Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Bosses Wave Off Max Rebo ‘Controversy,’ Say Galaxy Has a ‘Lot of Blue Elephant Creatures’
The creators of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are all ears when it comes to fan theories about whether one of the Disney+ series’ titular kids — the elephantine Neel — is of the same species as Max Rebo, the original Star Wars film trilogy’s Ortolan keyboardist.
“People really want to know,” series co-creator Jon Watts tells TVLine, “and we don’t mind going on record saying that he is not.”
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Hailing from Watts (director of Spider-Man: No Way Home) and Chris Ford (Spider-Man: Homecoming writer), and set during the same timeframe as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, Skeleton Crew follows four kids who discover a buried spacecraft on their home planet, then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy. Early into said odyssey, they cross paths with Jod Na Nawood, an enigmatic character played by Jude Law.
Robert Timothy Smith plays good-hearted Neel (with the aid of facial motion capture, a prosthetic suit and an animatronic puppeteered head), while Ravi Cabot-Conyers (#BlackAF), Ryan Kiera Armstrong (2022’s Firestarter) and Kyriana Kratter (BUNK’D) respectively play Wim, Fern and KB.
In making Neel a blue, elephantine character that is not an Ortolan, like Max Rebo, but a member of a different, unspecified species, “Obviously, we drive our car right into that controversy,” Ford admits with a chuckle. “We just went right in there and did it.”
But as the two creatives note, maybe there’s a bit of profiling going on if Star Wars fans instantly assumed that Neel and Max Rebo share alien DNA. After all, Neel clearly has four limbs, whereas many Star Wars fans are of the mind that Max Rebo only had two (and played the organ with his feet).
If Neel and his humanoid arms was Ortolan, it’d threaten to disrupt a long-held conception about Max Rebo’s kind.
“It’s a big galaxy. There’s a lot of blue, trunked, elephant creatures out there,” Watts notes. To which Ford adds, “There’s a lot of human-looking people that have no trunks that come in different colors and shapes, and we don’t blink our eye at that. So, it’s very human-centric to have a problem with this, I have to say.”
Watts wraps up the playful debate but suggesting that an altogether different elephant in the room is being ignored….
“Is Neel more closely related to Hooter from Captain EO?” he asks. “I think that’s the real question.”
Want scoop on Skeleton Crew, or for any other Star Wars TV show ? Shoot an email to [email protected], and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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