Posted on 06/26/2018 10:44:50 AM PDT by servo1969
If you don't want to watch, here's the quick written version:
Disney staged a big "secret" conference call with ranking people in the Star Wars division. Security guards were posted outside the doors at offices to prevent eavesdropping. Pixar and Marvel representatives were able to listen in on the call, but not speak on it. Apparently this was allowed to get feedback, I guess at a later point, about the Star Wars situation.
Disney's head Bob Iger wants to fire Kathleen Kennedy, but there's a problem: No one they're willing to offer the job to is willing to take it. JJ Abrams (Randolph reports) was offered the job, but turned it down flat. "Several" were approached.
One person that's brought up as a possible replacement for Kennedy, Dave Filloni, isn't being considered for the job by Iger, I guess because he hasn't run anything big like a studio.
Randolph says (speculating, I think) that no one wants the job because the Lucasfilm team is divided between old-guard Star Wars people and Kennedy's handpicked loyalists.
I would speculate myself that, assuming this claim that no one wants the job is true, it's because the brand is broken, and people know that, and it's a no-win situation: Everyone seems to think that Star Wars is supposed to make money automatically. That's no longer true post-Solo, but people still think that, so any head of Lucasfilm is in a situation where the best they can do is meet expectations (make money), and the worst they can do is fail spectacularly.
There's no upside. Well, except a huge pile of money, but I imagine the people being approached are already getting huge piles of money from other ventures with more of an upside as far as their reputations.
So no big-name person would want to walk into that situation. Smaller names would take that chance, but apparently Disney hasn't gotten desperate enough to offer it to a smaller name. Yet.
Randolph says that Disney feels that Star Wars is too targeted to "older SJWs," instead of its traditional fan base of men, and this is also hurting Star Wars in its merchandise sales, as "older SJWs" don't really buy movie tickets and certainly don't spend a lot of money on Milennium Falcon playsets.
She also reports that all the Star Wars "anthology" movies are indeed on hold as Disney tries to figure this out, except maybe for one: The Obi-Wan movie, which Disney thinks it should have made instead of Star Wars. However, while this movie is not officially on hold, it's also not on the front-burner, either.
Lastly, while "Episode IX" is still on (it's already started filming), it's "too late for any major course corrections." Kathleen Kennedy has ceded all creative control to director J.J. Abrams, maybe to spare herself further blame, maybe because she wants to just sit this one out, or who knows, maybe because Disney wants the ball in someone else's hands.
One point she alludes to, which she made before: She thinks that Star Wars never appealed to Kathleen Kennedy. Kathleen Kennedy didn't like the franchise, because it was, indeed, a boys' adventure franchise.
Instead of making a boys' adventure franchise she didn't get and didn't like, she made it into something she could like: a girls' empowerment fantasy.
This kind of sums up the problem with Social Justice Warriors taking over male-skewing sections of pop culture: They just don't like it. They never did like it. Some of them even feel that these parts of pop culture encourage "toxic masculinity," and therefore are evil.
And therefore must be subverted and remade into something they never were before.
So you... put multimillion dollar companies into the hands of people who don't like the product those companies sell and in fact might even hate?
Well, good luck with that, I guess.
Doubling Down and Redoubling Down: Apparently an official employee of Lucasfilm, writing for the "official" StarWars.com website, has decided to inform people that they are not "customers" of Lucasfilm and Lucasfilm owes them nothing at all, not even polite treatment.
She seems to be echoing Kathleen Kennedy, who has previously declared that she owes nothing to the male fans of Star Wars (who, let's face it, have maintained the value of the franchise for 40+ years):
"I have a responsibility to the company that I work with. I don't feel that I have a responsibility to cater in some way. I would never just seize on saying, 'Well, this is a franchise that's appealed primarily to men for many, many years, and therefore I owe men something.'"
Yes... yes... reach out with your Hatred... all is proceeding precisely as I envisioned...
Kathleen Kennedy is the root cause for this once great franchise decline.
Her liberal, girly boy characters are a joke.
Star Wars: The Flamethrower.”
The kids love them
The original Star Wars was fun. It was a space swashbuckler and did not take itself so seriously.
The Empire Strikes Back wasn't as fun because they started getting more serious.
Return of the Jedi jumped the shark by including Teddy Bears.
The RiffTrax (rifftrax.com) send up makes it. I don’t recommend watching without the riffs.
Solo’s failure scared Disney executives who presumed that every Star Wars movie would be a billion-dollar cash cow.
I haven’t seen Solo, but blame it’s failure on Rian Johnson, who used The Last Jedi to kill the Star Wars mythology.
Kathleen Kennedy hired Rian Johnson, and should be fired for having done so.
Replace her with Peter Jackson.
Despite the hobbit movies, he showed his brilliance with the LOTR trilogy.
[It’s not 13 year old boys that were buying up all the Star Wars stuff.]
You’re not kidding! At my job, there are PLENTY of adult men with cubicles FULL of SW toys and every piece of SW s**t imaginable.
And gay robots
Sounds like Disney needs someone with Balls
In Luke’s first scene, have him say:
“My lightsaber!”
“Hell yeah!”
If the force is female, that explains Darth Vader...
at least several days of the month.
A man over af Allspark Forum, a Transformers fan site, once said something very wise.
He said: “If even George Lucas won’t try to cash in on it, you know it’s bad.”
Sugar Free Haribo Wookiees?
My question to Disney: if you feel that "white males" are passé and the SW films should be tailored for the SJW crowd -- then why haven't all the women & minorities flocked to see them? Shouldn't they have helped make a profit? Or shown support?
Ultimately liberals have no loyalty. They only care about themselves; they will turn on a dime when something else comes along. Their protests are all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Meanwhile, these clueless studios will continue to alienate their fan base.
I’ve got it! Have her plan for a new theme park ... Disneyworld—Pyongyang!
ping
There’s still a lot of potential in the Star Wars universe, but only for a talented story teller. Trying to turn it into a Disney Princess franchise is guaranteed to fail.
Reason #544 why Donald Trump won the election
This hurting Disney is one of my ultimate schaudenfreudes.
With Air America, there was revived talk of the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine was meant not just to stifle conservative talk radio, but to give liberals access to conservative talk radio audiences when they couldn't build an audience of their own.
Imagine if liberals who failed to establish a thriving vegan restaurant then tried to take over a successful steakhouse and replaced all the steak with tofu? Take somebody else's market from them when you can't build your own.
There was nothing stopping writer or producer or director from making up their own fantasy universe of diverse yet relatable characters who overcome epic struggles. Literary history is filled with such stories going back to Beowulf. Why Disney allowed the Star Wars universe to be usurped and corrupted instead of being set aside for what it is, is a mystery.
-PJ
The only thing worth watching is Carrie Fischer, as she was completely high on coke during her parts.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.