Skeleton Crew Official Skeleton Crew Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

I think it’s just as likely that the source inspiration of this show (Goonies), which featured an ancient pirate ship loaded with treasure, inside a master planned community with a shopping mall, could still very much be the key to solving this. Think less ambitiously and you’re less likely to end up disappointed here.

The Great Work seems to be a reference to the High Republic era. Even if the currency is from the old republic era.

My guess is that this ship we are exploring was why the rumor of at attin’s riches first became such a legend. The original crew discovered something here, couldn’t keep it a secret, it leaked out to other pirates, became legend, the crew returned, argued over the secret getting out, battled one another for this valuable resource, killed one another and never left.

Centuries pass, and forests grow over this old ship, and eventually the High Republic sets out to create some experimental society that’s closed off from the outside world. Perhaps they discover it then and just cover it up further while building for everything else.

These people live this way all the way up to the fall of the Empire in total isolation and without any knowledge that pirates were once there, similarly to how the families from Goonies and the mall developers had no idea that infamous pirate One-Eyed Willie had been there all those years ago and left his secret treasure sitting there for centuries.


So, the one mystery will be us, the audience, learning more about this ancient society dating back to the high republic era and the other will be for the townspeople in that area to eventually solve with the kids to discover the pirate mystery of At Attin.

Jude Law’s character will be familiar with the legend and will bring them back in part to claim it but will bring other pirates to the planet who follow him.

 

I'd forgotten that Starlight Beacon was a Great Work. If this is also in the same vein, and isolated at the same time, they would know nothing of the Palpatine and Empire. Totally making sense to me now. Also, how the Pirates would know legends of it, probably, possibly from surviving Nihil, who are big time SW pirates. If this is so, I'm thrilled to see the EU used in this show. I always wonder with the plethora of SW fiction, canon or not, was not used more in the live action shows.

 

Maybe At-Attin is one of the Republic's secret science projects aiming to protect the galaxy or develop new research?

The whole planet is one big engineering university!

That was some serious gobbledegook maths stuff the children were expected to recall.

 

Because the show is very unsubtly telling and showing us that something ain’t right.

 

Thinking about the barrier some more.

The barrier looks like aurora borealis. Which is basically electromagnetic phenomena as the sun's radiation hits the northern pole/atmosphere. On Earth, its safe. But maybe on another planet it creates a natural barrier, where at least communication with the outside galaxy is impossible.

I read that the producers were also thinking about Peter Pan as inspiration. Obviously with kids and pirates that makes sense. But what about Neverland. Its an eternal dreamland where no one ages. At Attin is referred to the "Lost Planet of Eternal Treasure", according to myth.

SW has never really played with the fact that time is relative. Like with Hyperspace or traveling faster than light. It's not really a factor in the franchise. As we saw in Interstellar, a planet next to a giant worm hole has a time displacement. Everything on the surface is happening much slower than what's happening elsewhere.

What if ... At Attin is the same. The electromagnetic barrier is causing the planet to be blocked off not only via communications but with time. The people on the surface think its still the PT era. They think its the Republic. Maybe for them it hasn't been 200+ years. The planet is aging more slowly compared to the rest of the galaxy. Eternal in a way.

So Skeleton Crew reverses Peter Pan, where the kids live in London and venture forth to Neverland. Here the kids live in Neverland and venture forth to the real galaxy.

 

Have you seen the movie Time Trap?

Spoiler

 

I’m starting to think the most straightforward solution to At Attin’s Great Work being a sinister thing is that they think they are working for the Republic but the First Order is misleading them into working on Starkiller Base or something

The cooler scenario is that At Attin is a Los Alamos style military town on a long scale where the descendants of the original dwellers have formed a society to contain some kind of horrible monster the Jedi contained there years ago and the pirates are in for a spooky surprise

Given Jon Watts’s background I hope the series gets more horror oriented

 

I don't think it has anything to do with the empire or First Order

 

Who here is excited for Episode 3 next week on Wednesday ? I am!

 

I really hope not. And I really hope they give us a definitive story in this season instead of tiptoeing around any semblance of a satisfying plot so people can speculate for a season 2 that will never happen.

Undead Xim the Despot or an ancient Sith Lord would be really cool. Give fans SOMETHING meaty to chew on. Hell, bring in some buried Sith Leviathans from the EU.

 

The show already has the feeling of a movie chopped up and ends just when something was happening.

I'm still hoping that one of the shows uses a Rakatian Mind Trap or something. But not this show. I just get the feeling the answer is going to be rather lackluster

 

I think the barrier is manufactured. In addition to the swirls, there is also that neat grid of red dots.

 

Wonder if heavily armed type of security droids of At Attin will appear in future episodes, and they will look alike the geth from Mass Effect.

 

I didn't expect much from this series, but I have to admit it looks pretty good! I'm looking forward to the next episodes. I'm curious about the ratings too.

 

At Attin is far too established to be a First Order project. The ship they found shows it's been buried for a long time, thinking centuries. Works better with the Great Works of the High Republic.

This series is making me happy, like ANH made me happy. It's fun.

 

The peaceful eternal Republic of At Attin is definitely going to be over-run by Pirates. The barrier will probably be shut down, destroyed, and the Pirates will show up looking for the treasure and will find out its something else, probably disappointing them. And the people will learn that they've missed the last 200 years of galactic history around them. Possibly rebelling against their protocol droids and their Great Work mission.

Although it still seems strange that they'd be going on with this Great Work project for a century or more without any word from the Republic. It seems odd that they'd just continue plowing ahead, in radio-silence, and not question anything. Of course that could just be generations of propaganda via droids at work.

 

Could this "Great Work" have been started after the Nihil destroyed Starlight Beacon? If so, there would be a reason to hid it. However, the supposed purpose of the great work was to unite and expand the Republic. I love a good mystery.

 

I'm wondering if the planet itself is the treasure, and the barrier is to hide them from others as well as keep it's inhabitants from leaving.

Seems no one knows where At Attin is except for At Attins, and they really don't know where they are in the galaxy because they can't see the stars.

 

The "treasure" is knowledge or something like that...many years ago someone mentioned "the Republic's great treasue is at At Attin" and this was misconstrured as money.

 

Hopefully John Watts remains a bigger part of Star Wars long term. He, Filoni, Gilroy, and Favreau have mostly kept the angriest man babies online feeling like they’ve been seen and heard and that goes a long way these days to avoiding some of the division that often follows quotes from Kennedy, Headland, Chow, Obaid-Chinoy.

Is some of that likely just flat out online sexism, mistrust, insecurity, etc? Almost certainly but beyond that — excluding Obaid-Chinoy becuse we’ve never seen her do scripted cinema before — I legitimately do prefer the tone and style of the works that came from the first group in comparison to those released in the second and not for any of the reasons I mentioned.

Probably the most controversial male show runner/director of the Disney + series era was Rodriguez. Similar to Chow I just thought he was a bad fit for Star Wars aesthetically. Like her he tried to meet the expectation of the SW film language with more locked off wide shots than he’s typically known for but also like her I felt Boba Fett and Kenobi felt lower budget and more made for TV in large part from both director’s innate style and camera decisions. So, Rodriquez is definitely the exhibit A to point out if ever someone says “All the male run stuff for Star Wars series ends up better.”Remember that if you see it ahead.


Of the works from the second group I prefer Headland’s the most visually and I truly thought her attempt to bring wire fu concepts to the ancient Jedi arts was an inspired and bold choice that fit like a glove. I also thought her show had some fantastic fight choreography and some amazing space visuals. I mostly enjoyed the visual direction of Acolyte overall and found it close to that of Ahsoka which I also enjoyed a great deal. If I had to put two shows more in the middle tier visually it would be these two and honestly I’d give the edge to Acolyte visually because it’s lowest moments visually weren’t as low as Ahsoka’s. Keep in mind though that I’m a huge John Carpenter fan and Ahsoka had some moments that reminded me of Big Trouble in Little China visually so I probably enjoyed some of the odd “low points” more than some. For example the green magical sword stuff and black eyes changing or the zombie troopers. Reminded me of Carpenter in the 1980s in a good, fun way.

Both featured direction a tier below Andor, Skeleton Crew, and Mando’s best stuff though. Those 3 at their best rival the best cinematic works of Star War in terms of direction.

Chow’s direction was the widest ranging for me overall. At her best moments I felt she rose to the moment and provided a great mix of action, tension and human drama but her low points made Kenobi feel low budget and fan made from time to time and sadly lowered the potential of Kenobi. A true shame due to its potential within the scripts. Shaky handheld stuff can sometimes work in unique situations within Star Wars but she deployed it too often and seemed too willing to accept mediocre staging or angles that could have been better. It sometimes felt like i

Filoni has potential and seems to be mixing and learning from everyone. Ahsoka had some beautiful moments throughout but also the odd moment that felt really low budget and CW-like.

I hated Bryce Dallas Howard’s first Mando episode and thought her direction was atrocious and small scale but her second episode was amazing. Didn’t love her Jack Black one as much but her direction was good in it.

Andor is easily the best directed of them all and is one of the most mature directorial efforts ever done in Star Wars.

Favreau is a nice mix between old school Lucas, Howard and new school MCU visual direction.

Watts is probably closer to what JJ Abrams brought to Star Wars in that both are huge Spielberg fans and you can sense it in their shot decisions and sequencing. Of the Mando directors I felt like Famiyuma, Favreau, and Peyton Reed episodes pretty consistently stood out as strong. I also enjoyed Filoni’s Mando episodes too.

Watts is a top tier Star Wars director so I hope that once he hands the baton off to others ahead the quality drop off isn’t enormous. I would also like to see him handed a movie. If the new Rey Project hits some more bumps I wouldn’t mind him having a crack at it because his approach would feel similar to JJ’s which might work well.

 

The world building on show has been pretty incredible so far. And the aliens offering has been the best of the new era so far IMO. They just kept on coming, and we're only two episodes in. I particularly liked the barman and the crab-like dude. And the Teek! Pretty amazing stuff. Keep it coming.

 

I like the game that's being played in the school courtyard with the floating ball that tries to bop the players' heads. Some of the best world building relies on silly concepts that don't exist on our planet. Now I'm picturing a device that's comprised of a drone shrouded in a geodesic dome. Although, I think people's reflexes would still be much quicker than a drone suddenly propelling toward one's head.