Skeleton Crew premiers tomorrow on Disney+ and now is a perfect time to get acquainted with the creative crew behind the show. The Star Wars YouTube channel posted a roundtable discussion with the directors of show: Jon Watts, Jake Schreier, Bryce Dallas Howard, David Lowery, and Chris Ford. They all come from similar backgrounds from Spider-Man to The Mandalorian. In the video, they talk about the creative decisions behind the show, the tone, genre, and inspiration for why the show was made.
According to director Jon Watts, “It’s fun to have a genre as an entry point to help you sort of explore another section of the Star Wars world. We went back and watched old pirate serials from the 20’s and 30’s and that was a really fun entry point.” The Skeleton Crew is a essentially a pirate show with kids, so he talks about using old fashion pirate show as inspiration for the tone. He also mentions the idea of “entry point” a lot, and aside from being an entry point to just a portion of the Star Wars Universe, this seems more like an entry point to the entirety of the Star Wars Universe as a whole for a new generation.
With other shows like The Mandalorian and Andor having more mature themes, Star Wars is desperately missing a way for kids to get into the franchise. Yes Baby Yoda is cute, but more in a ‘defend the resistance’ kind of way. When I was younger in the 90’s I watched the original trilogy and enjoyed them, but the production value was not nearly as aged in comparison to a kid then as it would look now in 2024. According to Watts, it sounds like producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are giving them a good amount of creative freedom:
“That’s what’s so great about having Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni as your producers, is cause they’re like the ultimate safety net, they give you sort of the freedom to follow whatever creative path you want to go down. And they’ll let you know, it’s like bumper bowling…”
The video is a little over ten minutes so it is definitely worth giving a watch. They talk about working with actor Jude Law, the adult of the rag tag team of pirates and the most well known name in the cast. They praise him for not only his performance, but for his work with the kids on the set and how he was able to enhance their performance. Director David Lowery had this to say about the actor: “It’s such a gift to have an actor like that who not only can just you know, give you that incredible performance but also show the next generation of talent.”
They also talk about the perspective of, “stumbling into the larger galaxy and not knowing it all”. Lowery clarifies that the show really is meant to act as an entry point into the Star Wars Universe as an entirety: “It’s fun to be able to make something that works if you don’t know anything about Star Wars and it also works if you know everything about Star Wars.”
Check out the full video here, and don’t miss the show premiering tomorrow on Disney+!