Kathleen Kennedy has come out of hiding and is giving interviews.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/star-wars-ka...g-t-1840267035
I'm plagiarising a reddit comment about the above article;
Lies. Deception.
Mostly deception through false equivalance and omission rather than outright lies.
She's trying to make a case that there was some kind of overall vision to this trilogy while simultaneously explaining why there doesn't seem to be a unifying vision.
So she misrepresents what Lucas did and says he used 3 different directors for the OT as if that's the same thing they did.
But Lucas kept tight control over vision and script. He continuously commanded his directors what to do and where their limits were so that his cohesive ideas could come through.
Disney LFL did not. And the results show it. But Kennedy is trying to cover her ass with the false comparison to Lucas.
Second is she makes a big deal about all the preplanning speculation they did over possible story arcs etc, but notice what she DOESN'T mention: At no point did all that speculation from 8 people in the room carry forward into the writing of the 2nd and 3rd movie.
(The first movie, JJ wrote, so we know he took ideas from that room and from the Lucas treatment.)
Rian Johnson has consistently talked about having a blank slate with no target points.
And the fact that Trevorrow couldn't connect his script to their planning sessions shows that the planning sessions were irrelevant to what ended up happening.
In other words she paints this picture of them feverishly looking for a vision of the story at the beginning to distract from the fact that they didn't actually ENACT a vision for the trilogy.
She's also said the Emperor's return was a planned event, or is trying to pass off a brainstorming of ideas in the early days where I have no doubt Palpatine was discussed in some fashion, as some grand master plan now coming to fruition.
Do they take people for complete fools?
Here's a list of Rian Johnston quotes that conflict with Kennedy's recent statements that there was always "a plan" in place.
If you want the more complete picture of Rian talking about the ST plan, it's here.
Rian:
There wasn’t a roadmap laid out, there was no big huge master plan, it was a very organic storytelling process where I got to just say, ok, JJ took it up to here, now where am I gonna take it next? And now, I’m handing it back to JJ and saying now where does it make sense for you to see it end?
Rian:
We were working off of The Force Awakens, but it’s not like there was a blueprint for what happens after The Force Awakens. There wasn’t at all. It was literally just me reading the script, and then thinking, what happens next?
Rian:
There wasn’t some kind of rigid plan in place for where the story went after The Force Awakens. It was very open-ended. And so it was very much reading the script for TFA, watching the dailies, as they were shooting, and just saying “Ok, what happens next?”
Rian:
[JJ] was really gracious, in just stepping back and giving us a blank slate to work with. The starting point was The Force Awakens script, which is quite a big, expansive, wonderful starting point. In that way, we are drawing directly from his work. But from that point forward it was a blank canvas.
Rian:
I had a complete, free, open canvas to work on here. It was basically the script for The Force Awakens, and it was a question: “What happens next?” There was no big thing that was plotted out. Which was wonderful because it meant, it meant a few things, it meant we could organically kind of figure out what the next step for each of these characters was, without worrying about working towards bases we had to tag, that had been preset.
Rian:
I had figured there would be a big map on the wall with the whole story laid out, and it was not that at all. I was basically given the script for Episode VII; I got to watch dailies of what J.J. was doing. And it was like, where do we go from here?
Rian:
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." It was very open. It ended up feeling in some strange way, very similar as to when I had written my other films in that there was a lot of space and freedom.
Rian:
I'm sure they talked about where it might go early on, but when they came to me there was no mapped story presented besides TFA.
Rian:
I was truly able to write this script without bases to tag, and without a big outline on the wall. That meant I could react to what I felt from The Force Awakens, and what I wanted to see. I could make this movie personal. I could also just take these characters where it felt right and most interesting to take them. I think part of the reason the movie feels like it goes to some unexpected places with the characters is that we had that freedom. If it had all just been planned out and written down beforehand, it might have felt a little more calculated, I suppose.
Rian:
When I came into it there wasn’t a secret white board with the whole story laid out. It was really just, I read JJ and Michael and Larry’s script for VII and it was “what happens next?”
Rian:
It was very much like in a relay race, the baton pass, where you know I read JJ's the script that JJ had written with Larry Kasdan and Michael Arndt, and I was also watching the dailies because as I was working on the story he was shooting episode VII. And it was really just trying to take off from there and figure out “Okay what happens next? Where do these characters go and what's the most what's the toughest thing we can put each of them through?” and work it very naturally forward in my mind and then I left it in a place where I hope it has potential for like, you're gonna be excited about the next chapter, and now I hand the baton back to JJ and let's see where he runs with it.
Rian:
All of those questions [such as Rey’s backstory], it was all up in the air which was great because it meant that instead of just trying to tag bases – hitting these preassigned answers – I could figure out what the story was gonna be and where these characters wanted to get to and I could figure out what the answers would be that would be the most challenging for the characters and work backwards from there.
Rian:
It was the script for the force awakens which I read and loved, and I loved the characters it had created and the path had set them on. And then it was a conversation about, “Okay what do you think happens next?” and that led to... it was very wide open and there weren't any bases we had to tag, there wasn't something we had to fit into, there wasn't a place we had to specifically get to and that led to you know a writing process where I could really just find where each of these characters wanted to go. Clean slate. And it led to giving me the freedom to find personally my way into each one of these characters and really figure out organically where it made sense for them to end up
Rian:
It’s not like you have this sudden, grand revelation of the entire arc. The notion that there’s some kind of immaculate conception thing that would happen if they were all conceived of at once and everyone just stuck to that, knowing how a real creative process happens, I think that’s not really reality, you know. The truth is, that yeah these are kind of being discovered one at a time but I think, it’s not like we’re just running willy nilly, we’re still thinking very carefully about what came before, and even thinking carefully even if not in specifics but in terms of dramatic potential of what’s gonna come next. I think when we get to the end of the whole thing, even the way in which it is crazy and the way in which it’s leading to stuff that wouldn’t have come about if the whole thing was laid out on a whiteboard at the start, I think is really interesting, and I think it’s leading to creative decisions and directions that might never have happened if anybody had just come up with an outline at the very start and we had all stuck to it. I’m very happy that this is how it’s being done, for this one.
Rian(Twitter, May 29, 2017):
Each chapter is a reaction to one that came before it, the shape of the whole organically develops.
It is very carefully planned, but one piece at a time, each building off the previous movie.
^^^ In addition to JJ, cast members quoting their surprise at the dircection taken etc.
There's an infuriating doubling down over at Disney/Lucasfilm. Kennedy's strategy has been;
- Blame TLJ hate on alt right trolls who hate women and are racist.
- Vanish off the face of the Earth for 2 years.
- Re-appear before TSOS and assume that everyone's forgotten about it all and start lying to counter all the criticism.
It's actually worse than making bad movies to not have the honour to come out and own mistakes, then lie to cover your own incompetent ass.