Jon Watts and Christopher Ford Offer Insights into Writing ‘Star Wars: Skeleton Crew'

Conceived and created by Jon Watts and Christopher Ford, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew tells the story of four kids, Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and KB (Kyriana Kratter) as they are accidentally whisked away from their home planet aboard an ancient space ship and forced to find their way home. Along the way they meet a mysterious man named Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law) who claims to be a Jedi but seems like more of a pirate, and they set about looking for the coordinates to their home which the rest of the galaxy believes to be a myth. Equal parts The Goonies and Treasure Island, Skeleton Crew is a tale of pirates, kids, and hope, all rolled into one. 

Jon Watts is best known for his work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, bringing Spider-Man to life across his three latest hit movies, and he worked alongside Christopher Ford on 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. Together, they pitched Skeleton Crew to Lucasfilm, originally as a movie, but transformed the project into the eight episode series that wrapped up its run this month.

They sat down with Script Magazine to talk about the process and the finer points of writing such a high concept show in a galaxy far far away.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SCRIPT Magazine: During the development it sounds like there were a lot of options about what shape this story was going to take. How did you land what we ended up with, with the eight episodes for Skeleton Crew to tell this story, and why this was the right shape?

Christopher Ford: It's funny because there were certain requirements or just expectations from just the business of it, and then other things that are inspired creative ideas and they all just meet and come together equally on equal terms.

Jon Watts: There was, on the most basic level, a contractual requirement that we made of, like, X amount of minutes, but we weren’t constrained. I feel like it was always just sort of, 'Go and figure it out.' How many stories feels right to get to the end of the story that you want to tell or how many episodes feels right. It ended up being eight. It was not like a directive. There were times when we were like, 'Oh, maybe we could combine these two into one episode or, or split this one into two.' So if it had been seven or if it had been nine or ten, I think that we would have had Lucasfilm’s support to do whatever felt right.

Christopher Ford: Yeah. That's one of the best parts of streaming is that the structure, the shape, or length of episodes is way more flexible. I think what's really interesting though is how it changed from when we first envisioned it as a film, and then it became a show for Disney+. I've been describing it as a kind of movie-TV hybrid because so many of these streaming shows are this new kind of format. I mean, it's not new. It's like a limited series. What did they used to call them? Like a mini-series. I think the big difference was that we didn't really have an ending in mind, even when we had the movie, which should have had an ending.

Jon Watts: We were like, they get lost and then they have to get home. That's as much as we had when we pitched.

Christopher Ford: I guess it's implied that they would get home. And then when they first approached us about doing it as a show, I at first thought of it more as an old-fashioned show where it wouldn't have an ending. So I was just thinking, like, they're lost. It's just kids lost in Star Wars. And I think right away Jon Favreau said, “Uh, it should have an ending,” to bring us back to that place of it being a mini-series.

Jon Watts: Yeah, we explored what a more episodic structure would feel like, kind of going off of The Mandalorian framework, where it's a new adventure every week. And it was the idea that the kids are lost and then they just stay lost. But I think the impetus for that was well, they're kids. Their parents are going to want them to get home at some point. There was a parental fear that we ended up tying back in, which led to them wanting to get home.

SCRIPT Magazine: The Quantum Leap ending feels a lot more harsh when it's kids.

Jon Watts: Yeah. Exactly.

SCRIPT Magazine: As you're conceiving it as a movie and then to a series, it has that film quality where you're balancing the needs of all of the elements that you're introducing episode to episode, that need to fit inside of each episode, but also pay off at the end for the finale. As you're working on each of the stories how are you balancing containing those adventures on their own, but also laying the groundwork for the future. Right? I was watching it with my son and my wife and my son at one point was like, “Why did she take him up to show him the cannon?” And I was like, “Oh, it's going to play in at the end.”

And he’s like, “Why would that play at the end?

And I'm like, “Because they wouldn't show it to us otherwise.”

And we got close to the end and he’s still not convinced and I’m just like, “OK, buddy.”

Jon Watts: It’s not the most subtle of setups.

Christopher Ford: That was a little much.

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SCRIPT Magazine: Another example would be Kh’ymm, very specifically saying, “If you need help, call me.” How do you balance the needs of the individual episodes versus all of the tools you need to make the big finale resonate emotionally and feel like you haven't cheated by giving them tools they didn't have?

Christopher Ford: I mean, it's funny because we both had things in mind that we wanted to bring into the ending. And then when we were writing the ending, we wanted there to be more. So then we worked backwards and we seeded more things in for them to be able to utilize just so that it felt like it was all going somewhere.

Jon Watts: Yeah. That you learn a lot when you make a big Marvel Climactic third-act set piece. You know, it's just all payoffs, all character moments, all trying to come together at the same time. I remember when we were writing it, we wrote all the first drafts just as quickly as possible, just to get to the end so that we could focus on rewriting and doing the thing that you're saying, just making sure things are seeded. 

I remember when we were writing the last episode, just putting in things that felt satisfying and climactic, knowing that we hadn't really set them up yet, with the knowledge that you’ll go back and then you set that up, you make the ending feel really climactic and satisfying, and then you work backwards. That's how I usually think about that stuff.

Christopher Ford: Yeah, you come up with an idea in a moment of a fun payoff, but that has no setup. It's kind of like in the end of Bill and Ted, where they can suddenly have a thing, and then they say, we'll go back and set that up.

Jon Watts: That’s what writing is. It’s like Bill and Ted.

SCRIPT Magazine: Could you offer an example of one of those that really changed and defined something that you’d written earlier?

Christopher Ford: I think how it all worked out with the blocking of the climax of that KB was the one in danger. And you fear for her. That kind of ended up dovetailing with the feeling that she was more vulnerable, which we didn't necessarily start with that, you know. We started with that she would be a cyborg. To me, that was like she was stronger than the other kids, so it was cool to be able to find because she is. But that also comes with a different vulnerability. That, for me at least, helped us open up the idea of, 'Oh, let's really milk that and make the audience really scared for her.' That kind of opened up that whole story idea in episode six, where she needs help.

SCRIPT Magazine: That was a really terrific moment. That was really I think that was one of the most powerful moments in the show, just across the board. With the kids, they all have very strong, distinct personalities, and part of that is the performance. How much of that was shaped on the page beforehand and how much of that was the kids?

Christopher Ford: Well, it's both kind of because, as Jon said, we launched into the scripts really quickly and then it allowed us to get going on casting. Then we were rewriting. I mean, it all happened really fast. But we did have a chance to iterate. And you're right. We specifically tried to tweak and adjust the kids’ characters to match the actors.

Jon Watts: That happened immediately. They're sort of character types when you write them. And then when the kids come in, you get to meet the kids and spend some time with them and see what they're like in real life. And we were just constantly rewriting their dialogue and little character nuance bits, just leaning into who the kids were and the things that you would see them do on set or hear them say, you'd be like, 'Oh, let's make that be more a part of their character.'

So, we were doing that constantly. Yeah, Robbie [Robert Timothy Smith, Neel on Skeleton Crew], is a great example because we wrote him a little bit more shy and dreamy, I think. A little more like Elliot in E.T., but Robbie's not like that. He does have, you know, those sort of dreamy moments, but he's way more like running straight into the action. I remember the first day on set he had a scene where he was supposed to run up a hill and then fall down a little bit, and he just rocketed straight to the top of the hill. And he was like, 'I did it. I climbed the hill.' He just is so full of energy we made the character be more like that. And the idea of him constantly rushing into danger and trusting everyone immediately. A lot of that evolved over time. It wasn't necessarily in that very, very first pass that we wrote.

Christopher Ford: Yeah. We were lucky that we were able to work quickly and incorporate that at all because in more traditional TV, people can love a show so much just because the characters are just who they are, and those characters are so informed by the actors, and the actors have such a control over that character that the writers are servicing, that those actors personalities are the character as opposed to some made up character. That's abstract. So doing that in an adventure-action Star Wars piece, we were lucky to be able to do it at all.

SCRIPT Magazine: This has been described as Goonies in Star Wars with that 80s Amblin feel. You just brought up Elliott and it has moments from E.T. I loved the scene where the parents basically get the E.T. moment, where they're setting up the communications out in the woods, or, you know, you've got the water slide from Goonies in there. And it's got so much Treasure Island in it, too. I'm just wondering, Star Wars has always been the province of filmmakers taking the stuff they loved and remixing it into Star Wars. And I'm wondering what was it about this milieu of film that made you go, “This is where I want to spend my time in Star Wars?”

Christopher Ford: I mean, it wasn't a choice. It was just, as you said, the stuff that we loved.

Jon Watts: Yeah, that’s our childhood. It’s just what our imagination is made out of. Our imagination is made out of parts from 80s movies because we were kids wanting to go on adventures in the 80s. That was our training model.

Christopher Ford: It's fun to think about how every generation does it. The stuff in Goonies is Chris Columbus riffing on the comics and shows and movies that he had watched when he was a kid. And those were informed by radio plays or radio dramas for the people who wrote those. And on and on. Back to just mythology, I guess.

Jon Watts: I like deconstructing those references because. I was exposed to so much like 70s pop culture, but through The Simpsons. So I experienced it on The Simpsons first, and then I would see a movie and I'm like, 'Oh, that's what they're referencing.'

Christopher Ford: Oh, wait, you know what? I showed my kids Goonies for the first time the other night, and I forgot that they're watching Captain Blood in the film. I forgot that because we were watching Captain Blood for this.

Jon Watts: Part of our research process is deconstructing our childhood influences because you're like, 'Oh, that's Goonies.' And then you're like, 'But what is Goonies referencing?' Then you go back, you try to just go back deeper and deeper until you just get to like, mythology.

Christopher Ford: There's a forward to Treasure Island where he's saying “Do kids still like pirate tales? I hope they will.” It's like even that was retro. He was seeing if he could still entertain people with these old stories.

Jon Watts: Yeah. It's great. It's great to just keep going back and you try to draw from the purest source, But, Goonies in space is just the simplest pitch when someone asks you what your show is about.

SCRIPT Magazine: That was what was so refreshing about it too, is because it wasn't just that it had those threads of everything that makes Star Wars, Star Wars, but it was much deeper into the DNA of what makes the two of you, you two. There were deeper threads, too, I think specifically with Jod and and the Long John Silver arc, right? All the kids are like his Jim Hawkins, where he’s luring them in with his trust and then turning on them when the treasure is there. It doesn't feel like an accident that his name is Silvo to start. You know what I mean? Unless it was an accident, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.

Christopher Ford: The only accident of that was a lot of the character names that were really clear references we thought would just be temp, because, again, we wrote the first draft really fast, and then it was just swept into the production system and it would have been too much work to change them. Then we're like, OK, well, they're fun references. That's fine. Like SM-33 being “Smee.”

Jon Watts: I always thought SM-33 was great and Ford thought people were going to think it was dumb. But people seem to like this. Someone thought it was Spider-Man 33. They thought it was Spider-Man Issue 33.

Christopher Ford: Yeah, Issue 33, where he’s drowning.

SCRIPT Magazine: My nine-year-old actually asked me to tell you his favorite part was when SM-33 decided to go with Fern and double-crossed Jod. He actually got up and cheered. That was a really emotionally satisfying moment. Can you talk to me about SM-33 also, because there's this thing where somehow all of the writers of Star Wars seem to have to outdo each other with coming up with the next coolest droid. You've got R2 and then they're like, OK, fine. BB-8, awesome. Then you've got Chopper, K2 and so on, and you guys are like, “Well, we've got to pull out all the stops. We're going to give Nick Frost a peg leg and a rat.”

Christopher Ford: It's funny how you have to differentiate because, I also like the Andor android whose name escapes me right now.

SCRIPT Magazine: B2EMO.

Christopher Ford: Yeah, yeah. Because he’s kind of a similar tack in a way that we did, where it's like he's worse. He's running out of batteries and, yeah, kind of . So then you love him more. We knew we could differentiate ours because it would be the most broken down, messed up droid we had seen.

Jon Watts: And the kids are cute. You don't want to do cute on cute. So, you don't want to give the kids a cute droid because the kids are cute characters. So we were like, let's do the opposite and give them a mean, rusty, broken down, acerbic, mildly violent babysitter. It was a fun counterpoint.

Christopher Ford: We actually originally thought there might be a little nanny droid, like a little kind of R2 but for child safety droid going with them. And then it was too much. It was too cute.

SCRIPT Magazine: I want to ask about Jod's arc, especially with how it twists and turns and how much of his story was subtext. Every time he interacts with someone he's run into before it peels another layer of lies back. How much of that in the writing being very seat of your pants, and how much of it was really worked out into a backstory?

Christopher Ford: The general thing is he would run into people, or everyone he knew he had blown it with or betrayed already. Once we kind of had that conceptually, it was like, now we can do less. And that and Jude Law was in meeting with us. He helped us with that. He would always be saying stuff like that. Because we wrote him originally a little more of as a huckster and kind of a slimy con man. Jude very smartly understood all of the lies should be the closest to the truth as possible. He was getting into that idea of like, 'How would I actually get away with all of this?'

And so for a great lie that you'll remember, you get it as close as possible as you can to the truth. He built this whole world around himself so that in any one of those moments, he could just step right back into one of these other personas or hint at another adventure that was happening. It's that feeling from the original Star Wars that there was all these other stories, like Boba Fett steps in and you just feel like he has stories. We wanted the con man to be doing that on purpose within the world of Star Wars.

He always had more stories for other adventures that he had. We originally had written him saying like, "Yes, I'm a Jedi,” and making up a whole Jedi character for himself to Wim. Jude really smartly said, “But if I never say that I'm a Jedi and let the kids use their imaginations, it'll be better.”

Jon Watts: In the initial pass of those things he was much more blatant as a liar. And then it was fun to go through and finesse that and make it more complex. Make him a better liar essentially.

SCRIPT Magazine: What do you think was your biggest takeaway as a writer that you learned working on Skeleton Crew? What are you going to take away for your next projects that makes you feel like you came away as a better writer and artist?

Christopher Ford: It was a thousand things because it was such an experience for me. I mean, Jon, as you were saying, the stuff you would learn from doing giant Marvel things and how to make an act three work for the first time.

Jon Watts: We did something new on this that we had never really done before that I will continue to do, which is just write a first draft as quickly as possible so that you're not over-outlining.

Do the outline, obviously make sure everyone's on the same page, but then just really churn out a first draft and then start revising as opposed to rewriting treatments and rewriting outlines. That was initially just by necessity. It was like you got to start going and you’ve got to generate pages to feed to the machine to start designing sets and coming up with creature concepts. But I really liked this process.

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Christopher Ford: And within boundaries, because it was like we were doing it in conjunction, which was really cool, with the art department and Lucasfilm, creating concept art and stuff that was informing what we were rewriting. But it also meant these are the planets, these are the sets. We weren't throwing out whole storylines. We were just finessing what was there, iterating on it. Those first drafts that were not as well written, people could use as a pre-production document, but then we could keep refining.

Jon Watts: You have the experience writing scripts and developing projects and things like that and you realize that the first half of movies are really well written and then they kind of fall apart a lot of times in the second half. That’s because people sit down, they work really hard up until they get to the midpoint, and then everyone has to leave for like another meeting. People rarely get to the very, very end. So our challenge was to start and just crank all the way through to the very end immediately, as opposed to, 'Well, let's get going and then we'll figure out the end later.'

Christopher Ford: Yeah. The working backwards. But that wasn't that new.

SCRIPT Magazine: What made you decide that this was the right point in the timeline to tell this story? Because Attin is cut off from galactic events, it seems like you could have told it at any point. What made the New Republic era the right moment?

Jon Watts: We could have. It would be fun to slot this story in multiple timelines and see how dramatically it would change. But, you know, this was Favreau and [Dave] Filoni. Because they were already operating in that sandbox, it made a lot of sense to keep ours within their world and make it feel like a part of that.

Christopher Ford: But also if it hadn't felt so right, we may not have done it. It was just the fact that in their time period, it made more sense for these kids to run into pirates as opposed to the Empire. That was the thing we wanted to see. We didn't want to see the kids get arrested by the Empire. That could have been a lot worse, and a different show.

Jon Watts: Maybe it’s season two.

SCRIPT Magazine: Let’s hope. I’m certainly hopeful for that. What was the most challenging piece to write for this?

Christopher Ford: I think it was still the ending.

Jon Watts: When you have the third act with multiple planes of action, you have something in space, you have something on the ground, you have something in the supervisor's tower trying to get all of those things to line up at the right time. That's just like a crazy puzzle that takes a long time to work out.

Christopher Ford: Like a labor intensive, plotting, blocking, writing puzzle.

Jon Watts: When is the power on? When is the power off? I was reading it. I read it like I still read all the comments. Someone on Reddit was like, 'How did they get the elevator to work?' And I was like, 'Because Wendell knows how to hotwire an elevator.'

Christopher Ford: We went through every possible iteration of power on, power off, barrier on. There's versions where they turn the barrier off at the beginning of the episode, you know, all these different things. We tried them all, and we found the one that we thought allowed us to tell the character story. And that's the thing. All of that is in the way of the fact that we just want to tell the characters stories.

Jon Watts: Yeah, I have a great picture of our whiteboard just lining up all the action because it's a puzzle. It's like we need these five things to happen at the same time. So what is happening on each of the parallel timelines?

Christopher Ford: And then there's also that element too, where it's in this made up Star Wars universe. So we were always hitting up against like, 'Well, what is a barrier as opposed to if it was on Earth and it was some F-14's getting scrambled to a small town, there would at least be some parameters of what's plausible or what would make sense.' We had to also make up what things were on top of making them make sense. Compared to that, everything else was kind of more of just creative joy. They go to this cool planet where we can have this and this, and there'll be a crab monster and so on. Endings are always hard, like focusing everything in and and making it meaningful.

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SCRIPT Magazine: It gives you a new, new respect for George Lucas's multi-situation endings.

Christopher Ford: We were inspired by that! We were just like, 'Oh, we'll just do one of those big George Lucas endings. Oh wait. That's actually the hardest thing to do.'

Jon Watts: Really hard.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is currently streaming in its entirety on Disney+.

Bryan Young is a filmmaker, writer, and teacher. He also hosts the Full of Sith Star Wars podcast. His latest short film, The Lost Boys, is currently on the festival circuit and has won numerous awards. His newest novel is BattleTech: VoidBreaker. You can learn more about him at his website.