Skeleton Crew Proves One Thing About Big Sci-Fi Franchises

This article contains spoilers for “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” 

Focusing on kids as a new show’s main stars can be risky, but add in a great story and a fair amount of nostalgia, and you might just have a hit on your hands. Shows like “Stranger Things” have used this formula to great effect, and the latest “Star Wars” Disney+ show also seems to understand the assignment. 

“Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” is both bringing back obscure alien races and recapturing the awe of a kid getting to experience the galaxy far, far away for the first time with equal gusto. Its adventurous, Amblin-influenced take on the “Star Wars” lore is arguably the freshest point of view the franchise has had in decades and shows the series in a brand new light. Its deliberately younger and more inexperienced main characters provide a chance for young fans to enter the franchise, and for older ones to relive what it was like to dive in for the first time.

With the possible exception of “Andor’s” grounded storytelling, “Star Wars” live-action series have traditionally been pretty risk-averse, so this is an important and fascinating development. What’s more, “risky” shows like “Skeleton Crew” could (and should) help steer the franchise toward ever wilder directions. This is something many other major sci-fi franchises have already experimented with, to nigh-invariably great effect. As such, it’s great to see that “Star Wars” has finally received the memo. 

If you look at your list of favorite sci-fi movies, chances are that you’ll find more than one film that doubles as the single greatest stylistic experiment by the franchise in question. For instance, if you’re not a “Wrath of Khan” person, there’s a decent chance that your choice for the best “Star Trek” movie is Leonard Nimoy’s comedic and fatality-free time travel romp “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (1986). More recently, 2022’s “Prey” eschewed the “Predator” franchise’s usual contemporary and future settings by putting a Yautja hunter up against an 18th-century Comanche warrior Naru (Amber Midthunder), and her tribe. Dan Trachtenberg’s bold experiment revitalized the franchise and may very well be the best “Predator” movie by a long shot.

As far as stone-cold classics go, 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” turns the first movie’s villainous Terminator type T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) into a protector and switches to top special effects and big-budget action, revolutionizing the entire genre for years to come. And then there’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which takes the best things in the series, boldly mashes them all up into a huge car chase sequence that takes up nearly the whole movie, and throws in a guitar flamethrower for good measure. 

Of course, it’s far too early to say whether “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” can even hope to stand up to such classics, and as a TV show, it might have a hard time doing so. Still, if it leads to more bold swings for the franchise, it may at the very least act as a precursor to something even greater and more imaginative. It’s a big galaxy out there, and it’s high time “Star Wars” starts exploring it from all angles.