Synopsis:

TLDR: Skeleton Crew edited as a 2-hour, 33-minute, coming-of-age space adventure film, complete with a classic opening crawl and end credits. The edit is a straight-forward, linear cut of the story in the mood of Amblin Entertainment/Spielberg films.

Intentions:

This was an exciting, family show, and I really hope more folks watch it. It's not a game changer, but it has a lot of heart and sincerity. The central four are quite plucky and fun to watch. Jude Law doesn’t show up until the very end of the 2nd episode but he’s incredible. I didn’t think of doing the edit because pretty much everything in the show I enjoyed. But if there’s a long movie version that focuses on the main dramatic plot, it would be at the expense of two specific episodes (Ep. 4 and 6) , and those were my favorite episodes in terms of character moments so I didn’t feel this edit was necessary. I think the show stands up on its own, but even better now that you can binge it. But if you want to view the main drama in the form of a long, rollicking, funny, space-faring feature film version, this is what I was able to come up with.

Change List:

Changes (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD): 1. Added a new, tailored opening crawl 2. Pirate attack on the freighter. Edited for pacing and intensity. 3. Cut to Wim and Neel at the schoolbus stop then transported to school. Fern and KB shown bikeriding outside. Cuts for pacing. Introduce the Great Work at school. Assessment tomorrow gives Wim anxiety. 4. Wim comes home. His father too focused on work to read him Jedi stories. 5. Next morning, Wim misses the bus and takes a shortcut into the woods where he encounters a “Jedi Temple.” 6. Removed scene with Fern and her mother, the Undersecretary. I was surprised that they gave this away early in the show. I thought it would be fun to not show they’re related until the very end where the Undersecretary reunites with the children and hugs fern specifically. Jon Watts, showrunner of the show, also directed Spider-Man: Homecoming- one of the most fun twists was finding out that Liz’s dad was the Vulture. So I wanted to maintain something similar this until the very end of the edit for Fern. 7. Wim admonished by the droids and his dad. Wim sees Fern again at detention. 8. Instead of studying, Wim and Neel go to the woods where they encounter Fern and KB at the temple site. They argue about who claims it. The four find out it’s a starship. I removed the moment of Wim explicitly pressing the green button. I wanted to keep it vague and lighthearted without piling too much on Wim. 9. Reduced Wim’s father’s scenes. The starship takes the four children to space. 10. Introduce SM-33 and they go to Port Borgo 11. At Port Borgo, removed moved scene of lady asking Fern and KB who they are and telling them they need to leave. I get that’s it’s a reminder that not everyone in space are horrible. Some are good people. But I think this is redundant, and you’ll get plenty of reminders of goodness of people along the way (Kh’ymm, Hayna, Cthalops, etc.). 12. The four meet Jod (Jude Law) in jail. He helps them escape. Jod rescues SM-33. Cuts for pacing. 13. They all go to Kh’ymm’s observatory. This scene plays out pretty much the same as the episode but I removed the backpack/jacket stuff. 14. The crew goes to At Achrann. This was Episode 4, and this where I had to kill a number of my favorite scenes. This episode had Neel meeting Hayna and sharing a great moment together. I removed 90% of this episode with basically the crew just arriving, meeting Hayna, and going straight to the sanctum for coordinates. No Hayna kissing Neel. No silly backflip that I loved. Just a friendly rest stop at At Achrann, I’m afraid. By doing this all I had to do was remove the “big gun” scene at the end, so this little side quest needed to be streamlined significantly. I feel bad though. I really liked Neel and Hayna together. 15. The crew go to Lanupa, and Cthallops help them get to Captain Rennod’s hidden maze and bounties. Jod betrays the four, but the four escape down the hatch through the tunnels like in the Goonies and ESB where Luke falls down the reactor shaft. 16. Jod is taken by his mutinous pirates. This was Episode 6 but I made a radical cut from when the children escape the tunnels to immediately them finding out that their ship (Onyx Cinder) are about to be incinerated. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of removing sincere and lovely character moments between KB and Wim. I feel bad cutting these out, but I felt I had to move the story along. No small crabs. No big crab. No starship crashes. Just the four leaving the tunnels and getting up to retrieve their ship. The four head to At Attin. 17. Jod convinces the pirates to go to At Attin. The pirates see the Onyx Cinder and pulls them into their frigate. Jod kills Brutus and becomes their Captain. Jod takes the kids hostage. 18. The frigate receives a transmission from inside At Attin. Edited transmission dialogue for story pacing. The kids escape but turns out Jod was on their ship and threatens to chop up their parents. Some diabolical stuff. Jod pretends to be a Republic Emissary to get through security droids in At Attin. 19. The final setpiece plays out the same way as Episode 8. I edited a lot of what went on at the Supervisor’s tower so the events among Jod, the parents, and the kids are much less telegraphed. Of course, I removed the big gun scene with Neel. The episode itself didn’t have much of Neel anyway which was a travesty, so I leaned into that. 20. The Undersecretary has a change of heart (less telegraphed in this edited version) and pulls the lever removing the planetary barrier. The republic arrives with x-wings and b-wings and rescues At Attin from the pirates. 21. Classic end credits. Halfway through the credits, I swapped out to Jedi Rocks as the closing music. To me, it’s out of place in Return of the Jedi. But repurposed here, it’s quite fun.

Additional Notes:

Final thoughts: The show is fantastic and breezy. I hope there's a Season 2. Jude Law needs to come back to SW in one way or another. In any case, I didn’t have much issues editing this. I made some slight changes to the color presentation here. Hopefully it’s not at all noticeable. I explored Spielberg’s E.T. as the main palette to start, but I ended up reflecting a lot of Spielberg’s A.I. (2001) which also happens to have Jude Law in it and Ready Player One (2018). Also, as with any TV-to-movie edit, there’s always frustration in terms of what I needed to keep and what needed to go. I couldn’t justify the Hayna and Neel scenes enough even though, emotionally, those scenes have so much heart and character building. Same with the scenes between KB and Wim. It was all a compromise. This sounds so corny but this is truly a wonderful story where the treasure at the end is the friends we made all along the way. Hopefully I wanted to communicate that sentiment in this feature film version, if nothing else worked.