So now that I’m back to doing these “think piece” type of posts (at least for now), I figured I might as well take this opportunity to address a person who has been subject to a lot of scrutiny for the last six years or so: Kathleen Kennedy, the woman whom George Lucas himself handpicked to be his successor at running Lucasfilm (just as he was selling the company to Disney in 2012). Since late 2017 or so, fans have accused Kennedy of the following:
1.Making everything “too woke”
2.Constantly firing writers/directors or delaying/canceling projects
3.Not having a plan for the sequel trilogy
4.Breaking or changing canon
5.Exaggerating the truth (or even just flat-out lying) in interviews
I’d like to take the time to go through each of those things, and discuss what I agree and disagree with… Welp, into the fire I go!
1.Making everything “too woke”
I’m just gonna repeat exactly what I said in my last post: The whole “woke” thing never bothered me. I know this makes me sound pretentious, but seeing a bunch of main characters with different skin color, genitals, or sexual orientation doesn’t make me feel insecure. Besides, I’m old enough to remember when everyone complained that Star Wars (and blockbusters in general) didn’t have enough representation (“there’s only one woman in each trilogy and they both get sidelined!”). So now when I see people now complaining about too much of that stuff, my immediate thought is “What? You wanna go back to everyone complaining about the opposite? How is that any better?” People might read that and go “there should be more of both.” I don’t necessarily disagree. Maybe we’ll get there someday… To add to that, when Kennedy wore that “the Force is female” shirt, it was for a charity event to support an increase of opportunities for women in the workforce, and she only wore that shirt once. Furthermore, the only time Disney made a Star Wars movie about a straight white guy (Solo), you all boycotted it…
2.Constantly firing writers/directors or delaying/canceling projects
As I explained a few posts ago, before Marvel’s “assembly-line model,” as I like to call it now, big movies went through long development cycles all the time, with writers and/or directors constantly coming and going. Remember when James Cameron was gonna do Spider-Man? Remember when Tim Burton and Kevin Smith were gonna do Superman? With Nic Cage in the starring role, no less! At this point, Marvel is the only big franchise still sticking to their own “assembly line” process, and it seems to have done more harm than good for them in the long run, considering how stale their projects seem now. For the record, I know I’ve ragged on Marvel a lot lately. Let me make something clear: I still enjoy their movies for the most part (yes, even the new ones), and I give them credit for how far they’ve been able to take things. Before 2014, nobody took the idea of a talking raccoon and a humanoid tree seriously. Before 2012, nobody thought a magical being like Thor could exist in the same universe as Iron Man. Gotta give credit where credit is due! That said, the Infinity Saga was an exception, not the norm. For better or worse, we’re clearly back to long development cycles for everything else now (except DC, but we’ll see how long that lasts). Gun to my head: I’m still glad the Infinity Saga happened, but it’s time to stop viewing it as some “gold standard” that everyone else needs to adhere to.
3.Not having a plan for the sequel trilogy
This criticism has always frustrated me. It’s not that she or Disney didn’t have a plan, it’s that the plan kept changing. First, Lucas gave them an outline of what he would like to see happen. They kept a few breadcrumbs from said outline (Luke exiling himself to the Jedi homeworld, a girl coming to find him, Han and Leia’s son turning evil, etc.), but threw out what they didn’t like (which was most of it, to be fair). Then JJ Abrams comes in, makes The Force Awakens, and jots down what he would like to see happen in Episodes VIII and IX. Then Rian comes in, decides he doesn’t like JJ’s ideas, and does his own thing with VIII. Then Colin Trevorrow gets fired from IX, so JJ comes back and decides to keep only a few of Colin’s ideas. I understand that this all sounds irritating, but shouldn’t creators be allowed to change ideas between installments if they feel like they could come up with something better? The original trilogy didn’t have a plan either (you don’t need to look any further than Luke and Leia kissing to see that). Before The Empire Strikes Back, Vader wasn’t Luke’s father, and the emperor wasn’t a Force user (go read the original Star Wars novelization and Leigh Brackett’s first draft of Empire if you don’t believe me). And as I’ve said many times before, even the Infinity Saga wasn’t as well planned out as everyone thinks (the other gauntlet full of stones in Thor being the biggest indicator there). Once again, before Marvel, installments were either made one at a time, with ideas being allowed to change in between said installments, or they were made all at once like The Lord of the Rings. There’s an argument to be made that the Star Wars sequel trilogy should’ve been made Lord of the Rings style, but that’s neither here nor there. Besides, let’s face it: No matter who Lucas picked as his successor, and no matter which studio he sold the brand to, the sequel trilogy was always gonna be some kinda “meta remake” of the original trilogy. After the backlash which the prequels got at the time, VII was always gonna be something safe. And if I had to guess, whoever was in charge woulda had the instinct to make VIII something that “shakes things up,” to make up for how safe VII woulda been, and then the backlash to shaking things up woulda lead them to making IX mostly safe again. What we got was always what we were gonna get, more or less… How exactly does having a plan make everything better, anyways? For instance, if Deadpool & Wolverine ends up being as good as everyone thinks it’s gonna be, how does that have any impact (positive or negative) on Agatha All Along, Thunderbolts, etc.?
4.Breaking or changing canon
As I’ve said elsewhere: Canon doesn’t matter cause canon changes all the time. Just because you haven’t seen something yet doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Besides, outside of the MCU, what other long-lasting franchise do you know that adheres to canon so closely? The old X-Men films, the DCEU, Mad Max, Terminator, The Legend of Zelda, etc. all have continuity issues, and all of them prioritize artistic license per installment over continuity across all installments. That said, one thing I think Kennedy dropped the ball on was creating a “Lucasfilm story group” to supposedly maintain continuity across all formats of storytelling, yet whenever fans call out continuity errors, the story group themselves usually just dismiss it as “artistic license.” If they’re not going to bother doing what they were assigned to do, then Kennedy shouldn’t have even created a story group in the first place…
5.Exaggerating the truth (or even just flat-out lying) in interviews
This right here is the only major thing that I think Kathleen Kennedy is actually guilty of. To be fair, Lucas himself used to do this all the time too. Sure, he had vague ideas in his rough drafts of important siblings and whatnot, but would then go on to act like he always knew Luke and Leia specifically would be related. That’s just one of many examples of lying or, at the very least, exaggeration on his part. Unfortunately, with Kennedy, it’s been mostly more of the same. When it was revealed that Palpatine would be back in The Rise of Skywalker, she said “this was always the plan.” Since then, various drafts of the movie have leaked which showed that, while they always intended for a hologram or vision of Palpatine to make a cameo of some kind, the idea of him fully coming back to alive and being the final boss again was not the plan at all until fairly late in the game. Again, not a complete lie, but very much an exaggeration. Similarly, around that same time, she said something to the effect of “Star Wars has no source material.” While it’s true that Star Wars started as a movie franchise first (and not as comics like superheroes or as books like Harry Potter), quite a few ideas from the now-defunct Expanded Universe (since rebranded as Legends) have been used in the sequel trilogy. Palpatine clones, the Republic being reduced back down to just a Rebellion, Han and Leia’s son turning evil (the books had this idea before Lucas), Luke force-projecting himself while standing up to a bunch of AT-AT’s, and so on. Again, not necessarily a lie, but certainly an exaggeration, at the very least…
As I wrap up here, I’d like to highlight one more point: Regardless of who ended up owning or running Star Wars, the only way most people would’ve been happy is if it followed the model of something like Mad Max, where an installment is only made when it’s absolutely ready, no matter how long it takes. But keep in mind that the newest installment of that series took nine years to make, and the one before that took thirty years! You wanna wait thirty years for the next Star Wars movie? Conversely, can you imagine a new Mad Max being made every year, like what Marvel does?
Right now you might be saying “Yeah, but Star Wars is a much bigger universe than Mad Max.” Doesn’t matter. Marvel is a much bigger universe too, and now look where that’s at… Think of it this way: If Lucas himself continued to make Star Wars movies in the 1980’s, instead of stopping at Return of the Jedi, do you seriously think he woulda been able to keep the quality up? Every single time? Food for thought…
Peace!
PS: Just because I like Kennedy way more than most doesn’t mean I love everything about the Disney era of Star Wars. In fact, I think a lot of the things people blame Kennedy for are really the fault of Disney directly. That said, something I forgot to mention is the fact that both Kennedy and Disney clearly have money as their primary incentive, for better or worse. Sometimes that can mean trying to please everyone, instead of doing what’s best for the story.
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