‘Skeleton Crew’ turns to George Lucas for that old ‘Star Wars’ magic

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Jude Law was a little taken back when he first donned his Jedi robe and stepped onto the set of “Skeleton Crew,” the latest “Star Wars” television spin-off.

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The world-renowned actor, who has headlined a Marvel film, two Harry Potter movies and a slew of other blockbusters, was surprised to learn that “Star Wars” filmmaking had its own unique craft and style. There was a “language” to the process, he said – something that harked back to George Lucas’s original 1977 film.

In fact, Law recalled one director telling him specifically that they couldn’t film a shot a certain way because it wasn’t quite “Star Wars-y” enough.

“It required a whole different approach to the filmmaking process,” Law said. “It’s not that there’s a rule book, but a lot of it does relate back to what Lucas did all those years ago.”

Law stars in “Skeleton Crew,” an eight-part “Goonies”-meets-“Star Wars” series about a group of younglings who get lost in space. Law plays Jod Na Nawood, who claims to be a Jedi (though he’s a bit of a nerf herder) and says he wants to help the lost children get home.

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The show opens with scenes of the kids – including Ravi Cabot-Conyers’s Wim and Robert Timothy Smith’s elephantine alien Neel – being normal younglings in the “Star Wars” galaxy (their hometown is a cross between middle America and Disney’s ill-fated Galactic Starcruiser hotel). When they accidentally leave their home via a hidden spaceship, they find themselves tangling with pirates, an owl-like mentor and Law’s Nawood.

Showrunners Jon Watts and Chris Ford, who both worked on Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” wanted to turn back the clock to the Lucas days for “Skeleton Crew.” It’s been well-documented that the director gained inspiration for “Star Wars” from westerns as well as Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films. So Watts and Ford rewatched old spaghetti western movies, throwback pirate serials and some 1930s films to replicate that experience.

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“You don’t want to try to just copy ‘Star Wars’ directly,” Ford said. “You want to try to re-create the processes that George Lucas employed to create ‘Star Wars.’”

Creating a show in the “Star Wars” universe also requires making sure it looks like “Star Wars.” Watts and Ford said they worked with Lucasfilm design artists consistently to create the proper aesthetic. They also said they used stop-motion animation, which they said felt more like “Star Wars” than CGI.

“It’s not like there’s a series of rule books and like, someone comes down from Lucasfilm and is like, ‘Oh, you broke it,’” Watts said. “It’s more like trying to capture the vibe and aesthetic of ‘Star Wars’ is a little bit of like an intangible thing. And it goes back to just what feels right and what doesn’t feel right.”

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“It’s an emotional thing,” Watts added. “It’s like a feeling. How do you make something feel like ‘Star Wars’ is something that we talked about a lot.”

Ford agreed. “It’s not about rules. It’s more like upholding a tradition.”

To help make sure they were making the right choices, Watts and Ford heeded the advice of longtime “Star Wars” collaborators Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, both of whom executive produced “The Mandalorian,” to get the feel of Lucas’s universe. Similarly, Bryce Dallas Howard, who worked on episodes of “The Mandalorian,” directed one of the episodes for “Skeleton Crew,” which gave them added support.

Watts and Ford said that there are certain aspects of a “Star Wars” show that are unique to “Star Wars” – as opposed to a Marvel project, which can stretch in all sorts of directions.

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Law, who played Yon-Rogg in 2019’s “Captain Marvel,” is familiar with how Marvel’s filmmaking process is different than Star Wars. In his time with the franchise, he witnessed wide shots where characters soared through the air and moments when the camera would spun around the room.

“When it comes to space flight, you don’t see shots where they kind of pull out through the glass or whizzing around,” Law said of “Star Wars” films. “That’s more Marvel.” With “Star Wars,” he said, “you’re either inside or you’re outside. And again, I think that relates to the language that Lucas developed.”

Law said on-set “gatekeepers” instructed actors about how to keep their scenes consistent with Lucas’s original vision and with subsequent “Star Wars” projects. Similarly, various directors explained shots that were or were not permissible.

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Though some may consider such strictures frustrating, Law doesn’t. “I’m actually quite a fan of limitations on a film set,” Law said. “You’ve got, you know, too much money, too much time and too many toys – I don’t know that you make good decisions. I quite like the idea of – these are the parameters, stick within them. I certainly never felt frustrated.”

Part of this is because Law, Ford and Watts all recognize that Lucas himself had constraints when he filmed “A New Hope” in 1977. That’s why they worked to mimic the cinematography and style of the original trilogy, which included moments where viewers see wide shots of the Tatooine desert and flat pan shots of the Death Star hanging in empty space. You don’t see too many close-ups and zoom-ins on “Star Wars” characters.

“You wouldn’t do like a snap zoom-in to, like, a closeup of Jude Law as he’s looking around the room,” Watts said. “That wouldn’t feel like ‘Star Wars.’”

– Herb Scribner, The Washington Post

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