BW Media Spotlight

I can pull two articles out of one news story. I haven’t gone over this first one as a primary topic in a while.

Kathleen Kennedy was at a recent showing of the original, non-special edition version of the first Star Wars. What’s interesting here is Kennedy’s comments that, to quote the article:

“I really think that now we’re in a position where it’s broadened the possibility of stories and filmmakers we can bring in to tell stories that mean something to them,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to connect to every little thing that’s been done in Star Wars; it can actually be a standalone story that then builds into many many other stories.”

This is after Mark Hamill cut remaining ties with DisneyFilm recently, an empty gesture given the only living characters among the original cast are played by dead actors except for Lando and C-3PO. Luke’s dead, so’s Han and Ackbar, and Chewbacca had to be reworked back into being alive. Meanwhile Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, James Earl Jones, Kenny Baker (who role could be replaced with a real robot according to what I’ve seen at cons and the fact that BB-8 IS “played” by a robot), Alec Guinness, and Peter Cushing are all deceased while only Vader and Tarkin are dead in continuity. All this confirms is that New Star Wars will now reflect not the world that survived through six movies, four cartoons (pre-Disney, though one happened during the change over), three TV movies, and a ton+ of books, novels, and video games, but the world Kathleen Kennedy envisions, or Dave Filoni as the two fight over which of their daughters are going to be the new face of Star Wars. Of course they aren’t going to follow what Lucas created (and not doing so is WHY Hamill dropped out for even future flashback and Force Ghost appearances) but their “better idea”, which gets this article on topic while setting up a future one (possibly tomorrow’s depending on available topics).

So many complaints about “woke SJW activists” taking over franchises are out there that the real problem, or at least the reason the culture warriors were able to take over, comes not just from Hollywood types who want to look like allies to live their grandparents’ “glory days” of fighting for a cause (forgetting the cause wasn’t the fight but creating what they saw as a better world), but creators who insisted they had better ideas than their predecessors and opted to change all the things so that the popular thing was now what THEY wanted it to be, not what fans had come to love. This nonsense predates the current push of the culture warriors, but when you combine that ego with the ego of the modern activist the problem gets worse. And as I’ve said before, the fans are responsible for letting it happen.

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