About freaking time. By the way more people need to know how she was involved in killing two children when she was a producer of Twilight Zone movie.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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Only thirteen years, a horrid trilogy, and a ruined legacy too late. If she could stay far away from all forms of media, that'd be just fine by me.
You forgot the theme park flop (Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge), and the catastrophic Star Wars hotel (Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser).
Also, it was her direct involvement (read "demands") that ruined the Grogu storyline and forced the shoehorning of The Mandalorian and Grogu into The Book of Boba Fett.
Galaxy's Edge a flop? I dunno about that one. It's pretty amazing.
Yeah, I've only heard people say good things about galaxy's edge. Hotel absolutely bombed though.
As I was writing the comment, I tried to recount all of the failures under Kennedy's management. I couldn't even remember half of what Disney's churned out over the years, but I'm pretty sure the only two items that didn't suck were Skeleton Crew (which got cancelled) and Andor. Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor too, if we include games.
Rogue One was also good.
Rogue One was good because they knew it was going to be a one off and they felt comfortable taking risks. The same reason Halo: Reach is lauded as one of the better Halo games.
In my opinion too many franchises try to toe some line and end up falling short of expectations as a result.
The final season of The Clone Wars was good
The power of many
"And somehow she's returned."
Movies (2 hits, 3 misses):
- TFA was a good palate cleanser for the non-prequel-kids audience. Had some serious weaknesses that needed to be massaged away, however. Still, a hit.
- Rogue One is overrated but perfectly suited for its intended purpose to keep the fires burning and generate new narrative (and branding) opportunities between Skywalker movies. Hit.
- I maintain that The Last Jedi, apart from some modest concerns about pacing and (not) moving the timeline forward enough, was exactly what was needed and actually treated the themes and legacy of the OT and PT with respect. Shit, it was the only one that even mentioned the precious prequel trilogy. Clearly I'm in the minority there, though. I reluctantly concede it was a miss.
- Solo is a decent enough heist movie but they took the already-too-much fan service of R1 and turned it to eleven. It also cost too much, looked too dark, and came out at the worst possible moment because Disney refused to accept that Star Wars was becoming a Christmas thing. Miss.
- TROS was creatively reactionary garbage that didn't even satisfy the TLJ haters whose hurt feelings it was meant to soothe. Huge miss even if it made "enough" money.
Animation (4-1-2):
- Wrapping up The Clone Wars. Hit.
- Rebels. Slow out of the gate, but hit.
- Resistance. All of Filoni's iffy tendencies, with no built in nostalgia or time to "fix" the characters. Big miss.
- Bad Batch. Basically more TCW. Filoni's obsession with introducing an immature, annoying lead and hoping to either make them great or blend into the ensemble still mostly works here. Modest Hit.
- Visions. Good synergy and audience cross marketing. Some lovely vignettes. Some seeds for new directions in storytelling, but maybe mis-setting expectations for a certain segment of the audience. Hit.
- Tales. Fine, for the most part, but forgettable. Neutral.
- Young Jedi. Actual kids stuff. The only one I couldn't bring myself to watch, but that's not its fault. I guess it hasn't truly exploded, but the point of all Disney Jr. shows is to make a few dozen episodes to be recycled for the constantly rotating demographic. Is what it is. neutral.
Live Action TV (5-4 if you count each Mando season as its own thing):
- Mandalorian: Launched D+ with great fanfare. Devolved into Marvel-lite too quickly, but despite a weaker third season, 1 and 2 are still quite good and even 3 still just barely (IMO) counts as a hit.
- BoBF: Clearly came out the back side of Development Hell too ragged to be what it could have been. Some genuinely good ideas overwhelmed by a lack of cohesion and some truly baffling filmmaking choices. Miss.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: Shoulda been a movie, needed at least two more passes over the script, and displayed an overreliance on the shiny new toy (The Volume stage) that George would have been proud of. Miss.
- Andor. It built back credibility and is the closest Star Wars has come to sophisticated storytelling, and is just generally good fucking TV, so even though it didn't do great as "content" for Disney, definitely still a hit.
- Ahsoka: Oh boy, should have been an obvious hit. It's basically Rebels season 5, but Filoni was really struggling to tell a decent story in a compelling way. I'm fairly fond of it, but going to call it a miss.
- The Acolyte: A bit underrated, especially with Darth Bortles throwing some molotov cocktails at the Jedi, but still an undeniable miss.
- Skeleton Crew: Maybe the damage to the brand is already done, but this is still a good and fun show. No Home Run, but still a hit.
So look, I love the animation, but you have to maybe aggregate all them to get one project that's equal in significance to a movie or a season of live-action streaming. By that measure, I'd call her record on actual projects mixed to slightly positive, but the misses, on the films particularly, were so very divisive that regardless of who you really "blame," she was head of Lucasfilm during the period when it lost significant social cachet and market power. I reckon that she doesn't deserve all of the blame, and that Disney thinking they had Space Marvel (and of course Marvel has finally grown pretty stale too) was a huge factor in how they approached schedules, tone, and process. I won't judge too harshly, not knowing what she was up against, but if the best you can say is that it might have been even worse with someone else, that's a pale legacy.
If nothing else, they need new blood with a mandate to re-build the brand and the independence to do it well.
You're not alone on TLJ. I'm not gonna pretend it was perfect, but it's far better then it gets credit for. Imo, it's the best of the sequels.
I'm with you on The Last Jedi. This was a pretty good write up.
I'm always interested to know what people like about TLJ.
To me it just didn't do much of anything.
In my opinion In empire strikes back we see the might of the empire and the stakes of losing. In TLJ, the only thing that really happens is snoke dies. Ben still is evil and wants to rule the galaxy, the resistance is barely getting by, the first order continues to fail to do anything (at least on screen), Rey still has no motivation for doing anything (she does get some development, but it's weak given Rise), and Luke felt like a wasted character.
You almost described empire strikes back word for word.
Except in the empire strikes back we see the empire take over hoth (while showing the resistance is an actual movement, not three people that can fit on the falcon). Additionally they freeze Han, take over the cloud city, chop of Luke's hand.
Additionally, Yoda actually trains Luke on how to use the force and we can see that growth as well as setting up the whole plot that Vader is his father (motivation).
So after empire strikes back you have, characters that need to be rescued from a powerful empire, Luke being trained to be a Jedi, and the motivation for the final confrontation. At the end of the last Jedi there is no longer any resistance (cause they all fit in the falcon) and Rey's only motivation is to stop Ben because he's evil.
I think the real life time difference between ep7 and ep8 is what does it for most people. Ep4 and ep5 was an in story jump. There wasn't for 7 and 8. On top of nothing in ep7 have any back story setup etc with snoke, Ben and Luke. On top of that the first scene in TLJ the whole new public was basically nuked. But that's in the background because it was ep7. And it feels distant because of irl time but it like literally just happened in ep8. The whole way everyone goes into ep 8 I think changes their view. My first time seeing it was a 24 hours showing ep1 all the way through. I love discussing it. But I love it dearly haha
I appreciate the write up and mostly agree (especially for the animated shows), I have more love for R1 than you seem to but I disagree on E8 or E9, but thats the fun part about subjective film opinions.
I find TLJ/E8 insultingly bad, to me its "attempts to subvert expectations" is the worst case of Disney giving a giant middle finger to IP they have absorbed, and rubbing it in because they own the rights to them. TRoS/E9 by extension is just sad... Its the prime example of "written by committie". Bringing JJ back to save a sinking ship without a captian almost worked, but the scars of post production changes and a non-functional conculsion left me in that same nostalgic rut that the sequal trilogy started in.
Heres to hope that Andor S2 respects the audience, and its setting as much as S1 did.
Realistically though, who is righting the ship? Can the ship even be saved at this point? I feel like Star Wars is a remarkably small and boring sci-fi universe in comparison to what's come after it.
But hear me out...what if took all the characters you already know and made a prequel from their college days when they were all roommates. It will be set on Tatooine.
StarWars is a simple self contained classic heroes journey with a beginning middle and end about Good Vs Evil.
A New Hope
tonight we FEAST!
i cannot begin to describe how happy i am to hear this news.
Goddamn finally!
Kathleen Skywalker
More like Kathleen Palpatine, also known as Darth Kennedy.
If Kathleen is Palpatine, George Lucas is Darth Plagueis.
Will be replaced by J.J.Abrams.
Thank the force
Made a mint mishandling sonething beautiful. Business as usual in the entertainment industry.