Kathleen Kennedy: The Savior Of Star Wars

Should we get the elephant in the room out of they way? As those of you who navigated here from our front page saw, I don't particularly care for The Force Awakens. Star Wars is like a fraternal twin to me. While my biological birth predates Star Wars by a few years, my self-aware conscious birth is almost simultaneous with Star Wars's premiere. I grew up with it, and it grew up with me. So it is no hyperbole for me to say I had been waiting my entire life to see what happened next in Star Wars. Instead, TFA flashed Star Wars back to its 1977 state with a forced pen. "Boo," says I.

So after devoting the introductory paragraph to declare my disappointment with TFA (as a Star Wars film), why would I praise Kathleen Kennedy? I'm an empiricist, and the numbers don't lie. First and foremost, and as much as I don't like it, her job is not to cater to my personal Star Wars wants. It's to appeal to the broadest audience possible. She did just that with The Force Awakens. Second, and much more importantly, it's because she is guarding Star Wars like any of us would. She is saving it from itself.

The acceptance of fantasy entertainment is not unlike that of fiat currencies. The acceptance is basically social consensus. Why does the US dollar have value? This is a gross oversimplification, but it's basically because we all agree that it does. If we get to a tipping point where enough of us truly start to question the value of the dollar, it comes crashing down like the house of cards that it is. Yes, this alarms me as well, which is why I converted all of my cash to fidget spinners. Long after we lose faith in the dollar, we'll still have fidget spinners. And we can trade those spinners for things we need. Like other fidget spinners.

Whether or not something from entertainment becomes a cultural phenomenon is largely the same thing. It is because we collectively say it does. It goes the other way, as well. If we reach that tipping point of confidence where the concepts become too silly, it gets stuck in a permanent state of mockery. Then, by extension, the fans themselves are mocked. No one likes to be mocked, so off they go to the next new thing. Kathleen Kennedy is saving Star Wars from getting stuck in Batman '66 territory. It's a rut from which it is nearly impossible to extricate a franchise.

When the Batman TV series was launched in 1966, the concept of a self-taught, self-funded, tights-wearing, bat-cowled billionaire James Bond with a highly flexible adolescent sidekick was just too silly for the showrunners to take seriously. They couldn't play it straight. So they made the series a satirical self-parody where the villains had the courtesy to use only cartoonishly perfect ball bombs as their implements of destruction. And with that, an entire generation grew up viewing Batman as laughably foolish concept instead of the hip cool superhero he has once again become. It would take decades to undo the damage. Tim Burton started the process with the 1989 Batman film, but then he took a match to the subject's newfound respect with the jarring Batman Returns. By the time of the Clooney Batman, the escape velocity required for a return to relevance was lost, and the Caped Crusader crashed right back to 1966. The property wasn't truly resurrected until the uniquely gifted and supremely talented Christopher Nolan took the reigns with Batman Begins. It's serious, largely mirthless, and absolutely brilliant. It took nearly forty years and an apex talent to rescue Batman from mockery. That, my friends, is some heavy lifting.

Star Wars rests on some equally silly concepts. Impossible scales, magical powers, nonsensical weapons, and physics-bending action abound. If we allow it to do so, Star Wars can slip right into that Batman '66 territory. It is ripe to be mocked and is fertile ground for parody. As of right now, we collectively choose not to do this. If we reach that tipping point, it will be hard to rescue. After the prequels, we were getting perilously close to that point. Recently, there were several Star Wars comedic vehicles in various stages of development that, according to many accounts, were starting to lean too heavily toward mockery. Slapsticky Star Wars characters and skits were rampant at Disney venues. The untitled Han Solo film was rumored to be written as a comedy with a lot of meta humor (think 4th wall breaking Deadpool stuff).

This is where Kathleen Kennedy saves the mythos that we all care so much about. First, she nixed all the comedies that were in the works. Second, she halted a lot of the nonsensical business going on at the parks. Third, she abruptly fired Lord and Miller from the untitled Han Solo movie, and put a director on Christopher Nolan's level at the helm, who is well adept at telling serious stories (even if the Han Solo movie will have natural tension breaking humor). These, among other moves, have earned her the pejorative title of Emperor Kennedy. But this is dead wrong. She is not some despot ruling with an iron fist. She is Jon Snow protecting the wall.

Our franchise was rocketing toward Batman '66 territory. Fans might not like it, but Kathleen Kennedy stopped the slide and now protects the brand like we must insist she should. You'll thank her later.

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