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If Kathleen Kennedy had been made chief of all of Disney instead of just Lucasfilm, she'd have done a "reimagining" of "The Wizard of Oz," featuring a misunderstood lesbian Wicked Witch, and the Munchkins would all have been genderfluid.
Pause for a moment here, not to imagine 30 tiny trannies dancing around Dorothy's ruby red slippers, but in silent prayer that the one-woman wrecking ball of beloved movie franchises is finally exiting stage left. "After more than a decade in a galaxy far, far away, Kathleen Kennedy is charting a course toward retirement," I read in Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday.
Neither Kennedy nor Disney/Lucasfilm have commented.
There have been countless rumors over the years — wishful thinking, really — that Kennedy might finally release her death grip on Lucasfilm. But this week's reports are well-sourced and widespread enough that I think we can almost breathe a sigh of relief.
But only almost. I'll come back to that in a moment.
Let's survey the damage, starting with Indiana Jones.
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg mistakenly went back to the Indy well together one last time for 2008's mediocre-at-best "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." I say mistakenly because Indy's previous final adventure — "The Last Crusade" — ended on a perfect note. Indy literally rode off into the sunset with his father after their adventure together healed their wounded father/son relationship. Three movies' worth of lighthearted, swashbuckling adventure ended with even some of the toughest male fans finding themselves with an unexpected sniffle. Or two.
And Another Thing: Spielberg and Lucas shot "Raiders" quick and cheap, trying to recapture the spirit of the low-budget Hollywood serials of the 1930s and '40s. In today's dollars, the 1980 budget for "Raiders" would come in at just $80 million. "Dial of Destiny" cost $300 million just to produce, mostly on soul-crushing CGI and budget-busting reshoots because, apparently, nobody involved in the production understood what Indiana Jones was supposed to be and needed a $100 million second chance to get it right. They still failed.
Deeply flawed as it was, "Crystal Skull" at least delivered the goods at the end. Indy and Marion finally got married, and just when their 20-ish son, Mutt, looked like he was about to (metaphor alert!) pick up Indy's hat, Indy beat him to it with a sly smile and a “Not yet, kid.”
If that ending lacked the punch that "Last Crusade" had, it still gave us (and Indy) a happy ending and dreams of further adventures — adventures best left to the imagination, given Harrison Ford's age at the time.
The next time we see Indiana Jones, it's in the Kathleen Kennedy-produced "Dial of Destiny" from 2023. Marion has left him. Mutt is dead. He's a miserable old man, basically waiting to die. Why did they have to rob Indy — and his fans — of the rewards he'd risked his life, over and over again, to earn?
This is the same stunt that Kennedy's Star Wars sequels pulled on Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, beginning with "The Force Awakens" in 2015.
Kennedy destroyed our male heroes and replaced them with deeply uninteresting Mary Sue-types. Instead of flawed but lovable heroes, Kennedy's movies pushed infallible (and often insufferable) girl bosses on us. Audiences aren't having it. Despite bigger and bigger budgets, the three sequels brought in less and less money.
Last year, I looked into the acquisition, production, and marketing costs for Kennedy's Star Wars TV and movie projects. The numbers aren't pretty:
My back-of-the-envelope math indicates that Disney has spent $7.35 billion acquiring and producing Star Wars entertainment and generated $6.41 billion in revenues we can see.
They're losing money on Star Wars. That, to borrow Bill Clinton's inelegant-but-ever-so-apt description of his wife's presidential campaign, is like failing to sell p**** on a troop train.
If — if — the Star Wars TV shows brought in a billion dollars worth of revenue to Disney+ (which still lost $11 billion, regardless), then Disney might have made a little bit of money on Star Wars.
But only a little bit.
"Whatever your theory is about why Disney failed to make as much with five movies as Lucas did with the original trilogy (adjusted for inflation)," I wrote, "the inescapable conclusion is that the Mouse House has been a value-destroying steward of one of the most recognized and beloved intellectual properties in the world."
Kennedy had one job, and it should have been a cinch: make money on two of the most-loved franchises in movie history. She blew it, and I haven't even gotten into the numbers of her three worst stinkers.
"Dial of Destiny" is estimated to have lost $100–150 million — she lost money on INDIANA JONES, fer cryin' out loud. "Solo: A Star Wars Story" lost another $50-$100 million. "Dial of Destiny" was a sad, beaten, elderly Indy flick that nobody asked for. "Solo" was an ill-conceived attempt at giving Han Solo a completely unnecessary backstory. Another trainwreck of a production, "Solo" went through three directors (the first two working as a team) and pricey reshoots. Replacement director Ron Howard did what he could to fix the mess that Phil Lord and Chris Miller had made out of "Solo," but (as you'll see below) the project was doomed from conception.
And does anyone remember "Willow?" Kennedy would surely rather everybody forget.
The not-very-successful 1980s fantasy flick "Willow" was also part of the Lucasfilm acquisition and fell under Kennedy's purview at Disney. Kennedy ordered up a TV series reboot that was so badly received that Disney buried it so they could take the tax write-off. It cost an estimated $160 million to produce eight episodes (!!!) and tens of millions more in marketing costs. After Kennedy is gone, maybe they'll show "Willow" at company Christmas parties, like a gag reel.
Even worse, Disney is believed by some to be lowballing their actual production costs.
And Another Thing: "Solo" could have been good had they just given us a fun Han and Chewie adventure instead of needlessly (and often clumsily) explaining every little detail behind how Han came to be. Imagine a reboot of the Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone “Man With No Name” trilogy in which we learn that his name is Gary, and he got into gunslinging due to unreconciled feelings of loss after his wife left him for an anti-gun rights lesbian. See what I mean? Archetypes don't need backstories because they enter cinematic life like Minerva, perfect and fully formed at their creation.
Then there are Kennedy's Star Wars projects that you'll see on the side of a milk carton before you'll ever see them on the big screen.
No fewer than eight Star Wars movie projects were announced or strongly rumored before being quietly abandoned for various reasons. I had ChatGPT generate and format the list for me because it was just too much scut work for one columnist trying to write an essay:
That's just reckless. It's as though there's no one in charge of Lucasfilm because Kennedy can't control herself. Although, if I'm being totally honest, ditching Patty Jenkins and Rian Johnson wasn't dumb. But letting them get anywhere near Star Wars was.
Weirdest of all? The Rey Skywalker (or is it Palpatine?) movie, "New Jedi Order." NJO was announced to great fanfare (by Kennedy) and confusion (by everyone else) nearly two years ago, in April of 2023. Set to be directed by a Pakistani feminist activist, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who enjoys "making men feel uncomfortable," NJO seems to have been quietly forgotten, too. It's still listed as "in production" on IMDB, but it still doesn't have a cast (aside from Daisy Ridley) or maybe even a script.
NJO was supposed to relaunch the post-Lucas franchise for the big screen, as Rey relaunches the Jedi Order, "but the project has seen a number of changes, with various writers attached to the project, putting its release date in doubt," Bang Premier reported earlier this month. Ridley says the film will be "worth the wait." Whether Star Wars' traditional male-heavy audience is looking forward to Obaid-Chinoy making us feel "uncomfortable" when what we really want to see is blasters and lightsabers is a question Kennedy doesn't seem to have bothered to ask herself.
I get the feeling that if NJO doesn't start shooting before Kennedy exits, as rumored by the end of the year, then it never will.
The Kennedy years weren't all bad, of course.
"Rogue One" was easily the best Star Wars movie since the original trilogy wrapped in 1983 with "Return of the Jedi." Despite a muddled first act and some wasted opportunities in the second act, "Rogue One" pulled through in the end. The final act — a showstopper featuring four concurrent battles, so expertly woven together that the viewer never gets lost — is some of the best Star Wars ever filmed.
We also got two enjoyable seasons of "The Mandalorian," although I've found the re-watchability factor is close to zero. I'm told that "Andor" is quite good, but neither my wife nor I could get into it beyond the first episode. Maybe we'll try again now that season two is coming out.
But "Rogue One" was almost a decade ago, and "The Mandalorian" had a terrible third season. Sending "The Mandalorian and Grogu" to the big screens later this year seems like yet another mistake. But it's been more than five years since "The Rise of Skywalker" stank up theaters, so I'm guessing that Kennedy is desperate to get anything "Star Wars" back on the big screen.
And that's about it. Everything else Kennedy has touched, she's damaged — and the damage, sad to say, might prove permanent.
Younger fans who think that "The Last Jedi" is what Star Wars is all about have never experienced the magic of the real deal. Worse, older fans (like me) no longer know what Star Wars is. The original trilogy was a hero's journey out of Joseph Campbell by way of Flash Gordon, aimed directly at boys and young men — with just the right amount of feminine dash, courtesy of Princess Leia, to make it universally loved.
Last year, we learned in "The Acolyte" (I refused to watch it even for review purposes) that the Force is only fully understood by communist lesbian space witches. "The Acolyte" was also canceled after a single season of eight episodes that cost a staggering $230 million just to produce.
I'm reminded of a story from 30 years ago. My grandfather had driven nothing but Cadillacs for four decades but had just returned from an oil change at the dealer — where the lot was fully stocked with then-new Escalade SUVs. "I didn't see anything but trucks," he said. "I don't know what a Cadillac is anymore."
The difference between Cadillac and Kennedy is that Caddy SUVs might have put off traditional buyers in their 60s, 70s, and even older, but those "trucks" brought in the next generation of buyers who weren't interested in driving sedans. Kennedy's Star Wars gender swaps alienated traditional fans but didn't exactly have new fans breaking down the theater doors to get in.
Kennedy retiring at long last is not, however, enough to save whatever is left of Lucasfilm. Disney needs to gut the company of Kennedy hires and spend some quality time thinking hard about where Lucasfilm should go in the future.
It's easy to say, "Just stop making Star Wars stuff already!" but you didn't spend $4 billion acquiring that intellectual property and then 10 years waiting (and waiting) for it to start showing serious profits. Whatever ought to happen to Star Wars, letting a multibillion-dollar IP go fallow isn't going to happen.
Disney wants its profits. I'd like the most entertaining parts of my childhood movie experience back.
If Kennedy's successor can figure out how to deliver the latter, the former will follow just as surely as a proton torpedo guided by the Force down an unshielded exhaust port.
Last Week's Thursday Essay: Politico Finally Notices That Maybe Bidenomics Wasn't so Great, Ackshully