Should Kathleen Kennedy be let go from the Star Wars megaproject?

[Karha of Honor]

What's so awful about Lando being bi or something? We need more bi and gay characters!

Do you even realize how utterly meaningless this and patronizing this statement is? Why do we need more bi and gay characters? Why does Lando need to have any sexuality at all?

One of the first things Lando does when he shows up in Episode V is make a pass at Leia.

This is a really good example of how being straight is so expected that it's basically invisible, yet you have one or two characters with some other sexuality and all of a sudden the "why do we need x" questions are everywhere. That's without mentioning how it was basically nonexistent in the movie itself anyway.

Okay, first of all, we do not need more gay or bi characters. What we need are well written characters with agency in their own arcs, relevance to the overall plot, and a good purpose to the story. We can focus on who is wanting to get jiggy with who or what AFTER the writing team gets it together.

Second, if you cannot see the character contrast between lando and han, his advances fostering hitherto unseen jealousy in the later, and also further defining Leia's definite interest in Han by rebuffing his advances, then... well I honestly don't know what that says.

Third, I've always found that kind of aggressive forcing of diversity to be misguided at best, and at worst... I don't want to be inflammatory so I'll hold off commenting worse case scenarios as to what could be behind that kind attitude. Characters do not need to be les, gay, bi, pan, or straight to be appealing, just well written. Some of my favorite movies and TV shows didn't need a romance to be entertaining.

As for films or tv shows with homosexual themes and characters? Sure. I have the same requirement I have of heterosexual characters. Make the romantic and/or sexual aspects of the story relevant and well written please and thank you.

Yeah except people objected to gay characters full stop in Aftermath.

Star Wars is almost all chaste sexuality 101 with no nudity.

[MithrandirOlorin]

Star Wars is a Space Opera, it should never be boring.

[unknownsample]

What's so awful about Lando being bi or something? We need more bi and gay characters!

Do you even realize how utterly meaningless this and patronizing this statement is? Why do we need more bi and gay characters? Why does Lando need to have any sexuality at all?

One of the first things Lando does when he shows up in Episode V is make a pass at Leia.

This is a really good example of how being straight is so expected that it's basically invisible, yet you have one or two characters with some other sexuality and all of a sudden the "why do we need x" questions are everywhere. That's without mentioning how it was basically nonexistent in the movie itself anyway.

Okay, first of all, we do not need more gay or bi characters. What we need are well written characters with agency in their own arcs, relevance to the overall plot, and a good purpose to the story. We can focus on who is wanting to get jiggy with who or what AFTER the writing team gets it together.

Second, if you cannot see the character contrast between lando and han, his advances fostering hitherto unseen jealousy in the later, and also further defining Leia's definite interest in Han by rebuffing his advances, then... well I honestly don't know what that says.

Third, I've always found that kind of aggressive forcing of diversity to be misguided at best, and at worst... I don't want to be inflammatory so I'll hold off commenting worse case scenarios as to what could be behind that kind attitude. Characters do not need to be les, gay, bi, pan, or straight to be appealing, just well written. Some of my favorite movies and TV shows didn't need a romance to be entertaining.

As for films or tv shows with homosexual themes and characters? Sure. I have the same requirement I have of heterosexual characters. Make the romantic and/or sexual aspects of the story relevant and well written please and thank you.

Yeah except people objected to gay characters full stop in Aftermath.

Star Wars is almost all chaste sexuality 101 with no nudity.

https://www.vox.com/2018/5/29/17365958/ ... ic-history

The Han/Luke ship is one of the foundational pairings of the Star Wars fandom, present since the beginnings of the franchise and responsible for a considerable amount of energy around the creation of early fanzines and other fan works. After the 1999 release of The Phantom Menace, a massive amount of fanfic pairing Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan flooded the internet. And with the release of The Force Awakens in 2015, the fandom queering of Finn and Poe Dameron instantly became a topic of intense celebration and speculation. Even Han/Lando shippers have had their moments, producing fanfiction, fan art, fan vids, and general celebrations of their rivalry, friendship, and love. At Polygon, Julia Alexander interviewed the co-writers of the oldest Han/Lando fic housed on AO3, a 1997 fic titled “What Shall We Do With a Drunken Soldier?”

“People have been shipping Han/Lando and Han/Luke since the 1980s, and the subtext has always been there,” geek culture reporter Gavia Baker-Whitelaw told Vox. “The main difference is that now, queer representation is part of the public conversation.”

Also we're talking about having gay characters, not having pages and pages of gay sex.

[ChrisTheLovableJerk]

With all honesty I think Kennedy should be let go. Regardless of her overall abilities as a producer she has been involved with many a film from the acclaimed (Jurassic Park) to the awful (The Last Airbender) and didn't have much to do with the creative vision of those films.

I'm not flat-out anti-Disney Star Wars or pro-Disney Star Wars, I'm a bit more balanced as I loved Rebels and Rogue One, really enjoy most of the comics, have enjoyed some novels, refuse to play EA's bastardization of Battlefront, have been annoyed and let down by the refusal to give closure for The Clone Wars, thought TFA was shamefully derivative and predictable but promising, and I genuinely thought TLJ was an awful film that was a total insult to the franchise, and while I haven't seen Solo it doesn't sound interesting aside from Maul's cameo and a lot of what I've heard sounds dumb, and if I were to be honest TLJ and the attitudes of those involved with these movies towards the fans have left me disillusioned and bummed out, so once Rebels Season 4 is out on Blu-Ray I might check out until changes are made.

But as to Star Wars' management... well, the franchise isn't in a good place right now, multiple bad choices have been made under Kennedy's leadership and Disney's ownership of the brand:

A video game deal with EA, one of the most disliked and infamously predatory video game publishers in the history of the industry with only two proper games released and a couple mobile ones, the two proper games received negative reviews with the first being a barren and overpriced demo with barely any content lacking even the basic stuff like a campaign while the other went so overboard with the greedy, predatory business practices such as lootboxes and pay-to-win tactics that it caused a gigantic controversy, the most downvoted comment in the history of reddit, and even got governments involved with the concern that the game could get children addicted to gambling.

The toy sales are floundering, even dying the Toys R Us stores with the price cut down can't get rid of them, and there's the problem that toys from TFA can still be found on the shelves. Add to that rumors of Hasbro being unhappy with the performances of the toys and the films overall. Videos of the unsold Star Wars toys from the last few years are easily found on YouTube and toys of characters like Rose, Hux, Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor (in their Eadu outfits) are laughably cheap.

Strong-arming theater chains into giving them a bigger percentage of the ticket sales of TLJ and forcing them to put it on their biggest screens for three weeks straight.

Rebels airing on a channel that not that many people have (though that's more the fault of Disney being incompetent with running their TV channels) and deciding now to finish up a TV series that was very popular among fans, was critically acclaimed, and was something the creator Lucas himself was personally invested it, all because Disney didn't want to give Warner Bros a small piece of their massive cake.

Allowing the directors of the main saga to do whatever they please with it whilst micromanaging the hell out of the spin-offs and side projects.

Allowing Rian Johnson to make The Last Jedi based off of a first draft, an insanely poor choice, which led to subplots that felt superfluous, new characters that came off as forgettable, unnecessary, or flat-out unlikable, plot points from the previous film being swiftly dropped, ignored, or given incredibly anti-climactic and disappointing resolutions for the sake of subverting expectations, very virtu-signal-y moments, Leia Poppins, and what was, in my opinion, the complete and utter ruination of one of the most beloved pop culture icons of the last 40 plus years, and then killing him off as an afterthought, while ignoring the protests of Mark Hamill, while in TFA JJ Abrams bended to Oscar Isaac and allowed Poe to live even though it created a plot hole and it was just so an actor most had never heard of prior to his involvement with TFA would do the movie (I give Isaac credit for his huge balls on that though).

TLJ didn't perform as good as TFA, and while it wasn't a failure it did fall below expectations and the massive backlash from the fanbase didn't help either, with a score much lower than Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. The claims that it was just bots or hackers was disproved by Rotten Tomatoes themselves, and the dismal performance of TLJ in China didn't help at all. And unlike what some said, the backlash against TLJ hasn't gone down in the half-a-year since its release, it's still loud and vocal, and seems to be growing, if anything. Not to mention the recent news of dvd and blu-ray sales vastly underperforming what was expected, especially compared to sales TFA had when it was out this long.

And then there's the announced Rian Johnson trilogy, which I personally believe was nothing more than PR and hype for TLJ. And after the very vocal and unavoidable backlash against that film and Johnson himself, these films are apparently still in the works, but I personally doubt they'll ever happen.

The Solo film was a project many were skeptical of, as it was met with "Why is this being made?", "This is what we're going with, really?", among other things. It didn't help that the only reason it was being made was as a condition of Kasdan's agreement to help write TFA, and Kasdan isn't the genius Lucas-bashers make him out to be, as in the last 26 years or so his resume reads like a descent into film hell with films that bombed, were panned by critics, or faded off into relative obscurity. The casting of Alden Ehrenreich didn't help either, with many feeling he was totally miscast and wrong for the part of Han Solo. The involvement of Phil Lord and Chris Miller was interesting, as they're known for taking ideas that sound like crud on paper, but make them work fantastically (Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street) but were fired for trying to jazz up the script which is kind of what they're known for doing so getting mad at them for doing what they do is kind of like if a studio exec got mad at Tim Burton for putting something odd in a movie. Then word got out about an acting coach for Ehrenreich and this created even more of a worried and uneasy stigma about the film, which wasn't helped at all from the ongoing backlash caused by TLJ. The details about a droid that seemed like an odious SJW character caused even further worry, as did the lack of any trailer or promotional material until a month before release gave even more reasons to worry. And then a week or so before release Kasdan Junior runs his mouth about beloved character Lando wanting a bang robots and being pansexual, which adds more problems (not because of pansexuality itself but because they're forcing it onto a character who wasn't pansexual before instead of simply creating a new character that is pansexual). And then the movie came out to a mixed reception with some really liking it, some hating it, but with many declarations of 'meh'. The increased budget due to the reshoots cost even more, and the film flopping at the box office made it a huge problem for Disney and Lucasfilm, but Ron Howard accepted the film's underperformance with dignity and class.

And that brings something else to mind, the war between Lucasfilm employees and the fanbase. It's gotten ugly. Really ugly. With Rian Johnson refusing to accept any of the criticisms of TLJ as valid and constantly making poor excuses for the film's mocked scenes, JJ Abrams saying people who don't like ST are afraid of women and both directors blatantly refusing to listen to criticism to the point of promising to expand Rose's role in Episode IX, despite the negative reception that character got whereas Lucas understood people didn't like Jar Jar so dialed the infamous Mr. Binks down. Add to that writers like Chuck Wendig and Paul S. Kemp openly insulting fans and calling them horrible people, actors like Freddie Prinze Jr. and John Boyega trying to make it look like the fans are angry about race and gender instead of the quality of the story with Prinze calling people unhappy with the franchise's directions a bunch of out-of-shape white guys and Boyega openly saying 'We don't care' in regards to fans' concerns and critiques of the films.

What's worse is aside from the comics series and novels, there won't be any major new Star Wars content until this fall with the new Resistance tv show coming out and Episode IX not being released until Christmas of 2019, and that film has many, many issues to overcome such as the negativity TLJ left in its wake and the various controversies since, the lack of things to really look forward to, and the tragic death of Carrie Fisher left Leia confirmed dead no matter what. The fact that Colin Trevorrow seems to have been fired because he didn't like what TLJ left him with, especially with no Carrie Fisher around, and his ideas for Luke were openly supported by Mark Hamill, and having him being replaced not just by JJ Abrams (Who isn't exactly known for giving satisfying conclusions) and Chris Terrio of who wrote one good film, Argo, and two films that are mixed at best, Batman v. Superman and Justice League (though those last two are more the fault of incompetent studios than anything). When you take in the growing discontent among fans and the schisms between the fanbase and the staff of Lucasfilm, things don't look overly positive for IX for the time being.

And if you're paranoid enough, there is the chance, however slim, that the media's praise is being bought and paid for. While I myself am quite skeptical of that, the recent scandal with Kelly Marie Tran has left instagram, and the media flocked to it like chickens to feed, quick to blame harassment, sexism and racism for her leaving. Now, did that happen? Oh hell yes, it's the internet, that just comes with the territory, I do not doubt she got mean comments and my sympathy goes out to her. But the timing of it, happening right after Solo bombed and right when people were beginning to question Kennedy's leadership, to put the fans in this awful light, is just too convenient to me and comes off a bit like a distraction. I mean, yeah I do believe some of the critics, like John Campea, are shilling for them, but for perks like primer attendance, early screenings, mingling with celebrities, not for monetary gain.

Take in all of that and one thing stands: The series' future doesn't look too bright for the time being.

Let's face it, Disney didn't buy Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise because they had some grand vision for it. They bought it for one thing and one thing only: Profit.

Enormous profit.

And when you take in the failing toy sales, video game disasters, a Star Wars film actually underperforming, huge backlash against TLJ, behind the scenes woes, fan discontent, wars between fans and Lucasfilm actors, writers, and staff as well as the media, it makes it look like the company is bleeding from the throat and it doesn't seem that this wound will heal anytime soon unless action is taken.

Perhaps the rumors of Kennedy stepping down are true, it's highly probable. Even if she doesn't Bob Iger is stepping down next year, and his replacement might not be as tolerant of such problems.

Sorry if I wasted anyone's time if they actually bothered reading my tripe, I just had a lot to say that I wanted to get off my chest.

[unknownsample]

And if you're paranoid enough, there is the chance, however slim, that the media's praise is being bought and paid for. While I myself am quite skeptical of that, the recent scandal with Kelly Marie Tran has left instagram, and the media flocked to it like chickens to feed, quick to blame harassment, sexism and racism for her leaving. Now, did that happen? Oh hell yes, it's the internet, that just comes with the territory, I do not doubt she got mean comments and my sympathy goes out to her. But the timing of it, happening right after Solo bombed and right when people were beginning to question Kennedy's leadership, to put the fans in this awful light, is just too convenient to me and comes off a bit like a distraction. I mean, yeah I do believe some of the critics, like John Campea, are shilling for them, but for perks like primer attendance, early screenings, mingling with celebrities, not for monetary gain.

Even when a group admitted to doing it.

[unknownsample]

And that brings something else to mind, the war between Lucasfilm employees and the fanbase. It's gotten ugly. Really ugly. With Rian Johnson refusing to accept any of the criticisms of TLJ as valid and constantly making poor excuses for the film's mocked scenes, JJ Abrams saying people who don't like ST are afraid of women and both directors blatantly refusing to listen to criticism to the point of promising to expand Rose's role in Episode IX, despite the negative reception that character got whereas Lucas understood people didn't like Jar Jar so dialed the infamous Mr. Binks down. Add to that writers like Chuck Wendig and Paul S. Kemp openly insulting fans and calling them horrible people, actors like Freddie Prinze Jr. and John Boyega trying to make it look like the fans are angry about race and gender instead of the quality of the story with Prinze calling people unhappy with the franchise's directions a bunch of out-of-shape white guys and Boyega openly saying 'We don't care' in regards to fans' concerns and critiques of the films.

Of course the fans are blameless in all of this.

[ChrisTheLovableJerk]

And that brings something else to mind, the war between Lucasfilm employees and the fanbase. It's gotten ugly. Really ugly. With Rian Johnson refusing to accept any of the criticisms of TLJ as valid and constantly making poor excuses for the film's mocked scenes, JJ Abrams saying people who don't like ST are afraid of women and both directors blatantly refusing to listen to criticism to the point of promising to expand Rose's role in Episode IX, despite the negative reception that character got whereas Lucas understood people didn't like Jar Jar so dialed the infamous Mr. Binks down. Add to that writers like Chuck Wendig and Paul S. Kemp openly insulting fans and calling them horrible people, actors like Freddie Prinze Jr. and John Boyega trying to make it look like the fans are angry about race and gender instead of the quality of the story with Prinze calling people unhappy with the franchise's directions a bunch of out-of-shape white guys and Boyega openly saying 'We don't care' in regards to fans' concerns and critiques of the films.

Of course the fans are blameless in all of this.

Oh hell no, there are some real pieces of shit out there making the situation worse. But they are in the minority, there's probably only one of them per group of fifty, but the media is trying to make them look more significant than they actually are. And those fans who are doing stupid shit like harassment are just immature idiots with loose morality, but the people involved with Lucasfilm are supposed to be professionals and should take a moral high ground and instead they kinda generalize those who aren't happy with the direction of the series and the few who are acting like assholes as the same people.

[unknownsample]

Look at this appalling piece of abuse from John Boyega

https://twitter.com/JohnBoyega/status/1 ... wn-risk%2F

[MyUserName]

And if you're paranoid enough, there is the chance, however slim, that the media's praise is being bought and paid for. While I myself am quite skeptical of that, the recent scandal with Kelly Marie Tran has left instagram, and the media flocked to it like chickens to feed, quick to blame harassment, sexism and racism for her leaving. Now, did that happen? Oh hell yes, it's the internet, that just comes with the territory, I do not doubt she got mean comments and my sympathy goes out to her. But the timing of it, happening right after Solo bombed and right when people were beginning to question Kennedy's leadership, to put the fans in this awful light, is just too convenient to me and comes off a bit like a distraction. I mean, yeah I do believe some of the critics, like John Campea, are shilling for them, but for perks like primer attendance, early screenings, mingling with celebrities, not for monetary gain.

On that topic, here's a true story. On June 12th, John Boyega thought it would be fun to jump on twitter, and harass a fan for talking facts about the Kelly Marie Tran scenario. Despite blatant and inappropriate trolling from Boyega, the fan apologized if they said anything that was incorrect.

The guy said "I apologize" to the man who just trolled him.

"We Don't Care" was Boyega's response.

After that, Boyega got roasted like he was the main course at an Ewok cookout by the twitter community at large. The story was all over youtube as people jumped in left and right to have a go. It got so hot for him Mark Hamil jumped in, posted a witticism diffusing the situation with the hashtag #FatherlyAdvice, and Boyega hasn't been online since.

A few hours later, the media is running the story "John Boyega is a hero who stands against harassment of his costars."

I dare anyone to tell me Disney doesn't own most of the media after that. So now apparently hollywood stars can go online, harass people for just being decent netizens. You know, like they are accusing star wars fans of doing to KMT, and the media covers for them like a blanket.

The irony is, I was looking up Pacific Rim: Uprising Blu-Ray prices when Boyega decided he just had to make a fool of himself. Way to make an argument for torrenting.

Here's one of the youtube channel that covered the story, they signed out before things got really hot. but you can just search for mark hamils jumping in or follow the thread shown here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoOxb8o1n18&t=664s

[unknownsample]

And if you're paranoid enough, there is the chance, however slim, that the media's praise is being bought and paid for. While I myself am quite skeptical of that, the recent scandal with Kelly Marie Tran has left instagram, and the media flocked to it like chickens to feed, quick to blame harassment, sexism and racism for her leaving. Now, did that happen? Oh hell yes, it's the internet, that just comes with the territory, I do not doubt she got mean comments and my sympathy goes out to her. But the timing of it, happening right after Solo bombed and right when people were beginning to question Kennedy's leadership, to put the fans in this awful light, is just too convenient to me and comes off a bit like a distraction. I mean, yeah I do believe some of the critics, like John Campea, are shilling for them, but for perks like primer attendance, early screenings, mingling with celebrities, not for monetary gain.

On that topic, here's a true story. On June 12th, John Boyega thought it would be fun to jump on twitter, and harass a fan for talking facts about the Kelly Marie Tran scenario. Despite blatant and inappropriate trolling from Boyega, the fan apologized if they said anything that was incorrect.

The guy said "I apologize" to the man who just trolled him.

"We Don't Care" was Boyega's response.

After that, Boyega got roasted like he was the main course at an Ewok cookout by the twitter community at large. The story was all over youtube as people jumped in left and right to have a go. It got so hot for him Mark Hamil jumped in, posted a witticism diffusing the situation with the hashtag #FatherlyAdvice, and Boyega hasn't been online since.

A few hours later, the media is running the story "John Boyega is a hero who stands against harassment of his costars."

I dare anyone to tell me Disney doesn't own most of the media after that. So now apparently hollywood stars can go online, harass people for just being decent netizens. You know, like they are accusing star wars fans of doing to KMT, and the media covers for them like a blanket.

The irony is, I was looking up Pacific Rim: Uprising Blu-Ray prices when Boyega decided he just had to make a fool of himself. Way to make an argument for torrenting.

Yeah except that didn't happen did it?

1. By trolling a fan talking facts you mean Boyega pointed out that the idea that Lucasfilm force the cast to be silent on social media was a load of horse manure.

2 The fan's apology was we hate her character and we don't like yours.

3. Boyega also tweeted this

If you don’t like Star Wars or the characters understand that there are decisions makers and harassing the actors/ actresses will do nothing. You’re not entitled to politeness when your approach is rude. Even if you paid for a ticket!