Years later, it's abundantly clear that Kathleen Kennedy and Disney are at fault for these shallow character-less films since Kennedy just went against what George Lucas wanted and hired an incompetent story team, while Disney just didn't care and let Kennedy do whatever cause they thought it would be Marvel levels of success.
You're not wrong but to be precise, Alan Horn, Kennedy, Bob Chapek and Bob Iger were instrumental to the decline of Star Wars as a major franchise. Each one contributed a unique brand of self-destructive egoism and conflicting ideals that resulted in a metaphorical nuclear meltdown that started with a bright flash that was mistaken for awe-inspiring light but was really just the blast before the shock wave.
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Alan Horn (
chairman of WD studios and later creative officer) was all about deconstructing the franchise and remaking it into something completely unrecognizable because he supported the idea that Star Wars should focus on appealing to those who didn't care about Star Wars and whose decisions were what you would expect from an out of touch ivory tower boomer.
He was essentially a guy who had never delved into the franchise or understood anything about George's mindset or mythos. One of his earliest acts was to question everything by claiming stuff like "What is the Force?" "What are the Jedi?" and following it up by somehow rationalizing it that it was their turn to finally explain everything and really create a non-existent conclusion to a franchise that had already given more than enough closure and fanservice material. He and Kennedy also orchestrated (presumably with Iger or Chapek's blessing) the downsizing of Lucasfilm and the complete replacement of most of its old staff with fart-huffing "new age creatives", even getting rid of many Lucasfilm veterans and only keeping a few of the concept artists who had been working in the studio since the prequels, as well as a few infamous ass-kissers like
Pablo Hidalgo and Matt Martin.
Alan Horn effectively replaced most of the staff with Hollywood pr people or fresh-out-of-college "visionaries" who had no prior experience with Star Wars or even sci-fi, fantasy or space operas (or even writing) while completely undermining everything George and his writers had ever set up. And there's the achievement of the "Creative" officer. Alan Horn and Kennedy adherence to his ideas ultimately resulted in further conflicting directions which resulted in the disjointed narrative that has been following Disney "Canon" since its inception. There's more on him but you can just use search in this thread only and find more tidbits on his failings. Overall, I consider him and Iger to have been the most detrimental elements, with Kennedy as a close second behind them.
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Pablo Hidalgo and Matt "Porgcuck" Martin (
story group and former website managers that were needlessly promoted) in their own way also contributed to the division in the fandom by sowing seeds of conflict and making up reasons for the fanbase to fight via twitter and on forums as well as looking for reasons to claim why everything from George's era was dumb, or even making false claims about the state of the franchise which they even backtracked on a few times, as well as betraying old fellow employees when they demanded royalties or misleading them by claiming that they would still have their media published in Lucasfilm.
Leland Chee was another asskisser but who contributed less to the decline and division than Martin and Hidalgo, and acted more as a doormat who no one listens to and doesn't dare go against the grain, with his only purpose being to seemingly try and calm the flames the other two kept feeding, but he even failed at that, much like most of his tasks that required more assertiveness. His and Hidalgo's lack of assertion and competence were also the main reasons for so many continuity errors in Disney and the final days of old Lucasfilm.
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Kathleen Kennedy (
Head of Lucasfilm) was one of George's former trustees and producers and a longtime producer and secretary for Steven Spielberg. Kennedy was one of the key figures that helped to encourage the Disney buyout with George trusting her to continue his legacy faithfully but in truth it was just a further stepping stone for her career to becoming her own boss and even then she ended up doing very little other than smiling for Mr. Iger and adhering to Alan Horn's idiotic ideas, since in truth she is simply an opportunist. Even the whole "Feminist" push that had been used on the franchise early on by her, such as the 'Force being female' and whatnot was not because of an actual adherence to any ideology, but simply because at the time the Hollywood marketeers believed that a new wave of 'trendy feminism' was on the rise with what they perceived was the sure fire victory of Hillary Clinton and social media trends (that and investor suggestions), and so they wanted to take advantage of these heated events by tying it into the marketing, much like many other companies were doing and hence why Kennedy has done little to address the subject again once it stopped being trendy. Kennedy in truth was not some feminist idealist, simply just another Hollywood executive eager to do whatever it took to rise to power while also doubling as a patsy of incompetence for Horn and Iger who did whatever they wanted with most of her actual decisions being of the most incompetent quality you would expect from another out of touch ivory tower boomer, with most of her decisions being regulated towards marketing and PR appeal. She and Horn with Iger's approval also orchestrated the downsizing of Lucasfilm as confirmed by JW Rinzler's podcasts and both among others were there to bid farewell to the majority of the employees on the days leading up to the acquisition with very little fare.
Kennedy and Horn also served as the greatest roadblocks for creativity and adherence to George-era star wars, even meddling continuously in the productions of the new films, most especially their spinoffs, resulting in not only unnecessary budget costs but in large amounts of footage, sets, props, costumes, scripts and even
directors constantly being replaced on petty whims to make sure everything adhered to some moronic "new vision" of Star Wars.
Overall Kennedy's role in the company has been a relatively useless one that has been mostly self-serving and adhering to the whims of men rather than her own, and her actual decisions have all been flabbergasting or ignorant, even dismissing classic costumes from past films as "not being like Star Wars" and having a bizarre obsession with tentacles and sea monsters, and even hiring just as many incompetents as Horn, most of which were only hired to appeal to investors who wanted a more "progressive" image for Lucasfilm and were made up of soap opera writers for the
story group or more inexperienced college interns. It was all a shameless ruse that took advantage of shameless consumers, the politically obsessed and brainless investors who can't tell when they're being manipulated, all in a bid to obtain more money and influence for the greater company, the whole supposed 'feminist' angle was also a method to attract reactionaries against them in order to play the victim card and make their faux feminism look genuine and sentimental, which was at first exercised through cringe tweets by JJ claiming all criticism was racism or sexism and Lucasfilm's bragging about Phasma's armor to attract GamerGate medias which at the time were also in the midst of a feud regarding female armor in games.
It was all a cleverly orchestrated market strategy based around a faux illusion of altruism to increase publicity and it resulted in the birth of the uselessly idiotic
Fandom Menace youtube movement which only helps to boost interest in Disney rather than discourage it, with noteworthy examples like Doomcock and Geeks&Gamers who seemingly criticize Disney at every turn yet encourage their viewers to continue watching and buying Disney Wars material, basically making them more crypto shills who are too stupid to realize they're being used for publicity with their useless takes.
Spielberg may have also had a hand in all of this through her but the exact details are vague or rumor-based, with all that is certain is that he was more involved with supporting Kennedy and Iger after TLJ as well as shilling for Abrams and Bad Robot's involvement in the franchise. Also for some reason JJ was allowed to take ownership of Lucasfilm memorabilia, including preserved costumes from ANH which Bad Robot had no right to take.
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Bob & Bob
Bob Iger (
Former head honcho) primary orchestrator of the buyout, EA's 10-year hold, the Lucasfilm restructuring and giving Horn, Kennedy and Chapek free-run of the mess while Iger preoccupied himself with corporate fellatio, pointless monopolization and giving himself as many unwarranted raises as possible while spewing honeyed words on behalf of the company to distract the gaggles from any shortcomings. Hell even the bid with EA was mostly for their size and stocks rather than because of their actual quality.
He brought about the largest economic growth for the Walt Disney company by turning it into an even bigger corporate monster hellbent on controlling everything around it. This growth proved to have little benefits for the employees within the company, as even Abigail Disney (an actual disney heir) has pointed out Iger's corruption regularly, his and his executives habit of giving themselves raises on a regular basis while denying their employees even basic necessities and taking advantage of others willingness to work for the company, as well as how their substantial greed has resulted in a lack of money going to areas of the park and company that really need it.
It was also his decision that the original treatments for George's sequels be completely ignored, preferring to target a new demographic, mainly those who had no interest in Star Wars and who fittingly enough moved on from it as soon as the sequels disappeared, with the only ones sticking around being old school addicts and your typical disney fanboys who will lap up whatever has the disney logo on it.
Bob Chapek (
Chairman of Experiences, Parks & Products as well as Iger and Everyone's primary buttkisser) was the royal cheapskate of Disney and the one not only responsible for the unimaginative blunders that were the star wars park expansions and hotel, but was also the one who was most fixated on taking the cheapest routes for max profits. Since taking the CEO position, his current management of the Star Wars brand has also been one of cheapest alternatives for max profits resulting in even lower quality blunders than usual.
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Other elements also played a part in the downfall. Among some of them were George's adopted children, although one that wasn't mean-spirited as far as we know, but could be considered the primary cause of the downfall. George had no heirs who were interested in continuing the family legacy. His children already had goals or aspirations of their own, with Amanda most notably having a martial arts career she was solely dedicated to. His second daughter Katie initially showed interest in continuing the creative side of her father's legacy and even went on to write several episodes of Filoni Wars, but ultimately her pursuits fell elsewhere and to her romantic life. Finally Jett Lucas was the one clearly most fond of Star Wars and taking an active part in the franchise, even having some involvement in production wise in the Disney+ media, and he was also an avid fan of not just his father's work but Star Wars lore in general, including the WEG and WotC SW Roleplaying Games, but ultimately despite his more active role in Star Wars and dedication to his father's work, he ultimately did not continue it supposedly due to lacking the necessary film and executive savvy necessary to run Lucasfilm. All of this culminated in George seeking out a wolfaboo furry as his potential replacement and that's a can of worms I don't want to open today.
But the biggest problem of all and what ultimately led to the downfall was a budget problem which has been discussed in length before by better users here, but a lot of production mismanagement resulted in not only several cancellations but
the potential fall or decline of LucasArts. All of this came from the fact that of a lot of Lucasfilm's income came from ILM and THX among others, all of which Hollywood was actively looking to replace due to wanting to avoid connections to George's independence as well long-held grudges between him and Hollywood guilds.
This budget issue became a more serious problem when George grew interested in making a new series of films, something Lucasfilm at the time (as well as the costly budget of a certain show among other things mentioned) just couldn't do, resulting in George ultimately trusting Kathy and Iger's suggestions to sell Lucasfilm to Disney in hopes that their large assets and connections would allow for the new films and new media to continue unhindered with the hope that due to their long standing "friendship and trust" they would honor his work and continue his vision, aaaaaand you know the rest. George's involvement to this day is mostly for public image and supposedly due to some sort of agreement which keeps him from actively criticizing Disney, with the few instances that he has having been backtracked or erased, with the exception of a few and some production visits for the Disney+ shows which really don't amount to anything beyond cameos.
Ultimately, this can all be traced back to around 2010, but 2011 is where you could already see many changes start to occur presumably to accommodate or appeal to Disney whose deal would be made official in 2012, such as an abrupt number of cancellations, the complete overhaul of the official SW.com website, the Lucasfilm website also receiving a complete overhaul where it eventually resemble a shopping network website, the databank being deleted (despite containing a plethora of concept art, production info and setting lore), the disappearance of the EU and Infinities labels (Canon would be introduced around 2014 iirc), the sudden removal of many non-Filoni Wars merchandise from lists (as well as the cancellation of Filoni Wars which was finalized in 2013 due to contractual disputes with FOX and CN since Disney wanted full ownership of all SW media going forward), the disappearance of many recognizable labels, many producers, employees and authors suddenly going silent and most notably the shut down of the official Star Wars message boards, a massive loss since it was a place where Lucasfilm employees, Star Wars writers, authors, etc and fans all came together and expanded on the mythos and even contained info on unreleased media and background information on the films, George's notes and other productions, including info and images that otherwise went unreleased in any official magazines or guides, and which too many morons were too lazy to archive and because many didn't know about archive.org or the site's eventual demise (this was a forum that had been active for almost 10 years since 2001).
The only thing that is presumably still under George's influence (although the full extent is uncertain) is the original versions of the OT which Disney has not yet released (although George had permitted their screenings at film festivals completely unaltered), including newer edits being made to them such as the infamous 'maklunkee', but again the full details of this are unknown.
If I missed anything or messed up any info please feel free to correct me or supply me with new details.
Edit: Had to change images sizes because the post looks unreadable on mobile.
