Colin Trevorrow Won't Direct Ep. IX

Its weird agreeing with @Canadian Ronin so much but yeah this is creating precedent that is a problem. Star Wars isnt the only game in down and getting fired before you finish a project isnt great for your career. Star Wars isn't the only game in town and I worry if this continues will only be getting Ron Howard older Gen friends of KK doing this movies.

KK doenst look bad cause she fired RJ although she kinda does considering most of the fandom was not enthused by this choice. Her problem is director problems 4 times.

 

The only fault of KK & LFL is that they come to realisation so late. It's obvious that a potential director has to strike the balance between being fresh and staying true to the series. There have to be rules and I don't believe there's no room for creativity within those boundaries. Lucasfilm know their property better that anybody, so to me it's really weird that some people act as if fitting into their vision was something bad.

 

Eh, the problem with this statement is that according to the rumors, Kathleen Kennedy didn't get along with Lord and Miller early on and wasn't keen on their style of filmmaking. If simply disagreeing with her gets a director canned, then if reports are true, they would have been canned early in the shooting of the film. Additionally, the rumors indicate that they were clashing with Lawrence Kasdan more than anyone else, and the final straw seemed to be when Alden Ehrenreich himself raised concerns regarding the film's tone to higher ups.

I'm not here to defend everything Kennedy does, there are obvious problems going on behind the scenes, but we should also be careful about pinning too much of the blame on any one party. This is especially true when there are multiple people on different sides of the issues who are speaking out.

 

Exactly. I get a little tired of this "Let's blame everything on Kathleen Kennedy" attitude. She's not perfect and she makes mistakes like everyone else, and in all honesty, some of the blame for the issues will fall at her feet since she's the head honcho, but not "everything" is her fault.

When Lord and Miller were canned, everyone said she's too hands off and isn't running a tight enough ship. Now that Trevorrow's out, she's too controlling and won't allow directors room to breathe.

 

But the report/quote makes it sound like she isn't really that open to other input

She's in charge, everything is on her. And this isn't a criticism of 1 of the firing, it's criticism of the pattern. Of 7 projects announced by Lucas film only 2 hasn't had some kind of issue like this, one was cancelled because of them. How is that not a bad sign?

When it happened 4 times...........

 

I'd take that quote with a grain of salt, it's probably an exaggeration. Kennedy is not a writer or director, she's not crafting stories. In my understanding, all she can do is judge whether or not a proposed idea is good and right and that's different. Personally, I think it's possible that what Trevorrow was doing at the writing stage simply sucked and after the L&M shake-up and the fail of The Book of Henry they couldn't afford any doubts.

Let's see what TLJ is like. Rian has stated explicitly (and multiple times) that he had virtually no creative constraints. We'll see what that means for the quality of the film. If LFL didn't intervene because they liked what he did, and the film is truly amazing, there shouldn't be any further worries in regard to their "vision."

 

Lol - yep lots of people try to down play things ppl say that doesn't confirm their opinion

But we can see 4 of 7 projects (1 hadn't gotten far enough yet, so really 4 of 6) has had some kind of issue. What's the consistent element?

 

What's the common element?

 

Well so far LFL, under Kennedy, hasn't put out a terrible movie. I'm not the biggest fan of TFA, but it's not terrible. I think she's trying to make sure that they don't put out something bad. So by all means, squash the the Trank/Boba movie, fire the "funny" directors, and and get rid of the subpar ones. I'd say that mediocre to above average Star Wars is better than BAD Star Wars. She's just handling her household. She's trying to protect and grow what her buddy George left to her. She's doing her job. I don't care if she's a hardass, in fact, I'm glad. I don't think she's squashing creativity. Reigning in uppity directors is one thing, but there are hundereds of creatives working on these movies. They're encouraging them to be creative. (Sometimes, it's a little too creative for me, e.g. No Old Aliens is TFA)
She's the boss. George trusted her. I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt until I see a truly bad Star Wars movie.

 

Your Refusal to answer speaks volumes.

 

Honestly, I support it.

Disney and LFL are trying to tell a story. Eventually, it would be cool to have a system more like Marvel, where we have a centralized power but directors have a ton more creative freedom, and I think that we'll probably get there with the anthology films pretty soon. But with this trilogy and the early reestablishment of this universe, people need to realize that a little bit of conformity to LFL could be better for the series in the long run, and lead to more freedom later.

 

No I haven't left anything out

You can bring up whatever issue with each individual case you want - the issue remains. Why can't Kennedy hired the right director? Why can't she get along with the ones she does hire. Why can't she compromise with them? Why is she unwilling to work them? etc.....

 

Meh, all of these things are hearsay though. What we do know without a doubt is that LucasFilm has had some behind the scenes issues with their directors. It is indeed safe to say that there must be things that Kennedy could have done better. The specifics of these things we don't really know.

Take Lord and Miller, if reports are true, they were the ones unwilling to work with the higher ups at LucasFilm. Things apparently got bad enough that their lead actor expressed concern to the higher ups. I love a lot of the work that Lord and Miller have done, but if the "Ace Ventura" rumors are true, thank goodness they were fired. I'm all for allowing filmmakers to express their vision onscreen, but if they are working on an established property they also need to show respect to the franchise. If they can't do that, then they are bad for the job.

Now on to Colin Trevorrow. Let's be honest right out of the gate, the guy only has one major movie to his credit. It's true that Jurassic World was massively successful from a financial standpoint. From a creative standpoint the movie is pretty divisive though. I maintain it's a bad movie that's enjoyable to watch it you turn off your brain, but it's definitely not a "good" movie by any stretch of the imagination. It's a big budget schlocky B Movie. I was never all that happy with the announcement that he would be working on the film in the first place. I don't want Star Wars to feel like a schlocky B Movie.

If he had bad ideas for the movie, then I'm glad they fired him now instead of most of the way through filming.



One thing you can say without a doubt is that Kennedy and LucasFilm need to do better from the start by actually picking the right directors for the job. I don't think anyone can debate that. They definitely need to do better in that area.

What you can't say, especially without being privy to what events actually transpired is how much Kennedy is willing to work with directors and whether or not she should actually be compromising with their artistic vision in the first place. If their artist vision entails turning an iconic character like Han Solo into Ace Ventura, then no, there should be no compromising. This all goes back to the first issue, which is picking the right directors in the first place.

Even if Kennedy and LucasFilm start doing a good job picking the right directors from here on out though, there's still a chance that they might get another bad fit somewhere down the line. I'd rather them part ways with that director than allow a bad movie to come out because a director shouts "But muh artistic integrity!"

As a side point, stuff like this is why I want them to branch out more with their solo movies anyway. A director telling a story about brand new characters in the Star Wars universe has a lot more leeway than one handling an established character.