Not sure she had her eye on the ball or the target audience in mind.
I have no idea if Kennedy shares a good portion of the blame for the direction of Disney Star Wars, because that kind of information is never public, but I think change has a high probability of being a positive force here.
I have no problem with a “The Force is Female” tshirt, and I have no idea why anyone would. Seems like it’s just a positive slogan to try and get more girls into the franchise, not an aggressive ideology that’s trying to change the mythology of a scifi series to alienate the core demographic. I’d rather the force be overtly gendered than midichlorians anyway.
I agree. And while people point to the creative shake ups on the new Star Wars films, I really think a lot of the criticisms that people have about them are more the result of Disney itself rather than one person – they are just too protective about their IP to allow too much individuality in their creative processes - they write and create more by committee, and they almost never produce a terrible movie. But they also don’t reach the heights of movies made by individual creative artists.
I don’t think Feige has done much differently - I think they’re both very good producers. Hell, she did ET, Jurassic Park, Force Awakens and TLJ as a producer, and they’re all high in the top 10 successful movies of all time. I may still like a replacement more than her, but it’s also quite possible they could pick someone much worse in that role.
I agree with this, and yes I think it’s more of a problem of designing by committee. But somehow Marvel manages to not make a bad movie either, while still attaining (arguably) higher highs more of the time. I think Lucasfilm needs someone to take more risks, whether that’s Kennedy or someone else.
I think comic book movies as a genre are helped in that they are literally about comics, and fans are willing to hand wave 90% of the nonsense away and enjoy digging into the MacGuffins and plot-powers typical of superheroes.
I think what Feige brought to the table with Marvel was a holistic vision for the MCU. He built a realistic plan about how to go from one movie to the next while building an overarching narrative, with inflection points at the Avengers movies. There was enough detail so the directors had some limits, but not so much that they couldn’t be creative. And they were able to improvise and add/remove elements based on what worked and didn’t in previous movies.
I don’t get the sense that there is any of that on the Star Wars side. They have a universe that has characters and stories and they are mining the most very obvious stuff from it. Solo doesn’t serve any purpose for the franchise. He’s dead. Same with Rogue Squadron and the Obi-Wan movie if they’re doing it. They’re one-off dead ends that just fill a slot on the calendar.
Whether it’s Kennedy or someone else involved (or all of them), they seem scared shitless to introduce new characters. Instead of Rogue Squadron and Solo, why not introduce us to a new Jedi or other character who we’re going to see in Episode 9 or beyond?
Theoretically you could rip off the MCU roadmap and plan for 2-3 movies in between each big Star Wars Episode X entry where all the characters come together.
But it’s clear what they’re doing right now isn’t really working. Yeah, with the exception of Solo these movies are making money, but I bet you they’re not meeting expectations for both revenue and fan/critical reception (except for Episode 7, which was gargantuan).
… but Feige kind of missed with the Ghostbusters reboot, although, to be fair, a lot of the flack about that average movie was the shitty misogyny of male-based fandoms today.
I think it’s much easier for corporate overlords to create new content when there are no expectations and much harder for them to figure out “what to do” with older properities, because really, in their hearts, they don’t “get” why people liked these films and can’t capture/recapture the “magic” that these films inspired. I think Rogue One is probably the closest to getting at that “recapturing the feeling” of all the SW reboots. And with so much money on the line they’re terrified of straying off the reservation.
I think the prequels in that respect are actually much stronger films than the modern SW films just because Lucas had no problem telling a new story with new characters, even if in the most hamhanded and outdated way possible. They’re worse as films but have better vignettes.
#ooohhh gif. Thought they were the same. Thanks!
And that Ghostbusters movie was legit terrible. I love all those women as actors and comedians, and they have made terrific films in the past, but Ghostbusters was straight up trash.
Marvel also has the advantage of 60+ years of source material to pull from. There’s a lot of trash in that 60 years (for example, I don’t think we’ll get a Spider-Man movie about Green Goblin impregnating teenage Gwen Stacey then killing her later and rapidly aging his child, or one about that time Captain America was a werewolf). They can hand pick the best stories and adapt them for the screen.
Star Wars doesn’t have that luxury. They need to make new stories. To do a good job they need to hire someone with a love and understanding of the universe and characters, like a Feige, and quality writers. Like, pay them big bucks to draft an outline for a cinematic universe. GRRM quality epic outline, like what he did before writing Game of Thrones.
Maybe not 60 years, but there was/is plenty of pro-level Star Wars fiction. Much of it was terrible, but the Thrawn series, for example, could totally have been mined. Instead, Lucasfilm declared it all fantasy and shoved it aside.
But you’re right in that they could fix that. George Lucas called together a ton of writers and supposedly had two full seasons of a live-action TV series scripts written before that project got cancelled.
It all boils down to what your highest priority is. Are you selling Star Wars stories to Star Wars fans, or are you changing Star Wars to suit your political or marketing preferences? Disney’s acquisition of Marvel was done explicitly to appeal to young boys because Disney felt that it had young girls locked in with its existing properties, they were weak in “boy appeal.” Star Wars was also an acquisition that gave Disney a strength in an area it didn’t have.
And the question is, is Kennedy maintaining that strength? That’s her job. One of her first acts as steward of the Star Wars franchise was to get rid of the men.
Kathleen Kennedy founded the group in 2012 when she succeeded George Lucas as president of Lucasfilm, putting Kiri Hart, a former film and TV writer, in charge of the unit. Ms. Hart’s first move was to make the story group entirely female . . .
Because nobody has their finger on the pulse of what young boys find thrilling like middle-aged ladies. But – that was Kennedy’s call to make, and she made it.
However, printing “The Force is Female” shirts and posing for pictures is not Kennedy’s job. That’s a self-gratifying extraneous activity, which is tolerable if you are getting the job done. If you aren’t, it’s evidence that you don’t have the proper focus on the goal.
So far, Kennedy’s stewardship of the brand started strong and faded over time. She put Abrams in charge of Ep7 and produced a flashy retread that put butts in seats. Rogue One required reshoots, but came out ok and made money despite the absence of “classic” Star Wars characters who weren’t GC or in a suit. And then she put Johnson in charge of Ep8, and allowed him to deprecate almost every plot thread that Abrams set up in Ep7. The result was the worst-reviewed movie of the series.
Finally, she put people in charge of Solo, changed her mind, put someone else in charge who re-shot 70-80% of the movie at great expense, and ultimately . . . produced a movie that lost lots of money from a franchise that made Lucas a billionaire many times over. A franchise that Disney likely bought with the intention of making money by giving the Star Wars fan base what it wanted.
So. Is the Star Wars fan base pleased? Doesn’t look like it to me. I’ve been a lifelong fan (seeing such an iconic movie at age 10 will do that to a kid) and I’m pretty disappointed. Has Kennedy’s gambit to “get more girls into the franchise” worked? I have no data, but the toy sellers are complaining and people are mocking the piles of unsold Rose Tico action figures. In a franchise where Lucas was able to self-fund his movies because he retained merchandising rights, that’s unimpressive.
I’d guess that bad toy sales are an indicator of poor engagement of the fan base. So, we can declare all of those alienated fans complaining on the internet to be wrong or misogynistic, but has Kennedy replaced all of those “bad” fans with “good” ones? That’s going to be what determines whether she keeps her job.
Removed post; gonna post it in the other thread
This is a ridiculous argument. There’s nothing wrong with the character of Rey or the actress playing her. The failure of these new movies has nothing to do with women, despite what neckbeard YouTubers might have told you.
They wrote shitty stories that squandered their characters. These movies feel like a DM who got a great set of players who made wonderful characters they were excited to play, but didn’t bother to prepare anything before the session and is just winging it.
So we get, “uhh, you’re running from the enemy ship, what do you do?”
“We go to hyperspace”
“Uh you can’t, it’s broken.”
“We fix it”
“Uhhhhh, you need to go to this um… space casino to get parts”
Rey’s player, “I finally found the lost Jedi Master from the last campaign, Luke Skywalker, I talk to him”
“Roll diplomacy”.
“I have his lightsaber he used battling his father 30 years ago, does that give me a bonus?”
“Fine, +2”
rolls “I have a 30 on my diplomacy check.”
“Luke doesn’t want to talk to you.”
I very much agree that there’s a disconnect between how the story is being handled from Ep7 to Ep8, and I complained about that in the TLJ thread. My point here is about Kennedy’s priorities. You can only have one top priority, and it appears that maintaining the SW fan base by producing quality SW movies is not it. What her actual top priority is, is certainly a matter for speculation, and she may not even be able to articulate it in that way.
Here’s an analytical model I was presented with at a job interview. Five management priorities are written on five slips of paper. Your job is to put them in order of priority to you as the manager. There can be no ties, you must arrange them in descending order of priority. Does maintaining office productivity go above employee satisfaction or below it? You can’t fudge the question, one has to be the higher priority.
And my suspicion is, that for whatever reason, Kennedy has placed the slip of paper with “preserve the existing Star Wars fan base” below other things. That’s going to have consequences whether you think it should or not because there can be only one thing on top of the list, and everything else must give way to the top priority.
“What does General Leia say?”
DM: “Uhhhh, there’s an attack roll initiative.”
Players roll
“Kylo Ren wins, he attacks. Crit. The hull is breached, General Leia is sucked out into space and dies.”
Poe’s player: “I still have 2 hero points, I use them to save Leia.”
DM: shit “Uhhhh, Leia activates her latent force abilities and flies back to safety then falls unconscious.”
Poe: “We use our med kits on her.”
DM: “Uhhhh, no she’s in a force coma, you don’t know when she’ll wake up if ever. What do you do?”
Finn: “Fuck it, I go to the casino planet.” he’s railroading us
Little does the group know the Casino Planet adventure is something the DM just pulled from his d20 modern James Bond campaign that he ran 5 years ago when he gave a shit and he’s just recycling it for this session because he has nothing else ready
Man, I want to play this game. Can I play as a force-canceling lizard?
Rian Johnson as bad DM is the best explanation for how poor TLJ’s plot is ever. I bow down to you, @Wallapuctus.
Even though I still type your name as Wallapactus every single time.
I think this is fair. I’m pretty sure Kennedy and Disney want to maximize profits and grow the Star Wars fan base rather than just pleasing longtime fans. I would guess that “find a way to appeal to more women and poc” is part of that.
You can certainly argue whether or not that’s been executed well, and where exactly on that hypothetical hierarchy it belongs, but I don’t think it’s unsound on its face. Star Wars should appeal to as wide an audience as possible.