For the past several days, the internet has been focused on the astounding Independence Day failure of Indiana Jones: The Dial of Destiny, which was beaten on its opening day by an anti-human trafficking indie movie starring Jim Caviezel, Sound of Freedom. Of course Indy 5 will, and already has, raked in far more than the Christian-themed film based on the true story of OUR Rescue founder Tim Ballard, but the latter film already made its $14 million budget back while going toe to toe with a $300 million CGI-laden Disney-Lucasfilm picture. But the real question people should be asking is: will this embarrassment finally be the end of Kathleen Kennedy?
Since seizing the throne atop Lucasfilm in the wake of its sale to the House of Mouse back in 2012, Kennedy has presided over reboots and reshuffles and Disney+ launches that have, with few exceptions, amounted to a steadily spiraling series of failures. The excitement around The Force Awakens steadily decreased over the following films, to the point that the last episode of the sequel trilogy did less than half the box office. And the output from Lucasfilm on Disney+, while initially impressive with Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, has meandered with a mostly disappointing Obi-Wan Kenobi series, a very disappointing Boba Fett series and a Willow series so disappointing it was yanked from the service within a year of its launch. Is everyone excited for The Acolyte? I bet you are.
Kennedy’s decision to hire young, up and coming directors like Gareth Edwards and Rian Johnson backfired when she had to hire Tony Gilroy to scramble to fix Edwards’s mistakes in reshoots of Rogue One (the most iconic scene in the film being one of them), and when Johnson’s decision to “subvert expectations” went so far it left many viewers going “what the hell was that?” before returning to the bland jumble of J.J. Abrams for The Rise of Skywalker.
Worst of all was her botch of a promising standalone, Solo, directed by 21 Jump Street and Lego Movie pair Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Six months after filming started, Kennedy — urged on by Lawrence Kasdan and his son, the writers of the movie — got cold feet and fired the young directors to bring in her contemporary, the old reliable child of the early Fifties Ron Howard. Howard reshot about 70 percent of the film, ditched the humor and improv of Lord and Miller, scrapped Michael K. Williams as the villain for Paul Bettany, and turned in a film so poorly received it remains the only Star Wars movie to actually bomb at the box office.
And whatever happened to Lord and Miller? Within six months, their release of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse hit theaters with a bang, made almost as much money as Solo on less than a third of the budget, and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Their sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, has already almost doubled the prior film’s box office on the same $100 million budget. The Spider-Verse series is a phenomenon, a blend of nostalgia with a new take on an old character, with humor and emotion and a plot that plays with time travel and (obviously) the multiverse — all things Disney in general, and Lucasfilm in particular, have failed to achieve with their plethora of properties.
Meanwhile, Indiana Jones and the Irritating British Brunette are trucking right along toward emulating the performance of Bryan Singer’s bomb, Superman Returns. (Phoebe Waller-Bridge may soon hold the notable distinction of starring in the worst performing Star Wars movie and the worst performing Indiana Jones movie — perhaps some people should stick to television.) Not a good track to emulate in any case, and particularly not one that can inspire hope for what comes next.
What comes next for Lucasfilm is a big question, given how other than the plans for additional Disney+ series, the lack of creative direction is palpable. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the duo behind Game of Thrones, were supposed to be launching a new trilogy as soon as last year — but they reportedly walked away from the deal over tensions with Kennedy about obligations to Netflix. Rian Johnson was supposed to get a trilogy as well — that too was scrapped. Taika Waititi was supposed to have a Star Wars movie by now — he’s still working on the script after three years, and not close to launching. And Patty Jenkins’s Rogue Squadron film? That, too, is now on the shelf.
What we do have is an announcement from Kennedy at this year’s Star Wars Celebration (yes, it’s quite a stupid name, but we’re talking about Disney adults here) that there would be new standalone films from James Mangold, Dave Filoni and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. Filoni will get a chance to bring his Mandalorian-era take to the big screen, while Obaid-Chinoy — “a Pakistani-Canadian journalist, filmmaker and activist known for her work in films that highlight gender inequality against women” — will get to reboot Daisy Ridley’s Rey Palpatine atop a new Jedi Order. As for Mangold, he just came off replacing Steven Spielberg to direct Dial of Destiny at Kennedy’s behest — so how long that remains the case, we’ll have to see.
The critics of Kennedy’s tenure as head of Lucasfilm certainly can’t blame her for everything that’s gone wrong with their beloved franchises. But it’s fair to say that the largest amount of blame lies at her feet. As criticism mounted, the seventy-year-old has turned increasingly toward the idea that the critiques are borne out of sexism or a “toxic fan base”, more upset about her “The Force Is Female” T-shirt and her promotion of Strong Female Characters. She’s repeatedly touted that the majority of her story team working on Star Wars is female, and Lucasfilm pointed out to the New York Times with satisfaction the introduction in The Last Jedi of the first Asian-American female star, Rose Tico — who became a target of ruthless fan hatred as soon as the film was released.
Kennedy’s next pet show for Disney+ is The Acolyte, whose star Jodie Turner-Smith was booed at the Celebration gathering for describing her character as “a powerful leader in a very woman-centered world, which I was very excited to kind of be in that because I feel like Star Wars is very patriarchal.” Leslye Headland, the showrunner whose experience includes The Bachelorette and Russian Doll, admitted her discomfort with Star Wars‘s masculine vibes: “I’m not sure how much I care about Han Solo anymore. When I was little I really liked him. When I watch him now, I’m kind of like, ‘Gosh a lot of my psyche makes sense now.’”
The problem isn’t what these women have done to Star Wars; it’s that the obligatory strong female characters in these movies are just so forgettable and lacking in character development. They succeed at everything they try, they’re smarter than everyone else, they can defeat any man in any situation, and they lack any of the charm, wit and courage of — well, to pick a random female character from a problematic patriarchal film franchise, Princess Leia or Marion Ravenwood.
Getting a Star Wars show even as you hate on Han Solo’s toxic masculinity probably does explain a lot about Lucasfilm under Kennedy. The retreat to victimhood and gender politics as an excuse for a subpar performance is an easy out for some in Hollywood. But it matters a lot less when you’re part of an overall company that lost $120 billion in market value last year, and you’ve demonstrated that you can take one of the most beloved characters in American film history and turn him into an aging joke on Independence Day.
Results have to matter at some point. Someone has to know when it’s time to go. So please, Bob Iger, get Kathleen Kennedy to take that golden dial of destiny and give someone else a try. Maybe Lord and Miller are available?
