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Notes -
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.
The Disney live action projects have been:
Movies
Series
Of ten projects, we have five projects that are bad, two that are at least okay, two that are good, and one that is great. Not an amazing hit rate, and the ST being bad is a massively outsized issue, but probably not as bad as one might think if you compare it against the industry as a whole.
I think if you look at why the bad stuff is bad, it's hard to pull together a coherent throughline other than "get good." The ST and BoBF both flounder not because of particular tone or themes, but because they seemingly had no plan or idea for what they really wanted to do beyond cash in on Star Wars. The Acolyte has a serviceable concept for a movie, but it's drawn out over 5.5 hours (and has piss-poor execution to boot). Kenobi had a clear enough plan, but shabby execution and was something nobody wanted (or rather, getting what you wanted in the most literal sense, but in a way that makes you wish you hadn't asked for it). Similarly, Ahsoka embodies how pandering to existing fans is liable to produce a self-indulgent mess (though FWIW most SW fans I know IRL like Ahsoka, which is proof they have no taste).
Of these live action projects, the only ones that code as particularly woke are TLJ (which was bad) and Andor (which was not). The impression I've gotten from reading about the behind-the-scenes of SW production was not that Kennedy was pushing really hard for a particular vision that no one liked but that she was pretty lackadaisical and didn't impose much discipline on her productions or have a great sense for quality.
Yeah, but as an average of Good seasons and a Bad one, with the latter more recent and with it's biggest problem being the sense that they're out of good new ideas and are having to wring out old ones. Hence the upcoming movie that nobody cares about - it may turn out to be awesome, but I wouldn't recommend going on opening night to check.
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