I think Star Wars was fumbled, but she also produced/exec-produced ET, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, The Sixth Sense, Twister, War of the Worlds, Back to the Future, Lincoln, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Gremlins, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seabiscuit, Shindler's List, The Color Purple, The Goonies, The Land Before Time and much more.
I don't think you can have a track record like that and be bad. There's something else going on.
This is a post about Pixar, and you're calling for Kathleen Kennedy (who has nothing to do with Pixar) to be fired? You may not like them, but the Star Wars projects she produced made a ton of money. The layoffs aren't because of her.
I'm not sure I buy that being a good producer translates into being a good CEO. When I read your first sentence my thought is not "well she must be a good CEO then" but is instead "wow I hope she goes back to producing, these are some all-time greats".
That resume falls off a lot towards the end. Quoting Abe Simpson,
> I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it anymore and what's it seems weird and scary. It'll happen to you!
Sure, but he wouldn't keep her around if she was a bad producer.
Producers don't write or direct. They produce. And her Star Wars movies, even though not creatively great, made a ton of money – way more than Disney put in. She did her part of the job.
(And the reason the money argument is relevant here is because OP brought her up out of nowhere on a thread about layoffs at a separate entity)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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#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.
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.
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.
You honestly believe that the prequels are worse than the sequels??
I think you reversed that.
I think they're about equal levels of bad. To be fair, the prequels are "stiffer" than the sequels. However, the bad writing of the sequels severely overall damages the lore, while the bad writing of the prequels somehow manages to overall improve it.
>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.
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.
> 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.
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".
Very few IPs are truly universal in a way that strongly resonates across all cultures. That's a really high bar that is seldom cleared.
Disney is likely not focusing on Southeast Asia because, despite of the population, box office receipts and licensing deals must be fairly low in dollar terms. Most companies would rather be extremely successful in China, North America and Europe alone than be mildly successful everywhere, so content is optimized for these regions.
> 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.
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.
There was nothing like Star Wars when it appeared. I watched it outside the US and remember being absolutely blown away.
My kid doesn't care about Star Wars nearly as much as I do, obviously - but the big thing about it are the memories from when I first watched it. It would be great to see a new Star Wars movie that can engage kids today in the same way it engaged us so many years ago.
Also, have in mind that a lot of old blockbuster movies can look silly today (Sound of Music is one I watched recently), but you have to appreciate them with the proper time period context.
Doesn't that make sense though? Most Gen Xers in China grew up with Monkey King from Taiwan, not Star Wars from America. Japan has its own culture that has largely invaded America rather than the other way around, Korea is starting to do the same.
Europeans are completely different. My German co-worker (well, when I was working in China) reminisced about the Original Battle Star Galactica, which was featured as a movie for his East German market. Star Wars of course, was popular, it helped that Lucas cast a lot of stars from the UK.
Isn't it little clownish with funny looking characters spouting cheesy dialogues.
A lot of Asian pop movies and shows are exactly this. Child of Korean immigrants here, married to a Chinese wife. Lots of stupid fun that plays in one culture is just a non-sequitur in another.
It makes perfect sense. The only exposure China had to Star Wars when it came out, were bootleg comics where they drew the Star Destroyers as Space Battleship Yamato.
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.
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.
I don't think it can be on any one person. The CGI in some of these latest marvel movies (looking at you, Multiverse of Madness and Wakanda Forever) looks about as good as what I see when I play my PS5 which isn't terrible, but it looks cheap and lacks physical weight you normally associate with strong acting. You don't get that kind of product without the entire pipeline fouling up and then getting pushed out overtime rather than going with delays + reshoots. Add on to this that, for instance, the creators of Multiverse of Madness weren't even aware of the plot of the Scarlet Witch and allegedly it went over the same ground as her TV show (not that I've seen it), so it seems a lot more like studio dysfunction. I've got to imagine the problem is much, much larger than just one producer—one who has been attached to some of the largest Spielberg movies of the 20th century like ET and Jurassic Park.
Anyway, I'd think Kevin Fiege is far more closely tied to the decision making that appears to be hurting them right now—occasionally princess or Pixar movies miss, but they've sunk a lot of money into MCU movies that were not popular among their own fanbase, mostly due to his planning and, as I understand it from loyal fans, a lack of beloved characters returning.
> You don't get that kind of product without the entire pipeline fouling up and then getting pushed out overtime rather than going with delays + reshoots
I have also done poor quality work before. It’s always managements fault for prioritizing speedy crap to meet some internal goal instead of prioritizing the end product.
Managers need to be judged on customer satisfaction not internal OKRs and metrics.
Idk, I guess Lightyear is the most critically panned. But Pixar's worst is any other animation studio's mid.
Elemental is one of the biggest whiplashes I've seen in animation. I didn't particularly care for it, but it may be like Turning Red where I simply wasn't the target audience. I don't want creatives to be punished for not trying to keep it safe and unoffensive to everyone.
I thought Elemental and Turning Red were very well done story wise (Romeo/Juliet, teen angst), they are worth multiple watches on Disney+. Encanto (Disney, but not Pixar) was brilliant, it is too bad it didn't get the theater release it deserved because of COVID.
I get not being in the audience for a film. I felt like that about all the Star Wars prequels, and I spent my pre-10s on the original trilogy. I couldn't tell you what is wrong about sequels, even if they were done well I probably wouldn't be in the audience for them anymore.
I think the target audience is kids and their parents. As a parent of young children, I really enjoyed both Turning Red and Elemental, as did my kids.
It isn't easy to make movies that kids like and want to watch but parents don't mind watching multiple times (because that's how kids do movies... multiple times)
I'm not sure I still buy that. Super Mario was great. I think the Troll movies are very well done and entertaining. Despicable Me, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Rio, Klaus, Iron Giant, and Studio Ghibli films are pretty good and competitive to the low-mid tier Pixar.
Sure, but she also did ET, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, The Sixth Sense, Twister, War of the Worlds, Back to the Future, Lincoln, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Gremlins, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seabiscuit, Shindler's List, The Color Purple, The Goonies, The Land Before Time and much more.
The five Star Wars movies she oversaw from 2015-2019 made $5.92 billion at the box office, but let me know if that's not enough money for her to be considered successful.
You mean the ones that are widely panned, sold no merchandise, and poisoned the franchise? Those movies? I wonder about the people who defend those movies, I really do.
> turning money-printing machines into dust overnight.
What are you referring to? I just looked at the 5 Star Wars movies she has producer credits on, via Wikipedia, and not one of them demonstrates losses. The profits are in the billions and only one of the 5 movies, Solo, did less than a billion at the box office.
And why are you conveniently forgetting Jar Jar Binks and blaming someone else? Lucas was making trash long before Disney got involved. I thought Force Awakens was better done than most of the franchise up to that point.
I'm not so sure – I don't think it'll impact it positively or negatively. Personally, at least, it's never impacted my willingness to watch a movie. Seven Samurai is an all Japanese cast, but it's still my favorite movie of all time.
Like how the fuck is Kathleen Kennedy still employed? She's the reverse Midas, turning money-printing machines into dust overnight.