‘Skeleton Crew’ Creators Declare ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’ Tribute

Warning: This article contains spoilers from the premiere episode of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.

The latest star Wars Series titled Skeleton crewdescribes itself as a throwback to the Amblin adventure films of yesteryear. But the December 2nd premiere on Disney+ also featured some Easter eggs and throwbacks to past franchise moments.

In fact, the first scene mirrored the very first one star Wars Scene. As a ship prepared to be boarded by a band of pirates, soldiers with blasters drawn waited for the impending intruders. It was very reminiscent of the Rebel Alliance soldiers at the beginning A new hope They wait for Darth Vader and the stormtroopers to board their ship. And it was also extremely conscious.

“That’s a given,” says premiere director and series co-creator Jon Watts Weekly entertainment of the tribute. “Great.”

What made you reference this classic? star Wars Shot? “We wanted to do that and then combine it with our other big influence, which was the old pirate movies,” Watts says. “So it’s kind of a combination between the ship battles that you would see Captain Blood or The Sea Falcon or those old pirate series A new hope. We wanted to show what a pirate raid would look like and use that New hope Kind of structure as a framework.”

“These pirates just jumped onto the deck of the other ship as a team,” adds series co-creator Christopher Ford. “And it’s not just stormtroopers who attack in an organized manner with machetes. It’s just a little crazier.”

Speaking of crazy, the most surprising callback to a star Wars The 1970s project occurred later in the premiere when Neel’s (Robert Timothy Smith) family watched a hologram show in their living room. But not just any hologram show. It appeared to be the same insane space circus hologram that Chewbacca’s son Lumpy had originally seen in the infamous 1978 Star Wars Christmas Special.

How and why did this clear hat come to one? star Wars The project, which George Lucas rejected outright after a single embarrassing broadcast on November 17, 1978, made it through Skeleton crew? “This is definitely one of my favorite parts of the whole show,” Watts says. “And I’m glad it’s in the first episode just so we can get it out of the way. I’ve just always been fascinated by this strange little circus hologram.”

And in case anyone is wondering: No, this is not the original Star Wars Christmas Special footage. “We recreated it,” Watts confirms. “We initially wanted to see if we could get the original footage, but it’s such low resolution because it was a TV special.”

“It was a limitation because we would have had to use the same angle,” adds Ford. “We had to shoot it from multiple angles.”

When the duo realized that they couldn’t just take the original scene out of the film Holiday specialThey set to work staging their own space circus, also making sure their replica matched Bob Mackie’s original clothing. “We went into the archives and got all the original wardrobe designs and the original sketches from the show and recreated them,” Watts reveals. “And our stunt coordinator also happened to be a former Cirque du Soleil performer, so he plays the lead dancer and choreographed a whole new routine based on what’s in the show Holiday special.”

Not only did the new scene have to look right, it had to sound Right. “The music was another thing we had to recreate since it didn’t exist in any form except on YouTube,” Watts says. “And no one knew what the instruments were or what the orchestration was, so our composer had to recreate it from scratch and rerecord it.”

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In the end, Watts and Ford definitely did a job that would have made Lumpy proud. “We spent a lot of time and effort recreating this completely, just for that one little visual gag,” Watts admits. “But it really makes me happy and makes me wonder what this circus troupe is up to.”

Of course the homages to previous ones star Wars projects Skeleton crew Don’t stop there. Witness Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) tells Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) that her bike is “absolutely magical” – a callback to Kitster telling young Anakin that his podracer is “so magical.” The Phantom Menace. “There are a lot of them,” Watts shares of Easter Eggs. “I don’t want to give them all up. I want people to find them, but there are some deep cuts in there.”