I kinda wish Rey had called herself Rey Solo instead of Skywalker. I get why they chose Skywalker but part of my problem I have with the Rise of the Skywalker script is how easily Rey seems to just get past the fact Ben is dead. Or seems like she doesn't care as much as the kiss with him conveys. I understand shes happy all her friends are alive but her dyad is gone. Surely that would leave an emptiness within her. This is definitely one of the many reasons why I think Adam Driver is absolutely right to bring back Ben.
So, the YouTubers are finally right...Kathleen Kennedy has sailed off into the sunset after just over 13 years heading Lucasfilm. From her shock hiring in 2012 to her exit, it has been a rocky tenure with many ups and downs. On paper, Kennedy seemed uniquely qualified to take Lucasfilm forward after George Lucas's retirement and the sale to Disney. As a producer, she has an impressive track record with many, many hits and critical successes. She was also part of the same social/industry circle as Lucas. But as she discovered, producing is one thing, running a studio is another.
This is going to be brutal, non-woke, politically-incorrect honesty from a Star Wars fan who has been around since 1977, so buckle up.
Her record as head of Lucasfilm is mixed. She was the one who decided to keep Adam Driver in her back pocket after he auditioned for "Lincoln," thinking he would be a great addition to Star Wars (as every Reylo/ST fan knows, Driver was given the part of Kylo Ren instead of auditioning for it). She shepherded a successful launch of the ST, with TFA remaining 10 years later the highest grossing domestic box office hit. Rogue One, the first Star Wars film that didn't star anyone from the Skywalker clan, was a huge hit. Yesterday I calculated via girl math that Lucasfilm's batting average per film was about $914 million gross over 7 films, which is about $24 million less than Marvel's average in the same time period with a lot more films. Marvel had a slight advantage with international ticket sales, particularly in China, where Star Wars doesn't have much of a foothold. She shepherded the successful launch of The Mandalorian, which made Pedro Pascal a star and lil' Grogu the most loved alien since E.T.. Star Wars Visions was so popular, The Ninth Jedi is about to launch its own series. I'm not a fan of Andor but the show was a critic's darling. All of the anniversary theatrical re-releases to date have been very successful.
Kennedy launched an age of experimentation as she tried to navigate a Lucasfilm without George Lucas. Maybe the odds are stacked against anyone in those shoes. But Star Wars fans are used to hits, they are used to winning, not "let's throw this at the wall and see what sticks." And there was a lot that didn't stick. Kennedy had a habit of hiring people who weren't ready for prime time or had vastly different ideas on what they wanted to do, then publicly dumping them. Announced projects never materialized. We're still waiting for that New Jedi Order movie and now we find out that the James Mangold film about the origins of the Jedi is on hold. Donald Glover's Lando movie script is sitting on a shelf. Stuff like this probably scared away creatives and it frustrated fans. "Solo" went down in history as the first Star Wars box office flop, a damage to the pride of many fans still upset over TLJ. "Solo" was labelled a "troubled production" by the media after a series of firings, rewrites, reshoots, and probably the worst promotion I have ever seen for a Star Wars film. I was shocked that there wasn't even a trailer attached to TLJ, released five months before "Solo." It was already a risky proposition to have someone else who had less than a passing resemblance to Harrison Ford step into the role.
Then there was TROS, a film that made just over a billion but seemed to make few people happy. After TROS, Kennedy and Lucasfilm in general were paralyzed, almost afraid to get another movie made. Even "Mandalorian & Grogu" seems to be an easy-money way to relaunch Star Wars in the theaters, short of an Episode X.
Even Disney+ wasn't always a safe bet, as exemplified by The Acolyte, a series that cost a gazillion dollars to make and quickly became a punchline (I wasn't a fan).
The ball wasn't dropped only with Star Wars but also with Lucasfilm's other jewel in the crown, Indiana Jones. Let's be real. Disney did not buy Lucasfilm because it coveted Indy, it really wanted Star Wars. But you have to do things in order to hold on to IP rights, so we got "The Dial of Destiny." I didn't think it was that bad, a lot of it was pretty decent. But they woefully miscalculated by giving the film a debut at Cannes, so critics got in early to trash the movie. It didn't help that YouTubers had MONTHS to promote the (false) rumor that the movie was really about Phoebe Wallers-Bridge and she was going to "replace" Indy by the end of the movie. Lucasfilm did absolutely nothing to revive the IP before DOD's release. And now Kennedy just revealed that Disney doesn't want to touch Indiana Jones, citing a canceled plan to do an animated show. It's really embarrassing when you consider that Kennedy was one of the producers on the previous Indiana Jones movies!
The absolute worst, most regrettable thing to happen during Kennedy's tenure was allowing Star Wars to become a culture war football. YouTubers looking for rage bait found plenty of red meat and convincing evidence that Star Wars was leaving its core constituency behind: those The Force Is Female t-shirts, firing Gina Carano for her conservative views while others with leftist views were safe to spout off on anything, accusing anyone who didn't like TLJ or whatever of sexism or racism, the DEI stuff, etc.. Whether it's fair or not, "put a chick in it and make her gay" from South Park became a popular meme. Then leftist fans dug in their heels in response to these videos. I find it all very tiresome. Now Star Wars discourse is all but dead because it's almost intolerable to discuss it online. Lucasfilm needed and still does need a fan relations person.
All of this said, I don't believe Kennedy is to blame for every problem. In fact, the whole debacle around The Hunt For Ben Solo revealed that a good chunk of Star Wars's problems lie with Disney executives, who obviously favor Marvel/Kevin Feige, and seem to lack imagination when it comes to Star Wars. I keep saying that whoever replaces Bob Iger is more important than who replaces Kennedy, because I think things will get better if a new CEO loves Star Wars and deeply cares about it.
Stay tuned for what I think about the new dual monarchs of Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan.
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