[fastball]

I think the claim here though is that part of the reason the story is incoherent and that you have a lot of the other problems is because they weren't focused on making a good Star Wars trilogy. If you listen to basically anything the head honcho for these films (Kathleen Kennedy) has said, you get the distinct feeling that she had a different objective than "make good cinema".

As noted, this also seemed to be Rian Johnson's goal as well. It was not "make a compelling story within the Star Wars universe", it was "subvert expectations". Which in the end basically meant turning all the male characters into whinging losers / arrogant assholes while turning all the women into wise sages / over-powered wunderkinds who need no training and make no mistakes, even when they literally do: Leia and Holdo were the ones in charge when literally the entire rebel fleet was destroyed except for one ship with like 10 people on it, and the script gives them zero flack for this. And then of course you have the script letting said terrible leader become an awesome and amazing martyr by single-handedly destroying the huge and menacing enemy flagship in a way that was visually stunning (loved it in the cinema) but broke Star Wars canon in honestly a pretty staggering way (realized once my brain caught up with my eyes).

This actually seems to rhyme a bit with the OP – you can't point out what terrible leaders they were in VIII because the leaders in question happened to be women (I say "happened to be", but it is also clear that the decision to put leadership of the good guys in the hands of women while leaving the leadership of the bad guys in the hands of men was a pretty deliberate move).

Contrast this with The Mandalorian, which has strong and compelling female characters and is adored by audiences of all genders. Why? Because the agenda was not "subvert expectations", it was "make a good Star Wars story".

[staticman2]

The goal is never to make good cinema because the companies are not owned or run by filmakers, they are owned by MBA types.

It isn't some startling gotcha to point that out. "Good cinema" is subjective and meaningless, money can be quantified and is objectively reported as a number.

Anyone claiming the goal is something other than money is projecting.

I didn't like The Last Jedi but it got good reviews which shows how meaningless it is to argue about what is a "good Star Wars story" from a business perspective. Audience exit polls were also positive.

As far as I can tell the goal was to make Star Wars stuff as quickly as possible, presumably set by the Disney CEO not Kennedy. Presumably because he cared more about showing he was making back the money buying Lucasfilm than quality.

So they hired three writer directors and had them start banging out scripts immediately, instead of hiring a writer to outline movies in advance.

And the movies (except Solo) made a ton of money and 2 out of 3 had good reviews and good exit polls. So they are "good" by any "objective" metric.

I guess they've also been "good" for reactionary youtubers so the money trickles down.

None of us know what Kathleen Kennedy's involvement was in private office meetings or what notes she gave. The Youtubers version of Kathleen Kennedy is a fictional character. People are projecting meaning into PR statements about diversity.

[fastball]

This is what Kathleen Kennedy had to say about the production of the Mandalorian, of which (thankfully) she played very little part in:

> In March 2018. Kennedy added that the series was an opportunity for a diverse group of writers and directors to be hired to create Star Wars stories, after the franchise's films had been criticized for being written and directed by only white men.

You don't need closed-room meeting comments to just look at her public comments and infer the motivations from there. Literally, go and look at any public comments she has made.

[staticman2]

By that logic I guess if an Apple executive states they are hiring a diverse group of people and improving their hiring practices in response to criticism (I bet they have stated this?) your conclusion is Apple doesn't want to make good phones.

You might unpack why you see hiring a diverse group of people as the opposite of "making good product" but the long and short answer is you are the sort of reactionary I was talking about.

Never mind the fact that all Star Wars directors so far have been white men, or facts at all, you are angry and upset because someone told you to feel that way and told you that article should make you angry.

[fastball]

You might be projecting a bit here. I'm neither angry nor upset. Nobody told me to feel any which way. I also don't think you can point to anything I've actually said and honestly categorize it as "reactionary", unless to you "reactionary" just means... reacting to the behavior and words of others. And if you want to talk about facts, I'm the only one that has presented any in this conversation: box office results and Kathleen Kennedy's own words. What have you provided?

And no, I don't think hiring a diverse group of people and making good product are opposites or at all mutually exclusive. I never said that, so please don't misrepresent me (as you seem very keen to do). What I do think is that people have priorities and if your priorities are out of whack then that is going to have an effect on your outcomes.

If Apple says that their goal is to have phones be made with as (racial and gender, not neuro) diverse a group as possible, rather than "we want to make the best phones", then yes, I absolutely would be concerned about the future quality of their phones. I don't care who designs/makes my iPhone, and so my priorities and Apple's priorities would be misaligned. In fact, probably the best signal for the future of Apple design recently (for me) was when they parted ways with Jony Ive, a white man. But that was not a good signal to me because of his race or gender, but rather because I think Jony Ive without Steve Jobs to curb his worst impulses was bad for Apple products.

Likewise, I don't care if Star Wars is directed by a straight white man or a pansexual black woman (my two favorite episodes of The Mandalorian S2 were directed by a woman and a black man) – I just want the focus to be on quality storytelling, which is clearly not Kathleen Kennedy's primary concern, if you (again) look at any of her public comments on the subject. Luckily it is Jon Favreau's concern, which is why with The Mandalorian we got both: compelling storytelling with strong characters (of all types), directed by a diverse set of directors.

[staticman2]

You do know Kathleen Kennedy has worked on many successful, beloved movies and was hired for that reason by George Lucas, right? Whatever imaginary version of Kennedy lives in your head strikes me as not particularly plausible.

It doesn't even matter if the characters in Star Wars are white or black or brown- they appear to live in a society with no human concept of race- so I don't even know why you keep bring up the topic of diversity? Human races have zero to do with the plot of any Star Wars ever.

From what i've seen of it Mandalorian depicts a color blind, gender blind social world just like the sequal trilogy, they are sort of the same, so why go on about it?

I don't know why you keep bringing up diversity? It has nothing to do with the characters or why Mandorian is different from the movies so who cares?

The fact you enjoy Mandolorian but not the films just suggests you like one thing and don't like another. It says nothing about gender, diversity, artistic intent (artists tend to try to make good art even if they fail at it. Business people tend to try to make money.) so I don't know how else to explain your posts other than reactionary.

It's cool you like the Mandalorian but you don't actually know the motives of anyone involved, you just know you like the art they made.

[fastball]

For the last time, just go listen to Kathleen Kennedy talk about Star Wars. She makes her motives clear. I really don't know what else to say to you. The fact that she has worked on other films does not impact what her goal with Star Wars was when she took the helm. It's not an imaginary version of her in my head, it's the version of her in my head which is entirely based on her public comments. Not sure how else you want me to form opinions of people. I have quoted her saying something to the effect of "wow this is great because we can have non-white-male directors" – if you want to provide a single instance where she says something like "our goal here is just to tell a good story", then have at it.

This entire post is about diversity and gender issues, so, um, what else would we be talking about? In fact, I think the intersection of gender with the new Star Wars films is hugely relevant to the OP.

Perhaps the reason Rey was a Mary Sue is because nobody felt comfortable saying "hey, maybe this character should have some like, flaws she needs to overcome or something", because they were worried people would see that as wanting the female lead to be weak, and get pilloried for the suggestion. Sure, maybe gender had absolutely nothing to do with this poor storytelling decision, but based on the actual comments of the creatives involved, that definitely seems like the less likely reality.

[timeslip1523]

But they failed at making money. The box office revenue went down. Just because you can't easily quantify 'good cinema' doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and is correlated with monetary success.