ST Kathleen Kennedy "Theres no source material"

Anyone else see this Interview where KK said that they have no source materiel like Harry Potter for Disney Star Wars? Seriously? Has she ever heard of the EU? Not to mention GL passed over stories and outlines for the ST and other movies.

 

In before the lock, but I think it's a desire to save face on Kennedy's part. I don't see why she would want to draw attention to the source material's existence at this point, given how vocal fans have been in wishing it was used.

 

There’s no source material for an extension of the Saga, correct.

Legends were sequels. Different thing.

 

Well, she was absolutely right about that one. The Harry Potter movies were made from the already existing books. Star Wars movies were never made from any pre-existing material. There being some ancilliary material couldn't be less relevant to that. Those were never going to be an option, in part because even Lucas had disregarded them the entire time, in part because the story didn't really fit to the age of the actors.

The outlines made by Lucas don't change anything about that either. They are just that: outlines. Comparing that to having an entire set of books with detailed stories makes very little sense. The effort needed to rework the already developed story from the books is a very different one from what you need to develop a story from scratch or from a vague outline. Not sure what there is to complain about, the comment was both true and very much obvious.

Just because some people on the internet would have liked for that kind of stuff to be used doesn't somehow mean that it is what "the fans" wanted. You will still find more than enough people who are very happy that Lucasfilm didn't use the story-ideas from Lucas based on their opinion of the prequels. There being people who are unhappy with the direction the story took doesn't mean that they are the majority, or that those who believe it would have preferred if the ST had been based on Lucas' ideas instead. There are a whole lot more options than that. Not to mention the huge group of people who probably didn't even know that there were a) outlines from Lucas, and b) old books that dealt with the future of Star Wars.

 

I think she was just saying there was no source material as to how the story had to go. (The Harry Potter Books were already written.) She didn't mean there was no Star Wars source material in general.

 

Counterpoint there is Jacen Solo becoming Darth Caedus and that, so far, RoS is looking like a DE remake.

It's a really unfortunate choice of phrase but I'm to buy that LFL doesn't have a Press team?

 

Yeah, there's no way that she is simply unaware of the stacks of EU books, comics, etc. It was just an instance of putting her foot in her mouth.

I've long been happy that Luke in the ST isn't portrayed as a high school principal overseeing a bunch of students. That I think would be boring. On the other hand, I did not like TLJ's explanation for Luke's disappearance. Perhaps TROS can retcon that to my satisfaction.

The more that TROS is a remake of Dark Empire, the more I'll like it.

 

This interview, to me, proves that she wasn't the best person to be president of Lucasfilm. Unfortunately we aren't supposed to talk about this though, hence, in before the lock. *shhhhh*

 

This quote was such a revealing moment to me. I have felt for a long time that KK was pretty checked out from the franchise that she's in charge of, and this really sealed the deal. She's definitely no Feige or Favreau. Basically, she's not a fan. She's a business person. And frankly, I think with these types of franchises, the person at the top really needs to be a fan.

I can logically understand why she feels at ease ignoring Legends after the company trashed all of it. As the head of a company of artists, though, it's really hard for me to respect her thoughtlessness toward all the creators that contributed to Legends. I know she didn't mean it as a knock of Legends, but the reality is there is no avoiding that her statement is of course a knock on Legends.

From a practical standpoint, it's always struck me as a stupid position anyway. There is so much story to pick through for inspiration in Legends. There are some really wonderful, creative story ideas and awesome character templates. Just like with Thrawn, they never needed to do 1:1 story lifts, but at least show them and their fans some respect.

 

Yep George Lucas gave KK a 50 page treatment for the ST and they tried to adapt it through Michael Arndt but when JJ came on board he threw it out and Arndt was gone with it ......from what I understand some of TLJ was loosely based on GL's version of EP7 as in Luke was in exile at a Jedi Temple training a girl called Kira to be a Jedi..................

 

Her full quote actually mentions specifically comics, novels etc as source material. It is a quote for the casuals, to appease them and create the false illusion that even if they think the ST is not perfect or if it seems like a rehash of the old movies, they can say "hey guys, it wasn't easy ok?".

At the end of the day a story is a story. And whether it comes in the form of a novel, a comic, or a script, all of those count as source material.

Wjat I find even more amusing is that there was no source material for the last 2 or 3 Harry Potter books either when the first movie came out. And Rowling might have had the general idea of how it's going to go, but she still had to finish 2 books, and those were huge too. I didn't see her, or anyone else, try to make excuses for the lack of source material for the last movies. Maybe you should have had GL write a story then KK?

 

So what exactly did Disney buy from George Lucas? The Rise and Fall of Jar Jar Binks? LOL

 

She’s ultimately correct. There are some great concepts to mine from Legends but no one work is ripe for adaptation 100% to wind down the saga over 3 films. Some of the content is better suited to a Disney + mini series and adapted away from the Skywalkers and just utilizing the broadstrokes and adapting in some other known characters and changing them slightly. A lot of Legends was trash but if you take the best concepts and repurpose then you’re using Legends the way it should be. As a spitballing session of what could work and what won’t.

 

This is ridiculous. It was an interview for TROS, and about the ST. She's saying that there was no definitive established story for a sequel trilogy out there, no novel to adapt like with Harry Potter, LOTR etc, and that's perfectly true. She's talking specifically about the ST and having to pretty much start from scratch. Legends stuff is not a definitive outline for a ST set 30 years after ROTJ. She clearly knows about Legends, and some ideas from them have been used in the Disney era, but it doesn't provide the basis for a ST. What she's saying is correct.

 

Except the bolded is an irrelevant point. Marvel doesn't have that either, or at least that's not what they're doing. Nobody expects that of SW. Making that point doesn't require the extreme dismissiveness of the mountains of creative works out there in Legends.

 

That makes no sense. There were 8 HP movies, and they were released over what, 10 or 11 years, Plus each one told a separate story. That's completely different to a trilogy which is released over a four year period. Plus the obvious point, it didn't matter when they made the first HP movie that the story for the 7th / 8th movies hadn't been completed...for each of the films, when they were made, they had a book to base it on - plus the next several books already written. That was not the case for the ST.

 

The fact that they needed to actually announce back in 2013 that the EU is not canon anymore and will be reclassified as Legends, means exactly the opposite of what you just said. There WAS an established story for the events that happen 30 years after ROTJ actually. What's ironic, is that they actually borrowed elements from precisely these stories, and incorporated them into TFA and TLJ, starting from Starkiller Base, and all the way to Han and Leia's son being the dark side antagonist.

Have you watched the Harry Potter movies? They are NOT separate stories, literally all 7 books are connected.

When the first HP movie came out, there were only 4 books. Rowling wrote the next 3 books (and the main bulk of the story) within the next 6 years.

Disney bought LFL in 2012, which means they had 3 years to work on the first movie at least, and a total of 7 years for the entire trilogy. Plus, why is it not Disney's fault that they decided on such a tight schedule? They were the ones to decide on 2015-2017-2019 for the movies. George Lucas is a very smart man, and was very wise in having the films come out every 3 years instead of two. If Kathleen Kennedy feels that it was hard because they didn't have source material, maybe they should have had source material first, before planning the movies? Or maybe they shouldn't have scrapped the tons of source material they had? As I said before, if they didn't feel they had source material, then they could have had GL come up with treatments and develop them. OH WAIT.

Spoiler: I guess....

 

It's strange though. KK has quite the track record as a producer with Lucas and Spielberg (and probably others as well, don't remember).

 

This doesn't need to be a thread on it's own. A similar discussion can be held in The Development of the Sequel Trilogy. Locking.