Are people being too hard on Kathleen Kennedy for Star Wars?

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Cry me a f*cking river, Theophile. All three of those dudes went out on heroic sacrifices, a concept which has been part of the series since the original trilogy (Han and Luke's deaths mirror Obi-Wan's, Ben's death mirrors Vader's) and fits with the franchise's idea of heroism being about more than just having the most fighting power (which is the Emperor's line of thinking). Part of what makes Luke's later development good is that he gets this and points out how absurd it is to expect one man with a laser sword to be able to face down an entire army. To interpret all this as "white man bad" and, by extension, the whole reason that the newest Star Wars movies are bad (instead of other more legitimate reasons) is incredibly simplistic and reductive.
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We cannot suffer a white male hero to live:


Episode VII: Must kill Han Solo; because a while male hero cannot be allowed to live.

Episode VIII: Must kill Luke Skywalker (after we trash his entire character), because a white male hero cannot be allowed to live.
You do realize Harrison Ford made his death a condition to even being in the movie don't you? Why? Because he didn't even like Star Wars to begin with, and didn't want to be in another trilogy.

Luke Skywalker only died because of Ryan Johnson's terrible directing/writing. It had nothing even to do with Kathleen Kennedy.



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I never thought that they killed off those characters because they were white.



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I like that even ironpony doesn't think it's worth seriously entertaining the notion with one of his "unless I am wrong?" kind of questions.



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I mean, it's not like the original trilogy wasn't some broad Vietnam War allegory in the first place (perhaps too broad by the sounds of it) where the technologically-advanced imperialists are the villains and the rebels opposing them are the heroes - it gets taken to an absurd level with the Ewoks being jungle-dwelling tribals who manage to get the drop on the Imperials. You can criticise the newer installments for their blunt execution but I don't think you can act like this particular aspect is altogether new to Star Wars. Acting like the originals were good because they were mindless fun for the whole family just seems like it's half a step away from Zotis saying they're bad for the same reasons.
I always took it as a WW2 allegory actually.



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I guess I should give Solo a chance but it just feels weird to make an origin story of Han Solo. That's like EON making a spin off Bond movie, that's an origin story of Felix Leiter, or something like that.



The trick is not minding
I guess I should give Solo a chance but it just feels weird to make an origin story of Han Solo. That's like EON making a spin off Bond movie, that's an origin story of Felix Leiter, or something like that.
I don’t understand why that’s weird.....



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It's hard to explain. I guess Han Solo is just origin story material. I mean it's like he's Batman or something like that, if that makes sense?



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I think it's a matter of what learning a character's backstory, much less seeing it unfold in detail, actually adds to the character. Batman's origin story is important because it adds depth and complication to his motives for fighting crime, plus he's a main character so understanding him is vital to his story. Han Solo's origin story isn't too important because he is essentially a supporting character in Luke's story (so the Felix Leiter comparison isn't too far off) - you learn bits and pieces that are enough to give you an idea of his character (e.g. doing the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs indicates his skill as a pilot) but there's no real need to find out the complete story of how he became a smuggler. An origin story makes sense if it's actually serving as a new beginning from which further stories can be told (as is the case with Casino Royale or Batman Begins) but it seems less essential if it's just going to get folded into an established continuity (like X-Men Origins: Wolverine).



I guess I should give Solo a chance but it just feels weird to make an origin story of Han Solo. That's like EON making a spin off Bond movie, that's an origin story of Felix Leiter, or something like that.

Once a character is killed off, I stop caring. I will not watch the Black Widow movie because she is dead. Her origin movie should have come out before they killed off her character (maybe instead of that Captain America movie, which they should have saved until after Endgame).



I think the main problem about making a Han Solo origin story movie is it takes away the mystery of the character. Mostly the positive reviews I've heard have been little more than, "I liked it," and "it was good." I haven't heard a praiseworthy comment about the movie with any substance. The criticism though, has been intense and thorough, with production issues, casting issues, director issues, budget issues, and the whole thing being rushed. Overall it looks like another run of the mill action movie and corporate cash cow with no artistic merit or literary substance.

Of course, I'm just going on impressions and what I've heard other people say. I have zero interest in watching it myself. From what I've heard though, people who liked the Mandalorian show liked Solo. So, if you like the Mandalorian show then it might be worth giving Solo a shot. It could be mildly entertaining for you at least. I hated the Mandalorian show.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
Yes and no. On one hand, she only really became a scapegoat in the aftermath of The Last Jedi because she allowed Rian Johnson to make The Last Jedi the way that he did and, in the eyes of the people who hated that film, that effectively made her as responsible for "ruining" Star Wars as Johnson himself. On the other hand, she apparently over-corrected for that decision to hand a Star Wars film over to an auteur writer-director by not just taking Solo away from Phil Lord and Chris Miller over creative differences but also bringing back J.J. Abrams to do Rise of Skywalker in a way that made a concerted effort to disregard The Last Jedi as much as possible, presumably in an effort to appease disgruntled fans. However, this ends up making the Disney era of Star Wars look even more producer-driven than it already did and the resulting films got decidedly mixed receptions as a result - Solo wasn't distinct enough to properly justify its existence and Rise of Skywalker failed to stick the landing for one of modern pop culture's definitive epics. A common criticism for Rise of Skywalker is that its haphazard plotting and ill-fitting connections to its predecessors suggests that there wasn't a strong enough plan to turn the trilogy into a cohesive whole, which - if we take Star Wars as a producer-driven property, which it always was even when that producer was George Lucas himself - means that the fault lies with Kathleen Kennedy for presumably not doing a better job of overseeing the saga's production.

So in the end, people started to hate her because she stood by The Last Jedi and then continued to hate her when she worked to distance herself from it. There's just no pleasing some people, even if it's merited to a certain extent.
Agree with much of the first paragraph, the 2nd paragraph however I don't think she stood by anything she simply disappeared and has stayed hidden for 2.5 years, other than lying through her teeth in an occasional interview.
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The whole thing is such a huge mess it's hard to point blame.

Disney must shoulder a lot of blame for setting such a ridiculously tight schedule, one SW movie a year and an episode every 1.5-2 years. Very hard for a creative process to happen under those conditions.

Are Disney also the ones forcing unwanted trendy politics into these movies? They have to be right?

Kennedy is certainly part of the problem and is frankly not up to the task, people wave her CV around as if she's some movie genius but really she's Spielberg's secretary.

Her decision to remove the EU with nothing to replace it and a super tight deadline for movies left them with a copy paste OT, and a bunch of unwanted prequels. I'm actually embarrassed for her on that one, Marvel's success stems from a solid, long comic book history, LOTR from a 20 year work, Thrones success came from a masterful story then fell apart because it overtook the source material. Kennedy dumped 40 years of writing that they could have used, instead of riding that narrative wave for the next 20 years raking in gazillions of $$$ along the way. This alone is her biggest incompetent decision in my eyes. They could have made one of the stories with much older Han/Leia/Luke, not even using those 3 as main characters, then gone back and started post ROTJ with a new cast. They could have cherrypicked the best stories and dumped the bad ones, created a solid plan, instead they're in a huge mess.

You have to blame Kennedy for lack of oversight on a very disjointed trilogy, to have a director come into the middle part of a series and have COMPLETE free reign to do whatever he wanted and ignore the films either side of his is something I don't think we'll ever see again.

Someone decided that she was the right person to manage all this, she was supposed to be the Star Wars Kevin Feige, but did that happen because she's a woman? was that the overriding factor? No one stopped to ask whether she was actually equipped to the task, which she clearly isn't.



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Oh okay. Well one of the online comments I read said that the only reason Kennedy is not fired is that she must have dirt on Bog Iger. But if that's true, and that she has most likely dirt on him, could that be why she was hired as well then in the first place?



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Depends on how likely you are to believe everything you read on the Internet, it seems. She's already a well-established producer with a track record dating all the way back to the massively successful E.T., after all, so I think it's more to do with how she really does have enough industry cred that she would get put in charge of the whole enterprise (and just so happens to have enough overlap with what Disney's powers-that-be want to do with the franchise that her input wasn't a problem until audiences disagreed with it).



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Oh okay. Well one of the online comments I read said that the only reason Kennedy is not fired is that she must have dirt on Bog Iger. But if that's true, and that she has most likely dirt on him, could that be why she was hired as well then in the first place?
There are lots of rumours, a more credible one is that now she's basically only a powerless figurehead so they don't step in a political puddle firing a female major studio head. I'd predict a retirement or failing upwards into an executive Disney slot.

There are all kinds of reddit threads about insider info relating to Kennedy/Iger/Disney/Lucasfilm etc.They have to be taken with a pinch of salt though.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
Depends on how likely you are to believe everything you read on the Internet, it seems. She's already a well-established producer with a track record dating all the way back to the massively successful E.T., after all, so I think it's more to do with how she really does have enough industry cred that she would get put in charge of the whole enterprise (and just so happens to have enough overlap with what Disney's powers-that-be want to do with the franchise that her input wasn't a problem until audiences disagreed with it).
This is the point though, you can walk into a supermarket DVD section and find all kinds of straight to TV trash movies that headline "from the producers of x great film". Given her baffling decisions over the last 5+ years there looks to be a strong case that her contribution to previous great films wasn't all that much.



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Oh okay, and I can see her being hired for being a producer going back to E.T. yes, that makes sense.

There are lots of rumours, a more credible one is that now she's basically only a powerless figurehead so they don't step in a political puddle firing a female major studio head. I'd predict a retirement or failing upwards into an executive Disney slot.

There are all kinds of reddit threads about insider info relating to Kennedy/Iger/Disney/Lucasfilm etc.They have to be taken with a pinch of salt though.
Oh okay, well she was able to hire Harvey Weinstein's former personal assistant to do a TV show without Iger's permission from all the news, so if that's true, that doesn't really make her powerless does it? Seems like he has some power there, if that's true.