Kathleen Kennedy Attacks OG 'Star Wars' Fans As She Steps Down As President
Kathleen Kennedy, who served as Lucasfilm President for 14 years and oversaw Star Wars and Indiana Jones, launched an attack on fans of George Lucas’ original trilogy as she exited her position in the company.
In an interview with Deadline, Kennedy was asked to share what her highs and lows were running Lucasfilm and specifically Star Wars.
When it got to the lows, to no surprise, she lied, “The lows are that you’ve got a very, very small percentage of the fan base that has enormous expectations and basically they want to continue to see pretty much the same thing. And if you’re not going to do that, then you know going in that you’re going to disappoint them.”
If it was such a small percentage of fans you would not see such massive declines in the box office grosses of the various Star Wars films not to mention the significant declines in viewership on Disney+. In fact, Star Wars Disney+ viewership has declined despite overall subscribers increasing.
Nevertheless, Kennedy continued, “I’m not sure there’s anything you can do about that, because you can’t please everybody. All you can do is try to tell good stories and try to stick to the essence of what George created. He embedded incredible values into Star Wars and what it has to say. The whole idea of hope and fun and entertainment in what he’s done over all these years, that’s what I tried to preserve.”
While Kennedy is right in noting that George embedded incredible values in his films, she did not attempt to preserve those values, but rather sought to undermine them.
Those values were highlighted by Archbishop Lazar Puhalo in his original review of Return of the Jedi back in 1984. He said, “It is one of the only movies I know of from the last two or three decades where we witness an actual triumph of virginity and morality over the dark forces of the passions. The problems one might have with the interpretation of ‘the force’ are minor compared to the positive beauty of the movie.”
While discussing the final scene in the movie, he noted:
In the closing scene of the film, the allies are celebrating their final victory — not entirely aware that the victory was actually won by Luke Skywalker’s defeat of the passions in his own life, and his ultimate choice of co-suffering love over the temptations of power, anger and malice. Luke observes the worldly celebrations from a distance — he is disconnected from all this, dispassionate, already on a higher plane, his moral grandeur and virginity intact, he has become a “Jedi”, a true monk. He has received the Skhema, and the real victories in his galaxy will be won by him, and those who may follow him. He is now the Elder. As he turns his back on the festivities, he sees in an aura a vision of his sainted Elder, Yoda, his spiritual father Kenobi who, after his own self-sacrificing death, became Luke’s patron saint, and Luke’s father, Darth Vader — all smiling benevolently. Darth Vader with the two saints? Of course, for such is the power of repentance, such is that love which grants to him who wrought from the eleventh hour together with those who wrought from the first.
Kennedy stood athwart this when she made it clear she was going to inject feminism into the franchise as well as into the company that runs the franchise. During an appearance at Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit in 2015, she said, “I think the interesting path we’ve had is the conversation that took place around consumer products. Because there were a lot of companies that were in place who frankly didn’t initially feel that Star Wars was for girls.”
She continued, “And when you have a company situation where between Lucasfilm and Disney, we were all looking at this situation saying, ‘No, with Star Wars we have to change this. We have to make sure that we create products that are in a sense appealing to both boys and girls.’ What’s wrong with that?”
Later in her appearance, she said, “The fact that the company was bought by The Walt Disney Company has been amazing because they very much support the fact that we are trying to grow in the work force a number of women in executive positions and in all positions inside the company.”
“And with the movies that we are making and with the protagonists that we are putting in the stories. So I get a huge amount of support with that,” she continued.
She then touted, “But we have 50% of our executive team are women. And six out of eight of the people in my story group are women. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people that would be surprised that we’re making Star Wars movies and the majority of the people involved in the development of those stories are women. And I think it’s making a huge difference in the stories that we’re trying to tell.”
And Kennedy made it clear she’s proud of this, telling Deadline, “And I wouldn’t do that any differently and I wouldn’t change anything that we’ve done over the years. I understand why some people may like certain things more than others, but that’s not going to change why I decided to do certain things and why I decided to work with the people that we worked with.”