One of the more bittersweet parts of growing old is that you can never recapture a first time doing something.
For me, it is the wonder and amazement and fun I experienced the first time I watched Star Wars, which I don’t actually remember I’ve been watching it for so long. It just feels that it has always been a part of who I am. As a boy and teenager, I read every Star Wars novel I could find at my library. I pored over every making-of and behind-the-scenes documentary there was.
I grew up way back in the before times of the internet as a member of a Star Wars forum and message board. I would endlessly talk about the three films (all we had back then) with young fans like me in Australia, Europe, and the States. That forum no longer exists, but it was a great time for me to share fan fiction and thoughts and ideas.
Since 1999, when George Lucas exploded the Star Wars universe again with a new film in what would become a new trilogy, the galaxy has not stopped expanding. We fans got tv shows, both animated and (finally) live action, and more films and ways to explore corners of the galaxy that we had only dreamed of before. It’s even reality now at the Disney parks!
The latest offering from the galaxy far, far away is a little show called Skeleton Crew. It feels like Goonies meets Star Wars and is about four younglings who take their first steps into a larger world, and grow up a little bit along the way. It is about pirates and Jedi and the wonder of the galaxy, in all its darkness and light.
Anyone who knows me knows what a mega fan of the entire universe that I am. Heck, I’ve written about it endless times and in endless ways on this blog. It is my ethos here, and part of my online identity. I also love pirates, having long been fascinated by them, and was again, at the perfect age when the Pirates of the Caribbean films came out. Skeleton Crew is the perfect blend of all the elements of everything I love about Star Wars and pirates.
Watching through Crew this week made me feel like I was a young boy experiencing it all for the first time: the epitome of cool that is Han Solo and Chewbacca. The magic that was Obi-Wan Kenobi. The brash and sass that was Princess Leia. The excitement and the sheer joy of Luke Skywalker growing up to win the day. All of that was in Skeleton Crew.
I’ve appreciated (almost) all of the Star Wars offerings for what they are and how they expand the galaxy. But for all the complexities of Andor and Ahsoka, the storytelling of the Clone Wars/Bad Batch, the continuation of the saga, and even Solo and Rogue One, nothing made me smile and laugh and experience Star Wars the way Skeleton Crew has.
My wife can attest to the smile on my face as we binged the show, and then caught the finale just tonight. I hope it gets a second season, and another chance to evoke those feelings one more time. But even if Skeleton Crew comes back again, it may not be the same. If so, that won’t be a failing, just life. But for me, somehow, this show was the ephemeral “lightning in a bottle” that inspired me to build endless variations of the Millennium Falcon out of LEGO, to write my own Star Wars stories on that old forum, and to imbibe everything from that galaxy that I could find.
I thank everyone involved in the making of Skeleton Crew for making me feel like a kid again. It has re-ignited something in my heart, and for that I am grateful. I might just have to build my own pirate ship out of LEGO now…something I’ve not done in a long time. A long time.
a simple man 