‘Skeleton Crew’ Finds a New ‘Star Wars’ Show Lost in Space

I just don’t get Star Wars anymore.

Sure, I understand the stories, the mythos, the lore. But the overall direction of this franchise increasingly baffles me. The latest head-scratcher is Skeleton Crew, a new Disney+ streaming series series co-created by Jon Watts. His involvement, at least, I get. Watts directed the three hugely successful Tom Holland Spider-Man films, and he seems to have a very good handle on crafting broadly popular entertainments.

He also elicited very strong performances out of an ensemble of relatively young actors. That was also true of Watts’ pre-Spider-Man film, Cop Car, which shares a little DNA with Skeleton Crew as well — including its co-creator, Christopher Ford, who co-wrote Cop Car with Watts. Their Star Wars show is a sort of Amblinesque “Goonies In Space” concept. A group of four rambunctious kids inadvertently wind up on a spaceship lightyears from their peaceful planet with no way to figure out how to get back home. Their only hope is a man named Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law), who appears to know the Force and might be a Jedi … or could be a con man exploiting these naive children for his own gain.

READ MORE: 25 Movies With Very Surprising Letterboxd Scores

Star Wars has always resonated with younger audiences, so making a series aimed at kids makes sense. And based on his resume, Watts makes sense as one of its primary creative forces. (Cop Car even had a very similar concept to Skeleton Crew, with a couple of troublemaking kids taking a police cruiser for a joyride, only to be chased by the car’s amoral owner.) I’ve got two kids at home who I’ve wanted to get more into Star Wars. On paper, Skeleton Crew seemed like the right show to do that.

But then first episode opens with a very intense space battle. Ships are invaded, aliens get their eyeballs zapped out, space pirates get blasted into oblivion. Okay … so Skeleton Crew is a show about kids, but not necessarily for kids?

Not quite. After the surprisingly violent opening, the show settles down into more familiar children’s entertainment territory. The scares vanish, at least for the first few episodes. Young Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) lives with his overworked single dad (Tunde Adebimpe) on a boring planet that looks like Star Wars meets the suburbs; endless streets of identical houses and manicured lawns, plus the occasional friendly domestic droid. Wim craves adventure and one day when he’s late to school he finds one: Something buried in the forest near his home.

He convinces his elephantine alien buddy Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) to investigate further, but two more rule-flouting kids — Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and KB (Kyriana Kratter) —  start sniffing around too, and they want their own cut of the potential buried treasure. Reluctantly, the two pairs agree to explore their mysterious discovery together.

I’ll let you see for yourself how the foursome winds up in space and then how they encounter Law’s character, who is far and away the most interesting presence in the series. Jod Na Nawood dresses a little like Lando Calrissian, swaggers a little like the young Han Solo, and I genuinely can’t tell whether his Force powers are legit or a total put-on. That’s a good thing; the character keeps the viewer guessing — and keeps you curious enough about his backstory to keep tuning in to future episodes.

But here is another inexplicable thing I cannot explain. Aside from a brief appearance in the violent prologue, Law’s character basically doesn’t show up onscreen until the third of the season’s eight episodes. Leaving your most compelling hero (or villain???) off-camera for a quarter of your series … kind of an odd choice.

Without Law, those first two episodes can be a slog, with hokey subplots about how tests and teachers are boring, and parents just don’t understand, even in a galaxy far, far away. And the Skeleton Crew kids (and Wim especially, the nominal series lead) come across as less brave than willfully bullheaded. They don’t just stumble into an adventure; they make a series of decisions they are actively told not to take, and then when they go badly, they insist the consequences are not their fault.

Maybe the show’s younger audience won’t mind that — provided they make it through that intense opening sequence. The show does get better when Jude Law shows up. Otherwise, Skeleton Crew does little to erase the memory of the disappointing The Acolyte, which Lucasfilm has reportedly already canceled after just one season (and several massive unresolved cliffhangers). And The Acolyte followed Ahsoka, which felt like a show narrowcasted to fans of Clone Wars and Rebels to the exclusion of everyone else.

Now here’s Skeleton Crew, a show with moments that are too dark for kids and too infantile for adults. I really enjoyed The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, and the first couple of seasons of The Mandalorian hold up really well. Lately, though, whenever I watch Star Wars, I’m just confused. Like the kids of Skeleton Crew, this franchise seems to have no idea where it’s going.

The first two episodes of Skeleton Crew premiere on Disney+ on December 3. New episodes follow weekly.