Re: Kathleen Kennedy to step down from Lucasfilm?
GREAT post!
I haven't done any hard research into it, but this is what I have been saying-- the angry fan voice is the LOUDEST but it isn't the biggest. The past has proven that to be true over and over. If you went by fandom's response to the PT you'd think SW was dead, and yet, all of them are amongst the top money-earners of all time.
As for why Solo failed, I think you're all over it. I think it was a combination of things:
- The angry at TLJ fans weren't enough alone to tank it, but they made a dent
- It was only 6 months out from TLJ, which even if you liked, is a heavy chore to make it through
- The general public has been burned before on the "Star Wars characters you know, but YOUNG" approach
- Not many people WANTED this movie. Cool idea, sure, but we don't NEED that story
- The marketing targeting the general audiences was so-so. The Superbowl trailer made no promise of story, or gave a don't-miss-it vibe. It was LOOK! A YOUNG HAN SOLO! FUN STUFF HAPPENS!
- It was already in the hole with being reshot
Really, there wasn't a lot of incentive for anyone to go and see it other than "Hey look, another Star Wars movie." And they can't do that-- and hopefully lesson learned.
While I defend KK as somebody who knows how to produce movies and run a studio, she has certainly made mistakes. The two biggest being not hiring the right directors, and not having a unified plan for the ST.
I still don't know who would do any better, and she can course-correct, but if she has more than one and half flops, Disney will show her the door, I don't doubt it. But she's a ways from that I think. There's a lot of pressure on Episode 9 to kill it, its no wonder they went back to JJ. Like TFA or not, it made money.
Lucas has always been a complicated with this sort of stuff. He's a staunch liberal and he's married to a black woman... but his roots as a well-off young white dude growing up in Marin county taints him. If you look at the Raiders of the Lost Ark story beat session transcripts, or some of the (according to some) racial stereotypes in TPM and you see a guy who isn't actively racist, but a guy who is just sort of ignorant to the stereotypes that have been programmed into him.
I've looked at the subscriber figures on some of the anti Disney and found duplicate posts ie the same people subscribing to all the "I hate DIsney and Kathleen Kennedy" focal points. It makes their numbers seem larger and exaggerates the group size.
And as my analysis of the certain threads in this forum shows, just three people are currently respouncible for a disproprtionate number of similar posts in this various forum. In one thread alone its nearly up to a quarter, thats 25%, of the total replies.And that, of the total membership of the RPF ,is a very,very,very small but very vocal number and they are in every relevant thread on this topic.
Even the combined numbers of the three most vocal anti D&K groups are a very small number of the total number of people that visit the movies regularly. As a percentage of worldwide SW fans its low. And actually within the RPF where SW fan numbers are a huge proportion of the population, the vast majority appear to have gone to see Solo and liked it.
By normal standard BO performances for a sci fi adventure movie Solo has done reasonably well. Don't think I'm telling the truth? Go to Box Office Mojo, go to "genres" and look up "Sci fi adventures." Outside of the fracnhises original sci fi has always had a hard task attracting huge numbers, just look at the BO for "Serenity", "John Carter" even Star Trek. Even the first New JJ Trek ,which was widely well recieved only did $385 million.
Yet by SW standards Solo is seen as disappointment. But by RPFer SW fan standards here it appears top be largely liked and a "success". If anything it appears to me that the SUPPORT of SW fans has really been the only factor in keeping this from really crashing at the BO.
So why is it REALLY struggling?
I don't think its the boycott. That might account for five to ten million at the most currently and digital sales will recoup a large portion of that in three months.
I don't think its because its a bad SW film.It certainly hasn't generated anything like the hatred TLJ did, go check the post review thread. There is nothing like the general negativity toward it there. On your anti D&K youtube channels then yes, but they are going to always say that because "hating" and "controversy" earns them the hits and the money.
But the trailers got nothing like the usual number of hits a SW movie normally would do.
So that says two things strongly to me.
One is that the general movie going public has little interest in SW characters early stories, even if Han Solo is arguably the most admired and well known of SW characters . They just didn't care, but the SW fans did.
So Lucasfilm and Disney failed, to a very large extent ,to understand that there really is no overall huge interest outside the fandom for SW movies that are not Saga based.
That TLJ REALLY did fail to convert and make more new audiences for SW films, otherwise the opposite would be true, Solo would have been more of a success. The more people I speak too outside of the fandom and who have watched it just because its now digitally available say the same thing, it was a mediocre SW movie and that strongly affected their interest in any othe SW films.
And that supports alot of the arguments here. That the direction D&K have been going is not the best for the future of SW films.
GREAT post!
I haven't done any hard research into it, but this is what I have been saying-- the angry fan voice is the LOUDEST but it isn't the biggest. The past has proven that to be true over and over. If you went by fandom's response to the PT you'd think SW was dead, and yet, all of them are amongst the top money-earners of all time.
As for why Solo failed, I think you're all over it. I think it was a combination of things:
- The angry at TLJ fans weren't enough alone to tank it, but they made a dent
- It was only 6 months out from TLJ, which even if you liked, is a heavy chore to make it through
- The general public has been burned before on the "Star Wars characters you know, but YOUNG" approach
- Not many people WANTED this movie. Cool idea, sure, but we don't NEED that story
- The marketing targeting the general audiences was so-so. The Superbowl trailer made no promise of story, or gave a don't-miss-it vibe. It was LOOK! A YOUNG HAN SOLO! FUN STUFF HAPPENS!
- It was already in the hole with being reshot
Really, there wasn't a lot of incentive for anyone to go and see it other than "Hey look, another Star Wars movie." And they can't do that-- and hopefully lesson learned.
While I defend KK as somebody who knows how to produce movies and run a studio, she has certainly made mistakes. The two biggest being not hiring the right directors, and not having a unified plan for the ST.
I still don't know who would do any better, and she can course-correct, but if she has more than one and half flops, Disney will show her the door, I don't doubt it. But she's a ways from that I think. There's a lot of pressure on Episode 9 to kill it, its no wonder they went back to JJ. Like TFA or not, it made money.
That quote never sat right with me, why "white slavers"? Why not black slavers or brown slavers or whatever, those were just as common a white ones mister Lucas.
Anybody that would use that kind of language is already elbows deep in the entire social justice narrative and needs to stay far away from the franchise.
Lucas has always been a complicated with this sort of stuff. He's a staunch liberal and he's married to a black woman... but his roots as a well-off young white dude growing up in Marin county taints him. If you look at the Raiders of the Lost Ark story beat session transcripts, or some of the (according to some) racial stereotypes in TPM and you see a guy who isn't actively racist, but a guy who is just sort of ignorant to the stereotypes that have been programmed into him.