After Destroying Lucasfilm's Properties and Alienated Much of its Audience, Kathleen Kennedy is Retiring

Alberto E. Rodriguez. Getty Images.

The internet is lousy with lists of who the best fictional villains of all time are. Darth Vader. Voldemort. Sauron. The Wicked Witch. Loki. Lex Luthor. Scar. The Queen from Snow White. You could spend a day brainstorming the truly great ones and never come close to a complete list. 

But when it comes to non-fiction villains, over the last 13 years Nerd Culture in America has had a single name on its list above all other pretenders to the throne. One CEO to Rule Them All. 

Kathleen Kennedy.

Ever since Disney purchased Lucasfilm for billions back in 2012, Kennedy has annoyed and upset more SciFi/Fantasy fans than diet and exercise combined. The Rage Bait YouTubers have been angry that she's seemed determined to shoehorn a feminist message into every movie and Disney+ series:

Which inspired one of the great South Parks of all time:

Featuring one of their great plot devices ever, Cartman as an alternate universe Kennedy. Which simultaneously mocked Disney/Lucasfilm's approach to everything:

While at the same time using Cartman as a stand-in for the people accusing her of ruining their childhoods:

When to my way of thinking, what she's really been guilty of all along is making lousy movies and TV shows. 

The problem with the Star Wars sequels made on her watch isn't so much that she built them around the Rey character. It's that they suck. Rey is boring. She has zero character arc. They put her in the exact same situation as Luke Skywalker, but removed all the motivations, challenges, setbacks, losses and personal growth, and skipped right to the part where she's awesome and has amazing magical powers that no evil can overcome. Then at the end of the trilogy, just threw Palpatine back in and there and made it so he was rawdogging Rey's granny back in the day. That's less about forcing a sociopolitical agenda into your movie about space wizards than it is just awful storytelling. And not having the slightest idea why the source material resonated with literally billions of people over the last four decades. 

On top of that, she's developed a nasty habit of taking some of the great fictional heroes of the 20th century, turning them into bitter, cynical, misanthropic loners and deadbeat dads. Then replaced them with plucky, resourceful, indefatigable young females. First with Han Solo and Luke with Rey, then Indiana Jones with whatshername. Instead of, I don't know, making an original story about an original plucky, resourceful, indefatigable young female protagonist. But this is what Hollywood does now. Stands on the shoulders of giants like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and hopes some Film Studies majors can repurpose their inspired ideas into something passably entertaining and profitable.

But regardless of how I or any other geek thinks Kennedy screwed up a good thing, the fact is we won't have her to kick around much longer:

Source -  After more than a decade in a galaxy far, far away, Kathleen Kennedy is charting a course toward retirement. The Lucasfilm boss has told associates she plans to retire by the end of 2025, Puck reported Monday night.

   

Reps for Kennedy and Lucasfilm were not immediately available for comment.

So there's no word as of yet to indicate whether she jumped off the Lucasfilm ledge or was pushed. Undoubtedly, that won't last for long. If there's one thing that's always true of any industry but show business in particular, it's that when things go tits up, it doesn't take long for the people who've been keeping their knives sheathed to pull them out and start stabbing backs. And Kennedy had definitely made enemies along the way. 

There was her decision to fire one of her stars over some Tweets, proving that the Force Isn't All THAT Female:

Terribly misguided creative decisions that have fans hating or outright ignoring the very IP they used to love:

One of the worst business decisions in recent memory:

And while I'm really nit-picking here, someone on Kennedy's watch approved of a scene where Toddler Leia outran three grown henchmen:

And followed that up with a scene where Obi Wan snuck her out of a heavily guarded Imperial fortress under his comically oversized coat like Austin Powers:

That's quite a legacy to leave behind. Taking IPs that were indestructible and somehow managing to destroy them is a feat unto itself. The kind of thing it took the entire Rebel Alliance to do, and Kathleen Kennedy did it virtually all by herself. And I for one cannot wait to hear all the dirt that's going to come out about how it all happened. Stay tuned.