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So it is official. After nearly 14 years as President of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy has stepped down. Nope, not bait this time. Dave Filoni is taking over.
In the Deadline interview, KK reiterates that she wouldn't change anything:
But does anybody care anymore? This isn't even a twinkle in culture war discourse, KiA's response was total indifference. Despite Iger's comments a few years ago saying that "creators at Disney should entertain first, message second", I haven't seen them walk the walk. Within Star Wars itself, what immediately followed those statements was the wokest Star Wars to date, which got cancelled just one month after the finale aired due to low viewership.
While everyone was memeing about where the bodies were buried, how does anybody even expect to fix the IP at this point? Every year since Rise of Skywalker, they've been dropping a new season of a new live action show like candies. Star Wars ceased to be an "event" anymore. Sequel merchandise don't sell as well as the classics. But does it mean Star Wars is dead in the water? Probably not, Andor season 2 debuted with record viewership numbers. I guess, Star Wars fans are still more forgiving than most people think! Even if the IP may not be as bulletproof as it was during the Clone Wars era. I don't see the "Force is Female" direction being reversed for sure.
Giving that this is CW, it is probably about Star Wars being too woke?
I find this a bit of a strange objection. "Oh, I am fine with Disney pimping out the rotting corpse of a once beloved, childhood-defining franchise for as long as there is anyone still wanting to pay for it, but I draw the line at politics I disagree with."
Art isn't like people, it doesn't have a fixed expiry date of seven-score years and ten. The difference between rejuvenation and 'using the rotten corpse as a finger-puppet' is whether it holds true to the original spirit and people still like it. Politics is very relevant to that.
In theory it doesn’t. But how many properties remain really popular longer than fifty years? Sherlock Holmes and Dracula maybe, but for every one of those there’s a thousand things that died.
Just off the top of my head Shakespeare / Wuthering Heights / Jane Austen / Tolkein / Dickens esp. A Christmas Carol / arguably Kipling / Lovecraft.
Yes, there's a fierce winnowing process, in part because public attention is a limited resource. But look at Lovecraft, for example. Lovecraftian horror became a genre, there are lots of parodies and cutesy anime Narth???tep and Lovecraft-lite stuff, and the racial elements are toned way down, but broadly there are works which play it straight released every year and the genre is in rude health precisely because works are still being released which respect its spirit.
(Reminds me that I want to play Still Wakes the Deep).
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