In some ways, Star Wars has always been for children. This is neither condescension nor criticism: George Lucas created a swashbuckling fairy tale set in space, and its mantle has been taken up by subsequent generations of filmmakers who encountered him at a formative age. But with the exception of The Phantom Menace, there have been hardly any Star Wars stories around Children. That’s the value proposition of “Skeleton Crew,” the latest TV series in a franchise that’s now largely on the small screen. In a way, it’s also the most faithful to the DNA of the saga – or at least a certain variant of it.

Although Star Wars hasn’t released a blockbuster in theaters since 2019, Lucasfilm has seen a steady flow of releases on Disney+. These projects varied in quality, from Andor at the high end to Obi-Wan Kenobi at the low end, but they also had the effect of isolating certain elements of the Star Wars gestalt. A four-quadrant film has to appeal to everyone, which “Star Wars” has always done because it’s part fantasy, part military epic, part romance and part coming-of-age. Shows can be more focused, and they were: “Andor” is a political drama for adults, without a hint of the supernatural; “The Mandalorian” is a neo-Western; “The Acolyte,” which was canceled earlier this year after airing a single season, focused solely on the Jedi as wizard-like mystics. The strength of Star Wars as it stands is that it is a big tent that encompasses all of these genres and tones without any apparent contradictions.

So “Skeleton Crew” is a purely nostalgic children’s adventure – a logical path for “Star Wars”, given its own history and the huge success of “Stranger Things”. While “Skeleton Crew” can sometimes show signs of such coldly rational reverse engineering, the charm of its cast and their infectious sense of wonder go a long way toward selling the endeavor. Modern IP mining, which co-creators Jon Watts and Christopher Ford (both of Spider-Man: Homecoming) are no strangers to, is an exercise in which adult children play with used toys; There’s something refreshing about seeing this process in a child happily running amok on a spaceship.

Although a text crawl and cold open reveal that “Skeleton Crew” is set amid a wave of space piracy in the post-Return of the Jedi era, before the New Republic’s “The Force Awakens,” “Skeleton Crew ” puts us in the perspective of Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), a child who prefers playing imaginary lightsabers with his friend Neel (Robert Timothy Smith, sporting an adorable CGI elephant head). a new, drunk Star Wars creature) than studying for a test. Wim and his widowed father Wendle (Tunde Adebimpe) live on Attin, a suspiciously utopian planet that sequesters its young citizens on career paths to help with the “great work” of post-Empire state building – but doesn’t allow spaceships into the heavily guarded airspace enter or exit. It’s also our first look at Star Wars’ version of a suburban idyll, which is eerie enough in its own right.

This isolation explains why Wim mistakes a grounded ship for a lost Jedi temple and how he ends up stranded far, far away with Neel and two new, troubled allies: the swaggering tomboy Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and the tech genius KB (Kyriana Kratter, wearing a great bob and cyclops-like headgear). Wim’s enthusiasm is an understandable entry point; WHO not At that age, were you interested in Jedi history or did you wish you could be a part of it? But Armstrong gets to play the smarter, less naive Fern as a bit of a tough guy, although all four kids are overwhelmed when the ship’s malfunctioning droid (Nick Frost) navigates them straight into a pirate lair.

There they meet the biggest star in this corner of the galaxy: one Jude Law, whose character introduces himself as an apparent Force user named Jod Na Nawood. As with “At Attin,” there’s clearly more going on with Jod than meets the eye, and it’s delightful to see Law let his mask slip into the cheeky joy that characterizes one of his more entertaining modes. Neither he, Adebimpe nor The Banshees of Inisherin star Kerry Condon, in their role as Fern’s mother, ever seem like they’re calling for a franchise paycheck. Plus, their collective star power behind the camera is equal: Watts directs the pilot, while David Lowery (“The Green Knight”), The Daniels (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) and Lee Isaac Chung (“Twisters”) take over at least one episode each.

In the three episodes screened to critics, “Skeleton Crew” never conveys the sense of galactic risk or mortal danger – a relief given the age of the protagonists and the diminishing returns of always saving the world. There’s also no explicit connection to more well-known Star Wars stories, although one will likely appear later in the eight-episode season (I’m still moaning about the final shot of Yoda in “The Acolyte,” especially since it turned out to be the ending). of the series.) There’s a ceiling to the ambitions of a series that sticks to its “Goonies”-esque script and keeps things so light; “Skeleton Crew” only takes “Star Wars” to new places in a literal sense. But the series is able to live up to its limited remit and create a Star Wars show that is actually rooted in childhood rather than evoking memories of one’s own childhood.

The first two episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are now streaming on Disney+, with the remaining episodes airing weekly on Tuesdays.