Hear Me Out: Kathleen Kennedy did the ‘Star Wars’ franchise justice
The departure of Lucasfilm’s president of 14 years marks a conclusion to a fruitful era for the Star Wars franchise.
If the most vile commenters of the internet were to be believed, Kathleen Kennedy is a hack who vindictively tore down the legacy of George Lucas and the galaxy far, far away, and her departure should mark a time for celebration. Of course, these haters overlook the fact that Kennedy was the chosen successor to the company by Lucas himself, and that her résumé of credits includes such all-time classics as ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, The Sixth Sense, and AI Artificial Intelligence.
The Hollywood ecosystem has changed drastically throughout the last decade and a half, and no studio or production house has seamlessly dealt with the ramifications of the streaming boom, the Covid-19 pandemic, the WGA and Sag-Aftra strikes, and the merging of major conglomerates. Kennedy’s tenure at Lucasfilm wasn’t perfect, but her successes far outweighed her failures.
On the cinematic side, Kennedy succeeded at making Star Wars films ‘event cinema’, a quality that has become all too rare now that even Marvel and DC have seen their fair share of flops. Although it became targeted for criticism almost immediately after its initial popularity, The Force Awakens succeeded in launching the new characters that would dominate the franchise moving forward, and helped return the magic to Star Wars after the disappointment of the prequels.
The Force Awakens is just as similar in structure to A New Hope as The Phantom Menace was, but its goal was to provide groundwork for future projects to be more ambitious, so naturally, Kennedy took advantage of the talent at her disposal to make Rogue One into a gritty war thriller, and allowed Rian Johnson to make one of the most profound and beautiful blockbusters of the 21st century with The Last Jedi.
The backlash to the subsequent Solo may be a result of many factors, including that it was scheduled for release at an inopportune time, but the film is a much more fun, low-stakes space western than it’s given credit for. Even though The Rise of Skywalker is a defenceless failure, Kennedy admirably took the time to thoughtfully consider what the next Star Wars film would look like before rushing one into theatres. It may have seemed like many projects were announced and then cancelled, but this is something that happens within all studios, where Star Wars projects just happen to receive a lot of attention from probing journalists.
When it comes to television, Kennedy helped oversee one of the biggest hits of the streaming era with The Mandalorian, a show that earned Emmy nominations for its first two seasons. Although she lent creative control to Dave Filoni to oversee the continuation of animated projects like The Bad Batch, Tales of the Jedi, and the final season of The Clone Wars, her greatest success was in greenlighting Andor, Tony Gilroy’s two-season masterpiece that was a grounded, visceral, and unflinchingly political exploration of how rebellions are built, which, regardless of its association with Star Wars is one of the best shows of the past decade.
It may be easy to nitpick some of the projects that Kennedy oversaw that didn’t pan out as well, but many of them had far more rewarding elements than they were given credit for, such as The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, both of which suffered from their extended length more than any narrative decisions. Nonetheless, it was satisfying to see Temuera Morrison and Ewan McGregor playing their iconic roles once more, as both shows thoughtfully considered the way that they had changed over time. The Acolyte may have been the biggest misfire of Disney’s Star Wars era, but it still provided some of the best live-action lightsaber duels ever.
The amount of backlash, much of it created by trolls and right-wing grifters, directed at Kennedy is overblown, and Star Wars appears to have a bright future ahead of it based on the positive buzz for The Mandalorian & Grogu, Starfighter, and the new animated series Maul – Shadow Lord. Star Wars could have ended after Lucas’ retirement, but Kennedy gave the galaxy far, far away a reason to retain hope.
