Casting, Racism, Sexism and Kathleen Kennedy

Guys, no one's pushing any agenda. Disney and LucasFilm are just following the money-trail.

For a long time, Star Wars as a franchise could be sustained by a predominantly male fanbase but it doesn't work like that anymore. They've invested a LOT of money buying and marketing Star Wars and they want to see significant returns. There just aren't enough men in the world to make that kind of money. You need both male and females buying tickets, repeatedly, to hit the sweet 2 Billion.
By marketing female characters and toys, they're just expanding the fandom, bringing more females into the fold. Besides, don't you guys remember how they totally left Rey out of the Action Figure line-up post TFA?
Like, "Where's Rey" was trending on all of the social media websites for DAYS.


Of course, they run the risk of alienating the male fans if they take this too far. But where the line is, no one really knows.

 

I am not sure that argument works....Marvel is King and they did it without giving a single women a solo until 2019?
Not to mention not like Star Wars had no female fans before Rey.

Also KK has made it clear she has an agenda more then once...the only question is will that tent include anything but White British Brunettes.

 

Yeah, that was weird considering she was the main character of the film. To think she didn't get some, but Sio Babble did...

Only because Ike Perlmutter is someone who was raised on old-fashioned views, to put it politely. Hence why with Feige in charge, we're getting more female characters and female-centric solo films.

 

Oh I know Ike is ......expletiive.....doesnt change the fact that MCU got to the top with very little diversity outside a love interest and a black best friend (or Hispanic for Ant-man).

Course on the flip side Fast and Furious rose to maybe the 2nd most dominant franchise on diversity.

You can make the case for Pirates over the past decade.

 

I completely disagree with this idea that Kathleen Kennedy got to where she is currently by making bad marketing/business decisions. Sure she has an agenda but she knows enough to not let her agenda come in the way of the franchise's earning potential. Like it or not, the western audience is largely white. Like it or not, the western audience responds to white leads. That's what makes money. They already took a huge chance by making the lead a female.

Look at the box-office grosses of female-led action movies. They are dismal compared to their male counterparts. The highest grossing female-led action franchise was Hunger Games but even it's huge fanbase couldn't vault it over 1 Billion mark.

Star Wars is too big a franchise- too expensive a franchise for the LF execs to take risks with.

Do I agree with it? Not at all. As a non-white female, I would LOVE to see representation. However, I know well enough to choose my battles wisely.

--- Double Post Merged, May 14, 2017, Original Post Date: May 14, 2017 ---

Fast and the Furious makes very little money domestically. Star Wars makes most of its money domestically, Therein lies the difference.

 

yeah star wars is something that's too big to fail: theoretically they could put jar jar as the lead again and it would still make a billion.

 

Agreed. She has been involved in hit franchises such as Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and now Star Wars. She did not get her current job by making questionable decisions.

 

she's definitely talented but she got her job partially from being in the right place at the right time. She started as an assistant, became an associate producer, to producer to EP and then GL's trusty sidekick which is how she has her current role. One of the stipulations george made when selling to disney was the have KK as the head of the company. But I think that what she is doing isnt so much an experiment but just going by what is now PC and evolving star wars as a business over creativity.

 

Lucas' films got more and more progressive over time. All white cast with a strong female lead, then a black lead, some Asians, Polynesians, then a female-centric Star Wars film and TV show. Kathleen Kennedy is just continuing the trend.

 

Ok, this is going to be very rude of me but you're a fool if you think that's the case. No one in Hollywood "gets lucky" like that. For every successful person, there are twenty unsuccessful people willingly to take their place. She held her position through hard work and sound judgment. She is an integral ingredient to the success of the franchises she's been a part of.

 

thats what im saying...it's the PC culture that she's pandering to but that's because it's required to make money otherwise there would be no new star wars movies. I wasnt a fan at first honestly with the new star wars. It's grown on me over time but star wars has become...less "STar wars" to me as a result

 

Sorry, but that's just not true.

 

She's not pandering to any progressive ideals. Star Wars has non-white supporting characters to make the movie more appealing to non-western audiences. Like @Linnus said, F&F is a hugely successful franchise outside the US, partially because of its mixed cast.

 

Well I agree with you who say that KK is indeed great at business decisions, but that doesn't cancel out the fact that when she doesn’t get involved directly, female characters’ looks get incredibly diverse (animated series, video games or novels etc.)
She wanted to cast Bel Powley (yet another white british brunette....) for the role of Rose, Rian had to fight hard for Kelly Marie Tran to be casted.

On a similar note; people at LF and Disney didn't want to cast j boyega because they were reluctant to cast a non-white actor in such a big role. We don’t know if kk was one of them, but donnie said when he improvised the line “i’m blind!” in rogue one, they had to ask kk if it’s okay, so we can see her decision is very important in lucasfilm. JJ Abrams had to fight 7 months to cast john because john was his favorite. he auditioned 9 times during 7 months, which is very irrational.

You can defend her but her casting decisions seem really fishy to me

 

yeah dont get me wrong, it was a sithton of hard work. but it took being in the right place at the right time. I forget where I heard this story but one of the reasons why she was chosen on top of being successful and trustworthy was because she was in a meeting (for star wars I think) and, by the way, this was like 15-20 years ago or whatver, she was the only one to stand up to GL telling him his idea was stupid or something like that. I'm personally glad she's as successful as she is. But just so you know, in Hollywood, about 35% is pure luck.

--- Double Post Merged, May 14, 2017, Original Post Date: May 14, 2017 ---

I didnt mean it in a bad way. i just meant that it feels like she is doing what our culture these days demands. but again, it's a good business practice to follow regardless
.

 

KK road the coattails of Speilberg how hard could that be.

As for progressive Lucas gets a lot of crap as he should for some of his aliens but Lando was more progressive then Finn or Saw and that was 40 years ago or so.

where F and F got its money is irrelevant. America is still most important no doubt but it matters less and less each year because America isnt a growth market. Hollywood doesnt just decide based on what America buys. If it did Bay wouldnt be killing the Transformers.

 

You need to know the right people. However, there's plenty of ways to build said connections though. Theatre, foreign markets etc can all help. That's less luck, and more weighted advantage.

 

shes' the head of the studio and for "re-launching" a multi billion dollar franchise, she was probably just being anal and still is even though theyve already made back their $4bil investment but that's simply because it's a new era for the brand and the studio and they have the utility of a much larger brand as a whole to work with so she was probably pressured into being careful. Predominantly, most leads are white, chiseled men and/or really attractive women.

--- Double Post Merged, May 14, 2017, Original Post Date: May 14, 2017 ---

She helped make those coattails.

--- Double Post Merged, May 14, 2017 ---

well yeah at that point, the larger distributors are doing the work for you, and KK just has to focus on making the movie that will be sellable in the targeted markets. her connections took decades to build but she carved her name into everyone, even eventually marrying an amazingly successful producer too.

 

How much weight are you going to give rumours? None of these rumours have been confirmed and to judge someone based on hearsay is... fishy. There are n number of boxes an actor has to check before he or she is cast in a movie. Why would race be the most important? John Boyega is unknown to the American audience. He is British and has few acting credits to his name. The thing he had going for him was Attack the Block. Which admittedly, he was amazing in.

So did Daisy, what's your point?

The only one who didn't have to audition was Adam Driver - he's an established actor and pretty well known to the American audience, unlike either of the leads.

Yep, she's the one who signs off on all major additions to the movies. However, she's not the only one. Decisions only get to her after going through like 15 levels of scrutiny.

Fishy? Why? Because she's white? Or because she's female? I genuinely don't understand this idea that she owes any of us anything. She's already taken a huge risk with a female lead, so by all sense, she ought to play the rest of the decisions safe. And yet, she signed off on many non-white characters with significant roles.

Like I said, neither Disney, nor LucasFilm, nor Kathleen Kenedy owes us anything besides a good movie. The colour of the actors, where they come from, what their sexuality is, is immaterial to the quality of the movie.

"Progressiveness" doesn't automatically make a movie good and it's extremely naive to think it would.

 

Producers are basically charge of getting the money and fiances sorted which is great but that doesn't really matter if the Director doesn't deliver.
Plus Spielberg found KK not the other way around so the point stands.

Again the knock against KK isn't she is just casting White Women only its that 4X in a row she has wanted a White British Brunette (that looks a whole lot like self insert to me)...Note special Emphasis on White British Brunette....not Blonde not Redhead...not American, Canadian or Australian. Much less another Race.

And before some says she cast the best actress...that may well be the case however now she cast Emilia Clarke who the layperson has actually seen act for years on GoT. And as a watcher GoT I can look at list of actresses that came in for the Han Solo Movie Role and say yeah in no way do I buy Clarke was the best actress on that list.

There is an interview where John and Daisy talk about the process...Daisy went in less times then John despite having no real resume and being The Lead for the Trilogy and the biggest film franchise in history...curious....Also Adam didnt have to audition once. And all he had back then was Girls.