Re: Kathleen Kennedy to step down from Lucasfilm?
Obviously you only post here because its popular and fear that if you post in the threads where your points are relevant, they will get no response`s but that doesnt change the fact that the mods have asked to keep on topic on multiple occasions, which you have acknowledged yet ignored on multiple occasions. No one is asking you to fill this thread with anything by the way. I`m pretty sure a lot of people hope it just went away.
Dude, this thread is
dead. There is no "there" there. Kathleen Kennedy is still working for LFL. She hasn't been fired. It's highly unlikely she will be fired. In the not-quite-three months since this thread was posted,
nothing has happened to substantiate the original article. Nothing. If posting "off topic" is to be prohibited, the mods might as well lock this thread and move on.
How long do we have to wait before we admit that (1) the original article posted was a bulls**t rumor, and (2) this thread has basically just become another avenue for people to continue bitching about the current direction of Star Wars vs. people defending the current direction of Star Wars, because God knows we don't have enough of THAT on this forum...
I'm going to quote a controversial military figure here and say,
"This bickering is pointless."
It doesn't matter if Kathleen Kennedy is fired or replaced. Star Wars will never be the same. The system itself is broken and by system I'm not just talking about Lucasfilm. I'm talking about the movie industry itself. There is so little creativity in the industry and with every studio being so risk averse it's continuing to drive the market towards streaming content where people can binge watch shows from the comfort of their homes rather than drive 30 minutes to their local cineplex and shell out nearly $50 (including candy/ popcorn) for a so so movie. Plus the original content of say Neflix for example is far more original and compelling than most of what is churned out of Hollywood. If the movie industries started cranking out things that these streaming services do, at the rate they do and at the consistency of quality that they do we would see a radical shift of older audiences going to the cinema more often.
>snip<
I think the problem with Star Wars isn't as local as we keep making it out to be. It's a problem plaguing the industry as a whole and a change in leadership isn't going to fix that. It's also a shift in the culture of entertainment and the advent of easy to access technology. I'm typing this on my phone for example and often I find that I rarely even put a blu ray in my player but am quick to stream the same movie so I don't have to get off the couch. Lazy? Absolutely. Sad in a way? Yes. Very much so, lol. But we are kidding ourselves if Kathleen Kennedy leaving is going to change the nature and habits of the consumers who watch movies.
Agreed. Although I'll watch a bluray if I have a copy of it, if only because I find the video quality generally better and more consistent than a streaming feed.
A big shout out to "The greatest generation" around the world who not only lived through WW2 and other trials of existence but went on to build a better world for us. Hard to imagine, especially in Europe, that even in the midst of being bombed just for doing it, went to the cinema to briefly escape their misery.
Why post that in this thread?
Without devolving too far away from the subject of entertainment it really revolves around the shift in our culture as a whole and the effect technology has had on us. I got to thinking about going to the video store as a kid and renting movies. That was such a great experience and one that I wish young people had because it forced us to be social with one another. I suppose to my parents they could have viewed the video store as my generation could view streaming in the sense that my parents would go out into town to watch movies with their friends and interact with one another. Maybe go for dinner somewhere afterward and talk about what they just watched. It's not that people don't still do that, it's that as you get older other priorities take precedent. Plus teenagers today have streaming and other forms of entertainment to hold their attention so they may not be as likely to go out with their friends if they can interact with them at home via the internet.
Going to the movies was a social experience and perhaps that demand is diminishing to the point where it won't have the impact on our culture the way it once did. Movies used to be something special, but when you can get movies anywhere and any time, they become less so. Plus they are being churned out by the millions when in years past the wealth of content wasn't so vast. For my generation I think the advent of video help solidify a sense of ownership because for the first time we could OWN a movie. In order to own films before that time you had to have a reel to reel or all kinds of expensive equipment that most people couldn't afford.
Perhaps that's why we became superfans of things like Star Wars because unlike our parents who weren't able to own the movies they loved as a kids, we DID own our favorite movies. For our parents after they watched a movie they may have had affection for it but because they could only watch it when it came to the theater (and later when it might have aired on television) they eventually outgrew the movie and moved on to other things. To them it was just a fond memory and not something they would obsess over. With the toys and other merchandise that accompanied Star Wars, we literally owned a piece of the movie itself. It was unheard of before that time.
Movie tie ins were seen as just necessary promotional material to market the movie and then trashed when the movie had run it's course. No one cared about that after it's release unless you were a hardcore cinephile or collector. Say what you will about George Lucas as a director and writer (and I have to the point where I want to vomit) but the man was a visionary who was a business and marketing genius! We grew up that way and so that informed our experience of the movies where we felt a compulsion to have a piece of it for ourselves. This forum we are talking on is the result of being raised in that mindset. I think I finally understand now what movies mean to my parents generation and what they mean to us in my generation. To my understanding the new generations may see movies as a mix of the two. Some as disposable entertainment and others as something to be celebrated and owned.
I just wanted to say that I think that's a very astute observation re: the generational approaches to ownership of/fandom for films and film franchises, and I agree with it. I think literal ownership of copies -- which we could watch whenever we wanted to, and over and over and over again -- created a sense of "ownership" of the films themselves. That said, I've owned copies of other films and my connection to them has been different from my connection to stuff like Star Wars. The stuff that strikes a chord of fandom for me is ultimately different from the stuff I just enjoy. I own copies (on DVD) of the early 2000s Spider Man films, and the first two X-men movies...but I haven't rewatched them in God knows how long, and they're sitting in a bin in a storage container until I move into my new house and then likely jettison a lot of the old junk I've been hauling around for decades.
I agree with you that she's made bad decisions, but because the system is broken it doesn't matter who they hire. It's not 1977 anymore and you simply can't make those kinds of movies anymore and have the same impact Lucas did. There are almost no visionaries left and Lucasfilm isn't going to hire any of them because it's too risky a business move.
My overall point is that we are trying to treat the sickness rather than cure the sickness. Until people recognize that I think we are just going to keep going in circles. Besides which there isn't anything left to tell in the Star Wars films that hasn't already been told in my opinion. As I stated before, outside of the original three, everything and I mean everything else is simply filler. Non essential.
I actually think the "new frontier" of digital streaming is where you see the more "original" content and stuff that's closer to the spirit of filmmaking you saw in the 70s and 80s. For one thing, there's a desire for ever more original content developed in-house, and for another there's a recognition that niche products can actually gain wider popularity. Take Stranger Things, for example. Sure, Netflix the company greenlit the project due to datamining and figuring out what specific elements viewers want to watch...but the Duffer Bros. came up with the story themselves. I doubt some suit at Netflix said "Build me a movie that combines the 80s, kids on bikes, psychic powers, alternate dimensions and the nasty monsters that live there, and references to D&D." More likely, the Duffer Bros. pitched it, Netflix checked its data mining and said "I think that sounds great!" and we were off to the races.
It strikes me that there is basically ZERO chance that Stranger Things: the Movie would've been greenlit by Sony Pictures or whatever, because it's just...so out there. But on streaming, it has a chance, and then has a chance to grow thanks to internal (to the site), targeted promotion and word of mouth. Which, in turn, leads to the greenlighting of the IT remake, which even stars one of the kids from...Stranger Things, and gets a time bump from the '50s to (surprise!) the '80s. So, sure, streaming is killing one form of entertainment, but it's also opening another, as has "prestige cable" and the era of "peak TV." I'm actually glad for this, because as much as I enjoy the huge scale of the cineplex, I also enjoy the longer form storytelling that streaming/prestige drama provides.
