The third episode of Skeleton Crew is definitely an improvement on the previous two despite being directed by David Lowery, director of that detestable adaptation of The Green Knight from a couple years ago. At the same time, I'm getting a better sense of the show's fundamental flaws.
Episode three works entirely because of Jude Law's character, both for the writing and Law's performance. He's obviously patterned on Long John Silver and his position in the story is very similar to Long John's position in Treasure Island--he's a surrogate father figure for the point of view child protagonist and the problem of his true moral character is constantly in play.
I don't like the name "Crimson Jack". I know, having written pirate fiction myself, how difficult and yet tempting it is to find variations of "Red" and "Black" and other simple, lurid adjectives invoking death and violence. But for a pirate's name, it has to be something you believe people would casually say in conversation and "Crimson Jack" doesn't roll off the tongue like Long John Silver.
Law's performance is good and you can see the layers of thought in his mannerisms and line deliveries. I like the moment where he's challenged with a line about never leaving a man behind being a Jedi ethic. He starts saying, "That's not--" and then catches himself and says, "That's not a Jedi thing." Just something about Law's attitude and inflection makes me feel like he was about to say, "That's not true." I think the idea hit close to home, that he feels he was left behind by Jedi he formerly trusted. The fact that I'm compelled to speculate and read into his motives is an indicator the character has been effectively created.
I also liked the line from the otherwise lame owl alien character in which she cautions one of the kids not to listen to her gut but to her head. It's believable that someone would stridently offer this advice and yet, at the same time, it's not really useful since, when we talk about our gut, we are actually talking about our heads. In a dangerous situation where the kids have to make decisions quickly they don't always have the luxury of doing so with all possible evidence gathered. So it sounds like logical advice but really all it does is raise the tension.
Unfortunately, the episode also highlighted how poorly conceived and written the children are. Their home planet's odd resemblance to Earth is like a bone fracture that gets worse the more the show walks on it. The worse part was when the two kids were so excited to shoot at the X-Wings chasing them. What in their backgrounds has made them so eager to shoot at people? When Long John Silver gave Jim Hawkins a pistol, Jim wasn't chomping at the bit to blow someone's brains out. The scene was obviously meant to echo the Death Star escape from the first Star Wars movie but the makers of Skeleton Crew evidently don't understand what motivated Han and Luke shooting at the TIE Fighters. Luke had been dreaming of being a fighter pilot all his life and now he and Han were both fighting for their survival. The kids in Skeleton Crew don't know if the X-Wings are trying to kill them and, as far as we know, all they've been dreaming about are sterile descriptions of Jedi on tablets. The problem is the kids are written more as Star Wars fans than as characters who are organically part of this universe. I wonder if this show was originally conceived as something more like The Last Starfighter; maybe the kids were originally supposed to actually be from Earth but someone at Disney or Lucasfilm thought the idea was too far outside of what Star Wars should be. I would agree, but the fact that filmmakers are looking for postmodern concepts shows their imagination is somehow blocked from properly exploring what should be a galaxy sized field of opportunity.
Skeleton Crew is available on Disney+.
No comments:
Post a Comment