Denis Villeneuve Would Probably Hate "Skeleton Crew"

The ROTJification of Star Wars continues apace

Credit: Disney+

Every time Disney releases a new live-action Star Wars property, I imagine that it’s the franchise’s first entry since Return of the Jedi.

The Force Awakens probably would’ve caught even more flack for being a soft reboot of A New Hope without the context of the prequels. Rogue One or Andor might’ve been hailed as a post-Ewok course correction, albeit lacking Skywalkers.

In the case of Skeleton Crew, though, I think it’s more interesting to imagine it as the first release since The Empire Strikes Back. Ironically, given its obvious appeal to '80s-kid Amblin Entertainment nostalgia, Skeleton Crew would be completely incomprehensible to a Star Wars fan in 1981. It’d be like a medieval peasant drinking Mountain Dew. They’d just explode.

Skeleton Crew takes everything novel about Return of the Jedi and distills it to a concentrated, sugary syrup. Blue Elephant people (I don’t care if Neel and Max Reebo share zero DNA.) Swashbuckling pirate-adventure tropes. Aliens that are just animal heads on human bodies.

The original 1977 film had the cantina scene with its weird mishmash of costumes the studio had lying around—the delightful hammerhead guy mixing it up with the literal devil. Someone tasked with making the original Star Wars sequel could’ve understandably latched onto that scene and thought, “This movie is a goofy Flash Gordon parody featuring the Wolfman. Let’s just empty out a Spirit Halloween and give these kids what they want.”

Instead, Irvin Kershner made Empire, a stirring drama that put our heroes personal conflicts against the backdrop of a believable and hopeless war effort. Empire even used audiences’ expectations of goofy alien puppets to set up the Yoda twist, the franchise’s most indelible character introduction.

People anticipated another movie with wacky, kiddy aliens and a second Death Star attack in 1980, and instead they got something richer, more cinematic, more compelling. Then, three years later, they got another movie with wacky, kiddy aliens and a second Death Star attack.

No wonder a 15-year-old Denis Villeneuve felt so betrayed by Return of the Jedi. I’ve wanted to write a review of his first two Dune movies in light of his promise to make “Star Wars for adults.” Having only heard that soundbite, I had figured Villeneuve as a sci-fi hipster. His being an Empire Strikes Back superfan who gave up after Jedi makes so much more sense.

It’s hard to separate Jedi from Empire at this point. The original trilogy is a defined set that only seems more cohesive in contrast to each subsequent release. Jabba the Hutt is as much a part of pop culture as Yoda. But have you ever stopped to think about the purpose of the entire Jabba subplot? Do the first 40 minutes of VI serve the overall story? Listen, I’m just a guy asking questions. But maybe Denis Villeneuve is more right than he’s wrong.

Unfortunately, he’s also right that the Return of the Jedi-fication of the franchise seems pretty irreversible at this point. While Tony Gilroy makes Andor out on an island, the people who really run Star Wars clearly all loved Episode VI when they were kids: just count how many times the Gamorrean guards have show up in the “Mandoverse.”

A lot of crap has been hand-waved by Star Wars fans with the phrase “They’re movies/shows for kids!” And now—I guess—they’re about kids too.

I actually am enjoying Skeleton Crew. I will write about that later. But part of me imagines a world in which this show wouldn’t make any sense—a Star Wars franchise on Denis Villeneuve’s Golden Path.