Does Lucasfilm Need New Leadership?

Funny, I don't remember people freaking out about the MCU when The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 didn't do so hot in terms of reception and/or box office. For whatever reason, people offer those films a lot more lenience than they do other franchises like Star Wars.

 

Except that isn't right. These things happened before the Disney buyout. It's easier to compare things that happened after this. And Marvel and the MCU did have a leadership shakeup after AoU failed to outperform Avengers and the MCU was taken away from Marvel comics and the former creative committee lead by the CEO of Marvel that oversaw the movies with Feige were removed from the equation with Feige reporting directly to Iger.

 

Exactly. No one called for Lucas to step down after AotC under-performed.

 

SW Celebration next year is gonna be veeery interesting.

 

It has been very frustrating seeing the amount of vitriol spewed across the Internet by a small vocal segment of the fanbase towards Lucasfilm, Kennedy, other Lucasfilm employees, and even actors. Remember how disenchanted Lucas became because of fan behavior towards the prequels? I don't blame his feelings or his reactions. What's happened over the past few weeks (and months even, ever since TLJ's release) is embarrassing, and as a member of the Star Wars community, I feel embarrassed and ashamed being lumped together with these asinine individuals as one big group labeled as "Star Wars fans."

Kennedy is one of the most successful film producers in cinema history. The thought of having to reorganize leadership at Lucasfilm is silly. There have certainly been many hiccups over the past several years, but the output and numbers speak for themselves. The films have all done well, and while Solo may be struggling at the box-office, it's time people adjust their expectations, as well. Not every Star Wars film is going to be a "massive" hit, and not ever Star Wars film is going to bring in higher grosses than its predecessor. This is true for Disney's Marvel label, Pixar, Disney, and it's true for Lucasfilm--and that's a-ok!

Kennedy knows what she's doing, Lucasfilm knows what its doing, and Disney knows what its doing.

 

I'm not sure who could fill Kennedy's shoes. Whether you like her work or not, (and she is playing the cards she has been dealt by Disney), I don't know of someone else who could do that job and not be completely crushed by the big mouse.

Having said that, the fall out with filmmakers is now a pattern. They need to do something about that.

UKS

 

I wholeheartedly agree with this. There seems to be a part of the fandom that is greatly disappointed with the course the franchize took after Disney took over and turned bitter. In all honesty I do think that the most toxic oppinions don't realy come from the actual star wars fans though. This entire SJW / feminist topic has nothing to do with the movies or franchize itself and sounds an awefull lot like the same old song we hear from the alt right and out of boards like 4chan.

I think these elements dont speak for the real fans who are concerned with the integrity of the star wars universe and qualitiy of the movies.

With the second part of you post I have to disagree though. I don't think that KK and Lucas Films know what they are doing at the moment. They treat SW like the MCU and ignore that the fandoms have very different expectations.

The MCU has its origins in a medium that is focused on many small storys that often only losely interconect to each other and sometimes even contradict each other as alternative timelines are accepted in certaine franchizes and are no new idea.

Star Wars works entirely different since the original medium is the big screen and people expect one big coherent story... at least from the saga movies and where TFA was somewhat accepted as it left enough room for explanations for its role in the franchize Episode 8 just trashed it... if Disney cant repair the damage with an epic Episode 9 that repairs and expalins a lot of the damage done a part of the fandom will just wander off.

 

It doesn't sound like what the alt right preaches even in the slightest bit.

Women empowerment is social justice. What the alt right does is hate speech. One of them makes our society better and closer to being equal. The other is hate speech.

 

Yes it does! They need a strong new leader with the guts to admit that Rian Johnson made some extremely bad story decisions and demand an Episode 8 remake.

 

In the vast multiverse of infinite possibilities, you will not find a single reality where this happens.

 

That’s not going to change. Disney bought Star Wars to make money and that’s what they are going to focus on. Not the lore. No matter who is the head of the company it will forever be about the money.

 

You must have misunderstood me. The people that critisize the movies for the aledged sjw / feminist agenda sound an awefull lot like people from the alt right is what i meant.

Gesendet von meinem HUAWEI VNS-L31 mit Tapatalk

 

One can dream!

 

Yes, although that one sounds more like a nightmare

 

I am sorry. I did misunterstood you.

 

I know that companies are in it for the money, I work in product development and it's my daily task to meet customer demands while keeping production costs as low as possible (sometimes impossibly low).

However, some companies do care about quality and customer satisfaction and in case of a movie studio that means caring about lore and source material as well.

 

Lucasfilm needs a leader. Someone who can carry the SW brand forward. No one will ever replace GL, but someone needs to be the thought leader, the innovator, the dreamer.

KK is a talented producer and studio exec. But she is not a creative force like Lucas. So she has been outsourcing the creative stuff to the directors. And to mostly ok results. But she let JJ and RJ do some pretty inconsistent stuff in their respective films. And she let JJ basically do an ANH reboot.

So she needs a really solid creative force that can be that voice for the brand, IMHO.

 

Kennedy can still lead Lucasfilm but they need someone to run the story and the creative department and get the universe in order. Personally, with the fact that each filmmaker can do whatever they want without a plan for the universe overall makes me think more of the struggling DCEU than any other film universe brand right now and to me, that is worrying.

 

Yes, yes absolutely. The directors of these films have no creative freedom, that is except for the one with the worst ideas (RJ). When they push back, they’re expelled from their projects. Let’s look past that, though. When Lord and Miller were removed from Solo after having shot the vast majority of the film, Lucasfilm should’ve taken their losses and canned the whole project. Charts and numbers told them that Han Solo was popular, so they assumed a decent profit’s worth of ticket buyers would see it. Instead of canceling the film, they forged ahead, knowingly giving it a $250 million budget plus marketing. This is despite the layperson clearly having no interest in rushing out to buy a ticket, and a tentative release date that just begged for cannibalism by Disney’s own Avengers: Infinity War. After shafting Gareth Edwards in the middle of his film and getting away with it, they thought they could do the same for Lord and Miller despite some crucially different and blatantly obvious public circumstances.

 

For a somewhat different, and non-hyperbolic, perspective...

The Long Tail of Star Wars Fandom - How Disney is killing the value of the franchise



Much of the defense of the LF leadership I see in the media and online basks in the past glories of the cumulative box office receipts of TFA/R1/TLJ and talks as if that number alone should shut down the conversation.

What often goes overlooked is that the box office isn't where the money is, its the merchandise that the movies sell. Post-sale LF is noticeably lacking in developing new aesthetics and iconography, which makes for less reason to buy new toys (an X-Wing is still basically an X-Wing, despite some minor tweaks.) or buy games featuring them. And that's not even getting into the other Battlefront issues. We're seeing toy sales fall hundreds of millions of dollars below targets and 50% drop in disc sales for TLJ - that magnitude of drop cannot simply be waved away as part of a general decline in toy sales or discs. Furthermore, as one of the biggest entertainment IP's ever, Star Wars should be helping growing the market, not being a prisoner to it.

Also, LF is acting like they can safely alienate the fandom because they number far less than the general audience, but less is said about the fact that the hard-core fan spends many more times the amount of money on Star Wars then the general audience member. Each fan you lose requires gaining many new general audience members to make up the lost revenue. You're also losing the free marketing that fans provide by being the ambassador to the brand to their circle of family and friends. That kind of marketing is something you can't buy with critics, especially in these days where huge swathes of the population distrust the media. The general audience can just as easily go see Marvel or any one of a dozen other big action flicks. Why pick the toxic franchise where even the fans aren't excited or speculating about the next major turn in the story?

 

As much as Disney need to admit they have made some mistakes and offer a head (ie a firing of someone) there is zero why a remake of 8 is going to happen.

Best thing to do is ignore 8 like it never napped or treat it as a bad starwars parody and hope JJ Abrams fixes the mess in the next film.

 

The Last Jedi was a poor movie end of story and Solo was very average and that is being kind.
Not going to mention the feminist stuff I have my opinion and I am free to spend my money how I please as is everybody else.

Kylo Ray Finn Hux BB8 and Poe I really don't care about any of them.

I am not a hater and I have nothing against women or a diverse cast I enjoyed Rogue One and I think the cast did a fine job on that movie.

KK has fired how many people at this stage?
Lucas treatments got binned.
TFA was a shallow clone of the original Star Wars.

LFL blaming fans and calling them racist is lame and just wrong.
Sure there are a few nuts online but the fanbase as a whole seems to have rejected what Disney has been putting out.

TFA was an event the old cast back after more than 30 years however the movie was shallow and forgettable.

Rouge One was a great surprise to me and I think it really earned a place alongside the six REAL Star Wars movies.

TLJ sucked it felt small and lacked scope not going to go on it has been done to death already.

Solo was just a below average Sci Fi romp.

KK does need to go because the first thing that came to mind about the news of 9 movies in the works was Jesus NO.

Disney has given me one Star Wars movie I really enjoyed and I love the original six the other ones TFA TLJ and Solo are just bad movies and I am not a racist or a women hater.

KK and Disney can stick to their narrative about toxic racist fans and the real fans will just hang onto our money.

Star Wars use to be groundbreaking I loved all of the Six Lucas movies I admit they did have flaws.
Rouge One like I said was a nice addition.

I am from Ireland and that Island off the coast of Kerry used in TFA and TLJ really takes me out the movies.
Star Wars worlds are meant to be exotic and spectacular.

Rouge One had Jedda City and Scarif they looked like Star Wars locations.

The other 3 movies look dull barran and uninspired.

 

Huh?

 

I think the main issue was this.

Not the fact there was strong women leads. I certainly had no problem with that.

The problem was the males in the resistance where portrayed as walking lumps of dumb testosterone or stupid comic relief. O and Luke......pretty much a failure.
If the character of Fin had been treated correctly or Luke it would have been better. But there was no male Character you could really look up to or connect two as Poe, Finn and Luke where just meh. Both sexes should of had strong interesting characters.

But that's not why I hated the last jedi.