Ahhh, Hollywood. The only town where failure seems to get you promoted, criticism is not valid unless it comes from approved sources, and any headwinds are the fault of the customer, not the product or the producer.
On her way out the door, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has given a far-reaching “exit interview” to Deadline. In it, she gave her final updates on the state of the Star Wars production slate, and then she tackled what she considered the “lows” of her time in charge.
You guessed it, it was “toxic fans”:
The lows are that you’ve got a very, very small percentage of the fan base that has enormous expectations, and basically they want to continue to see pretty much the same thing. And if you’re not going to do that, then you know going in that you’re going to disappoint them.
I’m not sure there’s anything you can do about that, because you can’t please everybody. All you can do is try to tell good stories and try to stick to the essence of what George created.
I wouldn’t do that any differently and I wouldn’t change anything that we’ve done over the years. I understand why some people may like certain things more than others, but that’s not going to change why I decided to do certain things and why I decided to work with the people that we worked with.”
Hmmmm, so demanding quality product that respects established lore is “toxic”? She also talked about the challenges the female characters, and the actresses brought in to play them like Kelly Marie Tran and Daisy Ridley, faced:
I’m honest, especially with the women who come into this space because they unfairly get targeted. I don’t try to sugarcoat it. And I emphasise that it’s a very small group of people, with loud megaphones. I truly do not believe that it’s the majority of the fans.
And I think we’re also in this weird world where bots can affect things. You have to develop a tough skin. That is exactly right. That’s what you have to do. You can’t make it go away. All we can do is put our heads down and do the work and believe that we’re doing the best we can, telling the best story we can.”
That’s funny. Most of the criticism around Tran I saw online was questioning why an attractive, bubbly girl who seemed like great fun in interviews was given a dour character to play, and then placed in a shapeless boiler suit with Lego hair by a bunch of white women. Also, this looks pretty toxic to me:
She also admitted the glaringly obvious about Solo: A Star Wars Story:
“I brought Larry Kasdan in on, and we were so excited about that idea. And then when you’re into something and you realize fundamentally, conceptually, you cannot replace Han Solo, at least right now. As wonderful as Alden Ehrenreich was, and he really was good, and is a wonderful actor, we put him in an impossible situation. And once you’re in it and once you’re committed, you’ve got to carry on. I think I have a bit of regret about that, but not about the moviemaking and filmmaking. I don’t have regrets about that. I just think that conceptually, we did it too soon.”
Well, maybe if you and your harem of HR department escapees weren’t so keen to tear down the space-patriarchy, then you might not have made that easily avoidable strategic error, eh?
The fact remains that cinema’s golden goose was slaughtered on your watch, and no amount of retconning can sweep that under the rug.
