Kathleen Kennedy: Legitimate Gripes or Blistering Mysogyny?

[Starter Set]

Well, no, Star Wars is not responsible for EA's gross greed if that's what you're asking.

[Soubhagya]

This is what I don't really get though. I don't get how people can say the hate she gets is surprising when Lucas had scores of people trashing him for the same franchise. We didn't get a "The People VS Kathleen Kennedy" yet. We didn't get South Park have Kathleen raping a stormtrooper yet.

I think saying it's misogyny is kind of an easy out when this is **** that persisted in Star Wars fandom many years before Kathleen Kennedy was a thing.

It's more of a "Star Wars fandom is really rabid" thing.

I also don't know if I'd say she did a splendid job so far. She made one film that was largely viewed as a copy and paste of A New Hope, Rogue One which was the only one that was generally well received without many complaints, the most divisive Star Wars movie ever in The Last Jedi, and Solo being the first franchise failure.

All three of the prequels appear divisive. In comparison only TLJ appears to be divisive. And apart from Solo each of the films earned over a billion. That is what i call a splendid job. And its true that i am kind of 'biased' as i have loved all three of them. I haven't seen Solo so far.

I think rabid fans are everywhere. Though it looks like Star Wars has the most of them.

Now someone may say 1 billion is easy for Star Wars. I will point to Batman v Superman. That was supposed to be an event. Even Civil War, the very well received Avengers 2.5 made 'only' 1.153 billion dollars. Its not easy to make films where audiences come back again and again which is needed for billion dollar successes. Whatever she was doing had worked so far.

And these are opinions. I can't base it on something really solid.

[Username taken]

For what its worth, I'm pretty sure IX will try and course correct some, at least to what the plot will allow. I liked VIII, but I have my certain complaints and would agree that the main thing is that they gave Johnson too much control. There's being too restricting and then there's being too lenient. It doesn't seem like he had much of anyone in his ear challenging him. And really everyone needs that.

This pretty much sums it up.

Sometimes, you give an individual a long enough rope and he'll hang himself with it.

I know fans like to hear the phrase "director has full creative control" but sometimes (in fact a lot of times) some form of oversight is necessary...particularly in an episodic epic saga like Star Wars.

As someone pointed out earlier, Marvel has fallen out with film makers several times but seeing how everything has turned out for them, I would argue that the suits might have had valid points.

[MagnarTheGreat]

Business-wise there was an almost 50% drop in profit if Deadline is to be believed between TFA and TLJ, and TLJ reportedly didn't meet the target for merchandise sales (off by $150M).

TFA: $780.11M
RO: $318.80M
TLJ: $417.50M (TFA -46.48%, RO +30.96%)
S: -$??? (TFA -100%+, RO -100%+) (>$50M loss according to The Hollywood Reporter)

Disc sales are significantly down domestically and even more so in the U.K.. (TLJ opened just slightly down from TFA; when disc sales opened the gap is far larger.)

Solo is going to lose a money and likely didn't meet expectations there either. TLJ had a very divisive response that continues to this day, though Solo is doing about as well on average as the first two prequels (I & II) on the ratings sites across the world.



ANH (first release run) -> TESB (first release run) = -18% drop (domestic)
TPM (first release run) -> AOTC (first release run) = -30% drop (domestic)
TFA (first release run) -> TLJ (first release run) = -34% drop (domestic)

TLJ suffered from big declines week over week to falling below RO for most weeks after the 4 week theater lock-in contract with Disney.



(comparison chart to the burn rate of the Top 10 movies over the past 3.5 years >$200M)


(This chart was once made for a hypothetical Solo box office of $395M globally. It may be lucky to hit that high a number at this point.)

There is a downward trajectory for the revenue of the films.

There has been project mismanagement, and by mismanagement I mean the company and the writers and directors they hire have not been adequately synchronizing their visions for the franchise, leaving behind Trank, Edwards, Lord & Miller, Trevorrow, etc.. The constant need to redo movies over again are ballooning the budgets for the movies which makes them less of a sure financial thing and more of a risk.

Kennedy once assured George Lucas fidelity to his vision of Star Wars and then proceeded to go in a different direction. She even once said, "The main thing is to protect these characters, make sure that they still continue to live in the way that you [Mr. Lucas] created them," in October 2012. Lucas considered it a divorce, and grumbled about the 'white slavers' that had taken over Star Wars (he later apologized). Mark Hamill has also been an outspoken critic who has said he fundamentally disagreed with the direction of his character and thought they should have been staying more strictly to George Lucas's vision for the sequel movies and was disappointed at the departure from them.

There was also the Battlefront II debacle last year. That game did not hit sales targets either in addition to the gambling controversy. It brought unnecessary controversy to the franchise.

One of the only things I think I like(d) about Kennedy was the idea of diversifying Star Wars in terms of the characters. In theory having more diverse characters in main roles - including aliens - is a great idea, but the way it's practiced in particular by Mr. Johnson has been less than stellar or interesting or compelling; the characters were more stereotypical.

For all the false repeating out there that I see in comments section complaining about the LSG being all female (this was always false but the myth keeps getting repeated), the Lucasfilm Story Group has been increasingly made white and male during the past few years with hires like Josh Rimes, James Waugh, and Matt Martin and whoever I'm forgetting. There's been no female writing talent or directing talent being elevated either for these new TV shows or movies. "Kathleen Kennedy Doesn’t Think There’s a Woman Director Ready for Star Wars" Which retrospectively looks like a very...troubling notion given that being a man doesn't guarantee success even with Star Wars.

In the midst of all this turmoil or sputtering around, Disney is trying to get a streaming internet service off the ground next year with Star Wars content and open Star Wars attractions in their theme parks.

Richard Rushfield in The Ankler report has revealed a rumor that Kennedy may be out by September. "The talk out there is of a September changing of the guards. We'll see." That would be in the midst of the filming of Episode IX. Deadline has reported on this rumor recently, only getting a denial that Kevin Feige would be the one to take over. It's just wait and see time to see if anything changes in terms of leadership, business, and quality.

[shades of eternity]

There are only 3 major mistakes they made as far as I'm concerned

1. They needed to figure out their sequel trilogy story from beginning to end before they started recording.
2. they should have pulled a lord of the rings and recorded the series as one big shoot with connective tissue. They did it in part to ensure both Christopher Lee and Sir Ian McKellan survived long enough to tell the story.
3. they should have picked Ron Howard to record Solo from day one.

Everything else is minor gripes (ex.bb8 is the worst droid, they need to work on their lighting)

[Pinsir]

All of the MCU problems with actors and directors were the fault of Ike Ike Perlmutter. Fiege himself couldn't stand the guy and broke off Marvel Studios away from Marvel Entertainment and reports straight to Disney. There hasn't been any reported issues since the break.

Fine, but that still took years to fold out. People need to stop pretending that the MCU was always this perfect, seamless production line.

We don't have anymore Hulk movies because Universal still retains the distribution rights for solo Hulk films.

Sony still retains the rights to Spiderman. If they wanted to make a Hulk movie, they would cut a deal. They don't because the Hulk film flopped.

[Sacred Knight]

This pretty much sums it up.

Sometimes, you give an individual a long enough rope and he'll hang himself with it.

I know fans like to hear the phrase "director has full creative control" but sometimes (in fact a lot of times) some form of oversight is necessary...particularly in an episodic epic saga like Star Wars.

As someone pointed out earlier, Marvel has fallen out with film makers several times but seeing how everything has turned out for them, I would argue that the suits might have had valid points.

That's what Lucas had with the OT in Gary Kurtz. Well, at least until Jedi, and I attribute some of the issues with Jedi were specifically because of his absence. Meanwhile Lucas didn't have anything like that at all with the prequels, as McCallum who was just a yes-man. Products usually always turn out better when the main creative mind has input from someone equally stubborn and willing to make their voice heard. I believe lots of Johnson's ideas were good, but he needed pushback on some things. Like for instance when its asked why we didn't see Luke mourn Han, and have more time with Chewie. The answer is there wasn't time. Well, you make time by cutting into things that could easily have been cut, like some of the Canto Bight stuff. Tighter collaboration could have had this gone noticed, voiced, and executed.

[Gray Lensman]

Sony still retains the rights to Spiderman. If they wanted to make a Hulk movie, they would cut a deal. They don't because the Hulk film flopped.

Some of that could be the egos at Universal just as easily as the bean counters at Disney. There have been a few cases in television at least where a show tried to jump ship but got stopped by the original network destroying the sets and props. When someone succeeds where the first person fails the blame for previous failures will all go to the first person, and killing it prevents that question from getting a chance to be asked.

[Carabas]

Sony still retains the rights to Spiderman. If they wanted to make a Hulk movie, they would cut a deal. They don't because the Hulk film flopped.

They don't have to cut a deal. Marvel Studios can make as much Hulk solo movies as they want with Universal getting a say in the content at all. Universal doesn't have the Hulk movie rights, they have the Hulk distribution rights.

[sirmarkus]

There are only 3 major mistakes they made as far as I'm concerned

1. They needed to figure out their sequel trilogy story from beginning to end before they started recording.
2. they should have pulled a lord of the rings and recorded the series as one big shoot with connective tissue. They did it in part to ensure both Christopher Lee and Sir Ian McKellan survived long enough to tell the story.
3. they should have picked Ron Howard to record Solo from day one.

Everything else is minor gripes (ex.bb8 is the worst droid, they need to work on their lighting)

All of these are really good points.

Having a storyline for the whole trilogy mapped out from the beginning would have made a big difference, and improved TLJ(and I liked the film).

Filming them all closer together would have allowed for Leia to be played by Carrie Fisher in all three movies, and allowed her to be the focus in Ep IX as per the original rumoured plan.

Having Howard in place from the get go would have likely improved Solo's gross as they would have been able to spend more time marketing rather than doing reshoots and damage control. I didn't get excited about it until I saw the first trailer, and it was a fun film!

[BeastieRunner]

Filming them all closer together would have allowed for Leia to be played by Carrie Fisher in all three movies, and allowed her to be the focus in Ep IX as per the original rumoured plan.

I'm being a bit pedantic here but JJ, Kennedy, Hamil, Johnson, and a bevy of others at Disney/Lucasfilm have said that was the plan. It's not a rumor. That was the plan.

And that goes against the counter-argument of "they didn't have a plan" because film was one supposed to Han driven, film two Luke, and the final film Leia.

I think this argument is moot until the final movie comes out. Then we'll find out. JJ and Johnson collaborated on some changes and scenes (Rian wanted R2 with Rey, not BB-8 at the end of TFA and JJ requested a Finn change and scene filmed with Finn's TLJ look to which we don't know why till IX comes out. Boyega says he's changing his hair in IX.). It doesn't sound by what they've said that there was no planning at all between the new films.

Lucas and company ran through many changes to Jedi and Empire, FYI. And it turned out fine in the end.

That's my 2 cents.

[WebLurker]

I think that, at the end of the day, it's safe to say that there was always an outline for the overall trilogy. How set in stone it is/was and whether the director's personal visions and ideas mesh well into a coherent whole can be debated.

[BeastieRunner]

I think that, at the end of the day, it's safe to say that there was always an outline for the overall trilogy. How set in stone it is/was and whether the director's personal visions and ideas mesh well into a coherent whole can be debated.

That I can agree with.

[ClanAskani]

Here's what Rian said about writing Last Jedi:

"The first thing that made me think this could be a great experience was that it wouldn't be written by committee. It's also not like there's a white board with the whole story arc laid out. Much to my surprise, it was, 'Here's a script for Episode VII, and you can watch some dailies, because they were shooting Episode VII at the time, and let's talk about where this is going next.'"

http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/rian-jo...character-arcs

All he says about a plan that they seem to know where they are going next, but have no idea how they were going to get there. It sounds like from the beginning when they had a short writers' group meeting that they were crafting a universe and they could have been looking at how do you get from where things are at the end of ROTJ to a new playground for a large franchise of non-stop movies. This is why I suspect that the First Order won't be defeated because they can't have the good guys win at the end of every trilogy.

The novels have ground to a halt, and it seems like Lucasfilm's story group doesn't want to commit to any backstory until Episode IX comes out - likely because there's two tv series also dealing with the same time frame. If some tv writer comes up with a better idea for who Snoke is or who the Knights of Ren are, they don't want to limit them because some novelist came up with a different idea.

Revised to Add: Rian Johnson tweeted in May 2017 that there was no mapped story beyond TFA when he started writing:

https://i.redd.it/7bcfl1y7ed511.png

[Moon Ronin]

Here's what Rian said about writing Last Jedi:

"The first thing that made me think this could be a great experience was that it wouldn't be written by committee. It's also not like there's a white board with the whole story arc laid out. Much to my surprise, it was, 'Here's a script for Episode VII, and you can watch some dailies, because they were shooting Episode VII at the time, and let's talk about where this is going next.'"

http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/rian-jo...character-arcs

All he says about a plan that they seem to know where they are going next, but have no idea how they were going to get there. It sounds like from the beginning when they had a short writers' group meeting that they were crafting a universe and they could have been looking at how do you get from where things are at the end of ROTJ to a new playground for a large franchise of non-stop movies. This is why I suspect that the First Order won't be defeated because they can't have the good guys win at the end of every trilogy.

The novels have ground to a halt, and it seems like Lucasfilm's story group doesn't want to commit to any backstory until Episode IX comes out - likely because there's two tv series also dealing with the same time frame. If some tv writer comes up with a better idea for who Snoke is or who the Knights of Ren are, they don't want to limit them because some novelist came up with a different idea.

Revised to Add: Rian Johnson tweeted in May 2017 that there was no mapped story beyond TFA when he started writing:

https://i.redd.it/7bcfl1y7ed511.png

Same website


Abrams drafted out the entire new trilogy, and he stayed on as an executive producer so of course him and Johnson had to have gone over it together. So for Johnson to simple say "Nope" and that "..there was no mapped out story presented beyond TFA" is simply not completely true. The was a mapped out story he was just not required to follow it.