Arturo Hilario
El Observador
In a galaxy, far, far away there exists a neighborhood and children that seem awfully familiar to those found in the 1985 film The Goonies.
Incorporating children’s adventure comedy with the dangerous space pirates and incredible experiences beyond their neatly kept streets, the new live-action show Star Wars: Skeleton by creators and writers Jon Watts and Christopher Ford serves as a way to recognize the importance of smaller scope stories in the Star Wars universe, connecting audiences with the familiar dreams and imaginations of childhood and merging them with the excitement and high stakes of the world born from George Lucas’ imagination.
Set during the New Republic era alongside The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, the show brings together four kids from a quiet town where bike racing bullies, quizzes and stern parental warnings bring the most stress and anxiety. In a simple miscalculation, Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) falls into a ditch while trying to take a shortcut to school and finds a mysterious panel sticking out of the ground. Later, he and his alien best friend Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) are sheepish but committed to opening up what they assume must be a ‘Jedi temple’.
They come to find that they have been followed by two girls from their town, Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and KB (Kyriana Kratter), who want equal claim in the discovery. It is this meeting that sets the journey into motion, taking the kids from their idyllic but tame neighborhood to getting lost in space amongst pirates and mystery.
The show also stars adult actors like Jude Law, Tunde Adebimpe, Kerry Condon and Nick Frost. Frost plays the kid’s droid companion SM-33, who despite being a malfunctioning pirate, helps the children when they first find themselves away from home.
Recently Jon Watts and Christopher Ford spoke with us about their love letter to childhood adventure stories, from how they took their concept from idea to reality by incorporating fun and practical effects into their workspace, what it was like to create the show alongside the talented child actors, and why they hope the hard work and fun they had on creating the show translates into the final product.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is now streaming on Disney+.
With the vast amount of media out there in the Star Wars universe, how did you want to approach telling your story, and what type of your own interpretation did you want to leave on the world of Star Wars?
Jon Watts
Yeah. I mean, it all started as a really simple idea, which was just the idea of a group of kids that don’t know that much about the Star Wars, getting lost in the Star Wars galaxy and having to find their way home. For us, that simple shift of telling the story through the eyes of a group of kids was a way, I guess we weren’t intentionally trying to do this, but it just makes you look at something that you think you know in a whole new way with fresh new eyes. To be able to capture that feeling of seeing Star Wars for the first time, that’s what we were hoping to recreate.
Chris Ford
But that’s that thing. It’s always like, it is the same universe. We’re just coming at it differently with the kids and with going to places that maybe would be overlooked in a higher power-level story about a giant battle or something.
Jon Watts
That’s what’s always been so great about Star Wars is that in every frame, in every location that they go to, in every moment, there’s always something else happening in the background, which the world feels so dense and complex that you could follow any character and go, I want to go see where they live and what their day-to-day life is, it’s just such a rich world. Just the idea that there’s so much to explore in this world, and we’re still scratching the surface, I feel like.
The show starts off with a ship and space battle, and that’s like, “oh, yeah, that’s Star Wars”. And then you’re transported to this suburban-style neighborhood, like an ‘80s kids’ adventure story is starting up. So how did you guys go about trying to peel back the layers for the audience and for the group of kids as they’re starting to see they go beyond their neighborhood and town, and they’re starting to see what the real galaxy is like?
Jon Watts
That immediate juxtaposition was important because you’re like, these two things are both happening in this world at the same time. There are violent pirate attacks happening, and there are kids who are eating their breakfast cereal and are late for school. Those two things are happening in the same galaxy. Just establishing those two worlds and knowing that they’re going to collide, that was an intentional choice.
Chris Ford
There are a lot of layers to it as the story will unfold. I think it might seem deceptively simple at first but there’s a lot going on there.
On the inspiration or part of it, it’s obvious it’s also based on ’80s, The Goonies type films. What are your own personal experiences and inspirations that helped you craft the story?
Jon Watts
It’s our childhood. We grew up in the ’80s, so we grew up watching those movies and going on treasure hunts with our friends in our neighborhoods or just hoping that we would come across some adventure, which I don’t think is an ’80s thing as much as I think it’s just a universal kid thing, of longing for something more exciting than your day-to-day life.
There’s this phrase about, ‘Don’t work with kids and animals’ as if it’s this burden. But the kids were huge creative partners, and they were a huge benefit to the whole show.
-Christopher Ford
Chris Ford
Yeah. It’s like we did the first part of the story before the exciting thing happens. That’s from our real life. [Laughs]
Jon Watts
We never actually found any exciting adventure. [Laughs]
Chris Ford
Exactly. The biggest thing in my childhood is in a ravine wall down to this creek, we found a buried old gas station pump that had been dumped there and buried. We spent the whole summer digging it up, and it We were thrilled, and we were imagining that it was a spaceship.
Jon Watts
We found a cow skeleton once. That was the most exciting thing I ever found.
On the roadmap of creating the show, based off your guys’ ideas, how did you work with the other creators that are doing shows like Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni? And how was that relationship throughout the process of creating the show?
Chris Ford
I mean, it was amazing because those guys had been doing their own shows as the creator showrunners, and then they were basically our bosses, overseeing what we were doing on this, but they had such a perspective of what we would be going through. So they were the best bosses you could possibly imagine. They’re so understanding.
Jon Watts
Because they’ve done it. They’ve been in the trenches. They know what it’s like. They were basically a huge safety net underneath us. They knew what it was like. They knew what the hurdles were.
Chris Ford
Both with Star Wars and then just the making a giant show.
Jon Watts
Yeah. They were just there to protect us and let us follow our vision and help guide us along the way if we ever needed them. They were amazing.
Chris Ford
You literally couldn’t have a better setup. We were the luckiest.
For you, Jon, what was it like to take the reins in directing for a couple of episodes? And how was Christopher and the rest of the team there for support in that?
Jon Watts
It was fun because I did the first and last, so you set the table for everyone. Then you get out of the way and bring in the other directors and let them bring their voice and do the work. Selfishly, as a director, it’s really nice to step back and watch how other people do it.
Chris Ford
It’s funny because I’ve been a screenwriter, so I’ve been working for directors or with directors my whole career. Jon, as a writer director, was directing his own thing. When the other directors came in, you got to see what it had been like for me just to be hanging out on set instead of sweating.
Jon Watts
This is way better than having to do all the work.
Christopher, I was reading somewhere that you said that the show is “an adventure that takes kids seriously as characters.” And with that in mind, I was wondering what the process was, choosing the young cast How did you guys instill, emphasize the importance of their roles to the story?
Chris Ford
The kids added so much to the show. We had initial concepts for the characters that we just started writing and working with, and casting kids is hard because you have to not only find kids who are really talented at a very specific thing of on-camera acting. But these kids just needed to embody the spirit of the characters we had in mind.
Then what was so fantastic was we then saw how they were slightly different than the characters in ways that were actually an improvement. The Wim character originally was probably a little more introverted and dreamy, but Ravi, as just an actor, he’s so active and adventurous and charismatic, and that was actually a better character to tell the story with.
That’s just one example. It was great because they’re kid actors. People think of kid actors as like, there’s this phrase about, “Don’t work with kids and animals” as if it’s this burden. But the kids were huge creative partners, and they were a huge benefit to the whole show.
Jon Watts
They all became best friends, which was so sweet.
Chris Ford
Yeah. They were nice to be around. It made the set a fun place. I had crew members who were in their 60s who had been working in the industry for their whole lives, and they would come up to me and say, “This was such a great shoot. Thank you.”
Jon Watts
This is the most fun I’ve ever had on a camera.
Chris Ford
It sounds insane, but it’s true.
Going off the first episode, it does really seem genuine because you’re experiencing everything through their perspective.
Jon Watts
Yeah. We tried to make it really immersive for the kids on set. That’s why we did a lot of things, practically built a lot of sets, had real puppets and animatronics and things like that so that the kids were really experiencing it. So, the expressions that you’re seeing on their faces are sincere.
Chris Ford
There’s this amazing part where they’re in that little dingy flying into the spaceport in episode 2, and Wim is pressed against the plastic, looking out. I think on a regular shoot of whatever, three years earlier, he would have been looking at a tennis ball on a blue screen, but he was looking at the ships flying past on “The Volume” stage wall.
Jon Watts
Yeah, he’s actually looking at what the audience ends up looking at. Look at that. That’s a 100% real reaction.
Chris Ford
It would have been this ridiculous luxury to create that for the actor, but in this case, that was just the most efficient solution for the visual effects that we were doing. It was so fun.
Jon Watts
Yeah, they did something like that on Goonies. The first time the kids see the ship, that was the first time they were actually seeing the ship. They hid that from the kids, rolled the cameras, and then had the kids walk into the stage for the first time. Those reactions are real.
Why was it important to have these practical effects, weave it in with the digital to create the overall visual effects of the show?
Jon Watts
Well, the immersion was a big part of it, but we had Jon Knoll as our VFX supervisor. When you have someone like that on your team, it means that every tool that exists is available to you. Sometimes it wasn’t about the most realistic option. It was about what aesthetically felt right. We did stop motion, we did matte paintings, we did a little bit of everything. It was kind of just figuring out what was the best option, and that was always available to us. It was really a luxury.
Chris Ford
Yeah, it was a luxury. And it was the spirit that we were having fun and playing.
Jon Watts
Sometimes it’s just like, “Oh, it’d be more fun to build a puppet or build a miniature and do motion control as opposed to building it all on a computer.” Sometimes we just did it because we wanted to go visit Lucasfilm and go to their model shop.
Chris Ford
Exactly. I think we believed and we hoped that if everyone involved was really happy to be there working, because it’s so much hard work for everyone involved. If it can be fun, we hope that that translates on screen. It makes it a joyful thing.
