Ever since Disney relaunched the Star Wars franchise in 2015, LucasFilms president Kathleen Kennedy has been the target of fanboy frustration, hatred, contempt and death threats.Legions of them spend every waking hour throwing temper tantrums on the Internet, proclaiming Kennedy single handedly killed the tar Wars franchise, killing their childhoods and ruining human civilization in the process. While Rian Johnson found himself in the crosshairs following The Last Jedi, Kennedy has been the biggest face of fan and alt-right venom.
Need proof? When Bob Iger recently stepped aside as Disney CEO (moving into the role of Executive Chairman until he retires in December 2021), the Internet was rife with anticipation and speculation that Kennedy was the next to be “fired.” Her fate, many screamed, was already sealed. There was no shortage of Youtube videos on Iger’s move, and even the ones that didn’t mention Kennedy saw their comments section fill up with calls for her head.
And speaking of Youtube, there seem to be entire channels whose entire reason to exist is to hate Kennedy.
Now let’s not kid ourselves, some of that is purely because she’s a woman playing in a traditionally male dominated sandbox (a fraction of the online trolling is little more than pure misogyny). The rest? Well, there are suspicions.
But Hollywood is a results driven business and money is the only language that matters. So let’s take a look at Kennedy’s track record in the economic arena, shall we?
Originally hired by George Lucas, Kennedy joined Disney’s payroll when the House of the Mouse purchased LucasFilms in 2012. Kennedy has overseen the release of five Star Wars movies since 2015; The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, Solo: A Star Wars Story and The Rise of Skywalker. Four of those have been blockbusters (The Force Awakens even joined the prestigious two-billion dollar club) with only Solo being considered a bomb. Kennedy is essentially battling four out of five. If she was a baseball player hitting .800 she’d be the only name in the MVP conversation.
The only exec on the planet with a better record is MCU architect and fellow Disney employee Kevin Feige. That’s not a bad list to be number two on.
But let’s break it down a little further. Kennedy’s Star Wars films have grossed over 5.92 billion dollars worldwide. That’s an average of 1.18 billion and change per movie even with Solo’s disappointing performance factored in. Again, only the MCU can boast better numbers.
And Star Wars is no longer confined to the silver screen. Last November’s The Mandolorian was a smash hit, launching DisneyPlus with a nuclear explosion. Baby Yoda became a worldwide phenomenon overnight and a second season was green lit immediately. And while everyone would agree that John Favreau was the creative engine driving that particular star fighter, Kennedy was responsible for marrying the two together and signing off on the entire project.
The fact is all the streaming Star Wars goodness we can expect on DisneyPlus over the next few years (including the long awaited Obi-Wan Kenobi show) is courtesy of Kennedy. While she always gets the blame for disappointments and fan disdain, she never gets credit for the hits and the bullseyes. If something or someone doesn’t get her green light as the gatekeeper of Star Wars, we don’t see it. Plain and simple.
She even dips a finger into the creative process every once in a while. While there are whispers that resurrecting uber-villain Emperor Palpatine for The Rise of Skywalker was something they toyed with since the beginning, word is it was Kennedy who suggested they make his resurrection a reality. And no matter what you thought of Palpatine’s presence, his return was the primary narrative pillar that held that movie together.
Kennedy will always be a lightning rod for fan hatred. When she convened with Disney’s powers that be one weekend in September of 2018, the haters were lined up announcing that she was being fired. There was dancing in the virtual streets. The fans had won! they exclaimed, giddier than a five year old on Christmas Eve. Except the truth was Disney, the biggest and most successful entertainment company on the planet, was rewarding her with a new deal. And given her aforementioned box office performance, who could blame them?
When she received the BAFTA award in recognition of her forty years of accomplishments in the movie industry last February, message boards were filled with angry, salty fanboy tears screaming she should be in prison for “killing Star Wars.”
She can’t win for losing and at this point it wouldn’t be a surprise if both Kennedy and Disney were merely trolling the trolls.
There are a lot of people who don’t like the direction Star Wars has taken under Kennedy and Disney, but you can’t argue with their box office success. And in the end, Hollywood’s winds blow in the direction of the omnipotent dollar and Kennedy has a box office record few in history can match. So even if you were to ignore everything else in her career (George Lucas didn’t just pluck her from a vacuum all those years ago, her previous producing credits read like the hit parade from the 80’s and 90’s and include E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, both Gremlins films, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, all the Indiana Jones movies a about a hundred others) her Star Wars batting average is virtually unparalleled.
And that alone deserves some respect.
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