Endgame was so successful for two reasons - one, the movies before it were mostly good/great and thus set it up to suceed, and two, Endgame was really legit good for what it was (story conclusion), even if some other MCU movies were better (my favourites are Ragnarok and Winter Soldier, not Endgame, for example).
With SW, the reception of TFA was mostly good but with not insignificant people disliking the “rehash” aspect of it, TLJ split the fanbase down the middle and even many people who paid for a ticket disliked it…and thus Solo failed and Rise seems to be on track to made least amount of the trilogy.
If Kennedy gets shuffled out, I would expect Rian Johnson’s trilogy to be dead. I think it’s telling that we haven’t heard about it in some time. He might get a writing credit, but that would be it for him.
Which, IMO, would be too bad. Johnson has never been given the chance to do an extended story like that, and I’d love to see what he could do. I’ve never disliked a single thing he’s done, and he always comes through with an interesting take on whatever genre piece he’s tackling this time.
I’ll be honest. I think letting Rian do whatever he wanted in TLJ and not having a plan to directly follow on those themes was dumb. I think he would’ve worked better directing a standalone Rogue One style movie than being the middle of a trilogy.
I think the serial announcements of pretty much all previously announced SW film projects being cancelled (Johnson, the GoT producers, and Boba Fett, IIRC) tell us which way the wind is blowing. Kennedy is being slow-motion fired so it doesn’t look as bad for her.
Assuming she is at fault for Lucasfilm’s problems, What is it about Kathleen Kennedy that has made her difficult to remove? Is it a weakness of Iger’s/the board’s that they assume too much good faith for too long or something? Or is she tight with people they need to maintain relationships with (JJ/Ron Howard etc.?)
Again, that’s assuming she has not been a good executive; it may be that she’s been doing exactly what Disney wants her to do.
Resume aside, one of the greatest franchises in movies has been in decline ever since she was given the reigns. Ignore Solo missteps for a second. This trilogy lacking a clear narrative vision, allowing each movies writer to have total control over their film has left a disjointed mess. That’s coming from someone who liked all 3 films individually. Now that we have all 3 of them and it’s clear that episode 8 is at best irrelevant.
It’s like that narrative game where each person adds a sentence to a story and tries to throw curveballs to the person after them to get them to fail.
Looks to me like she’s been extremely talented in which directors to work with, and maybe her skill as a producer is in making sure the people making the movie have the chance to do their best.
And it doesn’t work to well when it’s the wrong people.
No one is infallible. She has other blemishes on her resume.
The biggest mistake in hindsight was giving Johnson so much creative control and they probably realized too late that they made a mistake and had to just roll with it because of all the spent money. As Producer, she should have realized earlier that many of Johnson’s choices for the characters and story ran counter to the established characters and the overall sensibilities of Star Wars as lighter popcorn entertainment. While Rogue One has a definite darker tone, I love how that movie still reinforces hope and lighthearted banter in the face of overwhelming odds. It remains definitively Star Wars in presentation and character motivation. It even has its own redemption arc for Cassian Andor, who I found to be one of the best Star Wars characters in years alongside Jyn Erso and K-2SO. Orson Krennic is also a proper Star Wars villain, “Don’t choke on your aspirations… Director Krennic.”
I need to watch Solo. It came out when I was super busy with life in general and haven’t found the time to watch it since. I suspect I will enjoy that too.
With Rise of Skywalker, I’m sure they were aware that the fanbase is now split and they’d run into some potential backlash from one side or the other that might reduce box office receipts.
My biggest problem with a lot of the fandom is that they want these movies to grow up, and that’s not at all who Star Wars was made for originally nor do I think it should have been in these three main trilogies. These are films for everyone, that were originally based on serials with action, rather simple characters and motivations, fun, and cliffhangers. The guy who made Episode VIII obviously didn’t understand that.
I kind of doubt this was the case. I mean, the biggest criticism of TFA was ‘it was too derivative of the old movies’. So letting Johnson make something completely new was what they explicitly wanted, I’m guessing. The backlash from the toxic end of their fandom was probably unexpected.
You can do plenty of storytelling that respects the previous stuff without copying the format of the old movies. In general, TFA was well-received. It just didn’t have to follow New Hope beat-for-beat. For example, Starkiller Base didn’t need to exist at all. The whole First Order would have been so much better had it just been a secret, hidden org like Hydra in Marvel, which Poe was tasked with finding, and Finn defected from. Luke going into hiding would have made more sense since he wouldn’t have abandoned the galaxy. The 2nd movie could have revealed the First Order fully, with the 3rd one having Starkiller Base or some other strong weapon.
Sure, if they’d planned all that out from the beginning (and to be clear that should have been how they did it). But the reality is what I wrote: the biggest criticism of TFA was ‘derivative’. They responded to that with TLJ… just not the way some fans wanted. I think they were caught off guard by the backlash.
Why is it toxic to want the trilogy films to stay true to the characters and the overall sensibility of the universe that was created? Those fans aren’t toxic. They were simply betrayed by a film that went in a completely different direction from what Star Wars had always been before that.
As for @Bluddy’s link, if they had introduced a totally new character to filmgoing audiences as as the Big Bad, that would have been a bigger mistake. I know there’s all this other stuff out there, but for myself and probably most people who attend these films, the films are the extent of our Star Wars knowledge. This is why Marvel continued to separate Agents of SHIELD and the other Marvel shows from the films so much, at least according to the people who love the Marvel films. I mean, I love the TV part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but even I understand that you couldn’t just walk Graviton into a current Marvel film and know where he came from or how he was created.
There are things I would have liked to be done different since The Force Awakens and that includes in the new film, but I am happy with where it has left us now. I do think the Lucas Story Group seems to have some real issues with taking all of this way too seriously.
Gary Whitta should feel pretty good looking back over the last five years of Star Wars movies. I think he wrote the best one, and Gareth Edwards direction was also the best of the last bunch barring Solo which I need to watch.
Re: That reddit thread-- I find it monumentally unbelievable that JJ would look to George Lucas and his original storyline to figure out how to end the trilogy. That post is a troll.
