Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is inspired by classic Monkey Island games

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is out this week, and was apparently inspired by a game series we at Shortlist hold dear: Monkey Island.

Skeleton Crew follows a group of kids who get lost in space, having stumbled upon a spaceship in their home town. And in their attempt to find their way home, they find adventure.

This is where the pirate link of Monkey Island comes in, according to (co)showrunner Jon Watts.

“There's a fun thematic parallel between our kids and the pirate crew,” he told SFX Magazine in an exclusive interview Issue 386. “In a lot of ways, pirates are grown-up kids who don't want to follow rules and just want to go on their own way, arguing about who gets to be the captain.”

Watts says this brought in inspiration from old “swashbuckling epics” including movies The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood, and classic point ’n’ click adventure series Monkey Island.

“My other huge Lucasfilm fandom is the Monkey Island games. I loved all of the pirate things in those, and felt like we could bring a little hint of that to Skeleton Crew,” says Watts.

Never played the Monkey Island games? They follow the exploits of Guybrush Threepwood, a aspiring pirate who fumbles his way through a series of comedy adventures in which he is pitted agains the ghost pirate LeChuck.

The first three titles in the Monkey Island series are available right now as part of Humble Bundle’s Disney Classics bundle, available to PC players.

We don’t have long to wait to see how this inspiration pans out on-screen. Skeleton Crew hits Disney Plus on December 3 in the UK, or December 2 at 6PM PT in the US.

Skeleton Crew is an 8-part series, and as well as those kids it stars Jude Law, Nick Frost and Kerry Condon.

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