Tag: Kathleen Kennedy

A Tale of Two Franchises: The Real Reason Why ‘James Bond’ Succeeds While ‘Star Wars’ is a Dumpster Fire


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

You hear a lot of bullshit among the Joe Rogan types about how Kathleen Kennedy has “ruined” Star Wars for this or that reason. They think up a lot of thinly veiled misogynistic rhetoric that boils down to a MAGA circle jerk. And, yet, another franchise run by a woman that men love — James Bond — continues to do well on both a commercial and artistic level.

I would suggest that it’s not a matter of Ms. Kennedy being too woke for her own good. I would suggest that the difference between Ms. Kennedy of Disney and Barbara Broccoli of Eon is one of fandom. Given the steaming pile of dreck that Ms. Kennedy has managed to churn out from the Star Wars universe compared to what Ms. Broccoli has produced it definitely seems as though Ms. Broccoli is a Bond fan while Ms. Kennedy is not a Star Wars fan.

I have no idea if I’m right or not, but just as an audience member — an aspiring novelist obsessed with story — the most recent Star Wars movies suck so bad because they’re not seen as movies so much as vehicles to sell toys and a “message.” The Bond movies, meanwhile, are, on their merits, good movies. Ms. Broccoli “gets” Bond in a way that Ms. Kennedy does not “get” Star Wars.

Now, I’m pleased that Eon is working to update Bond by bringing in someone like Phoebe Waller-Bridge to spice up the script. That’s really cool and makes a lot of sense. But it’s still being done within the context of understanding what the audience goes to see a James Bond movie for — girls, guns and gadgets.

Meanwhile, Star Wars movies are all over the place. They totally misunderstand the origin of the passion associated with franchise. The whole thing is so top heavy with identity politics, “slaying the patriarchy” and, most of all making that sweet, sweet cash from selling toys that the thing that brings people to the movies — a swashbuckling space opera — is totally muddled into oblivian.

The sad thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. The Star Wars universe is massive. There are soooooooo many secondary characters that are beloved. There’s a whole canon to be referenced and riffted upon in a way that would bring tears of joy to millions of fans. But they have totally squandered all of that in an effort to get little kids woke and to get them to buy toys along the way.

Part of the problem Star Wars faces is it each movie is such a cultural event — and it’s so associated with little kids — that’s its difficult for them to pair back the edifice and get back to the fundamentals of good storytelling. Just by using the Star Wars brand, you can’t really have any type of sex and your violence has to be comic in nature.

In an ideal world, you would have an “adult” Star Wars franchise and a “kiddy” Star Wars franchise. For adults, you would have The Empire Strikes Back with sex and violence. For the kids, you have the more campy aspects of A New Hope. As it stands, you have a Star Wars movie with a 30 minute subplot designed specifically to get kids to buy toys. What’s more, you have a very contrived and painful to watch plot point that creates a massive hole in the entire Star Wars canon simply to bludgeon audiences with the idea of “trust women.”

This is not brain surgery. You could very well get an actual Star Wars fan like Kevin Smith to write and direct a really good Star Wars movie that would bring back the magic of A New Hope and The Empires Strikes Back. But I would suggest trying to be a least a little bit original by thinking up an entirely new clan to follow the exploits of. You have an entire galaxy to play with — why do we have to keep getting Skywalkers to blow up bigger and bigger Death Stars? It’s becoming quite ridiculous.

The James Bond franchise, meanwhile, has a winning formula and runs with it. What’s more, they’ve managed to turn the campy Roger Moore James Bond that I grew up with into a very serious, dark Daniel Craig James Bond that really takes the whole franchise to the next level.

It’s wild how out of all the franchises that exist in Hollywood today, Bond is the only one that hasn’t either run out of steam (MCU) or that hasn’t been strip mined into irrelevance (Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, Terminator.)

But no one listens to me. And maybe they shouldn’t. But it’s a tragedy to me that Star Wars has all this unlocked value and its producers are such non-fans that they don’t understand what to do with it.

The Problem With Star Wars


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I beginning the process of writing a screenplay as something of a creative “Plan B” and I am using the original Star Wars screenplay as my “textbook.” The interesting thing is, I find myself worrying if I can use its character concepts and structure beat-for-beat now or not. Is it even possible to have a traditional Hero-saves-the-princess type story in the modern media environment?

This gets me thinking about the clusterfuck that is the state of the Star Wars franchise. Now, let me begin by saying, I honestly don’t know how much of this problem is “real” and how much of it is the Russians testing out new ratfucking strategies. I say this because I’m not really the fanbase of the franchise. I love the first two original movies and all the rest of them I can take or leave.

It is easy to accept the narrative that the Star Wars fanbase is male and the executives at Disney — specifically Kathleen Kennedy — are all woke feminists who want to cram their ideology down the throats of the misogynistic fanboys.

I simply don’t think things are that cut and dried.

The whole thing, in fact, is extremely murky and and open to a whole lot of different interpretations. The reason for this is Star Wars is such a potent cultural force — and a lucrative one to boot — that the whole thing is being torn in a number of different directions for a number of different reasons.

I’m not going to play Joe Rogan and try to square the circle in some hyper masculine, yet earnest way. Sometimes, you have to actually have an opinion and own it.

With that in mind, I would say, the problem with Star Wars is, at its core, an issue with storytelling. If Disney would simply go back to storytelling basics, then a lot of the problems the franchise has would be solved. Of course, even the “basics” of storytelling are loaded in this era of Woke Hollywood. I’m of the opinion that if you simply tell a good story, the audience will follow.

As such, maybe Disney needs to lay off trying to sell toys or use the culture significance of Star Wars to change the world. Maybe start a new Star Wars trilogy that is all fan service.

Though, I will note that the more I think about it, the more there’s one specific issue that is causing all these problems for Disney when it comes to Star Wars — they don’t have one, specific visionary to guide it into the future. They have J.J. Abrams, but he just doesn’t seem like a fan of the series.

If I could wave a magic wand, I would give Kevin Smith a three picture deal to fix Star Wars. He’s a huge fan and probably has a good sense of what the fanbase is looking for.

Anyway, I don’t really have any skin in this battle. Star Wars has always suffered from a problem with a consistency of tone. It’s just sad that the problems — be they real or not — are apparently intractable and unlikely to be solved any time soon, if ever.

YouTube Has A Real ‘Red Pill’ Video Problem

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

One of the biggest threats to the Republic outside of fucking MAGA is its ideological nasty little brother the “Red Pill” video that I keep getting bombarded with on YouTube. I guess some of the research I’m doing for the novel I’m developing makes YouTube think I’m a would-be incel-altRight-MAGA friendly or something. Fuck that.

I hate all that bullshit and I hate that I keep seeing these videos by Scott Adams acolytes that vaguely and barely hide their racism and misogyny in the guise of telling me the “truth” about the things the evil main stream media is trying to hide from me because of the influence of SJWs and “woke” “cancel culture.”

Ugh.

I have some very, very strong political views. A lot of my political views probably would not fair well in the eyes of “woke” blue check liberals on Twitter. But my hatred for MAGA is so absolute that I’m willing to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune from the Left simply for the sake of having someone to help me destroy MAGA as a political and social movement.

It’s somewhat amusing how passionate these Red Pill videos are about how Kathleen Kennedy is the George Soros of Hollywood out to crush Baby Yoda or whatever other fuckwit theory.

I’m not a huge fan of Ms. Kennedy, but, come on guys. Your misogyny is showing.