'Star Wars' Boss Kathleen Kennedy Steps Down From Lucasfilm (apnews.com) 109
After more than 13 years leading Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down. "When George Lucas asked me to take over Lucasfilm upon his retirement, I couldn't have imagined what lay ahead," said Kennedy. "It has been a true privilege to spend more than a decade working alongside the extraordinary talent at Lucasfilm." The Associated Press reports: The Walt Disney Co. announced Thursday that it will now turn to Dave Filoni to steer "Star Wars," as president and chief creative officer, into its sixth decade and beyond. Filoni, who served as the chief commercial officer of Lucasfilm, will inherit the mantle of one of the movies marquee franchises, alongside Lynwen Brennan, president and general manager of Lucasfilm's businesses, who will serve as co-president.
Kennedy, Lucas' handpicked successor, had presided over the ever-expanding science-fiction world of "Star Wars" since Disney acquired it in 2012. In announcing Thursday's news, Bob Iger, chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Co. called her "a visionary filmmaker." Kennedy oversaw a highly lucrative but often contentious period in "Star Wars" history that yielded a blockbuster trilogy and acclaimed streaming spinoffs such as "The Mandalorian" and "Andor," yet found increasing frustration from longtime fans.
Under Kennedy's stewardship, Lucasfilm amassed more than $5.6 billion in box office and helped establish Disney+ as a streaming destination -- achievements that easily validated the $4.05 billion Disney plunked down for the company. But Kennedy also struggled to deliver the big-screen magic that Lucas captured in the original trilogy from the late 1970s and early 1980s, and her relationship with "Star Wars" loyalists became a saga of its own.
Kennedy, Lucas' handpicked successor, had presided over the ever-expanding science-fiction world of "Star Wars" since Disney acquired it in 2012. In announcing Thursday's news, Bob Iger, chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Co. called her "a visionary filmmaker." Kennedy oversaw a highly lucrative but often contentious period in "Star Wars" history that yielded a blockbuster trilogy and acclaimed streaming spinoffs such as "The Mandalorian" and "Andor," yet found increasing frustration from longtime fans.
Under Kennedy's stewardship, Lucasfilm amassed more than $5.6 billion in box office and helped establish Disney+ as a streaming destination -- achievements that easily validated the $4.05 billion Disney plunked down for the company. But Kennedy also struggled to deliver the big-screen magic that Lucas captured in the original trilogy from the late 1970s and early 1980s, and her relationship with "Star Wars" loyalists became a saga of its own.
easily validated? (Score:3, Interesting)
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As a viewer, we got Rogue 1, Andor, and Last Jedi. She seems to have done her best to avoid giving us more of that - more shows for adults, not focused on selling toys. So I'm not going be too upset over her departure.
Re:easily validated? (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, Star Wars is still only the original trilogy (the reworked fan edit being the best releasse).
Everything else that came after more or less doesn't fit well with those movies.
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I enjoy different takes on things, different types of story in the same universe. It's a shame more people didn't watch Andor, or didn't understand it.
Re:easily validated? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd burn the entire back catalogue for another Andor.
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Same! I have a few friends that haven't watched Andor and when I mentioned my same opinion as yours (it's the best Star Wars production ever made) I got some very doubtful looks. After decades of movies and shows that almost entirely ranged from mediocre to crap a lot of people just plain won't believe the show is a truly excellent production.
Re:easily validated? (Score:5, Informative)
I enjoy different takes on things, different types of story in the same universe. It's a shame more people didn't watch Andor, or didn't understand it.
I think what happened was after actively dismissing the fan base, which was largely male - but not exclusively, the fan base just rejected all of the Star Wars Offerings.
And yes, the sad part is that the new Star Wars shows/movies were not all dreck.
They hit rock bottom when Harvey Weinstein's Staff assistant somehow became the director of The Acolyte, which was a deconstruction of the Jedi, and a weird take on Lesbian Space Witches. A really dreary offering.
The hell of the thing is that a good movie could be made about a female only civilization, perhaps discovering pathogenesis, but then having a DNA related existential crisis. But the Acolyte was just more of what the ex fan base expected.deconstruction of Star Wars, and abysmal storytelling.
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Andor, is probably my favorite Star Wars story. This coming from someone who, as a kid, wore out the VHS copy of the original movie.
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fantomfive suggested:
You might enjoy The Clone Wars
Here's the thing that absolutely ruins Clone Wars - and every Star Wars production that includes military conflict, for that matter - for me:
It's blindingly obvious that neither George Lucas nor any of the other scriptwriters who have penned stories for one or another of the franchise's productions has any meaningful experience with or knowledge of actual military science. Every freaking battle scene is straight out of the Homeric Age. Significantly-sized forces simply advance straight
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It's blindingly obvious that neither George Lucas nor any of the other scriptwriters who have penned stories for one or another of the franchise's productions has any meaningful experience with or knowledge of actual military science. Every freaking battle scene is straight out of the Homeric Age. Significantly-sized forces simply advance straight toward one another, and all combat is basically hand-to-hand. Other than the Jedi, the combatants pretty much all have ranged weapons, but they don't even take advantage of cover as they advance. It's essentially all human wave (okay, droid wave) assaults, culminating in single combats at close quarters, over and over again.
I totally get that complaint. Of course it's hardly unique to Star Wars. Even theoretically serious military movies fall victim to that that sort of thing to a certain degree. Of course, fantasy like Star Wars have an excuse for military tactics and strategy to be significantly altered from what we would expect. For example, when you have wizards and magic and monsters that may have all sorts of capabilities that alter the effectiveness of typical tactics, it could change things. In the Star Wars universe s
Ding-Dong, the Witch is Dead (Score:2)
Though I don’t have much hope for improvement; Dave Filoni seems little better.
Re:easily validated? (Score:4, Insightful)
Rogue 1 was fantastic.
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As a viewer, we got Rogue 1, Andor, and Last Jedi. She seems to have done her best to avoid giving us more of that - more shows for adults, not focused on selling toys. So I'm not going be too upset over her departure.
She was an integral part of Disney's misandric and racist turn it took around 2016. "The Force is Female", was not just a slogan. It was an intentional deconstruction of Star Wars, a Golden Goose that she and her acolytes were intent on implementing.
Strong female characters are perfectly fine. But the extremely clumsy way it was implemented, with ideology trumping good storytelling.
Bye Felicia, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
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Strong female characters are perfectly fine. But the extremely clumsy way it was implemented, with ideology trumping good storytelling.
Disney's only real aim is to maximize profits on every project. That means every possible audience segment should have an entry point to the project, from every possible angle. You can't achieve that if you automatically alienate half of the entire world.
However, the idea that Disney promotes "strong female characters" is pretty amusing. I haven't seen any. Rey isn't "strong," she's a classic Disney princess; she wishes and her wishes come true. Padme marries Anakin and even gets pregnant, yet the actors ha
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Andor had a bunch of "strong female characters". All of them strong in different ways. None of them in the physically overpowering anything they want way. But Andor was a one off in more ways than one.
Perhaps it was too little, too late. Let's look at Sarah Conner, from Terminator. Talk about character growth. Or Ripley from the original Terminator/Terminators. Same thing.
And there's the hook. Why do so many of the presumed Toxic males revere those characters?
Male and female do have actual differences. In a lot of recent movies, we get these tiny 90 pound women who can easily physically overpower musclebound males.This is unrealistic and overly repeated. And in a social context, I fear it has allo
Re:easily validated? (Score:4, Interesting)
Strong female characters are perfectly fine. But the extremely clumsy way it was implemented, with ideology trumping good storytelling.
Disney's only real aim is to maximize profits on every project. That means every possible audience segment should have an entry point to the project, from every possible angle. You can't achieve that if you automatically alienate half of the entire world.
So far so good. They certainly haven't done that.
However, the idea that Disney promotes "strong female characters" is pretty amusing. I haven't seen any. Rey isn't "strong," she's a classic Disney princess; she wishes and her wishes come true. Padme marries Anakin and even gets pregnant, yet the actors have zero chemistry and we never see Padme so much as kiss Anakin, because that would conflict with the laughable idea that doing that would make her less "strong" and "a Senator."
A couple things. When trying to turn Padme/Anakin into a love story - it was awkward. Mainly because Star Wars IP inherently isn't that type of story.
Now for the Rey character, you are correct - she is a warped version of a Disney Princess. Because at. Disney's base, they make movies and stories about Disney Princesses. That is their main brand. And that's no problem at all. There is an audience for that, a big one.
But the whole process of making Mary Sue characters, and trying to insert them into the Star Wars universe just doesn't work very well.
For an obvious example, let's step outside of Star Wars, and look at something from the past. "Mulan", animated and live action. The animated Mulan movie was charming, a young lady pretending to be a man to fight in war, because she wanted to not have her old father be called to surely die. She was flawed, she made mistakes, she had antagonists within her group who didn't respect her. A lot of conflict. She grew through the conflict and ended up a hero. First class story telling, and showing how clever storytelling can put a twist on the Disney princess.
Contrast that with the live action Mulan. The story got warped a little - that happens. Live action Mulan was a girl with magical "chi" power whose only flaw was that she didn't understand her immense power.
See, the problem with modern Star Wars hasn't really been Kathleen Kennedy. It's that Disney slop sucks, and the more franchise entertainment it gobbles up, the more of it will suck.
Kennedy promoted the culture that embraced the gestalt, she promoted the third wave womanist outlook, the slop writing that was a combination of political ideology and incompetent storytelling, a culture that thought diminishment of male characters and promotion of so called "strong, independent women" characters of perfection was an agent for cultural change. It didn't work. It couldn't work. Not they way they were trying
Moviemaking is a process with a formula. Everyone knows it, even if they don't know they know it. You can tweak it a little. Called "subverting expectations". But the trick is just a little goes a long way. Disney writers were expected to subvert expectations, but in the end, it wasn't doing that any more, The subverted expectations were now the main concept.
Disney's original formula worked. The Disney princess is a valid IP. They strayed from it with trying to make Princesses out of shoot-em-up space cowboy characters with political leanings, lost much of their audience, and with that, a fair amount of their profit.
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Yeah - $5.6 billion gross, $4.05 billion to buy the rights, plus what were the production and marketing costs? Seems like a very bad ROI.
Marketing is around the same cost as making the movie for high profile offerings.
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Point taken on the level of success on
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Every single movie should have generated a billion+ in profit. This is Star Wars. The audience was huge, global, and insanely loyal.
Exactly this!
Exactly this!
Exactly this!
Star Wars, as an intellectual property, was a cinematic Golden Goose. It had a formula, both in storytelling and cinematography. Formula is not a bad thing - it is how storytelling works.
She destroyed the property. I didn't bother to see most of them after the shock of his horrible the first ones under her hand were.
Most of the tv shows were crap too. Sticking a baby muppet in wasn't enough and that was the highlight of her era.
Ideology was more important than competency. As I noted her T-shirts stating "The Force is Female" was not just a slogan, it was her plan for transforming SW into a Woman dominated Sci Fi IP.
Didn't work, and she messed the whole legacy up.
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Is that with or without inflation taken into account?
So this is the culprit (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw Star Wars the day it came out. I have the originals on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray. (Han did fire first, BTW)
While I remember dialogue from the original trilogy, and I vaguely know the plot lines of the prequels, I have absolutely no idea what happens in the last three episodes of the series. It's a blank.
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While I remember dialogue from the original trilogy, and I vaguely know the plot lines of the prequels,
Really? You don't remember the lines about sand? Perennially quotable. Not like you.
Re:So this is the culprit (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw Star Wars the day it came out. I have the originals on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray. (Han did fire first, BTW)
While I remember dialogue from the original trilogy, and I vaguely know the plot lines of the prequels, I have absolutely no idea what happens in the last three episodes of the series. It's a blank.
Ep7 was just a rehash of Ep4... After that it was a simplistic plot that poorly straddled a line between unimaginatively cliche and poor fan service. It wasn't as bad as people like to think but it is entirely forgettable.
The plot of the original trilogy was nothing special either but we consider it special because we got incredible special effects for the time and a great back story to a new universe... and expected the same magic from the subsequent trilogies. By the 90s we got used to good SFX and we all knew the back story so the magic was gone.
The problem is that movie studios are very risk averse, had Lucas pitched the original Star Wars today, it never would have been made. So we get boring, cliche ridden dross with pretty actors and lots of shiny lens flares.
The sequel trilogy would have been better off doing something with Grand Admiral Thrawn, but that would have required taking a *collective audience gasp* risk, however it's not as bad as people say. I liked Adam Driver in that role even though he's a terrible actor.
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Ep7 was just a rehash of Ep4... After that it was a simplistic plot that poorly straddled a line between unimaginatively cliche and poor fan service. It wasn't as bad as people like to think but it is entirely forgettable.
It was pretty derivative!
On the plus side: the cinematography was phenomenal, it was just beautifully shot with great music. The defecting stormtrooper plot line was a good one. Also General Hux was excellent. Gleefully played by Domhall Gleeson, he was truly the heart and soul of the firs
Re:So this is the culprit (Score:4, Funny)
What are you talking about? The original trilogy are the three last episodes - in universe chronology, and the prequels are the last three episodes - by release date in the real world.
There are no other Star Wars movies.
THERE ARE NO OTHER STAR WARS MOVIES.
LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU !
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I think youve forgotten how bad Episode 1 was.
She made bad films (Score:2, Insightful)
Any independent viewer looking at what Kennedy made would agree that they were cheesy, needlessly woke, and simply not good movies.
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Any independent viewer looking at the first three Star Wars film would agree they were fantastic movies on many levels. Any independent viewer looking at what Kennedy made would agree that they were cheesy, needlessly woke, and simply not good movies.
I really think you're blaming the wrong person here. Lucas made the 3 prequel films. He's not a good writer. He deserves the blame for what people don't like in films 1-3, meaning the prequels. The "classic" original Star Wars trilogy is films 4-6. The final 3 films, 7-9, have J.J. Abrams to blame. What you object to is his fault. Somehow, nobody ever holds him accountable but here is how he works. His basic premise is that he claims to be a "fan" of Star Wars, Trek, etc. but he clearly thinks
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Well, they clearly are broken. Just look at the original, way too few lens flares and ridiculous, cartoonish visual gags. Everything needs more lens flares! Lens flares everywhere!!! The audience needs to walk out of the cinema stumbling and crashing into walls from lens flare induced blindness!!!!!
Woke is not a thing - it was just lame (Score:2, Troll)
Any independent viewer looking at what Kennedy made would agree that they were cheesy, needlessly woke, and simply not good movies.
The first three movies were great for many reasons. Most of the rest wasn't. No one dislikes Star Wars because of wokeness, but simply because the movies weren't good. It's like comedy. If you're laughing, you don't care that much about politics. If you notice the politics, it means the joke wasn't funny.
No one at Star Wars had an agenda or politics. They wanted to make fun space fantasy movies. If you felt otherwise, it's just they made bad choices that simply didn't work and that is sufficient
It's a matter of perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
"Under Kennedy's stewardship, Lucasfilm amassed more than $5.6 billion in box office"
Well, that is a big number.
On the face of it, you'd say yes, she was quite good at what she did...
But if we account for how many billion dollar blockbusters there were in the last decade compared to the 1970s... I would say the scale has changed fundamentally. So yeah, she was profitable, sure... but... How profitable could it have been?
As far as I am aware, the Disney theme parks are struggling and merchandise was extremely disappointing on Star Wars in general under her reign. And that is an interesting factor, considering how much merchandise took off with the original films.
One wonders how much the cultural pressure of Star Wars had to do with the numbers not sucking because from where I stand, the media products released under Disney's Star Wars were mediocre at best.
Re: It's a matter of perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Disney paid 4.5 billions for Lucas film, and the 5.3 billions is the box office figure, not what went into Disney's coffers (half of it, maybe ? No idea, really). And that's not factoring in the cost of production and promotion (and I'm pretty sure that apart from the Mandalorian, none of the series has broken even, nevermind turning in a profit).
Actually, that's even worse than I imagined. I know there were special clauses in her contract, but how Disney's execs could have let such a train wreck continue on for so long is beyond me.
To think that when I heard Disney was buying Lucas film, I believed we could expect a number of average productions (nothing exceptional, but mostly enjoyable if forgettable). They wouldn't want to kill the golden goose, would they?..
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Ah, you're right, I didn't think it through. The 5.8 billion wasn't profit.
Yes, I read that the cinemas take about 50% of the box office and lets not forget that they do not include marketing in production cost. That's usuall 30 to 50% on top of production cost.
As for why people are allowed to operate like that I have no idea. I am GenX/Millennial. I grew up being told that to a CEO shareholders are akin to God and that shareholders are unfeeling ultracapitalists that would eradicate earths population if th
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However, Blackrock has since drop
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But that right there is my point... did they think they could make the DEI stuff rain profit? And why were they ready to wait for it for that long?
Vanguard is the largest stockholder of Blackrock at over 8% that isn't part of the "others" slice.
But Blackrock sure as hell IS a publicly traded company with a LOT of different interests... Why were they allowed to burn that money? Why is Fink still CEO? He holds less than a half percent in stock.
Re: It's a matter of perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Disney paid 4.5 billions for Lucas film, and the 5.3 billions is the box office figure, not what went into Disney's coffers
But they own everything Star Wars, and make a profit off of everything, not just new movies or shows. Anytime cable re-runs Empire, Disney gets a cut. Any time someone buys a Star Wars Lego, Disney gets a cut. Etc. Etc. Etc. Even this post, because I used the word Star Wars, Disney gets $0.0004.
Star Wars is a cash cow. And the goal, especially with movies 7, 8, and 9, should have been to not F- anything up. Which she did, especially with 8. Crapping all over beloved characters just because she could. It was a disaster and she should have been sent packing before that garbage even hit the lens of the camera.
But Disney is still printing money from Star Wars. They're going to be fine.
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A few years back, I watched Force Awakens again and although it wasn't original or exceptional in any way, it was still enjoyable enough (exactly what I talked about in my previous post). Abrams doe
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these people warming up executive seats and enjoying their cosy board rooms like to paint themselves as being some kind of financial geniuses when, in reality, they mostly are morons who ended up there because of whatever type of nepotism
Totally agree. Have you watched The Studio on Apple TV? That's the overarching point the show makes (except there's no nepotism, as far as I remember). Studio executives are terrible at making good art and many aren't even really that good at making money. It's hard to say for sure if Disney's recouped its investment in Star Wars. The revenue streams are so varied - toys, merchandise, theme park, movies, streaming, licensing, broadcasts, etc. - it's probably impossible to determine if they've made their mon
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It's an overall loss.
Disney paid 4.5 billions for Lucas film, and the 5.3 billions is the box office figure, not what went into Disney's coffers (half of it, maybe ? No idea, really).
It is if you consider the profit from the films to be the only value of the purchase. But they got all the IP and, may I remind you of the immortal words of Yogurt the great, Yogurt the wise, Yogurt the all-powerful:
"Moichandising, moichandising!"
You've got Star Wars da Video Game(s), Star Wars da ride(s), Star Wars da action figure(s), Star Wars da flamethrower! And so on and so forth. Yogurt was making a cogent observation about the Star Wars franchise that was true then, and is still true that the real
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Do you really believe they're happy with only earning money on old parts of the franchise ?
Right now, that's exactly what they must be satisfied with : there is nothing in the post-take over by Disney that has created the kind of following and willingness to buy things the way the old movies did (even baby-yoda doesn't come close). Worse, it feels like they've killed any interest in the 'old
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Well, we know that, in terms of revenue they have made back more than they spent just from box office revenues. Now, obviously, we know that's not all profit, but on the other hands, paying the cost for the IP doesn't come out of profit in terms of accounting. Profit is what is left over when the revenue pays for the cost of making and distributing the films, sure, but cost of the IP and other Lucasefilm assets is part of that cost. Basically, we know that the film revenues on their own will have paid a dec
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It's a matter of perspective
Come on! "From a certain point of view" was right there!
I know what I like (Score:3)
I know what I like and everyone can have a different opinion.
Say what you like about originals / sequels / prequels / TV versions etc. but I enjoyed Rogue One.
I'm still waiting for them to make an equally enjoyable Rogue Two.
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But I am hoping for more movies and series like those. I also enjoyed the first two seasons of the Mandalorian... but two seasons is enough.
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> I also enjoyed the first two seasons of the Mandalorian... but two seasons is enough.
They blew it to pieces by firing Gina Carano, and Kathleen Kennedy was directly involved in that decision.
Must be a coincidence.
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Carano was good in the show but she was hardly the linchpin keeping the show together.
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Carano was good in the show but she was hardly the linchpin keeping the show together.
That’s a strawman. I made no such claim. The point is that her departure yielded a perfectly understandable enzyme reaction: the writers went back to the drawing board after that, and certainly learned their “pour encourager les autres” lesson.
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Carano was good in the show but she was hardly the linchpin keeping the show together.
That’s a strawman. I made no such claim.
You mentioned your response to Skam240 to me in another part of this thread, so I went to have a look. I just have to ask, how is that a strawman? You literally said "They blew it to pieces by firing Gina Carano..." and Skam240 said that she was "...hardly the linchpin keeping the show together...". How in the Hel is it a strawman for Skam240 to say that she was not keeping the show together when you said that her removal "blew it to pieces"? Does the "it" there refer to something other than the show? If so
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I already answered sufficiently in our other thread.
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You explained, in the other part of the thread (where I still find what you are saying incomprehensible, btw), how Skam240 was using a strawman argument by suggesting that she was not holding the series together when you said she blew it apart? I would say I find that a bit unlikely, except that I can't say that because I simply know for a fact that you didn't.
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I think you haven’t seen my latest messages in direct response to your questions in the other thread. At least you haven’t responded to them yet.
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Correct. Note the timestamp on the above message relative to the post you're referring to. I hadn't gotten an e-mail notification yet and Slashdot is generally pretty slow at sending them out, if at all.
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"They blew it to pieces by firing Gina Carano,"
I feel my take on what you said was perfectly accurate. You're claiming her firing ruined the show and I think that's completely absurd even after you expand on the idea in the post I'm replying to.
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They blew it to pieces by firing Gina Carano, and Kathleen Kennedy was directly involved in that decision.
Must be a coincidence.
I mean, come on, that's nonsense. She was fired months after the last episode of Season 2 had aired and probably something like a year after it was filmed. There were 16 episodes of the first two seasons and she was in 7 of them. She got like 10 minutes of screen time in her last three episodes combined with one of those being less than a minute. She was basically a recurring side character who they clearly didn't have much use for past the first season. If you think her being fired blew it to pieces I can
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To repeat the point I just made to skam240: her departure didn’t go unnoticed and so yielded a perfectly understandable enzyme reaction. The writers went back to the drawing board after that, and certainly learned their “pour encourager les autres” lesson.
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I honestly don't really get what you mean by an enzyme reaction here. An enzyme is an organic catalyst. An enzyme reaction would be two chemicals coming together in the presence of the enzyme and undergoing a chemical reaction that they probably would not undergo without the enzyme and, after, the enzyme is there to promote more reactions... I just can't manage to figure out how that's a metaphor for the situation.
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Deliberately missing the point, eh? “Enzyme reaction” is a pretty common metaphor. Anyone with even a modicum of investigative spirit that’s having trouble understanding the metaphor? They can easily suss out its role in this discussion by reverse engineering what I meant when I added “pour encourager les autres” as a hint. If you’re unfamiliar with that phrase, look it up.
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Deliberately missing the point, eh? “Enzyme reaction” is a pretty common metaphor.
Uh, not really. I really can't actually understand what you're trying to say. Maybe you're in some small subculture where use of "enzyme reaction" is common and you are making the common mistake of thinking that your subculture's terms are widespread. Happens a lot. We all tend to do it. But I tried searching for it through search engines, on wiktionary, on urban dictionary, slang.net, etc. and I have found nothing (well, except for some actual texts on biology). Nothing. So, please provide a reference to i
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Ok, I’ll bite. After Gina was fired, they (the writers) subsequently redirected and avoided the rugged individualism (RI) through-line Gina represented. She was a counterweight to the charming but zany baby yoda, and to the mandalorian’s rather boring strict honor code. They probably did this so as to avoid annoying their “overlords” regardless of rugged individualism’s audience appeal. This kind of “moral flattening” is death to conventional aesthetics, but highly
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Sorry, I forgot to address your point that Gina was no “linchpin”. Perhaps this is true of the actress herself for this particular role, talented though she is. But this doesn’t address the point that her character’s pivotal role as a “rugged individual” counterweight wasn’t replaced - it was obliterated. Smuggling in “The Message” to please KK’s corporate direction means RI through-lines could no longer be as openly tolerated, and this is, in many
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Ok, I’ll bite. After Gina was fired, they (the writers) subsequently redirected and avoided the rugged individualism (RI) through-line Gina represented....
OK. So, first thing regardless of whether that opinion is accurate or not, what's with the "OK, I'll bite."? You''re acting as if what you originally wrote somehow made any of that clear. It did not. You seem to be providing plenty of evidence for that theory I mentioned about being immersed in a sub-culture thing. In other words, it seems like you are taking for granted certain things that you think that everyone supposedly knows and it doesn't even occur to you that it's just a meme (going by the original
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Sorry, I forgot to address your point that Gina was no “linchpin”. Perhaps this is true of the actress herself for this particular role, talented though she is.
Talented fighter. Lower end of average as far as acting goes.
As far as the rugged individualist counterweight not being replaced... Well, once again, if Cara Dune was that counterweight, the fact that she basically wasn't even there in season 2 seems to make that a big "meh" even if it was the case that she was that in the first place. I mean, what makes Greef Karga not a rugged individualist? Or Peli. Or Boba Fett? Or that Marshall that had Boba Fett's armor for a while? For that matter, what makes Cara Du
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> In other words, it seems like you are taking for granted certain things that you think that everyone supposedly knows
The Message is known by many names, and is now broadly known outside of certain echo chambers. It’s been touched on by literally dozens of posts in this discussion. I could explain the situation in much greater detail but why bother? I already supplied several examples, abut your deliberate strawman response “everyone” includes a Mongolian hermit.
> I still have no b
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> In any case, have you ever noticed that, in movies and TV, the preponderance of "rugged individualist" characters exist in places that are really crappy to live in? Various types of apocalypse. Wild West type environments.
You’re suffering from confirmation bias. Rugged individualism is shorthand for personal agency, personal uniqueness that transcends but recognizes “identity”, personal fallibility, and character driven storytelling that recognizes such as the characters overcome dive
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By the way, a good definition of The Message is flattening that rigged individual “personal uniqueness that transcends but recognizes “identity”” into a mush where identity matters most of all, but, paradoxically, to be Kathleen Kennedy “safe” there’s also a hyper vigilance against “stereotyping”. The net result is that differences between characters with different identities can only be detected by immutable characteristics like skin color or sexual pre
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> as the characters overcome diversity
Doh! I meant “adversity”!
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The Message
Capital letters. Oh dear.
your deliberate strawman response
Ah, right. So you just call everything a strawman. Got it.
It’s bloody obvious from the context and the accompanying “ pour encourager les autres”. Catalyst. Trigger. Etc. Etc.
Sorry, after your total failure to actual explain it and just go with, to paraphrase, "it's obvious", figure it out from context, etc. the supposedly common idiomatic expression is still a mystery. I'm just going to have to conclude that you don't know yourself. I'm going to chalk it up as a "covfefe" moment: where someone makes an obvious error, and defends it as actually having a special meaning.
No it wasn’t
How exactly do you think TV
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You’re suffering from confirmation bias. Rugged individualism is shorthand for personal agency, personal uniqueness that transcends but recognizes “identity”, personal fallibility, and character driven storytelling that recognizes such as the characters overcome diversity.
Rugged individualism is shorthand by Herbert Hoover for, figuratively, "let them eat cake". Garbage like that is why he lost by 472 to 59 electoral votes in the next election. Once again, pegging personal agency, personal uniqueness and overcoming di^h^hadversity to a specific character in Star Wars is ridiculous. It's hard to throw a rock without hitting a "rugged individualist". I mean, despite what you seem to think, the Mandalorian absolutely is one. You seem to be discounting that because the Mandalori
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Sounds a it like pseudo intellectual literary analysis gobbeldygook to me. I might give it more credence if you weren't just a political slogan that Hoover came up with during one of his "against" phases as part of his wishy washy inability to decide whether he was vehemently against or for things like labor unions, workers rights, public assistance, etc.
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I mean, I'm tempted to call it a Freudian slip. Freud was mostly full of it though and mistakes are not always deeply revealing of hidden intent. Everyone makes typos.
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> I want to ignore the Red Hen because it is a simplistic children's fable. Still, the hen is not a rugged individualist, she just bakes bread and eats it herself. She asks everyone for help at each stage. She's not a rugged individualist.
That isn’t at all the conventional interpretation. It reads similar to claims Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm were warnings against out-of-control capitalism instead of out-of-control collectivism - a claim that Orwellianly reverses Orwell’s own words in
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That isn’t at all the conventional interpretation. It reads similar to claims Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm were warnings against out-of-control capitalism instead of out-of-control collectivism - a claim that Orwellianly reverses Orwell’s own words in interviews about the book.
Oh, so sorry for defying the "conventional" interpretation. Please don't report me to the politburo. Sorry for being a non-conformist, but I don't always draw the same messages from these simplistic stories that try to railroad a moral. I think Rudolph probably should have told Santa and the other reindeer to get bent, or, if he chose to help out just for the children's sake, not just accepted the "friendship" of the other reindeer afterwards. I think the grasshopper and the ant is a bunch of tripe and trea
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> Basically, the little red hen offering the bread to the other animals just so she can withdraw the offer at the end is just her being a total a-hole.
The assumption that she would share? That was contingent on getting some help in return - which would help her have the resources to grow enough wheat for everyone. Siding with the lazy? It’s siding with that neighbor with a “bad back”, living on disability, that goes skiing on the weekends, and labels everyone who complains about payin
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The assumption that she would share?
There was no assumption that she would share. The red hen asking "who will help me eat the bread?" is not others assuming that she will share, it's an offer to share. It's a false offer, intended to trick others into thinking she will be generous just so that she then pull back the offer and say, effectively, "Ha! Too bad! Suffer!". No one asked for bread. If the other animals were even sad that they didn't get bread rather than just shrugging their shoulders and saying "there she goes again" the story give
CLO... (Score:2)
No plan (Score:2)
What blows my mind is a company that large can invest that amount of money in a "trilogy" without any kind of plot line or story to to map out three films. Especially when the plan is to have three entirely different directors for the films.
Uninspired slop with some exceptions (Score:2)
Last(?) trilogy (Score:2)
The latest/last trilogy started out fairly strong but went downhill from there.
Force Awakens was a well made and directed movie that was too safe and little more than a remake of Star Wars.
Last Jedi at least dared to try something new and was enjoyable enough to watch in theatres but it just didn't treat the characters well and didn't work as the second part of a trilogy - throw everything away and replace it with almost nothing is not a good idea.
Rise of Skywalker was a shitshow, exhausting to watch and ju
She ruined Star Wars and it's not debatable (Score:3, Insightful)
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The downgrading of the Expanded Universe ( = everything but the movies, basically) into the lower tier "Legends" was like spitting the fans in the face.
Especially since only a few months before, at an official Star Wars convention, Lucasfilm had promised to clean up and bring the majority of the Expanded Universe into Star Wars canon.
This became apparent for most fans when TFA came out, which redrew the post-ROTJ continuity altogether. And completely without reason as well: the major themes in the movie had
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I don't get the EU love. Most of it was terrible, and the bits that have made it to screen haven't been great.
It wouldn't have made anyone happy.
Star Wars for $4B was a gift (Score:2)
When Lucas sold Star Wars for $4B, it sounded like a ridiculously low number. Even without the rights to make new content, that was worth well over $1B. If he were shopping around instead of giving it to Disney, it probably was worth closer to $10B. With honest accounting, that's probably in the range of value Disney has received, and that's with having produced the worst possible sequels.
South Park (Score:5, Insightful)
Devoted an episode to her, and deservedly so.
To paraphrase for polite company: “put in a Mary Sue and ram in The Message”.
Andor and Rogue One managed to avoid her meddling - the exceptions that prove the rule.
Is no-one really ever gone? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, Kennedy is still staying at Lucasfilm as producer of the upcoming The Mandalorian and Grogu film, and of Star Wars: Starfighter.
There have been rumours that Jon Favreau is planning to make a film adaptation of the Thrawn Trilogy, series of Star Wars books. ... and because Kennedy is producer of the latter, the Thrawn Trilogy movies will never happen.
but Disney would permit him to do that only if The Mandalorian and Grogu does well in the box office.
Disney's next adventure... (Score:2)
Now that Trump is in the White House, Disney will decide that the Darth Vader character was unfair in portraying conservative values as "evil". The new creative director will make sure to show Darth Vader and his movement in a better light.
(Yes, I kid... uhh... but somehow I think it is just too close to reality)
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Disney will decide that the Darth Vader character was unfair in portraying conservative values as "evil". The new creative director will make sure to show Darth Vader and his movement in a better light.
(Yes, I kid... uhh... but somehow I think it is just too close to reality)
Oh what a tangled web you weave. It makes sense in a twisted way - but not in the way you try to imply.
Those “Conservative” values that you dislike? They unambiguously encompass enlightenment classically liberal principles: blind justice, capitalism, property rights, judge by merit - not by identity, free speech, welfare based on actual individual need - not identity, empiricism, objectivity, etc.
But the dislike is understandable, as too many progressives are all-in on “Critical Theory
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Please, very few on the left even know what critical race theory is now let alone knew of it before conservatives seized on it as a buzzword they could capitalize on. It's crazy the alternate reality some conservatives try to paint
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> Please, very few on the left even know what critical race theory is
True on the surface. But you’re trying to also smuggle in “there’s no true Scottsman”, eh?
By any objective assessment, it’s undeniable they (the left) commonly cling to CT’s popularized form (1619, Kendi, micro aggressions, safe spaces, DEI) even if they don’t use the exact academic language. And it’s undeniable this form smuggles its way right down to grade school and is pervasive in corp
Why they didn't axe KK earlier? (Score:2)
My theory about why KK didn't get axed earlier is this.
George Lucas, in fear that Disney would bastardize his baby, engineered a secret clause into the sale of Lucasfilm that made it difficult or impossible to get rid of KK. He did this with the best of intentions, not knowing what kind of commercial and creative disaster she would be. That clause is the thing that has protected her all these years.
The good, the bad, and the ugly (Score:2)
Good: Madalorian (mostly), Andor, Rogue One
Bad: Ahsoka, Obi-wan Kenobi
Ugly: The Acolyte. (No... just... no...)
The rest are debatable. A lot also has to do with who are the showrunners.
Outside the Star Wars universe, Indy 5 was uninspiring. Too much reliance on virtual sets and devoid of the scope that the first and third films had.
Personally, I'd like to see The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles make a comeback as well as Amazing Stories.
Does this mean boys can be Jedis again? (Score:2)
Ding Dong (Score:2)
Millions of Star Wars Fans Everywhere (Score:2)
Can pay their respect's appropriately. [youtube.com]
Finally rid of her (Score:2)