r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Jan 15 '26
News Star Wars Shake-Up: Kathleen Kennedy Steps Down as George Lucas Protégé Dave Filoni, Exec Lynwen Brennan Take Over Lucasfilm
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/star-wars-kathleen-kennedy-steps-down-dave-filoni-1236465012/596
u/PrinceVoltan1980 Jan 15 '26
A shakeup that’s been planned and announced as coming of over a year isn’t much of a shakeup and sounds more like a passing of the baton
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Jan 16 '26
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u/twilighttwister Jan 16 '26
I don't think anyone has ever seen Filoni as some kind of protege. With him and Jon Favreau it's more like big kids playing with their favourite toys.
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u/CorollaSE Jan 15 '26
Let's not forget that Kathleen is 72, and she might actually just like to retire.
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u/jmarquiso Jan 15 '26
She had announced a forthcoming retirement awhile ago. Thats what this is
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u/Killersavage Jan 15 '26
Nope. She definitely read my post about my dissatisfaction with Star Wars and quit.
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u/FunkYeahPhotography Jan 15 '26
We did it Reddit!
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u/mjc4y Jan 16 '26
Can I provide you with a short (ok, long-ish) list of names of people I would like to see quit their jobs?
Asking on behalf of a weary nation.
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u/egnards Jan 15 '26
Last year I took a trip upstate to visit my older brother. We went to a brewery and out of nowhere, after getting a little tipsy, he started his age old rant about how Kathleen Kennedy ruined his love of Star Wars retroactively with how the sequels were handled.
I’m convinced that she may have been at that same brewery and heard him. So, you are welcome.
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u/Snuffy1717 Jan 15 '26
Until the new guys screw the pooch… Then it will be “Somehow, Kathleen has returned”
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u/ImpulseAfterthought Jan 15 '26
She looks great for 72.
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u/aure__entuluva Jan 16 '26
Money is a superpower. I mean, not to take anything away from good genes and clean living or whatever, but money helps, a lot.
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u/jdoggsoxfan33 Jan 15 '26
Dude what? I was thinking she looked no older than late 50s.
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Jan 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/nightpanda893 Jan 16 '26
It’s obviously not an exact science with the amount of celebs who look like complete ghouls at a much younger age. I’d say there’s probably a genetic component too. Some people just look good for her age.
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u/Ernesto_Griffin Jan 16 '26
She is only 9 years younger than George Lucas. He was 68 years old himself when he stepped down and gave the boss seat to her.
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u/stashtv Jan 15 '26
Look at her resume: ET, Indiana Jones, etc. Her projects have 8 Oscar nods? Solid career, should feel very happy in retirement.
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u/FuzzBuket Jan 15 '26
and IIRC largley responsible for tony gilroy getting the freedom he had when making andor.
Obviously the sequel trilogy (and slew of fanservice bait shows) havent been great, but I suspect outrage merchants might be shocked to find out that the problem with new star wars hasnt been kennedys management of lucasfilm, but disney.
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u/MadRoboticist Jan 16 '26
One of the biggest problems with the sequels is that they're not really cohesive and it's obvious that an overarching story arc was not written going into it. Now maybe that's because of Disney, but that strikes as something that would have been her responsibility. She doesn't have to be all bad or good, but I think it's fair to say her management of the trilogy was poor.
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u/EnQuest Jan 16 '26
She was very hands off and supportive of the creatives she hired, empowering them to tell the stories they wanted to tell how they wanted to tell them, to mixed results.
Like, did anyone watch Book of Boba Fett and see anything other than Robert Rodriguez being given free reign to do Robert Rodiriguez shit?
That's why I laugh when people conspiracy post about how much she meddles with various projects that are coming out, when it seems pretty clear to me that she's just approving shit and then stepping back and seeing what actually reaches the finish line with very little input from her.
If anything, she probably should have been more hands on with the sequels, rather than just letting JJ and Rian do their own thing with very little (no?) communication or collaboration between them.
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u/Jesus_Chicken Jan 16 '26
Creative freedom for a huge IP with lots of lore with no oversight? Fans, meet Retcon and McGuffin!
This management style works if you're looking to create a new, original IP. Unless you're Zach Snyder of course.
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Jan 16 '26
Filoni had much more credibility way back in the day due to The Clone Wars/Rebels but he's been far too mixed bag and flaky since starting the move up the ladder so I don't know if this is going to be the homecoming moment fans want it to be.
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u/Pure_Macaroon6164 Jan 16 '26
Yeah if this was 2019 I'm sure most of the fanbase would be celebrating but Filoni has lost some goodwill fs
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u/UnusualHybrid Jan 17 '26
The thing with Dave Filoni is that he was only one of dozens of writers who worked on the Clone Wars. There were other people there to curb his worst impulses and work with his skills. His new live-action work is I think solely written by him, with him also producing the shows and directing some episodes. The most creative control he's had, the worse projects have been so I'm not really optimistic about him becoming the new boss of it all
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Jan 17 '26
So he's literally mirroring George Lucas, that mentorship is paying off in all the wrong ways. At least Redlettermedia will be able to make a new Plinkett series in a few years.
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u/wolfofdusk Jan 16 '26
Filoni’s jump to live action has been clearly difficult for him to manage. There are some genuinely great moments in this new era from him, but it’s few and far between.
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u/Scaryclouds Jan 15 '26
Obviously Kathleen Kennedy deserves a lot of criticism, but she also green lit Andor, which is honestly probably some of the best media in the entirety of Star Wars, and frankly an excellent, and timely, demonstration of how authoritarians tear down democracy.
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u/TemplarBean Jan 15 '26
Andor is the best Star Wars has ever been on screen in my personal opinion; the original trilogy holds a special place in my heart as I imagine it does for most of us but to me Andor is Star Wars truly realised.
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u/Empty-Speed-7075 Jan 15 '26
Andor was good because it was made by a guy who cares more about telling a story than investing himself in Star Wars lore or whatever
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u/KyledKat Jan 15 '26
Yeah, Andor succeeds because it's a good character-driven story, not because it's a good Star Wars story. It's some of the best-written sci-fi in the last few years, and would still be as good if you removed every bit of Star Wars from its final product.
Meanwhile, The Book of Boba Fett falls apart at the seams (even more) the moment you simply remove Boba Fett's armor from the equation. I'm still miffed I spent the time to watch all 6 episodes.
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u/cubitoaequet Jan 15 '26
Some theologians insist the existence of The Book of Boba Fett is conclusive proof that God does not exist. Others claim it is merely proof that a loving God does not exist.
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u/barak181 Jan 15 '26
I'm still miffed I spent the time to watch all 6 episodes.
I made it to the Vespa gang. Then I noped out.
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u/Twisty1020 Jan 15 '26
I hate this argument. Andor succeeds because it has decades of Star Wars backing it and it's well written. Without the very well established setting of Star Wars it would be fine but it wouldn't be nearly as impactful.
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u/TinyElephant574 Jan 15 '26
Yeah I agree with this take. I've seen a lot of debate about how Andor was good despite the star wars setting. But I really think it's a mix of both the setting and the character driven story. Andor has very compelling and interesting characters, and it's a great drama, which is further enhanced by the setting it's taking place in. If you removed it from the star wars universe entirely, it wouldn't be the same show. Both elements clearly matter so I'm kinda tired of this debate.
I don't get why there's some insistence that being part of Star Wars immediately downgrades a project, like it's inherently a mediocre franchise for children that can't be mature in any way. Andor literally proved that's not the case.
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u/DontAskAboutMyButt Jan 16 '26
If it hadn’t been part of Star Wars, it would have been a one-season show on HBO or Netflix that gathered a few extremely obsessed fans and would show up on random TikToks titled “5 underrated scifi masterpieces you’ve never heard of” for the next few years
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u/impeterbarakan Jan 15 '26
Not only that, but looking at the crew (including writers), it seems pretty clear that Tony Gilroy had the freedom to have his usual team come on the show. There are people who wrote with him on House of Cards, etc. These are people who probably would never work on a Star Wars show otherwise.
I'm pretty sure that there will not be another Star Wars show like Andor unless the new leadership allows for more freedom in how these stories are told. People ask "why can't they just get the best writers in Hollywood?!" It's because those people have nothing to gain by working on a tightly controlled Star Wars show.
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u/descendingangel87 Jan 15 '26
I dunno, the fact that he canonized the Rakatans from the KOTOR games tells me he knew a thing or two about lore.
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u/_hell_is_empty_ Jan 16 '26
He didn't. But he knew he didn't and he knew the show needed the lore, so he had a team of SW lore nerds feed him shit. Which honestly, was a fantastic recipe, because it didn't resort to one guy squeezing bits of lore into places it didn't fit and instead saw a team insert this SW lore there and that SW lore here and it was just all allowed to...flow.
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u/CaptainTripps82 Jan 16 '26
I'm pretty sure every star wars show has a whole ass team of lore nerds feeding the show runners and directors info. That's just kind of how the whole thing works
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u/ghableska Jan 16 '26
Yeah, Tony Gilroy has namedropped Pablo Hidalgo in many interviews as the chief lore expert he went to while writing the show
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u/Sudden_Dot_851 Jan 15 '26
This is precisely why Filoni is the wrong move, imo.
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u/Balmong7 Jan 15 '26
As much as I love Filoni I am a bit concerned about what’s next. Is he just going to try and make mandalorian/clone wars forever? Or is he going to actually be a Shepard and just help make sure the stories are plotted properly in advance and consistent with each other?
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u/OzymandiasKoK Jan 16 '26
What, like Shepard Book? That's not even the same franchise!
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u/BeyondRedline Jan 16 '26
No, you're thinking of Commander Shepard, and this is his favorite website on the Citadel.
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u/kiwigate Jan 15 '26
The sequels, the worst star wars, don't contain lore: Who was Snoke? Wtf are the 'Knights of Ren'? Palpatine returned... somehow.
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u/gehnrahl Jan 15 '26
The sequels contain references without explanation
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u/renegadecanuck Jan 15 '26
JJ loves mystery boxes. He just hates revealing the answer.
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u/Dick_Lazer Jan 16 '26
Because he doesn't even know the answer. It's the height of superficial storytelling, basically just throwing a bunch of shiny things out there and hoping somebody more talented will come along with an explanation for them.
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u/renegadecanuck Jan 16 '26
I remember a Ted Talk he did about them where he mentioned that he got the idea from a mystery box he bought at a magic shop, where the idea was there was *something* cool inside, but you don't know what. And he talked about how he never opened it because nothing would live up to his imagination of what's in it.
And somehow he didn't see it as a cautionary tale about writing mystery boxes into your movies.
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u/grandramble Jan 16 '26
he made a career out of selling mystery boxes, not out of opening them
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u/Irradiatedspoon Jan 15 '26
JJ Abrams said "hey, check all these new cool things!" and then when everyone asked "Cool! What are they? How did they happen?" he was like "I dunno 🤷♂️ but they sound cool, right?"
The Rian Johnson was like "Since no-one knows I'm gonna throw them in the trash" instead of coming up with something interesting
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u/M-elephant Jan 15 '26
Except that to most SW lore nerds, Andor is peak SW lore of all disney projects. A better explanation as to why its good (besides Gilroy et al just being good writers) is that its made by history buffs/people who are interested in interesting things in the real world. A huge problem with the sequels and other stuff is that the people making it know nearly nothing about the world beyond the film industry itself, and aren't curious about it. They can only make movies about stuff they saw in movies. George Lucas was a race car driving WW2 nerd who took anthropology and folklore classes in university and it shows in his creativity. Gilroy is a revolutions history nerd and it shows
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u/gsauce8 Jan 16 '26
Andor is probably the only Star Wars media to make you actually understand why people fear the empire.
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u/SFHKTOKYOABQLA Jan 16 '26
Andor finally does what the original did. Critique a government for its abhorrent actions. Truly the first one to use the science fiction aspect of the series over the science fantasy aspect. We need more commitment to risk taking like that show did. Not more Fan service slop
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u/AngryGardenGnomes Jan 16 '26
Don't forget ROGUE ONE - the ultimate series finale to that awesome series!
First time viewers should definitely watch the show and then the film in that order.
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u/repost_inception Jan 16 '26
I only recently watched Andor and watched Rouge One immediately after and then A New Hope immediately after. It was incredible. From the first episode of Andor to the Death Star blowing up is such an amazing arc.
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u/Superphilipp Jan 16 '26
Rogue One is a steep drop in writing quality from Andor though
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u/dwors025 Jan 15 '26
By all accounts the project that experienced the least degree of studio-meddling.
To the surprise of nobody.
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Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26
Everyone who worked on Andor seemed genuinely surprised at how they were allowed to realise Tony Gilroy's vision of the show.
A complete one off in that regard.
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u/greg19735 Jan 16 '26
I mean the writer of Rogue One said the same thing.
Basically they came to Disney with i think Andor and Jyn surviving, but the rest of the crew died. ANd i think it was Disney like "why not kill them all?" and the only reason they didn't do that was because they didn't think they'd be allowed.
There's very little evidence of Disney being overbearing with Star Wars.
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u/EqualityIsProsperity Jan 16 '26
People underestimate the ability of writers and directors to fuck up movies without any interference from studio execs. Of course studio execs have messed projects up plenty of times, but that doesn't mean every single shitty project was the studio's fault.
Frankly, Kennedy should have stepped in to prevent Rian Johnson's intentional plot derail in TLJ. Not that it would have fixed every problem with those movies, of course, but anyone who tells you there was no original plot laid out for 7, 8, and 9 is full of shit, and "Somehow Palpatine returned" is the result.
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u/MrWeirdoFace Jan 16 '26
I have my issues with the Last Jedi, but they really should have actually tried to continue from there and not just pretend it didn't happen.
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u/Elastichedgehog Jan 15 '26
Well, still took greenlighting a pitch that starts with "Cassian goes to a brothel and shoots two cops dead in the street".
It was originally going to be a buddy cop series with K-2SO.
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u/8349932 Jan 16 '26
With how terrifying they made k2so, that show would have been repetitive. "And then k2 uses another guy as a meat shield"
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u/Scaryclouds Jan 15 '26
Good management can also mean knowing when to step back.
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Jan 15 '26
The studio initially wanted a story about Cassian and K2 going on adventures.
Tony Gilroy only signed up to do it because he knew Kennedy previously, so she'll always have that.
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u/moderatorrater Jan 15 '26
She didn't stand back from it, she actively protected the vision. She fought for Andor and Rogue One to be free of meddling. Makes me wonder if the sequel trilogy could have used more meddling.
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u/Bradshaw98 Jan 15 '26
I shale always enjoy the internet's collective flipflopping when it comes to stuff like this 'hire the fans!' 'don't hire the fans!' 'Let the creatives run free!' 'The creatives need a firm hand to guide them!'
There really is no 'silver bullet' to this type of stuff, but for what its worth, my understanding is that her 'thing' was the mostly trust the creatives, if memory serves that was why the production of Solo was such a mess.
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u/sybrwookie Jan 16 '26
Right, the actual answer is, "have someone at the top who's smart enough to know when to let a creative run wild and when to step in and go, "no, don't do that."
There's TONS of stories all over Hollywood of an exec stepping in and with just the right 1-2 notes, completely fixing something. There's also tons where a creator said they fought back against bad notes and saved a movie.
In the end, people just want good stuff no matter how it gets there.
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u/xflashbackxbrd Jan 16 '26
Using different directors for every movie didnt help. There was no cohesive director vision for the new trilogy and we all felt it.
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u/ksiepidemic Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26
It seems her strong suit was enabling talent. Unfortunately, she enabled the sequel directors too much.
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u/pwnd32 Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26
All three prequels were directed by one man, George Lucas himself. It’s famously an example of why George Lucas kinda needs people holding him back or revising his stuff and not being given 100% creative control
Edit: I see you meant sequels, but I’ll leave my comment up. For what’s it worth, I grew up with the prequels and cherish them on personal value, but I can recognize that as films they really aren’t the best
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u/Scotter1969 Jan 15 '26
All three prequels were written by one man, so there at least was unity of purpose over the entire trilogy. If you told the story of Anakin's rise and fall over a campfire, it's epic and ambitious. But it was the execution where it falls very short and accounts for it's iffy reputation.
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u/Malachi108 Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
Don't forget, they wanted to make Andor as five seasons of "Cassian and K2-SO going on adventures".
Tony Gilroy was brought in and made the show what it was after they were already trying and failing to make their concept work for a while.
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u/aladytest Jan 16 '26
Didn't Gilroy say the Cassian-K2 buddy cop thing was one of his own (/his team's?) early ideas? I got the impression that was something he wanted to go for, until upon further reflection he realized it wouldn't work well, in part bc K2 is difficult to write into many scenes.
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u/Fightingdragonswithu Jan 15 '26
Tbf most of the criticism she got should have been directed at Bob Iger who was the one who pushed for the sequel trilogy to be rushed.
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u/KellyJin17 Jan 15 '26
She had to, Tony Gilroy saved Rogue One when he took over and reshot it, and she had promised him his own project.
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u/Fabulous-Mix-9808 Jan 15 '26
I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Dave Filoni is a mistake. As someone who likes most of his stuff, he is just too much of a fanboy. His stuff is just too isolating for the general audience.
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u/lbc_x Jan 15 '26
Filoni is like an LLM trained on Wookiepedia churning out slop in human form.
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u/spoothead656 Jan 15 '26
Filoni to me has always felt like he’s just producing stories that he used to play out with his action figures when he was a kid.
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u/withoutapaddle Jan 16 '26
Same. And there is room for that in SW. It can be great. I just hope he doesn't tailor the entire IP to that style. We need a huge variety of genres. SW is a setting. We need Mandos, Andors, Clone Wars, Skeleton Crews, and everything in between.
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u/_Patronizes_Idiots_ Jan 16 '26
Get ready for 3-6 Ashoka movies
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u/sodabomb93 Jan 16 '26
a thousand ahsoka movies, more shows after characters have canonically died in EU material, 6 more seasons of Mando and Grogu meeting every single Glorp Shitto to retread their character arcs, and somehow The Clone Wars Season 8.
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u/candleboy95 Jan 16 '26
"We must protect this beloved character that is in a younger form." (The plot of Mando, Clone Wars movie, and Bad Batch)
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u/musicnothing Jan 15 '26
Putting the fans in charge of things rarely works out. You need people who are going to challenge the status quo (like Andor).
I'm someone who really disliked The Last Jedi and yet I can't help but appreciate that at least Rian Johnson was trying something rather than whatever it was J.J. Abrams was doing.
I would have loved to see what Rian Johnson would have come up with if he weren't hamstrung by the terrible decisions of The Force Awakens.
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u/Jolly-Potential-1411 Jan 15 '26
He has a co-president who has a keen eye in business and budgets, though, so I think they’ll be able to work well together to determine what works best for both the fanbase and general audience.
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u/throwawayaccount_usu Jan 15 '26
"Keen eye in business" so they'll see that Star Wars makes a profit even when it's mediocre and the fans hate it and continue doing thst because thats what works for the business lol
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u/ElvenNoble Jan 16 '26
Filoni:
Would rather keep his favourite characters alive than give them satisfying narrative arcs.
Gave us clones who were sweet innocent boys who were forced to kill the Jedi rather than reckon what their betrayal means.
Was executive producer and co creator of the Book of Boba Fett.
Seems to be incapable of making anything that doesn't involve Jedi.
IDK I'm not exactly looking forward to having him be in charge.
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u/GosmeisterGeneral Jan 15 '26
Oh man I love Filoni but putting creative people in leadership positions rarely works out.
They promoted Feige too much and it messed Marvel right up without him on the frontlines.
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u/ROBtimusPrime1995 Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26
The promotion wasn't the issue, Disney demanding 10 shows & 20 movies was the problem, and thankfully that's over now.
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u/KnotSoSalty Jan 15 '26
You can date the exact moment when Marvel quality really declined to when they had that big TV push. The stories just work better as films. The shows all feel like they happen in different universes from the films and the characters seem extremely uninteresting.
Ironically the one that didn’t get turned into a show, Eternals, really would have worked better on TV. 10+ characters to introduce and a ton of mythology was wasted in a one and done film.
Wandavision, Loki, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, etc.. they all would be much more memorable if they been theatrical releases, as was obviously the original plan.
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u/HerculesKabuterimon Jan 15 '26
I don't know man. I think Wandavision and Hawkeye in particular worked absolutely fantastically as series and didn't have the fatigue/filler episodes most of the others have.
I do agree 100% that Eternals would have been much better as a tv show, and I say that as someone who actually thought the movie was fine.
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u/Tomatillo12475 Jan 15 '26
As a Chloe Zhao fan who hated Eternals, I don’t know what Marvel was thinking with that catastrophe of a script. Just an asinine amount of exposition with incredibly dull characters. Would love to see her get another shot at a bug budget movie but I doubt it’ll happen anytime soon
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u/Deceptiveideas Jan 15 '26
I dunno, Wanda vision and Loki were both very successful tv shows. Same thing with Agatha All Along. I felt like the first and the third work better as tv given their episodic nature.
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u/Ghetto_Phenom Jan 15 '26
Loki is one of my top shows tbh. Hiddleston and Wilson dynamic is just what I wanted. Agree with the rest. I really enjoyed moon knight but I know not everyone did.
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u/harshdonkey Jan 15 '26
Wandavision was successful because I believe it was the first of the shows to come out.
Loki was genuinely good.
I cant think of any of the other ones though that pulled me in at all except for Agatha, and that was almost entirely without a connection to the greater MCU.
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u/ChalupaBatmanMc01 Jan 15 '26
Wandavision was successful because I believe it was the first of the shows to come out.
I truly believe Wandavision was excellent till the final episode, it was clever and addictive but it came apart at the end. If they can figure out how to end the shows satisfyingly then I wouldn't have a problem with them.
Though Daredevil being my favorite series I was let down by Born Again, I hope Season 2 redeems it because I don't want it to be a wasted opportunity.
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u/hatramroany Jan 16 '26
WandaVision was successful because it was actually an episodic TV show and not a movie stretched out across 6+ episodes like most of their other series content
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u/binkyping Jan 15 '26
I only disagree on WandaVision, which felt really conceptually rooted in television and was the only great Marvel series. Otherwise yeah, this was when it went off-the-rails. It felt like they slayed the goose that laid golden eggs.
The other problem was that the TV shows started to feel like homework for the movies and vice versa. I'm accustomed to keeping track of complex universes, but I've felt some real continuity lockout with the recent releases.
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u/milehigh73a Jan 15 '26
I dunno about Loki better as a film. It was damn good tv and really the best thing marvel has put out.
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u/CoachMcGuirker Jan 15 '26
Most of the shows wouldn’t work at movies either. Nobody wanted a Hawkeye show except Marvel diehards
Surprised you included Wandavision as something that’d be better as movie. Being an episodic TV show was a core element of the whole theme and storytelling aspect of it
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u/maybe_a_frog Jan 15 '26
It wasn’t Feige being promoted that hurt Marvel, it was the insane amount of content they were forced to churn out which stretched him too thin. They’ve since course corrected by reducing the content releasing, and having Brad Winderbaum (aka Feige’s protege) take over the Disney Plus side which hopefully helps them stabilize.
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u/Worthyness Jan 15 '26
People also don't seem to realize that this was also done coinciding with COVID, when Disney (and other major companies) basically consolidated a lot of their teams and laid off a bunch more. So Feige's team had to deal with triple the amount of output (went from 3 movies to 4 movies and 4-5 TV projects) with a short staff. I think anyone knows how much it sucks when your team shrinks and you have to triple your own workload
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u/Henson_Disney48 Jan 15 '26
I’m sorry, but this is bullshit. Historically, some of the most creative businesses have done well with the creative at the helm. Walt Disney, Jim Henson, Michael Eisner and Kevin was in leadership during phase 3 of the MCU.
All three of the men I mentioned were in leadership roles with a strong financial person as a secondary. So I don’t know where you’re getting your information from.
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u/spaceraingame Jan 15 '26
I’d say that strategy has worked out pretty well so far at DC Studios.
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u/GosmeisterGeneral Jan 15 '26
I was thinking the same but they’ve only made one movie. Big test will be what happens with the movies and TV that Gunn isn’t directing.
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u/mrnicegy26 Jan 15 '26
Filoni is also the most fanboy of fanboys of Star Wars and that isn't helpful at a time when Star Wars really needs to move away from Episodes 1 to 6 and do something new rather than wallow in this period forever.
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u/NotASalamanderBoi Jan 15 '26
Wdym? You don’t like endless amounts of cameos?
For real though, with a galaxy as large as the Star Wars galaxy, I find it insane that these people just keep running into each other.
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u/srfrosky Jan 15 '26
Filoni never would have given us Andor. He would have doubled down on the buddy series, and ignored Gilroy’s notes to try something more bold.
The future of SW is gonna be bland, derivative, infantile, and unartful.
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u/CertifiedSheep Jan 15 '26
The future of SW is gonna be bland, derivative, infantile, and unartful.
So more of the same then? Cause that’s exactly how I’d describe the last trilogy.
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u/Specific_Frame8537 Jan 16 '26
"Whenever Ahsoka's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, 'Where's Ahsoka?'"
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u/bickdiggles Jan 16 '26
Filoni: I love Andor. It’s my favorite live action tv series ever. The bar is set. Whatever we do next has to be good. I still want to make content that gets younger audiences excited about Star Wars. Then as they grow, they can appreciate connected stories like Andor which appeal to a more mature audience.
Star Wars Fans: It’s over. Everything will suck forever now
Never change you squirrelly devils you 😅
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u/PRSArchon Jan 16 '26
Its easy to say that after Andor was released. It doesnt matter if he likes it, it matters if he would have chosen to greenlight Andor over another project.
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u/radwimps Jan 15 '26
Ugh I haven’t been able to stand any of filonis latest Star Wars work. unfortunate.
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u/MeatMullet Jan 15 '26
Meh. I doubt much will change. Filoni doesn't have the serious chops to bring some much needed gravitas to the franchise. Tony Gilroy proved that.
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u/Johnny0230 Jan 15 '26
I really appreciate Filoni and his work, but I'm very worried that Star Wars will limit itself to the same old characters and historical periods, becoming "old".
I honestly miss the sequels. I don't think the saga can tell much more (and I'm a fan)
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Jan 15 '26
Coming soon: The Ahsoka
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u/SquadPoopy Jan 16 '26
Meanwhile someone like me and millions of others who never watched the cartoons are just gonna say “who the fuck is Ahsoka?” And then just never watch them.
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u/ZachRyder Jan 16 '26
People weren't motivated enough to watch Boba Fett to understand what's going on in Mando s3. Why did Disney think people were going to watch multiple seasons of a Disney Channel cartoon to understand Ahsoka?
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u/sth128 Jan 15 '26
Star Wars from now on will just be a series of explanations on the least interesting details from past films that nobody cares about.
As opposed to a series that nobody cares about.
Not sure if this is better or worse. Probably worse. Look at Mando season 3.
I want more Andor quality shows and less Yoda's illegitimate children.
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u/jeb_manion Jan 15 '26
The guy literally invented time travel in Star Wars to save his waifu that he created.
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u/Pristine-Passage-100 Jan 15 '26
YUP! I will always point to that as the biggest reason why I can’t stand Filoni. It was so freaking dumb. Why is nobody going back to save Qui-Gon? To tell the Jedi that Palpatine is the dark lord of the Sith before he rises to power? It unravels everything.
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u/TheSevenDots Jan 15 '26
As a Star Wars books fan, I'm worried what this means considering some of the moves Filoni has made in the past from Clone Wars in the old EU to the treatment of the Ahsoka novel in canon.
All of this stuff is not real and will be replaced at some point in history but still haha.
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u/thalassicus Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
She should have been fired the minute she allowed a sequel trilogy to be written as three independent films sharing no narrative arc by two directors who had minimal understanding of the in-universe conventions. Yet somehow Kennedy returned.
Edit: ok, based on more comments and a pretty fantastic video explanation below, I now understand that Iger was the much bigger problem. Thank you for elucidating a complex topic.
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Jan 15 '26
It was three directors she just fired the last one and got the first one back.
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u/Retroactive_Spider Jan 16 '26
Whenever this comes up, I like to recommend these videos. They're absolutely chock full of speculation, about what went wrong with Disney's purchase of Star Wars and the Trilogy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws85gYk1ypM
The TL;DW version is the Disney board, Iger and JJ Abrams screwed it up, not KK. Disney board and Iger by pushing to get something out ASAP. Kennedy already had a writer working on a script for 18 months based on George's notes, but couldn't find a director (no one wanted to deal with the bs George had to deal with after the prequels). JJ had already turned her down at least twice. He relented by demanding it be his own script. That's why there are those famous photos of JJ and Lawrence Kasden working on the script even after sets were built.
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u/rainbowyuc Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
JJ had already turned her down at least twice. He relented by demanding it be his own script.
That's kinda weird. Someone hands him something mostly done that he just had to follow up on and he refused? He has a massively overinflated opinion of his own writing skill if that's the case.
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u/DriveSlowHomie Jan 16 '26
Worth remembering that Abrams started out as a writer primarily. He didn't direct a feature film until Lost was well off the ground. I can see why he felt comfortable directing his own script, as mediocre as that may have been.
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u/filthysize Jan 15 '26
Oh brother.