Star Wars News: Kathleen Kennedy Staying at Lucasfilm

hey everybody looks like Kathleen Kennedy according to news is staying on that Lucas film through quarter 2 of 2025 now I thought this was interesting because of the way it was being recorded you know Star Wars fans aren't going to be happy about this I'm seeing no great celebrations that there is a light at the end of the tunnel in fact I'm seeing more of a uh she's still there kind of thing that's telling to me because as someone with a modum of media literacy that tells me that people are more concerned about losing a target for their rage bait that makes them a lot of money than they are actually whe caring about whether or not the product gets any better now that is not the say I'm out here defending Kathleen Kennedy's Reign at Star Wars you know it has definitely been flawed at best but in order to properly critique her Reign you have to acknowledge some things if we're going to be honest because in reality two things can be true at the same time Kathleen Kennedy is the third most money-making us producer of all time that is not there's no question on that that is fact she has produced some of the most legendary movies of all time and no amount of creating fictions about her just generally being Spielberg's coffee girl is going to make that reality ET Jurassic Park I mean you look at her list of credits she is legit one of the legendary producers in film history period hands down like I said two things can be true at the same time she can be that legendary producer and be terrible at running a studio there are two different jobs I may be good at my job I may be good at making weird little cartoons but you know what I'm not good at fixing a car okay if you put me in charge of an auto shop I would fail because I'm not good at that so like I said two things true at the same time great producer terrible at running a studio now I'm going to put on my analyst hat here and kind of go through Kathleen Kennedy's time at Lucasville because I think she made some fun fundamental missteps from the jump that really you know shows where the true weakness in her time there is because a lot of people get jumbled up into a lot of culture War nonsense and that's not why her stuff failed her stuff failed because of poor decision making from the get-go now if we go all the way back to when Lucas film was sold to Disney I was excited because I knew Kathleen Kennedy's history like anybody who produces Banger after Banger like that has to be great for this but that was before we started to know things now obviously Force Awaken was a success and to say otherwise is just a complete fiction it was a huge success critically and audience wise period now little did we know at the time but now we do because we have hindsight it was written about in bober's book that they had taken George Lucas's original plan for the trilogy that was going to be 7even eight and n and went tossed it over his shoulder into a trash can now that was where the downfall started that was mistake number one Kathleen Kennedy should have been that advocate for that Vision to say no we are not throwing away George lucas' treatments for episodes S8 and N are you crazy are you insane we are making those that's going to be 789 this is what we're doing this is the path this is what was sold to us this is what we're doing doing because at the moment that she gave in on that that took lucasfilm's autonomy as its own thing flushed it down the toilet and really there was no reason for it you know oh you know we wanted to do our own thing well no you wanted to make Star Wars movies and you because you got to understand corporations aren't the quickest on the stick especially when they get that big and unwieldy you were still thinking about people getting mad about midi glorian and Jar Jar Binks so you thought George Lucas somehow was not the way to go and Kathleen Kennedy did not have the backbone to stand up to Bob Iger in that moment that's where the failure started so that led to a sequel Trilogy with no plan so you go from Force awakens then you have Rogue one Rogue one generally people like but you start hearing Rumblings of problems behind the scenes you don't think much of it because it's more rumor it's not widely reported you kind of hear about re-shoot and oh did they take it away did they not take it away then you get to Last Jedi you know reception to that is controversial still makes buckets of money successful on that account then you get solo now solos really where the cracks in the veneer start to show because what happens here is Lord and Miller are Jen off Ron Howard brought in the film is retooled and it still makes money but it's not where a Star Wars film should be so it's viewed as a failure now that movie was going to be mixed at best anyway because there are two things wrong with that movie and now in hindsight we kind of know the second part of it now the first part everybody knew nobody really was asking for a Han Solo origin story movie nobody was asking for that they had wanted Boba Fett because they wanted to see him return from the rancor and do all this cool stuff that people wanted to see nobody really wanted the Han Solo origin story nobody cared it wasn't that interesting so you know everybody kind of knew like yeah he was a Smuggler you know corellia he you know jumped into the empire for a bit and then veed off into this thing everybody kind of knew it they didn't have any desire for it now the weird thing was so though and we know this now because what has come out about what George's original treatments was is that solo at the end leans big into what those original treatments were now this may seem like nothing but if you have a Keen Eye you can see nobody's watching the what's going on because if you're approving scripts and you're lording over things so much that you're Jets people off because you're not liking the way the movie is shaking out how do you let that slide in and I'm talking about the Darth Maul Cameo because what we've found out through leaks and information published in books is that the George Lucas treatments leaned into the power vacuum after the Empire and basically how the criminal syndicates all kind of came in and took over you had some Imperial you know element in there that were kind of becoming you know this almost terrorist organization and then you had Darth Maul with Darth Talon kind of lording over things in the criminal world so knowing that why did you leave a scene in that would have led a line directly to that story line that you were you knew you weren't making Kathleen Kennedy knew she wasn't making that story that that story was not going to be part of the future of Star Wars why would you leave that in that to me is the biggest Telltale sign that no one's watching the shop they do weird things that make look like people are watching the shop firing directors announcing projects and then collapsing them on themselves and getting rid of them like they were never an idea but of all of those things that's the one that says no one's watching the shop something's wrong then you get to you know two things happening Colin tavaro after couple things because everybody makes it about right you know the reception of The Last Jedi and then wanting to change course and go try and recreate The Nostalgia trip that was force awakens that's part of it that's part of it the other part of it is Carin tavaro had released a movie called The Book of Henry that ate it tanked it bombed hard so whatever cold feet they already had about where it was going they got basically frostbit at that point and just booted him off the project then brought JJ Abrams back in who notoriously is bad at sticking the landing of any anything and have him do the ending of this big n movie Epic and it and by all accounts it's a flawed movie straight up like even as much as I kind of view Star Wars as like you know kind of that old saying about pizza even when it's bad it's still pretty good if we're being honest it is flawed it is very flawed you know it does a horrible job tying everything up it goes back and makes it it it goes out of its way to make it seem like they're just going in and re retconning everything that happened in the last Jedi like it goes out of its way you would almost think it was done on purpose to be like oh that thing you didn't likeo oh that other thing you didn't like we we're tossing all that out like and awkwardly so it is in your face so like even just from that standpoint it's like that's rough that's a rough watch and it does one of the worst things you can do which is because it's not a satisfying ending it makes what came before worse in retrospect that's why if you have any kind of if you've made any kind of plan going forward my God stick with it cuz if you tie it up in a nice neat bow at the end it might make what came before a little bit better might elevate it a little if you scrap it all and slap Dash something together at the last minute odds are it's not going to be satisfying and it's going to make everything before it worse in retrospect and that's what happened with rise of Skywalker now did they learn a lesson yeah they did but it was the wrong one why because the Mandalorian had come out and did Gang Busters hugely successful so what lesson did they learn well we'll just move everything to TV everybody seems to like the Mandalorian so we'll move everything to TV That Boba Fett movie you're supposed to get turn it into TV so what they do they take it stretch it push a bunch of filler into it that probably wasn't there and there you go a flawed show Obi-Wan Kenobi stretch it out push a bunch of filler in it flawed show I enjoyed both of them but to say they aren't flawed would be dishonest they are very flawed there's a lot of filler in those two shows it those should have been movies they were made to be movies they were announced as movies so they learned the complete wrong thing went away from theatrical and just to TV Ahsoka I enjoyed it I thought it was good but you know it's holding so tightly to Rebels that casual fans have no idea what's going on no clue so even even though I would say it's one of the better of the shows you know definitely I would say the order generally goes Mandalorian at least first two series the third is touchy but has a nice landing you know and then I would say Andor which Andor is great because it's self-contained it only links to one thing Rogue one so it can tell a much more contained interesting story and it was made for TV was not made to be a movie and then stretched out to be TV it was made for TV Great decision same thing with the first season two seasons of Mandalorian made for TV you know very streamlined and then you get to acolyte flawed and is probably the most no one's watching the shop show out of all of them because there are flaws to that show and I talked about it a little bit in my thoughts on it being cancelled there are elements that are brought in there that didn't need to be in there and go back to just no one minding the shop and telling people no you're not doing that there's no need need for this take that out not necessary so all of these things show where the cracks in Kathleen Kennedy's tenure as head of Lucas film are it's really just down to poor decision making in that role just straight up she's made poor decisions from the jump she may be a good producer but as somebody you know running a studio and making the tiptop creative decisions she's just not good at it just not she may be able if you put her in a producer role execute on that role but not running a studio CU they're two wildly different things had she from the jump started her tenure there defending George's original vision for 789 basically slapping Bob Iger on the wrist and taking those treatments saying nope this is what we're making she would have started on a much stronger footing in every decision since then has has been you know if she gets one step forward she takes 20 steps backwards reacting to things in a way that just is dumb for this industry creative Industries thrive on risk and if you're constantly having these knee-jerk reactions to things that you know just do not like George Lucas took risks the prequels as much as Star Wars is a guaranteed thing the stuff he did in the prequels were risky when you think about it and him often times doubling and tripling down and you look at how those things have aged you know apart from their release I would say have aged supremely well and they've certainly aged better than what the sequel Trilogy will because the decisions made during that were not made in the best way you know if Kathleen Kennedy leaves at the end of quarter 2 2025 yeah they may you know get favro in will that create any better goodwi well depends it's all down to decision making you know what they need is somebody who will make good decisions not rash decisions not caving to every single thing whether that's coming from Disney with like at the beginning with Bob Iger tossing George's treatments or having a bunch of people yell loudly on the internet and go whoa we better retool this whole thing oh this last movie didn't do as well we're going to need to you know lean into TV instead because people like this one show that we've done one season of so now we're just going to make it all TV shows instead of looking at it from a narrative perspective where did we go wrong in story that people aren't satisfied with this hard to tell we'll see one we'll see in you know 6 months or so whether or not Kathleen Kennedy retires and if that happens we'll see who they put in place and we'll see what kind of decisions they make hopefully smarter ones hopefully better ones so those are my thoughts on it see you in the next video