Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which airs its season finale on Disney Plus on January 14, has often been referred to as The Goonies set in a galaxy far, far away. It’s an apt comparison, as the series follows a group of youngsters who set off on an adventure involving pirates and treasure. I’ve enjoyed watching the show over these last few weeks, but something that is going to stick with me as I remember Skeleton Crew — it should have been a movie.
It’s been a key strategy for Disney Plus to build out its subscribers and general buzz by relying on new stories set in the Star Wars universe. It started with The Mandalorian and has since included the likes of Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Book of Boba Fett, Ashoka, Andor and The Acolyte. But in the meantime, the franchise’s movie legacy, where it all started, has fallen into a crater. We haven’t had a new Star Wars movie since the disappointing Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. While that drought seems poised to end in 2026 with The Mandalorian & Grogu, that entry will require a level of entry of the first three seasons of The Mandalorian to likely know what’s going on in that movie.
I think that both the story of Skeleton Crew could have been better served as a movie and that it would have been a better refresh for the Star Wars movie brand. Let me explain.
I’ll start first with the TV show itself. Again, I have enjoyed Skeleton Crew as constructed on Disney Plus. The show was utilized a number of my favorite directors — David Lowery, Lee Isaac Chung, The Daniels (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert) — and more talented filmmakers to bring these episodes to life. I like that the story has almost nothing to do with the characters that we’ve seen in past projects, or the Jedis or the Empire in general (at least not to the point where they’re the focus). We finally explored a different kind of story going on in this vast galaxy. And making it a more family-friendly show brought back a nostalgic quality and sense of fun to the proceedings.
That being said, this story could have been condensed. Many make the argument that telling a story as a TV show versus a movie allows you to provide more depth to characters and include memorable moments that would ultimately end up on the cutting room floor otherwise (this is a big justification for HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter TV series). However, spreading a story out over eight or more episodes runs the risk of exposing weak points. There were definitely some instances of that in Skeleton Crew.
There’s a whole episode of Skeleton Crew that feels completely extraneous, episode 4, “Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin.” This little side quest to a planet similar to At Attin but now in ruins and featuring opposing factions offers a nice character moment for Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) and reveals a plot point on how they can find the next clue to get home, but it doesn’t appear to have any greater ramifications on the story. You could remove it and basically nothing about the series would change. I’m not the only one critical of that episode, as Skeleton Crew episode 4 is the lowest rated episode of the season on IMDb.
I also tend to think that tightening the story up would have helped with the character arcs for the kids. By the third or fourth episode, Wim' (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) complaining got annoyingly repetitive.
All in all, Skeleton Crew’s eight episode run is going to come in at a little over four hours, but I’m hard pressed to believe that you couldn’t have told just as good (if not better) a story in two hours (The Goonies did).
The other aspect of this is that Disney and LucasFilm, the powers behind Star Wars, missed an opportunity to get some energy behind their movie franchises again. Sure, monthly subscriptions to Disney Plus are a more reliable source of revenue than a movie’s box office, but in terms of cultural impact, outside of The Mandalorian no Disney Plus Star Wars show has come close to achieving the heights of the Star Wars movies.
Seeing the re-release of Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope in movie theaters when I was a kid was one of things that really sparked my interest in movies and made my a lifelong fan of the franchise. Skeleton Crew could have been a great opportunity to do something similar for a new generation.
Let’s be honest, the Star Wars prequels and sequels were more built for well established Star Wars fans than newcomers. But Skeleton Crew requires no real base of knowledge about Star Wars to start watching. Yes, there are things about Jedis and the Republic that are helped if you have some background, but it’s not entirely necessary. Combine that with the fact that this is geared for kids, and Skeleton Crew on the big screen could have inspired a whole new generation of Star Wars fanatics, who following the movie may have sought out other Star Wars titles to find out more about the lore that was mentioned.
Perhaps that will happen anyway, as consuming things on TV is more the norm for younger kids anyway. But let’s be honest, what do you as a fan remember more fondly: watching the Star Wars movies on the big screen or streaming Ashoka on Disney Plus? Times may be changing, yet the power of the movie theater is still something to be reckoned with, as studies show.
Would Skeleton Crew have been a big hit at the box office? I don’t know. Reports on streaming numbers haven’t been great, possibly making a Skeleton Crew season 2 a long shot, so it may have failed in movie theaters as well. Still, despite enjoying the TV show, I'm confident that the best version of Skeleton Crew would have been as a movie.
Stream Star Wars: Skeleton Crew exclusively on Disney Plus.
