Maxance Vincent
Warning: The following article contains spoilers for episode four of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.
As expected, with any property riffing on the days of The Goonies, kindertrauma is bound to pop up one way or another. In Canada, a generation of children developed PTSD after viewing Michael Rubbo’s The Peanut Butter Solution (not joking), and now a new generation may be unsettled after seeing the beloved, friendly SM-33 (Nick Frost) turn into a killing machine who wants to rip the kiddie crew apart after Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) unlocks its repressed memories, when wanting to know more about the origins, and whereabouts of At Attin.
This scene concludes the Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan-directed episode and will stay in my memory for a long time. Now, I’m no longer a child and have (mostly) gotten over the trauma of watching so many unsettling Québec-produced fever dreams in elementary school (including my eight-year-old self viewing a children’s film, whose title purposefully escapes me, that exposes its kiddie protagonist to someone deliberately cutting his head off with a sword). Still, for the younger viewers who are tuning into the mild thrills of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew week-to-week, this may affect them in the way that movie (I try to repress deep in my memory) and The Peanut Butter Solution did to me.
Though nothing will top these films as far as trauma is concerned, it’s great to see The Daniels understand that no children’s entertainment is complete without a good dose of scarring the living shit out of them. There are movies you see only once in your lifetimes, very young, as a child, and are far too afraid to revisit them because the memory of seeing it for the first time is so unpleasant that you would rather not reawaken the trauma it caused you. I was unsure if I ever wanted to rewatch Michael Jackson’s Thriller when it was re-released in IMAX 3D after my first exposure (in elementary school, where in the hell did I go to?) petrified me to no end. I ultimately did, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as my childhood self made it out to be.
Perhaps I’ll be able to revisit The Peanut Butter Solution – and other kids’ films I cannot utter the titles of because my mind will continue haunting me – at some point, but I really don’t want to. However, that’s the beauty of being impacted – and traumatized – by cinema at such an impressionable age. One begins to understand it as a form of catharsis that can project our greatest dreams, make us imagine better, more hopeful, and fun futures from our dreary world, and, in contrast, showcase our worst, most horrifying fears.
In that regard, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew has, so far, shown the best of both worlds. It primed us with a real sense of adventure and wonder, which the franchise has truly lacked since Rian Johnson’s daring The Last Jedi (still the best film of 2017). Now, it’s flipping this wondrous story to its head by showcasing a bleak and helpless ‘clone’ of At Attin, named At Achrann – a desolate wasteland that has been ravaged by a perpetual war between the Troiks and Hattans. The leader of the Troiks, General Strix (Mathieu Kassovitz), has bred his children out of war and violence and believes it’s the only way for them to survive.
When the crew lands on the planet they think is At Attin. They immediately see a side of the galaxy they never imagined before. A world that looks exactly like theirs but is completely unhabitable. The kids living on At Achrann have never experienced the joys of living because all they’ve known is war. It makes the eventual friendship between Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) and Hayna (Hala Findlay) a bit sad because one is attempting to convince the other that there is a life beyond war, and perpetually fighting will not solve anything (“La guerre, la guerre, c’est pas une raison pour se faire mal,” anyone?). Conversely, the other can’t see life beyond the path she is stuck in by her father and realizes there may be no way out of the mess created by an eternal war with no end in sight.
The episode doesn’t fully develop this internal conflict enough, but it’s far more interesting than a classic war story between the Troiks and Hattans. In fact, the only action scene in the entire episode occurs when SM-33 transforms into that killing machine and threatens to rip everyone who dares ask questions about At Attin, leading Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law) to deactivate it. Speaking of, Nawood’s arc gets far more intriguing week-to-week, as he has found a new affinity for the kids beyond the potential treasure likely longing to be discovered in At Attin.
Of course, this is all so he can gain their trust, hoping he will get the treasure for himself. But he’s still not a clearly defined character and only performs actions that will benefit him. Stopping SM-33? He is heroic in the eyes of the kids, but he knows they will trust him far more than they initially did. The same can be said when he frees the Troiks’ Eopies and regains the children from Strix’s hands. Seeing how it all plays out will be fun, especially when we’ve reached the show’s halfway point.
It feels miraculous that Star Wars: Skeleton Crew hasn’t fizzled out at this point. Perhaps the episode needs to be longer (especially when exploring interesting themes like the psychological toll of a never-ending war), but when the chemistry between its leads is airtight and the show tips the hat to our greatest-ever moments discovering the joyful thrills – and horrific trauma – of the art of the cinema, who am I to complain? With Jake Schreier, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Lee Isaac Chung taking a crack at this story in the next few weeks (before Jon Watts returns for the finale), to say I’m looking forward to seeing what the second half of the series has to offer feels like an understatement.
The fourth episode of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is now available to stream on Disney+.
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