1977, and we have to accept them as part and parcel of this odd recycled universe.

Star Wars defied logic from the outset.

Harlan Ellison ridiculed it for doing so back in 1978:


All design has to be recycled and modified in a way that doesn't distract you as a viewer though and these 'burbs aparently don't fit the bill for alot of fans. The examples you've used from the OT only ever seemed to bother people with special knowledge about "fringe" topics, such as firearms. The problem here is that everyone knows what typical western architecture looks like. Also, Had George Lucas been born in Japan or in the Middle East we'd very likely have a vastly different looking Star Wars altogether...
 
All design has to be recycled and modified in a way that doesn't distract you as a viewer though and these 'burbs aparently don't fit the bill for alot of fans. The examples you've used from the OT only ever seemed to bother people with special knowledge about "fringe" topics, such as firearms. The problem here is that everyone knows what typical western architecture looks like. Also, Had George Lucas been born in Japan or in the Middle East we'd very likely have a vastly different looking Star Wars altogether...

Even if you didn't know what a jezail musket looked like, the fact that Lucas put them in that environment, and into the hands of desert nomads, means that he wanted the connection to be drawn: that this universe, as alien as it is in many regards, is actually very familiar.


Familiarity makes the universe more accessible to a wider audience, as opposed to the genre of philosophical or hard science (i.e., Harlan Ellison, Arthur C. Clarke) that can be too involved or too bizarre to draw audiences/readers in.

Become too familiar and some will reach their breaking point: the world of escapism becomes too close to the real world we want to escape from.

Among my breaking points were the Mods and Rockers in The Book of Boba Fett. It was Quadrophenia in space. Essentially it shouldn't break the universe since so much that came before already transposed elements of our world directly into George's.

However, the suburbs don't bother me as they seem a natural inclusion, and if you have the space you can have gardens, a luxury not available for those in tower blocks, and certainly not for anyone on Coruscant.

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Andor was lauded as a top class series by many, yet gave us a slice of life from the perspective of working people.

Skeleton Crew has suburbs, schools, school buses, BMX or chopper themed mini-speeders. It's a slice of life like Andor, but specifically designed to evoke 1980s kids movies in the manner of Stranger Things.

If this series had been made at the time of the Ewok movies, this is how it would likely have looked, albeit with matte paintings.


The 'burbs aren't breaking me because they're what I expect to see at least somewhere in that universe. They feel like they belong in one of Brian Daley's Han Solo novels. Han and Chewie landed at spaceports that sounded much like airports, and made their way into alien cityscapes, though I don't recall them ever going to the 'burbs because the action and the interaction was in the busier centre. But they must've existed beyond the commercial centre, on the outskirts of the cities.


I'm getting over the piratey pirates with the 'pirate' clothes and weapons (we already saw them in Mandalorian season 3), but one thing I am finding hard to stomach is the elephant boy because he looks like a walking cartoon.

A couple of years ago I became completely sick of Star Wars, OT included, and cancelled a lot of my pre-orders.

The sickness gradually subsided and I was drawn back in. Oddly enough, probably for many, it was Ahsoka that largely cured me. While some things were still off, many elements seemed to merge the classic with the new in a way that much of Obi-Wan Kenobi or TBOBF failed to do.

The Acolyte was an utter dud, but I expect Skeleton Crew will have a lot more going for it, including the unique aspect of being retro '80s.
 
You can absolutely have suburbs in Star Wars, provided they are sufficiently different from our own.

Have the suburbs be multi-level with houses above houses, the paths being where flying speeders drop off passengers. Have the school transport be a hover pod in a tube. Have the lawns be purple mushrooms. have the roofs of the houses be covered in individually articulating tiles that capture the wind.

Make it visually reminiscent of suburbs, but at the same time completely alien. Visually we understand that the carpet of oddly coloured fungus is analogous to a grass lawn but it isn't so close that it feels like earth.


Part of the reason the OT had so many Earth elements (the primary reason actually) was budget and tech limitations. George didn't WANT halloween wolfman and devil masks for aliens. He didn't want the real world weapons to be easily identifiable as such, but they needed functional weapons for the effects so they tried to stick bits on them to make them look less like real world weapons where they could.

The intention was to NOT be Earthlike. Han didn't wear a cowboy hat and have a classic face off with the town sheriff outside a saloon while people shuttered their windows. Lukes Homestead was chosen because it was the most alien looking location (to Western audiences) available. Most people had no idea it was a found location, most assumed it was made for the film.



Disney repeatedly jump the shark and this new show does it again.
 
I think we all know how to play the Star Wars game by now -- mixing cultures and icons to create something new yet familiar.

But its too simplistic to say Han is a 'cowboy' and the Empire is the Third Reich (though true).

Han Solo was a mix of gunslinger, pirate and hot-rodder in character and image. Vader was part Nazi, part Samurai, part Black Knight, part 'Death' all locked up in a dark spacesuit.

I think that's the game: several cultures, several iconic images, all wrapped into one. That is, if the game is played properly.

The problem with the above 'suburbia' is that its just the one image -- that is all it evokes: suburbia. The sidewalk (even divided into blocks), the lawns, the roofs, the curving street, the people walking... at first glance it is nothing new. But Star Wars was always something new at first glance; it was the 2nd or 3rd glance where you start to see the mishmash of familiar images. Yes, sometimes the images were very simple -- a Princess is a Princess -- but again, throwing her simple image into an all-new environment like the Tantive IV made it feel new.

That suburbia above feels like it needs another 2-3 ingredients to make it feel unique. It feels unfinished. Like Lucas would point to that photo and then to some seaside shanty town in China and then to some colorful slum in India and say: now mix them all together.
 
I just read on 16bit that this show was filmed in 2022.

I guess the networks learned nothing from Stranger Things. If they ever wanna do a season two, these kids won't be kids anymore.

Hope that means they had the foresight not to end on a cliffhanger.

"Foresight" in a Disney SW product....oxymoron.
 
You can absolutely have suburbs in Star Wars, provided they are sufficiently different from our own.

Have the suburbs be multi-level with houses above houses, the paths being where flying speeders drop off passengers. Have the school transport be a hover pod in a tube. Have the lawns be purple mushrooms. have the roofs of the houses be covered in individually articulating tiles that capture the wind.

Make it visually reminiscent of suburbs, but at the same time completely alien. Visually we understand that the carpet of oddly coloured fungus is analogous to a grass lawn but it isn't so close that it feels like earth.


Part of the reason the OT had so many Earth elements (the primary reason actually) was budget and tech limitations. George didn't WANT halloween wolfman and devil masks for aliens. He didn't want the real world weapons to be easily identifiable as such, but they needed functional weapons for the effects so they tried to stick bits on them to make them look less like real world weapons where they could.

The intention was to NOT be Earthlike. Han didn't wear a cowboy hat and have a classic face off with the town sheriff outside a saloon while people shuttered their windows. Lukes Homestead was chosen because it was the most alien looking location (to Western audiences) available. Most people had no idea it was a found location, most assumed it was made for the film.



Disney repeatedly jump the shark and this new show does it again.
Lucas Star Wars demanded a level of ambition & creativity that Disney simply isn't capable of here. (Or is lack of talent?) They graft OT props and FX onto their North American set pieces, and it's lame and lacks escapism for a seemingly Goonies-derived product.
 
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