Kathleen Kennedy leaving Lucasfilm... maybe in September

[Andrew NDB]

https://movieweb.com/kathleen-kenned...ilm-star-wars/

[MikeandRaph87]

This isn't a joke? The fans flustrated by behind-the-scenes turmoil with multiple firings and plots we were waiting anxious for only to get the finger actually got her removed? Well, fans do have a voice after all.


So...how about Luke teleporting like Hamill believes he did?

[Vegita-San]

If this isn't a joke, It's a START.

There are TONS of people at lucasfilm that are still loyal to her AND believe in her agenda. they need to go too!

if you hire dave filoni to right the ship, like they should, he needs his staff in there to fix a VERY large whole.

It's sad. I had ZERO opinion of her when she was first announced. i did not know about her, OR her history..but after revisionist lucas, I was hopeful someone with a plan was coming in. oh, how FAST I wished lucas was back.

[Andrew NDB]

I don't like how the "excerpt" ascribes to the Kennedy "redeemed Star Wars from the awful prequels with a ANH remake" narrative, which is a quantifiably FAKE narrative.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I definitely agree that Kathleen Kennedy has been more "Warner Brothers" than "Kevin Feige."

But that's not really a good comparison. She basically has been steering the Star Wars ship to follow in the rebooted Star Trek path... reboot, tell the same stories, young pretty actors, safe predictable stories matched with incredibly bizarre creative choices.

J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson seem to be sci-fi relaunch poison... except financially, which is unfortunate.

[Vegita-San]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I don't like how the "excerpt" ascribes to the Kennedy "redeemed Star Wars from the awful prequels with a ANH remake" narrative, which is a quantifiably FAKE narrative.

yeah, I was reading that too.

news flash movie web. She IS at fault. her and her bosses at disney. it's all her direction.

Getting rid of her is a start, but there's lots of others that need to follow with her.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I need to watch the prequels for myself and determine just how truly awful they are.

But as a consumer who believes in artistic integrity, I'll take a bad original story over a soulless retelling any day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to needling my J.J. Abrams voodoo doll...

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I don't like how the "excerpt" ascribes to the Kennedy "redeemed Star Wars from the awful prequels with a ANH remake" narrative, which is a quantifiably FAKE narrative.

While Kathleen Kennedy worked wonders relaunching this property from the abyss of the Lucas prequel trilogy and turning it into a bigger than ever all-devouring cultural force...

The "abyss" of the prequel trilogy may not have earned the adoration of long-time fans and critics, but it certainly made the franchise lots of money and earned it a new audience who grew up with the merchandise, video games, and media spin-offs.

[Vegita-San]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

The "abyss" of the prequel trilogy may not have earned the adoration of long-time fans and critics, but it certainly made the franchise lots of money and earned it a new audience who grew up with the merchandise, video games, and media spin-offs.

yep.

there was enough new, and enough GOOD new, to earn it a nice nostalgia spot in the fans and franchise. I have a feeling the same will be true with Star wars rebels.


But, R1? People may like it, but what new did it introduce? TFA? TLJ? Solo? nothing really memorable about ANY of these movies. from pacing, to editing to story.

They are just made to make a quick billion and quickly forgotten about.

[NinjaPug]

The original report said Kasdan and Kinberg are in the story group so I'm assuming the rest of the report is BS too.

[NinjaPug]

Well if the youtubers think she's gone it must be true

[CyberCubed]

They're not going to make the old EU canon again when 90% of current fans have no idea what that is.

[Andrew NDB]

Maybe it's not too late to reedit and reshoot large portions of "The Last Jedi" under new management. Preserving all of Carrie's stuff, of course.

I wouldn't mind waiting an extra year for IX if it means we can get a proper VIII.

[ABrown]

Yeah, I don't know who this person. When I saw the name, I thought maybe we were talking about this hot piece of...

[NinjaPug]

Interesting article from one of the trades:

Toxic Fandom Is Killing 'Star Wars'
6:30 AM PDT 6/11/2018 by Marc Bernardin

Racist harassment of 'Last Jedi' star Kelly Marie Tran and the 'Solo' backlash: Lucasfilm’s problem isn’t the movies, it’s trolls who want only the nostalgia of their youth, like "old Luke Skywalker hiding on an island from everything new," writes columnist Marc Bernardin.

Fandom has always been an us versus them proposition. In the early days, it was because you loved something that the world at large found silly, be it comic books or Doctor Who. It was you, and those who felt like you, against everyone else. Star Wars redefined fandom because it built a bigger tent than had ever existed before. Suddenly, the "everyone else" also loved Star Wars. Your mom knew what The Force was. Mark Hamill was on The Tonight Show. There was Yoda underwear. It was the first real “fan” thing that exploded into a phenomenon. But fandom always needs a “them.”

Star Wars is in an interesting place right now. The most recent film, Solo: A Star Wars Story, has been drastically underperforming at the box office. After two weeks in release, it had pulled in a mere $271 million worldwide. Analysts believe Disney will lose $50 million or more on the film, and Solo comes on the heels of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which-despite making $1.3 billion worldwide—proved itself an incredibly divisive film. While critics loved it (judging by the 91 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes), fans were split.

Some loved the bold liberties of writer-director Rian Johnson. They understood that there was room under that big tent for characters like Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) and Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), women placed—alongside Carrie Fisher’s Leia and Ridley’s Rey—at the center of the Star Wars drama.

But others hated it. Hated everything it stood for. Hated what they saw as a social justice warrior remix of the Star Wars they grew up with. And they hated Tran’s Rose most of all because they decided that she was the avatar for all that was wrong with the franchise. Those fans — a minority but a loud one — found their “them” in the very thing they used to love.

Those who chose this particular vein of the Dark Side, emboldened by the faceless intoxication of the internet, went hard on Tran. Racist invective, misogyny, rape and death threats, all hurled at her constantly, unrelentingly, transforming what had been a Cinderella story — The Last Jedi was Tran’s first major film —into a modern-day nightmare. On June 4, she all but quit social media, stripping everything from her Instagram save for a profile picture and a bio that says “Afraid, but still doing it anyway.”

(It shouldn’t go unnoticed that when this stripe of fan decides they don’t like a new take on an old favorite, they level their hate on the woman of color. Leslie Jones bore the brunt of the backlash to the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters and the racist, sexually violent tweets she got also caused her to withdraw from social media to find her balance.)

All of this begs the question: What exactly do Star Wars fans want? For so long, all they were asking for was more. It was 16 years between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, and then 10 years between Revenge of the Sith and The Force Awakens. Just getting Star Wars on the big screen was enough … at first. But then fans wheeled on the prequels: too much Jar Jar, too convoluted. (The vitriol was strong enough to chase Lucas away from directing and perhaps from Star Wars altogether.)

When J.J. Abrams signed on for The Force Awakens and built his narrative around a young woman with The Force and her black friend, it triggered the anti-SJW brigades. (Never mind it also gave them Han Solo, Chewbacca, Leia, and a pair of familiar droids.) The #BoycottEpisodeVII hashtag spread, targeting Ridley and John Boyega, though it probably had more headlines than effect, as the film topped $2 billion worldwide.

But if The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were too progressive for some fans, why didn’t they comfort themselves in the warm blanket of Solo, co-written by Star Wars standard bearer Lawrence Kasdan and directed by Lucas’ Willow collaborator Ron Howard? It should’ve been everything they wanted in the prequels they didn’t get, without the “too many ladies and people of color” issues they claimed hurt the new films. But judging by the gross, they didn’t want Solo either.

What is Star Wars fandom against? Turns out, the answer: itself. Or, rather, the realization that Star Wars is and always has been for children, and they aren’t children any more. Star Wars fans — I count myself among them — look to the original trilogy as an anchor of youth. They want anything Star Wars to make them feel the way they did when they saw “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …” roll across the screen 40 years ago.

No diehard fan wants to imagine himself as old Luke Skywalker, hiding on an island from everything new, anything that might shake his steadfast belief in how the world is supposed to be. But if you saw the original Star Wars in the theater, that’s who you are, unless you find a way to open yourself to heroes designed to hook a new generation while still resonating with yours. Those who haven’t are lashing out at everything that reminds them that they’re no longer young Luke, staring off into the horizon of a future still dawning, like twin suns.

They are forgetting the very things that spoke to them about Star Wars in the first place—and the warnings of a little green puppet about the perils of anger.

Marc Bernardin is a former THR editor and a comic book and television writer whose credits include Hulu's upcoming Castle Rock. He also co-hosts the Fatman on Batman podcast with Kevin Smith.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/am...mpression=true

[plastroncafe]

Surely this is just another one of those "FAKE" fan writers from the "FAKE" geek blogs that we've been hearing so much about, and as such can't be trusted.

I mean, what even are this person's credentials.

[Vegita-San]

If it's only trolls who only want the nostalgia of their youth, then how come the force awakens hasn't aged well in the publics mind? that was basically one big episode 4 call back, just like everything lucasfilm has done. unless they want to remind us that they are trying to 'kill the past'.

There is also an alternate version of that article that started it all, titled 'star wars has a toxic white male fan problem.'

The toxicity isn't coming from the fans....it's coming from lucasfilm itself. all their employees are blaming fans left and right..in what was a relatively happy fan base before the dark times. Don't like the force awakens? you are afraid of powerful women, you basement dwelling white man babies. they actually say stuff like this direct from JJ himself. can you imagine the crap storm if any other race was placed in that statement?

and people wonder why fans are angry at this point. people of all races and genders and walks of life are finally seeing what lucasfilm is trying to do, and they've had enough. you are basically taking away something that an entire generation of people enjoyed the way it was....and turning it into something it's not.

yeah, people are not going to be happy.

[sdp]

That article is the perfect example of FAKE mainstream geek culture blog I constantly mention. It tries to create a narrative to fit their personal opinions without actually understanding geek culture.

It's still trying to continue the narrative that it's not the franchise's fault, it's the fans fault. And to justify this they throw in a bunch of excuses in that very article and see what fits, anything from "it's for kids" and even "you are afraid of change" and "you hate women/minority" for good measure and no one dares to challenge your views.

It's just for kids? Yeah, I know, I love Jar Jar and the Ewoks and don't mind that the story is basically good vs evil. Yeah there can be more serious takes but a lighter story is no problem for me.

I'm afraid of change? It's the exact opposite, I"m tired that these movies are all pandering to the OT when I want to see NEW stories. I genuinely got super excited during TLJ with the whole "Let the Past Die", I thought they would fix their mistakes, Rey joining Kylo and forming this new alliance of no Jedi or Sith seemed something new and interesting. Instead by the end of the movie we were back to Empire V Jedi.

You don't like Women/Minorities? I love women, Admiral Holdo (and as a Jurassic Park fan you know I love Laura Dern) and Rose are horrible characters, they suck. I only know their names because I'm copying and pasting. I love Rey as an idea, it's too bad she's being written as a Mary Sue who already knows everything and is boring. Finn is a great addition, too bad he hasn't done any progress since The Force Awakening since he even had to re-learn the lessons and they even took away his love interest because a black man can't be with a white woman. Who is the racist now?


And whose writing these articles? The same people who bashed the prequels and did worse things to the fandom since then, who is the one bringing toxicity to the franchise? You like the film? NO PROBLEM but don't tell others they're wrong. You don't see me telling people they're wrong for not liking Godzilla 1998.

[plastroncafe]

Well that one in particular was written by Marc Bernardin

...a former THR editor and a comic book and television writer whose credits include Hulu's upcoming Castle Rock. He also co-hosts the Fatman on Batman podcast with Kevin Smith

I guess there's no greater fake geek content generator than the guy who co-hosts a podcast with Kevin Smith.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by NinjaPug

Interesting article from one of the trades:

Toxic Fandom Is Killing 'Star Wars'
6:30 AM PDT 6/11/2018 by Marc Bernardin

Racist harassment of 'Last Jedi' star Kelly Marie Tran and the 'Solo' backlash: Lucasfilm’s problem isn’t the movies, it’s trolls who want only the nostalgia of their youth, like "old Luke Skywalker hiding on an island from everything new," writes columnist Marc Bernardin.

Fandom has always been an us versus them proposition. In the early days, it was because you loved something that the world at large found silly, be it comic books or Doctor Who. It was you, and those who felt like you, against everyone else. Star Wars redefined fandom because it built a bigger tent than had ever existed before. Suddenly, the "everyone else" also loved Star Wars. Your mom knew what The Force was. Mark Hamill was on The Tonight Show. There was Yoda underwear. It was the first real “fan” thing that exploded into a phenomenon. But fandom always needs a “them.”

Star Wars is in an interesting place right now. The most recent film, Solo: A Star Wars Story, has been drastically underperforming at the box office. After two weeks in release, it had pulled in a mere $271 million worldwide. Analysts believe Disney will lose $50 million or more on the film, and Solo comes on the heels of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which-despite making $1.3 billion worldwide—proved itself an incredibly divisive film. While critics loved it (judging by the 91 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes), fans were split.

Some loved the bold liberties of writer-director Rian Johnson. They understood that there was room under that big tent for characters like Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) and Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), women placed—alongside Carrie Fisher’s Leia and Ridley’s Rey—at the center of the Star Wars drama.

But others hated it. Hated everything it stood for. Hated what they saw as a social justice warrior remix of the Star Wars they grew up with. And they hated Tran’s Rose most of all because they decided that she was the avatar for all that was wrong with the franchise. Those fans — a minority but a loud one — found their “them” in the very thing they used to love.

Those who chose this particular vein of the Dark Side, emboldened by the faceless intoxication of the internet, went hard on Tran. Racist invective, misogyny, rape and death threats, all hurled at her constantly, unrelentingly, transforming what had been a Cinderella story — The Last Jedi was Tran’s first major film —into a modern-day nightmare. On June 4, she all but quit social media, stripping everything from her Instagram save for a profile picture and a bio that says “Afraid, but still doing it anyway.”

(It shouldn’t go unnoticed that when this stripe of fan decides they don’t like a new take on an old favorite, they level their hate on the woman of color. Leslie Jones bore the brunt of the backlash to the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters and the racist, sexually violent tweets she got also caused her to withdraw from social media to find her balance.)

All of this begs the question: What exactly do Star Wars fans want? For so long, all they were asking for was more. It was 16 years between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, and then 10 years between Revenge of the Sith and The Force Awakens. Just getting Star Wars on the big screen was enough … at first. But then fans wheeled on the prequels: too much Jar Jar, too convoluted. (The vitriol was strong enough to chase Lucas away from directing and perhaps from Star Wars altogether.)

When J.J. Abrams signed on for The Force Awakens and built his narrative around a young woman with The Force and her black friend, it triggered the anti-SJW brigades. (Never mind it also gave them Han Solo, Chewbacca, Leia, and a pair of familiar droids.) The #BoycottEpisodeVII hashtag spread, targeting Ridley and John Boyega, though it probably had more headlines than effect, as the film topped $2 billion worldwide.

But if The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were too progressive for some fans, why didn’t they comfort themselves in the warm blanket of Solo, co-written by Star Wars standard bearer Lawrence Kasdan and directed by Lucas’ Willow collaborator Ron Howard? It should’ve been everything they wanted in the prequels they didn’t get, without the “too many ladies and people of color” issues they claimed hurt the new films. But judging by the gross, they didn’t want Solo either.

What is Star Wars fandom against? Turns out, the answer: itself. Or, rather, the realization that Star Wars is and always has been for children, and they aren’t children any more. Star Wars fans — I count myself among them — look to the original trilogy as an anchor of youth. They want anything Star Wars to make them feel the way they did when they saw “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …” roll across the screen 40 years ago.

No diehard fan wants to imagine himself as old Luke Skywalker, hiding on an island from everything new, anything that might shake his steadfast belief in how the world is supposed to be. But if you saw the original Star Wars in the theater, that’s who you are, unless you find a way to open yourself to heroes designed to hook a new generation while still resonating with yours. Those who haven’t are lashing out at everything that reminds them that they’re no longer young Luke, staring off into the horizon of a future still dawning, like twin suns.

They are forgetting the very things that spoke to them about Star Wars in the first place—and the warnings of a little green puppet about the perils of anger.

Marc Bernardin is a former THR editor and a comic book and television writer whose credits include Hulu's upcoming Castle Rock. He also co-hosts the Fatman on Batman podcast with Kevin Smith.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/am...mpression=true