Lucasfilm has released the first trailer for Skeleton Crew, which will be the next Star Wars series to hit Disney Plus when it debuts on the streaming service on Dec. 3. The footage out of the D23 Expo on the heels of The Acolyte, and adds to Lucasfilm and Disney’s experimentation phase of getting Star Wars out of its Skywalker-centric safe zone.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew trailer gives us our first look at Jude Law as a Jedi
Speeder bikes, Amblin vibes and a certain space pirate also feature
Oli Welsh is senior editor, U.K., providing news, analysis, and criticism of film, TV, and games. He has been covering the business & culture of video games for two decades.
The series follows a group of young kids on an intergalactic adventure, and is strongly influenced by the classic Amblin Entertainment films of the 1980s like E.T., The Goonies, and Gremlins (just like Netflix’s smash hit Stranger Things). Jude Law stars alongside the young cast, and appears in the trailer in full Jedi garb.
The trailer even indicates the show will go so far as to incorporate a Star Wars version of the Amblin movies’ suburban 1980s Americana, with shots showing the kids in school and running around a peaceful residential district. There’s some more familiar Star Wars action too, as the kids ride speeder bikes, stow away on spaceships, and run away from space pirates. Skeleton Crew also indulges the Star Wars series’ recent obsession with people toiling away in cubicles in administrative offices. (What’s that about?)
Skeleton Crew appears to be a largely standalone adventure, although it’s set in a similar time frame to The Mandalorian — the early days of the New Republic — and the trailer teases one direct link to that show, in the form of the space pirate Vane, played by Marti Matulis.
The show was created by Jon Watts, director of the three most recent Spider-Man films, with his collaborator Christopher Ford. Watts and Ford have assembled a stellar line-up of directors for the series, including David Lowery (The Green Knight), the Daniels (Everything Everywhere All at Once), and Lee Isaac Chung (Twisters), while the cast includes The Banshees of Inisherin’s Kerry Condon and Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Kyriana Kratter, and Robert Timothy Smith as the kids.