This article contains spoilers for the first two episodes of “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.”
Back in the day, “Star Wars” used to deal with the fear of the unknown quite a bit. “Episode IV — A New Hope” alone has plenty of scary moments: Darth Vader (David Prowse, with James Earl Jones providing the voice) is a creepy, unstoppable monster. The Empire is a faceless force of oppression. Animalistic, screeching Tusken Raiders stalk the deserts of Tatooine and nearly end young Luke Skywalker’s (Mark Hamill) journey before it even begins. Homesteads and planets are destroyed, countless people die, heroes are trapped in a trash compactor with a monster … you name it. The other two entries in the original trilogy also have their share of hair-raising moments, from Han Solo’s (Harrison Ford) horrifying carbonite prison to the nightmarish fate that befalls anyone cast in the Sarlacc pit.
But all those moments are now canonized in the annals of pop culture, and what they’ve gained in notoriety they’ve lost in terror. Ardent fans can recite the original trilogy’s lines off by heart and analyze it from a lore standpoint instead of being creeped out by its scarier moments. As people delved ever deeper into the galaxy far, far away, its frights went away. The franchise itself has also largely avoided them since the prequel trilogy, opting for spectacle in lieu of the original trilogy’s sheer otherwordly nature.
“Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” seems intent on correcting the franchise toward its original, scarier course. Its stars are children from a brand new sheltered “Star Wars” planet, unfamiliar with the galaxy’s horrors. Their viewpoint makes the viewer understand and appreciate how terrifying all those droids, pirates, and strange locations would really be for an unwary visitor — and the show is all the better for it.
Skeleton Crew taps into 1980s nostalgia in more ways than one
The Amblin influences of “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” mean it’s geared toward a new generation of “Star Wars” fans. It’s easy to assume that this takes away from its horror merits, but that’s only if you don’t remember how scary those 1980s Amblin films could be when you first saw them as a kid. “The Goonies” features plenty of scares, traps, and creepy characters, and even “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” briefly presents E.T. as a potential threat when Elliott (Henry Thomas) finds him. “Gremlins” (1984) is an Amblin movie and graces the viewer with a town-wide invasion of murderous monsters — and a tale about a chimney death that’s fit for any campfire story time. “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” is also an Amblin movie, and that melting cartoon shoe will tell you how family-friendly that film is. Amblin loved to terrify kids in the 1980s, is what I’m saying.
It’s refreshing to see “Skeleton Crew” embrace this side of its influences. Two episodes in, Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) and the show’s other young heroes have been thrown into a lawless area of the galaxy where space stations are teeming with alien criminals who could double as horror movie monsters in any other franchise. The show seems to be setting up Brutus (Fred Tatasciore) — a character who, for all intents and purposes, is a gun-toting werewolf — as a major villain. Even the (somewhat) benevolent pirate droid SM-33 (Nick Frost) gets an entrance scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a sci-fi horror film.
Are such moments enough to make “Star Wars” compete with actual horror movies? Of course not. But are they an important and oft-forgotten part of old-school “Star Wars” that yours truly, at the very least, warmly welcomes back? Absolutely.
New episodes of “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” premiere Tuesdays at 6 pm PST on Disney+.
