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

[MithrandirOlorin]

She should stay right where she is, protecting the Star Wars brand from people trying to take it too far in another direction.

Well that theory sure has been Debunked.

Not at all, if you honestly think other producers wouldn't drag things further than we've seen then you haven't been paying attention. Honestly Solo is a solid movie that does little to break lore or characterization....however it's also a movie that had a 'meh' reaction from audiences from the get go. If KK is guilty of anything it's being more hands off with the directors...which is odd since I recall a time when people assumed she had her hand up the backside of each director telling them exactly what to do.

I haven't seen Solo. TLJ killed all my enthusiasm for Star Wars.

[MyUserName]

Another reason Kennedy needs to go, and perhaps the most damning of them all.

She's turning the criticisms of her tenure on Star Wars into a Gender war.

I know she's technically been silent, but Kelly Marie Chan's exit from social media, her silence on the matter but the widely circulated story that it was the bullying of star wars fans that drove her and Daisy Ridley of Social Media, the later was proved false by a statement that was found made by Daisy Ridley prior to last Jedi, has been used by too many people as an excuse to target males, specifically white male fans, by too many people. Then there's Stephen Colberts mock trailer of a Rose Tico only film calling Star Wars fans dweebs, and specifically mocking the white male fans.

Disney is one of the most copyright strike happy companies on the planet. If this video wasn't endorsed and requested by them and/or Lucasfilm, it would have been off the internet and a Lawsuit filed against Stephen Colbert within an hour.

Considering she's very pro-female, boasting that 75% of her incompetent writers circle are female, and circulating "The Force is female" T-shirts, this is just the sort of stunt she'd pull to save herself and make the failure of her tenure seem like the fault of the fans.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I doubt many minds on either side are changing at this point, despite the performance of Solo. Almost everyone seems entrenched, frequently on ideological grounds. All I'll say about it is if Kennedy goes but Johnson gets that SW trilogy, I think they will have made a mistake.

Yeah, you don't have to spend a lot of time sifting through the ongoing fan debates to realize that most people have their own conclusive, "factual" theory about why Solo flopped, how successful or popular TLJ actually was, and the state of the franchise as a whole. The fact is, though, that Disney has access to far more information and has actual professionals who figure out this stuff for a living. And those people aren't going to settle for either the "SJWs are ruining Star Wars, fire Kennedy" narrative or the overly optimistic "TLJ is loved its just alt-right trolling" narrative.

Kennedy is a hugely successful producer, but honestly I feel like they've done a horrible job to squander so much good will so quickly. Things are always toxic with social media and the internet these days, and its tough to gauge the reaction of the general public, but it feels obvious to me that their creative direction has been really poor and at times has felt non-existent. And I know I'm far from alone in feeling that TLJ really, really damaged my excitement for the franchise as a whole.

To me the timing of the sequel trilogy and the story reset to the same old Empire vs. Rebellion totally contradicts the message of TLJ about building off the past in a new direction. So essentially they've been talking out of both sides of their mouths, playing up the idea of the vastness of the Star Wars universe while cynically rehashing old characters and scenarios and refusing to actually go do something with the thousands of years and unlimited space they have to work with. And even so, nostalgia-mining might be working better for them if their treatment of the OT characters didn't tick off so many long time fans.

I really don't know how much blame falls at Kennedy's feet for that. It definitely seems like she dropped the ball in how she handled Solo's production and the amount of extra money that had to be spent on reshoots. And honestly, without knowing behind the scenes details, it seems like each individual director has had simultaneously too little and too much creative freedom. A subversive story like RJ tried to tell would have (again, imo) worked far better outside the central saga rather than throwing that monkey wrench right in the middle of the ST.

[Madner Kami]

Mark Hamil widely spoke about his dissatisfaction with TLJ for a time, and then stopped as if a gag order was placed on him, but no such thing has happened with those attacking the fans who are the source of the companies profit line. The level of dissatisfaction and outright contempt between the company and its profitability Kennedy has allowed to be fostered and grow is the definition of bad business. Profits are down across all areas of merchandise. Millions are being lost across the board and its all on her head for allowing this to continue. So yes, she should be let go. There are a dozen different ways She could rectify the customer satisfaction situation, yet no action has been taken to reach out to and reassure the fans.

Pretty much this. There's having a bad hand with scripts, choice of personnell and other such "mechanical" decissions regarding movies and then there's showing open contempt for the very fanbase that you want to get money from. One is a mistake everyone can make, the other is pure stupidity and almost intentional suicidal. Ironically enough, Star Trek shows much of the same problem. They want to cater to an audience, but can't get themselves to actually cater to the already existing expansive and willing audience. If you add open contempt to that retarded attitude, you might as well shoot yourself in the head.

I haven't seen Solo. TLJ killed all my enthusiasm for Star Wars.

I find it's an actually decent to good movie. The only thing really broken about it is the Solo-connection. That character just does not need to be there. Take him away and you have a decent heist movie in the Star Wars Universe, sans space magic everywhere. It's exactly what I think fans would actually really value, a low key view into the universe beyond Sith and Jedi killing each other.

[GandALF]

If the prequels or special editions had happened during the age of twitter and outrage culture the tantrums would've been apocalyptic.

[unknownsample]

Another reason Kennedy needs to go, and perhaps the most damning of them all.

She's turning the criticisms of her tenure on Star Wars into a Gender war.

I know she's technically been silent, but Kelly Marie Chan's exit from social media, her silence on the matter but the widely circulated story that it was the bullying of star wars fans that drove her and Daisy Ridley of Social Media, the later was proved false by a statement that was found made by Daisy Ridley prior to last Jedi, has been used by too many people as an excuse to target males, specifically white male fans, by too many people. Then there's Stephen Colberts mock trailer of a Rose Tico only film calling Star Wars fans dweebs, and specifically mocking the white male fans.

Disney is one of the most copyright strike happy companies on the planet. If this video wasn't endorsed and requested by them and/or Lucasfilm, it would have been off the internet and a Lawsuit filed against Stephen Colbert within an hour.

Considering she's very pro-female, boasting that 75% of her incompetent writers circle are female, and circulating "The Force is female" T-shirts, this is just the sort of stunt she'd pull to save herself and make the failure of her tenure seem like the fault of the fans.

Yeah about that.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/j ... m=facebook

I suppose Kennedy could have made them do it.

[unknownsample]

Most recently Rian Johnson took to Twitter saying how true fans and him get along and And enjoy the franchise, and not those who criticize TLJ and harass people on social media. So that's gatekeeping AND a type of nerd culture profiling. He also called the critics, "manbabies." Classy.

Johnson's manbabies comment was referring to those who were harassing Kelly Marie Tran. As for his true fans comment this is what he wrote

https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/ ... 4649904128

Chuck Wendig thinks all SW fans are toxic, Caucasian, bigoted, males.

Wendig was referring to those fans who objected to having gay characters in his work.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/ ... cter-slurs

“If you’re upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you,” Wendig wrote. “Sorry, you squawking saurian — meteor’s coming. And it’s a fabulously gay Nyan Cat meteor with a rainbow trailing behind it and your mode of thought will be extinct.”

“You’re not the Rebel Alliance. You’re not the good guys. You’re the fucking Empire, man. You’re the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars. It’s like trying to picture Jesus kicking lepers in the throat instead of curing them. Stop being the Empire. Join the Rebel Alliance. We have love and inclusion and great music and cute droids.”

JJ Abrams says if you don't like the female characters from TLJ you are intimidated by strong women.

This is what he actually said

Asked by IndieWire about pushback from “Star Wars” fans who decried Rian Johnson’s film for its focus on more female-centric stories (bolstered by the edition of franchise newbies like Laura Dern and Kelly Marie Tran), Abrams was clear: “Their problem isn’t ‘Star Wars,’ their problem is being threatened.”

Jon Kasdan is sorry/not sorry for retconning Lando as a Pansexual.

Nobody cares

[Worffan101]

I honestly don't know if she should. There's only three franchises other than the MCU and Star Wars itself that have kept the level of sequel potential that SW currently has for serious lengths of time, one of them consists entirely of B-movies, one of them is largely non-serialized and half its films suck ass, and one of them is Harry Potter.

The MCU is run on a nonstop train of consistently entertaining and straightforwardly fun films, all but four of which have been really good and the weakest of which was merely mediocre. It has an unprecedented hype train, tight budgets, "good enough" production values that still look great, and a truly exceptional level of writing, directing, and production discipline.

The current Star Wars universe is run on massive budgets, long production times, what I feel is too much auteur philosophy, and is catering to a notoriously unpleasable fanbase. Given that, I think that the social-justice question is not the best way to analyze Kathleen Kennedy's performance as franchise runner, and I think that any analysis of Kennedy's performance is inevitably going to find her lacking due to the simply extraordinary run of good luck that Marvel's had and the inevitability of comparisons to Marvel.

However, it's still, I think, a valid point of argument, and while any comparison will inevitably be imperfect it is I believe possible to attempt an analysis of Kennedy's performance in her role.

Here's the weakness of Kennedy's approach to putting people other than more straight white dudes in Star Wars (not that there weren't already, I mean seriously, did the racists even see Lando Calrissian or Princess Leia before?). By intentionally focusing on confronting the racist, sexist monsters hanging around the Internet harassing anyone who happens to exist while female, and making that such an important part of the debate around her franchise, Kennedy and her associates have structured a very black-and-white debate. People on Tumblr express unconditional support for the films and refuse to admit that TLJ was a deeply flawed mess of a movie that shat on its best characters (Rey and Rose), using one to shill Kylo Ren and the other as part of the single worst romance arc I've seen since Trip and the Xyrillian who raped him in a holodeck. Racists whinge about how "teh sjws" are "ruining" Star Wars and claim that Kelly Marie Tran is Chinese, which is like saying that that William Wallace from Braveheart was English.

The core issue from a business perspective like this is that most people don't give a fuck about the Internet wars and just want to watch a movie with their kids, and the Tumblr anti-racists don't watch the movies enough to keep ticket sales up. Does hyping their LGBT characters make EA a less evil company? Hell no. Does it help EA make money? Nope. It's the Ultimate Team lootbox scam that makes them money, they killed Mass Effect by making a weak game that didn't make money and I know people personally who actually have played Mass Effect and DragonAge specifically because of the LGBT content.

TLJ, objectively, had a steeper drop in ticket sales than TFA, indicative of a lack of overall popularity and very few repeat views. I suspect that that was due to the haphazard and disorganized story, the frankly mean-spirited attempts at deconstruction, and the mind-blowing misuse of several key characters. DC has proved that bad movies are KRYPTONITE to serial franchises.

Side note, I don't think that Solo's box office problems are because it's too straight-white-dude, or that TLJ was bad; Solo is releasing at a bad time and is meant to appeal only to a small group, it was never going to make the big bucks, which is why splurging so much on it was moronic.

But honestly, the core problem with Kennedy's tenure is that all four movies her team's put out have been flawed. Episode 7 had every single one of JJ Abrams's problems as a filmmaker on full display and made money mostly on nostalgia. Rogue One's main characters were boring as shit. TLJ was a hot mess. Solo was never going to be better than OK and really was only OK.

You can't sustain a cinematic universe on a track record like that.

So...yeah, my thoughts are a bit muddled. But overall, I think that Kennedy is not doing as well as she could, though it's not entirely her fault.

I hope all that makes sense.

[MyUserName]

Another reason Kennedy needs to go, and perhaps the most damning of them all.

She's turning the criticisms of her tenure on Star Wars into a Gender war.

I know she's technically been silent, but Kelly Marie Chan's exit from social media, her silence on the matter but the widely circulated story that it was the bullying of star wars fans that drove her and Daisy Ridley of Social Media, the later was proved false by a statement that was found made by Daisy Ridley prior to last Jedi, has been used by too many people as an excuse to target males, specifically white male fans, by too many people. Then there's Stephen Colberts mock trailer of a Rose Tico only film calling Star Wars fans dweebs, and specifically mocking the white male fans.

Disney is one of the most copyright strike happy companies on the planet. If this video wasn't endorsed and requested by them and/or Lucasfilm, it would have been off the internet and a Lawsuit filed against Stephen Colbert within an hour.

Considering she's very pro-female, boasting that 75% of her incompetent writers circle are female, and circulating "The Force is female" T-shirts, this is just the sort of stunt she'd pull to save herself and make the failure of her tenure seem like the fault of the fans.

Yeah about that.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/j ... m=facebook

I suppose Kennedy could have made them do it.

Have you looked up that group? Or the tweet itself? They currently have 35 followers, the tweet itself has five likes. The supposed fb page was deleted months ago. And on the tweet itself, there are numerous people calling it a false flag, which I have to agree with simply because looking back at legit hate campaigns in the franchise, like The People Vs George Lucas, which targeted Lucas, Hayden Christiansen, and Jake Loyed, and even approached the OT actors for support who publicly told them to bugger off, there was WAY more activity, likes, and support. Also incriminating is... where are the groups replies to criticisms? Hate groups LOVE to argue and overstate their points.

Not only, but episode IX is in full post production mode. None of the involved actors are allowed on Social media. So where did the story of Kelly Marie leaving social media due to cyber bullying come from? It's typical for even extras to turn in their phones and ANYTHING with a camera and/or recording function while on set. So again, I must ask, WHERE DID THIS STORY COME FROM?

And in regards to your rebuttal about Abrams, Wendig, Johnson, and Kasdan, I'm not going to discuss their wording, but rather their attitude. Please imitate their attitude towards a client or customer at your office/workplace, let me know how that works out for you.

[Madner Kami]

I hope all that makes sense.

It does, I just want to add: Both Rogue One and Solo suffer from a secondary issue, other than already having a more limiting scope in regard to audience attraction or appeal. Both movies were extensively rewritten even while being shot and in the case of Solo even after it was shot. Solo in particular takes the cake in that regard, as they apparently almost made a completely new movie, bloating the budget onto unrecoverable levels of stupid. This makes them both extraordinarily expensive and suffer from many of the typical "studio-mandate-change"-issues.

As for TLJ, what strikes me as completely insane is the fact, that the movie straight out assassinates it's characters. It's understandable that the people in charge do not necessarily know about the characters in detail, but if the guy who played Luke Skywalker three times and who is critically acclaimed and not just a random schmuck actor tells you, that the character he is playing in this movie is not Luke Skywalker, then you maybe should think long and hard about what you are doing with the movie.