They're going to be threatening us with this thing forever, aren't they?
The Last Jedi's Rian Johnson given full creative freedom on his new Star Wars trilogy
With a franchise as tightly run as Star Wars, you would think that Lucasfilm painstakingly plans out every story detail themselves. However, when it comes to director Rian Johnson, he seemingly gets to let loose in their sci-fi sandpit.www.criticalhit.net
To be fair, Lucas actually did own the property, so he had the right to do whatever he pleased.
Oh no.
True.
He didn't just own the property, he owned the company, the facilities, he put his own money into it, and would have been personally on the hook if the whole thing imploded (it did not, and was in fact wildly successful.)
I absolutely agree with this with one tiny caveat. Any creative endeavor benefits from honest feedback. The stories I've heard about the prequel era was that George had pretty much surrounded himself with Yes Men. The prequels, as much as I prefer them over the sequels, might have benefited from someone speaking truth to power and saying something along the lines of, "George I'm not sure if Jar Jar is going to land the way you think he is". Even Gene Roddenberry was able to be talked down from three-breasted Betazoids and "three-legged" Ferengi.
Where were all the "No Men" for the sequel trilogy, now that Lucas was safely out of power? Why did no one object to killing off Han before he and Luke even had the chance to be in another scene together?
This. Not saying Lucas didn't have the right to do whatever he pleased, just as Disney does. Only that there is a benefit to limitations.
If a director is going to be given unlimited authority, they should give it to a director who knows and understands the series well. And KK or anyone else should not interfere with 'that' director's work.
I don't think it was so much that he "surrounded himself with yes-men" so much as by that point, nobody working for him thought they had any right to fundamentally contradict THE George Lucas on how to make a Star War. And it's not like the man didn't try to recruit creative collaborators. He flat out offered Spielberg the director's chair, and he turned him down because he felt that Star Wars was George's and should remain so (though he did eventually get him to direct some pre-viz on RotS as a means of teaching him ILM's new system while he was working on War of the Worlds.)
I disagree.
KK should definitely be fired.
Oddly, kids embraced ANH despite its lack of a similar character, something he seemingly overlooked.
That's fine. Don't mind that but I don't trust directors who can't possibly handle being told no.
Kennedy is not new to the Hollywood drama scene. She is not going to say yes to everyone especially if they can't manage a project based on a companies and their expectations.
Well that rather depends on who's doing the telling, doesn't it? It's one thing when a Director is hired on to develop and execute a project on someone else's dime, it's quite another when they put their money where their mouth is and finance it themselves.
Indeed. She wouldn't have survived this long in the business by being a pushover, or not knowing when to cut losses. She also doesn't strike me as the sort to suffer fools.
Yes.
Why? The majority of Star Wars productions released under her tenure have been financial successes, with only Solo and The Acolyte being the true failures, from a financial perspective. That's not grounds to have anyone fired.
I hope you also get fired for doing a good job
