5 ms·

Kathleen Kennedy might as well be the boogeyman with how she's uselessly vilified. She's just at the head of a one-trick poney: Star Wars is not an infinite can

Kathleen Kennedy might as well be the boogeyman with how she's uselessly vilified. She's just at the head of a one-trick poney: Star Wars is not an infinite canvas. It's this very narrow thing, that's not exceedingly popular outside North America. And do you honestly believe the CEO of Disney does not review every single major move she makes already? She's not great, but mark my words, firing her will not improve the quality of Star Wars content. Star Wars itself is stretched out.

newsclues 3y ago
[flagged]
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Mandalorian S1 was not the problem. Rogue One was not the problem. Andor was not the problem. Everything else was.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    Reading Characters and Viewpoint by Orson S. Card and one of the main thing is that characters should answer these three points: * Why should I care? * Why is he doing that? * What is happening? IMO, most movies focus on the last one and not on the two first. They expect us to believe the answer for the first is our love for the universe and the second is "heroes good, villains bad". Which makes for a very bland story. I watched The Marvels and the most interesting thing was the sound in the theater (Dolby Audio). But I've done an all-nighter for Andor and watched it again the day after because: 1. Everyone had serious motivations which you discover during the show. 2. It was not a fairy tale 3. The story was clear and beautifylly put together. These days, I prefer having my own curated collection that I can rewatch every now and then and add the few good things that come each year.
paulddraper 3y ago
> She's just at the head of a one-trick poney A really, really big pony. Disney's biggest opportunity of the last...forever? (Tied with Marvel) And an opportunity that was squandered more than it needed to be.
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
The Star Wars Extended Universe used to be massive. I bet if you just adapted some of the more popular novels they could continue making a lot of money. The problem is that in that case they'd be targeting the Star Wars fandom rather than throwing them under the bus to court as broad of an audience as possible. The franchise just can't keep reinventing itself to target every demographic. They need to cater to existing fans.
- verve_rat 3y ago
  Which is the lesson Star Trek has been learning over the last several years. Play to the fandom, and grow the fandom over time. Making a thing into a different thing, unsurprisingly, alienates the people that pay you money for the first thing. That doesn't mean that these IPs (and their fandoms) can't evolve, but you need to tell good stories that respect the universe they are set in.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > The Star Wars Extended Universe used to be massive. To emphasize this point: There are literally 350+ Star Wars Legends books [1]. And that's not including film novelizations, comics, or individual short stories. [1] https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Legends_books https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Legends_books
- tenpies 3y ago
  Speaking of the Extended Universe, everyone should watch the trailers of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), especially Kathleen Kennedy and anyone at Disney working on Star Wars content. My understanding is this universe began as fan fiction and these trailers about an MMO are probably the most interesting Star Wars films since first two trilogies. Betrayed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWFzfQs7vmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWFzfQs7vmk Sacrifice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bmsNa9GOR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bmsNa9GOR0 Deceived: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGDBTDnW7d0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGDBTDnW7d0 The MMO is over ten years old, but the trailers are so celebrated that they re-released them in 4K two years ago. In a matter of minutes, they all manage to tell a better story, with more compelling characters and dialogue, than anything Disney has put out.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> that's not exceedingly popular outside North America You definitely don't mean Europe so I guess that is just code for China? It is true these days that movies have to do well in the world's second biggest market, but there is a lot of box office skim combined with fraud and low ticket prices that don't make the market that lucrative.
- freddie_mercury 3y ago
  Are China, North America, and Europe the only places in the world? I live in Vietnam. Population 100 million. More than any country in Europe. It is not popular here. Or anywhere in Southeast Asia -- population 660 million -- from what I can tell. I mean, it is popular in the way any big budget, CGI spectacular is popular. But it's not this big cultural thing it is in the US or Europe. Nobody cares in the slightest what the next Star Wars movie will be about or how the IP is doing. They think of Rogue One in the same way they think of Train to Busan. A fun enough foreign movie they watched that one time a few years ago. The vast majority of my friends and family have never seen any of the original trilogy or even most of the prequels. They definitely aren't watching any of the Disney+ series, since it says "Sorry, Disney+ is not available in your region".
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > Nobody cares in the slightest what the next Star Wars movie will be about or how the IP is doing. Of course nobody cares about how the IP is doing. That is for the corporation to worry about. On the other hand people, individualy, will make up their mind about buying a ticket or not. There are many different things which go into that decision, but one of those is how much they enjoyed the earlier movies in the franchise. Caring about the IP is the forest. And individuals making a decision to go to the cinema to watch the new star wars thing or doing literally anything else with their free time are the trees which make the forest.
  - geodel 3y ago
    Agree. As asian in US I once told my colleague in office "What's the big deal about Star wars? Isn't it little clownish with funny looking characters spouting cheesy dialogues." And he was stunned into silence. Apparently big fan of star wars with all paraphernalia in his home office.
huytersd 3y ago
[flagged]
stcredzero 3y ago
Kathleen Kennedy might as well be the boogeyman with how she's uselessly vilified. So you think Disney way overpaid? She's not great, but mark my words, firing her will not improve the quality of Star Wars content. The stupid Vespa scooter stuff in the Boba Fett series? Hers. Lots of the stupid stuff in Disney Star Wars is hers. The early Jedi stuff in the comics no one liked? Instigated by her. Star Wars itself is stretched out. Basically, KK put it on the rack!
- dahart 3y ago
  Hahaha the only specific example you have is a single prop? Kathleen hasn’t even directed any Star Wars movies, she’s a producer. She was one of, what, 14 producers on Boba Fett? Whatever creative credit you’re giving her credit for, if it’s even true, was executed, directed, acted, filmed, and approved by many other people. This feels like some kind of bogus internet meme talking point. (Edit: aha! I see that it really is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens#Fan_backlash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens#F...) George Lucas did many orders of magnitude more damage with the Phantom Menace and stretched out and trashed Star Wars with the prequel trilogy 15 years before Kathleen was even hired.
  - stcredzero 3y ago
    Hahaha the only specific example you have is a single prop? Nope. Dig into it. There's TONS of meddling she did that turned out to be cringe. George Lucas did many orders of magnitude more damage with the Phantom Menace and stretched out and trashed Star Wars with the prequel trilogy 15 years before Kathleen was even hired. This absolutely doesn't track with people wishing for the prequel days again. Yes, the prequels were disappointing, but still we didn't imagine how much worse it could be.
    - philistine 3y ago
      You honestly believe that the prequels are worse than the sequels?? There’s an argument to be made for Rise, but those other two films are Citizen Kane compared to the trash that are the prequels.
TillE 3y ago
I have no idea who is personally responsible, but the idea that you can only tell stories about boring Jedi with no personality and Tatooine is just a massive failure of imagination. There's a whole rich universe of EU novels exploring a wide variety of stories. Timothy Zahn wrote an Ocean's Eleven heist story in "Scoundrels". Andor was universally praised, partly because it's doing something completely different. Even the currently ongoing High Republic books are pretty good and nothing like the movies. Star Wars is a whole science fiction galaxy, it's as big or small as a writer wants it to be.
- lawgimenez 3y ago
  Not sure if Tron Legacy is under Disney but I would love to watch another movie on the Tron universe.
  - arein3 3y ago
    Hope the woke fad ends before they will make part 2, otherwise it can go straight in the trash. So many great series ruined completely.
- geodel 3y ago
  But Disney plans to keep dropping crapola at regular intervals with their old tired characters because it worked in past. I think there is partial blame to audience also who kept Disney afloat for so long despite their atrocious content.
- AceyMan 3y ago
  What is an "EU novel"? Kagi & urbandictionary are no help. (I'm going out on a limb and guess it's not the European Union.)
  - caconym_ 3y ago
    Expanded Universe. Now known as "Legends", iirc, and declared non-canon superseded by the execrable sequel trilogy.
- 3y ago
karmasimida 3y ago
How Kathleen Kennedy fumbled this much but still had a job is truly beyond me and is the best American corporate circus you can watch, live.
krisoft 3y ago
> not exceedingly popular outside North America I can tell you it is exceedingly popular in Hungary. I have no reason to believe it is not similarly exceedingly popular elsewhere. > Star Wars itself is stretched out. It is now. Franchises need nurturing to remain valuable. The biggest crime they commited is that they did not employ the same screenwriter for all 3 of the sequels. When you are making a trilogy, and you know that you are making a trilogy, you better write the complete arch as a consistent whole and then find the 3 separate sub arches in that. Instead of that what we got is 2 different teams subverting each other’s ideas and basically messaging to each other. (And the message was that “your ideas are baaad”) It was as if watching someone build a sand castle, someone else comming along kicking it down starting to build a different one, and then the first person returning and kicking the second sandcastle down to build a third. “Yes, and…” is not just the way to do good improv, but also the way to build good movies built on each other.
pyuser583 3y ago
I remember 1990s frustration over the lack of Star Wars development. George Lucas was seen as a dictator who was just sucking in legacy money without doing any real work. Now the owners are criticizing it for being overstretched. The Mandalorian was good. I’ll never forget Werner Herzogs character defending the Empire: “on every possible metric life improved!” I haven’t seen Andor, but it got great reviews. Star Wars seems in a good place.
- Exoristos 3y ago
  "On every possible metric, life improved" -- what riveting dialog.
- the_doctah 3y ago
  You haven't seen Andor and it's been out for 2 years, why would anyone take your opinion about where Star Wars is?
tjpnz 3y ago
>She's just at the head of a one-trick poney: Star Wars is not an infinite canvas. It's this very narrow thing, that's not exceedingly popular outside North America. You're minimising her reach and impact on the industry, for better or worse. Dial of Destiny was her last film. As for Star Wars, it's huge across the anglosphere and even in countries where English isn't spoken. I've personally queued for hours in Japan to get tickets.
- philistine 3y ago
  Look I'm not denying anything you're saying, but I'm arguing against the idea that this woman at the head of Star Wars is the problem! If only she was fired! That Kathleen Kennedy is in the room for all the important decisions about Spielberg and Lucas' best films in the 80s and 90s is outside the scope of this insane idea that somehow firing her will fix Star Wars. Star Wars itself is the problem. It was underplayed in the early 90s, and is massively overplayed now. And I should have been clearer about its global reach. Star Wars is not this hallowed franchise outside the anglosphere, and is actually not particularly popular in China.

newsclues 3y ago

[flagged]

paulddraper 3y ago
Mandalorian S1 was not the problem. Rogue One was not the problem. Andor was not the problem. Everything else was.
- skydhash 3y ago
  Reading Characters and Viewpoint by Orson S. Card and one of the main thing is that characters should answer these three points: * Why should I care? * Why is he doing that? * What is happening? IMO, most movies focus on the last one and not on the two first. They expect us to believe the answer for the first is our love for the universe and the second is "heroes good, villains bad". Which makes for a very bland story. I watched The Marvels and the most interesting thing was the sound in the theater (Dolby Audio). But I've done an all-nighter for Andor and watched it again the day after because: 1. Everyone had serious motivations which you discover during the show. 2. It was not a fairy tale 3. The story was clear and beautifylly put together. These days, I prefer having my own curated collection that I can rewatch every now and then and add the few good things that come each year.

paulddraper 3y ago

> She's just at the head of a one-trick poney A really, really big pony. Disney's biggest opportunity of the last...forever? (Tied with Marvel) And an opportunity that was squandered more than it needed to be.

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago

The Star Wars Extended Universe used to be massive. I bet if you just adapted some of the more popular novels they could continue making a lot of money. The problem is that in that case they'd be targeting the Star Wars fandom rather than throwing them under the bus to court as broad of an audience as possible. The franchise just can't keep reinventing itself to target every demographic. They need to cater to existing fans.

verve_rat 3y ago
Which is the lesson Star Trek has been learning over the last several years. Play to the fandom, and grow the fandom over time. Making a thing into a different thing, unsurprisingly, alienates the people that pay you money for the first thing. That doesn't mean that these IPs (and their fandoms) can't evolve, but you need to tell good stories that respect the universe they are set in.
paulddraper 3y ago
> The Star Wars Extended Universe used to be massive. To emphasize this point: There are literally 350+ Star Wars Legends books [1]. And that's not including film novelizations, comics, or individual short stories. [1] https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Legends_books https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Legends_books
tenpies 3y ago
Speaking of the Extended Universe, everyone should watch the trailers of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), especially Kathleen Kennedy and anyone at Disney working on Star Wars content. My understanding is this universe began as fan fiction and these trailers about an MMO are probably the most interesting Star Wars films since first two trilogies. Betrayed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWFzfQs7vmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWFzfQs7vmk Sacrifice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bmsNa9GOR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bmsNa9GOR0 Deceived: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGDBTDnW7d0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGDBTDnW7d0 The MMO is over ten years old, but the trailers are so celebrated that they re-released them in 4K two years ago. In a matter of minutes, they all manage to tell a better story, with more compelling characters and dialogue, than anything Disney has put out.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

> that's not exceedingly popular outside North America You definitely don't mean Europe so I guess that is just code for China? It is true these days that movies have to do well in the world's second biggest market, but there is a lot of box office skim combined with fraud and low ticket prices that don't make the market that lucrative.

freddie_mercury 3y ago
Are China, North America, and Europe the only places in the world? I live in Vietnam. Population 100 million. More than any country in Europe. It is not popular here. Or anywhere in Southeast Asia -- population 660 million -- from what I can tell. I mean, it is popular in the way any big budget, CGI spectacular is popular. But it's not this big cultural thing it is in the US or Europe. Nobody cares in the slightest what the next Star Wars movie will be about or how the IP is doing. They think of Rogue One in the same way they think of Train to Busan. A fun enough foreign movie they watched that one time a few years ago. The vast majority of my friends and family have never seen any of the original trilogy or even most of the prequels. They definitely aren't watching any of the Disney+ series, since it says "Sorry, Disney+ is not available in your region".
- krisoft 3y ago
  > Nobody cares in the slightest what the next Star Wars movie will be about or how the IP is doing. Of course nobody cares about how the IP is doing. That is for the corporation to worry about. On the other hand people, individualy, will make up their mind about buying a ticket or not. There are many different things which go into that decision, but one of those is how much they enjoyed the earlier movies in the franchise. Caring about the IP is the forest. And individuals making a decision to go to the cinema to watch the new star wars thing or doing literally anything else with their free time are the trees which make the forest.
- geodel 3y ago
  Agree. As asian in US I once told my colleague in office "What's the big deal about Star wars? Isn't it little clownish with funny looking characters spouting cheesy dialogues." And he was stunned into silence. Apparently big fan of star wars with all paraphernalia in his home office.

huytersd 3y ago

[flagged]

stcredzero 3y ago

Kathleen Kennedy might as well be the boogeyman with how she's uselessly vilified. So you think Disney way overpaid? She's not great, but mark my words, firing her will not improve the quality of Star Wars content. The stupid Vespa scooter stuff in the Boba Fett series? Hers. Lots of the stupid stuff in Disney Star Wars is hers. The early Jedi stuff in the comics no one liked? Instigated by her. Star Wars itself is stretched out. Basically, KK put it on the rack!

dahart 3y ago
Hahaha the only specific example you have is a single prop? Kathleen hasn’t even directed any Star Wars movies, she’s a producer. She was one of, what, 14 producers on Boba Fett? Whatever creative credit you’re giving her credit for, if it’s even true, was executed, directed, acted, filmed, and approved by many other people. This feels like some kind of bogus internet meme talking point. (Edit: aha! I see that it really is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens#Fan_backlash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens#F...) George Lucas did many orders of magnitude more damage with the Phantom Menace and stretched out and trashed Star Wars with the prequel trilogy 15 years before Kathleen was even hired.
- stcredzero 3y ago
  Hahaha the only specific example you have is a single prop? Nope. Dig into it. There's TONS of meddling she did that turned out to be cringe. George Lucas did many orders of magnitude more damage with the Phantom Menace and stretched out and trashed Star Wars with the prequel trilogy 15 years before Kathleen was even hired. This absolutely doesn't track with people wishing for the prequel days again. Yes, the prequels were disappointing, but still we didn't imagine how much worse it could be.
  - philistine 3y ago
    You honestly believe that the prequels are worse than the sequels?? There’s an argument to be made for Rise, but those other two films are Citizen Kane compared to the trash that are the prequels.

TillE 3y ago

I have no idea who is personally responsible, but the idea that you can only tell stories about boring Jedi with no personality and Tatooine is just a massive failure of imagination. There's a whole rich universe of EU novels exploring a wide variety of stories. Timothy Zahn wrote an Ocean's Eleven heist story in "Scoundrels". Andor was universally praised, partly because it's doing something completely different. Even the currently ongoing High Republic books are pretty good and nothing like the movies. Star Wars is a whole science fiction galaxy, it's as big or small as a writer wants it to be.

lawgimenez 3y ago
Not sure if Tron Legacy is under Disney but I would love to watch another movie on the Tron universe.
- arein3 3y ago
  Hope the woke fad ends before they will make part 2, otherwise it can go straight in the trash. So many great series ruined completely.
geodel 3y ago
But Disney plans to keep dropping crapola at regular intervals with their old tired characters because it worked in past. I think there is partial blame to audience also who kept Disney afloat for so long despite their atrocious content.
AceyMan 3y ago
What is an "EU novel"? Kagi & urbandictionary are no help. (I'm going out on a limb and guess it's not the European Union.)
- caconym_ 3y ago
  Expanded Universe. Now known as "Legends", iirc, and declared non-canon superseded by the execrable sequel trilogy.
3y ago

karmasimida 3y ago

How Kathleen Kennedy fumbled this much but still had a job is truly beyond me and is the best American corporate circus you can watch, live.

krisoft 3y ago

> not exceedingly popular outside North America I can tell you it is exceedingly popular in Hungary. I have no reason to believe it is not similarly exceedingly popular elsewhere. > Star Wars itself is stretched out. It is now. Franchises need nurturing to remain valuable. The biggest crime they commited is that they did not employ the same screenwriter for all 3 of the sequels. When you are making a trilogy, and you know that you are making a trilogy, you better write the complete arch as a consistent whole and then find the 3 separate sub arches in that. Instead of that what we got is 2 different teams subverting each other’s ideas and basically messaging to each other. (And the message was that “your ideas are baaad”) It was as if watching someone build a sand castle, someone else comming along kicking it down starting to build a different one, and then the first person returning and kicking the second sandcastle down to build a third. “Yes, and…” is not just the way to do good improv, but also the way to build good movies built on each other.

pyuser583 3y ago

I remember 1990s frustration over the lack of Star Wars development. George Lucas was seen as a dictator who was just sucking in legacy money without doing any real work. Now the owners are criticizing it for being overstretched. The Mandalorian was good. I’ll never forget Werner Herzogs character defending the Empire: “on every possible metric life improved!” I haven’t seen Andor, but it got great reviews. Star Wars seems in a good place.

Exoristos 3y ago
"On every possible metric, life improved" -- what riveting dialog.
the_doctah 3y ago
You haven't seen Andor and it's been out for 2 years, why would anyone take your opinion about where Star Wars is?

tjpnz 3y ago

>She's just at the head of a one-trick poney: Star Wars is not an infinite canvas. It's this very narrow thing, that's not exceedingly popular outside North America. You're minimising her reach and impact on the industry, for better or worse. Dial of Destiny was her last film. As for Star Wars, it's huge across the anglosphere and even in countries where English isn't spoken. I've personally queued for hours in Japan to get tickets.

philistine 3y ago
Look I'm not denying anything you're saying, but I'm arguing against the idea that this woman at the head of Star Wars is the problem! If only she was fired! That Kathleen Kennedy is in the room for all the important decisions about Spielberg and Lucas' best films in the 80s and 90s is outside the scope of this insane idea that somehow firing her will fix Star Wars. Star Wars itself is the problem. It was underplayed in the early 90s, and is massively overplayed now. And I should have been clearer about its global reach. Star Wars is not this hallowed franchise outside the anglosphere, and is actually not particularly popular in China.