Kathleen Kennedy To Exit After "Tribute" At Disney "Star Wars 23" Convention

[jkholm]

I am baffled by Lukas's assertion that the Hero's Journey is basically an "adolescent narrative" and that so called 'grown-up" stories are more realistic. That is a gross misunderstanding of what the Hero's Journey is and how it functions as both myth and storytelling template. I am not opposed to stories that are "realistic" but certain genres, especially sci-fi and fantasy, lend themselves perfectly to variations on the hero's journey. If you see a movie with this template, and it's boring, that's not the fault of the plot, it's the fault of the storyteller.

[Monterey Jack]

Just being honest -- I often wondered back then if ANY of them actually LIKED movies. Granted the L.A. staff were mostly out of college but I actually LIKED movies and had seen a lot more of them, even being a few years younger, than they had...but the tone of the mag was sarcastic and highly critical, even of quality. That of course was also its charm for readers too, but in hindsight, they really had no idea how good they had it back at the time compared to now!

Lukas is almost the exact same age as I am (48 as of a month ago), and yet, when I started reading FSM in the fall of 1994 (when we were both around 20), he already had a deep level of cynicism about movies and their music, like he was a middle-aged grouse inhabiting the body of a college student. I would just read each issue (as a freshly-minted film music enthusiast), and be astounded at how he'd tear down great movies/scores, claiming how they "weren't as good as back in the day!" , which is REALLY weird for someone who wasn't old enough to HAVE a "back in the day" yet! I mean, at my current age, I have witnessed the slow deterioration of good filmmaking and the good music that used to accompany it, but when I was twenty, there was still TONS of good film music being written, and for good, adult movies. Yeah, in the mid 90s there was sh!t like Congo and Batman & Robin and Judge Dredd, but all of those had music that'd be considered ambrosial by today's moribund standards. The 2012 Dredd movie was a lot better than the Stallone one, but imagine it backed by Alan Silvestri's bristling score to the 1995 movie!

[AndyDursin]

Hey look -- when I met Lukas, he had never seen GOODFELLAS and had no idea what Intrada was.

And I'm nearly the same age as you guys (48 in October -- I was referring more to Jeff who's several years older), but I was constantly devouring movies all the time, from the time I was in middle school. Renting them, going to the theater, getting a laserdisc player, recording stuff off AMC and Cinemax when they had great movies showing all the time -- that's what I was into. I imported movies before there ever was a DVD lol. I've always wanted to see movies and hear scores I had never been exposed to by composers I liked -- didn't matter if I ever saw the movie itself -- and I never got the sense the FSM staff was as invested, back then, in the cinema in general. I remember so many times saying I liked something and being dismissed for that opinion. One time I mentioned some of the Williams Pops CD's and it was like, literally, "I don't like that Boston Pops s---t".

Granted, the mid 90s were the beginning of the end for modern studio fare -- like you rightly pointed out, the quality ratio started heading downhill when I was in college from 93-97, so there was a LOT of mediocrity to rip on -- but there were still great movies and great composers out there that the magazine tended to dismiss and snark on.

One thing I know is some of the cynicism was formed from relationships with older guys like Nick (for a time), Richard Kraft, and the like. One time when I was saying how great a score John Williams' THE RIVER was, the response was "I heard that score was an abortion!" Now, the person had clearly NEVER HEARD the score, but HAD heard from Nick (or whoever) that it sucked. That kind of thing happened a lot in the early years. So there ARE instances where it's not so much an opinion that changed -- it's that they hadn't even heard it back at the time to begin with!

[Monterey Jack]

Granted, the mid 90s were the beginning of the end for modern studio fare -- like you rightly pointed out, the quality ratio started heading downhill when I was in college from 93-97, so there was a LOT of mediocrity to rip on -- but there were still great movies and great composers out there that the magazine tended to dismiss and snark on.

This was the era when Thomas Newman, Elliot Goldenthal and James Newton Howard were breaking out, writing a series of fine scores for a variety of (often adult) movies, and yet Lukas would always dismiss them with a *** out of ***** review, complaining that the scores weren't as good as some blacksploitation flick from 1972. And, again...things from movies from before he was born (or else very little), in an era when it was difficult to go back and watch older films. Hey, back in 1994, I was listening to composers like Horner, Silvestri, Broughton, ect., and Lukas was always grousing that they were crap compared to some Miklos Rozsa bible epic from the 50s or 60s. I was just starting out! Granted, I was a "late bloomer" when it came to film music fandom (I didn't buy my first soundtrack album - Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom on cassette - until the spring of '92, when I was still 17), but Lukas already seemed like some grumpy 45-year-old with a curt "get away from my bone" attitude when it came to contemporary stuff compared to "the good ol' days". Basically it took me almost thirty years to get to the kind of sour attitude Lukas has when he was in college, but at least I had good music to listen to when I was that age, and wasn't stuck-up enough to complain it wasn't Ben Hur or Superman: The Movie.

[AndyDursin]

Hey, back in 1994, I was listening to composers like Horner, Silvestri, Broughton, ect., and Lukas was always grousing that they were crap compared to some Miklos Rozsa bible epic from the 50s or 60s.

Right, but again, do you think that was a truly informed opinion, or was from people who "shaped" the early years of FSM providing their analysis? Because I can tell you in 1994 he hadn't seen many films from the Golden Age. lol

[Monterey Jack]

Right, but again, do you think that was a truly informed opinion, or was from people who "shaped" the early years of FSM providing their analysis? Because I can tell you in 1994 he hadn't seen many films from the Golden Age. lol

One time he used a phone call I made to the FSM offices (not using my name, of course) as grist for a column where he said he was "...recently talking to someone who has never listened to a score by Rozsa, Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, ect. He had heard the names, but not the music", and how that "threw him for a loop", but he was the EXACT SAME AGE as me. I remember mentally sighing a bit when I showed Alien to my nephew some years back, and he was like, "Oh, Sigourney Weaver's in this?", but, at least there, I was over 25 years older than he is. I could give him the benefit of the doubt that stuff from our generation is stuff he hasn't seen yet because he's much younger. But Lukas had this snobbish attitude even when he was barely out of his teens! I can complain about films and their music being crap these days, but it truly IS, whereas in 1994, despite the "rot" beginning to set in, there was still plenty of good music and movies to go around. CGI hadn't taken over everything, political correctness hadn't swamped everything, franchises hadn't swamped good, adult filmmaking yet, and good, melodic film music was still hanging in there, putting up the good fight. 1994-era Lukas was like a time-traveller from 2022 inhabiting the body of his 20-year-old self in terms of his I Hate Everything attitude.

[jkholm]

Right, but again, do you think that was a truly informed opinion, or was from people who "shaped" the early years of FSM providing their analysis? Because I can tell you in 1994 he hadn't seen many films from the Golden Age. lol

I can complain about films and their music being crap these days, but it truly IS, whereas in 1994, despite the "rot" beginning to set in, there was still plenty of good music and movies to go around.

I remember reading letters in FSM from people in their 40s and 50s complaining about how much better movies and music were in the 1950's and 60's and I would think, what's with these cranky people? Now I'm their age and saying the same thing. I ask myself, am I just being a cranky old person or are movies really much worse today? Maybe it's more that the number of "pretty good" movies has dwindled and now we have a whole bunch of terrible movies and a small handful of exceptional ones. The only bit of anecdotal evidence I have for movies getting worse is the people I follow on Letterboxd who are younger than me and who frequently complain about the sorry state of contemporary cinema. Even some of the diehard MCU fans I follow are beginning to express frustration with the last couple of movies and TV shows.

I also have to admit I was probably influenced too much by the negative opinions I read in FSM. I all but completely ignored James Horner in the 90s thanks to the harsh comments from the FSM writers. I even had a snarky letter making fun of Horner fans get printed. Now, I'm discovering much of his music for the first time and really enjoying it.

[AndyDursin]

I'm glad to hear that John some of his best scores occurred right when they dumped all over him.

And I will tell you: movies are not as good in 2022. And certainly film music isn't either. That's not a "get off my lawn" statement I don't know how you could possibly advocate in favor of either. You'd be insane to do so lol. The 50s VS 80s argument was about style and you could have those disagreements. There's no such debate to have today.

Again I agree with you on Horner I often felt I was one of the few who was an advocate for him throughout the 90s on that magazine. I disagreed with how they treated him at the time and I think history has shown I was right to do so. Same with John Barry who wrote a few of his best scores in the mid 90s but they dismissed some of them as bland and themeless. Wrong!

But I would run into people who read the magazine and were heavily influenced by the reviews Lukas and Jeff wrote. Years later when they started writing liner notes as if they never criticized Horner or whoever I had to laugh as they tried to do a 180 on material they once called crap. I guess the labels just forgot all about the reviews and tone of the magazine over time.

[Eric Paddon]

I admit my enthusiasm for TV and movies started to decline in the 90s. Maybe that's why I didn't view the last decade when the giants of film music were still with us as anything particular special because except for Williams theme for "Jurassic Park" nothing from that decade entered my memory as a great and memorable film music theme the way it had been so in the late 70s and early 80s. There were some good efforts but nothing stood out in my mind the way film music did a decade earlier. I could remember humming the theme from "The Right Stuff" for years even without benefit of any kind of soundtrack album back in the day. That feeling just wasn't there for me in the 90s even with films I saw that I liked.

Regarding Barry, I have to wonder if many of us were just frustrated by the fact he wasn't doing the Bond films any longer? We were still pining for him to do another Bond score that I think it made us not interested in whatever else he was still doing.

[AndyDursin]

Well you guys really missed out if that's the case, because The Specialist is a sensational score, musically far more interesting than most of his last few Bond scores (especially Octopussy and A View to a Kill) and not outside the genre either albeit with the addition of a jazzy, sexy undercurrent reminiscent of Body Heat. The Scarlet Letter, Across the Sea of Time are also beautiful scores from that era. I felt the magazine totally missed the boat on many of those as far as I recall. Several of them rank with his career best IMO.

Frankly Barry said all he needed to say with Bond over his career. Yes I would've liked another one too but The Living Daylights was a nice way to go out. The series needed him more than he needed the series by the 90s. He had nothing further to gain except a pay check, but as John Williams has kind of proven here working for Disney, tapping back into the well without the inspiration doesn't necessarily add to your musical legacy. It kind of detracts from it.

[Monterey Jack]

He had nothing further to gain except a pay check, but as John Williams has kind of proven here working for Disney, tapping back into the well without the inspiration doesn't necessarily add to your musical legacy. It kind of detracts from it.

I remember Lukas, reviewing Goldsmith's Star Trek: Insurrection in the pages of FSM, comparing it to John Barry's Octopussy. "You wouldn't want anyone else doing it, at least there's a new theme, but compared to twenty years ago, it's pretty muted." That's pretty much where Williams is at writing various scraps for the Disneyfied Star Wars...it's just reassembling bits and pieces of his previous work, with little in the way of memorable new character themes or individual, concertized setpieces (there's nothing akin to a "Battle In The Snow" in any of these recent films). Yeah, it's "better" than the generic mush that constitutes the TV scoring, but it's kind of like watching a gimpy, 80-year-old Robert De Niro delivering the most laughably arthritic "beatdown" in cinema history in The irishman.

[AndyDursin]

Some of it is a function that these movies are scored like cartoons today. The music is this frantic bombast of "happy" and "sad" flourishes, closer to a Bugs Bunny cartoon than the 1977 Star Wars. Even when he throws in a theme from the original films it's rammed in and poorly implemented. Watch the end of Revenge of the Sith and the last 13 minutes of that score compared to Rise of Skywalker -- there's no comparison musically even between the prequels and these pictures.

These movies simply were not worth his time but we know he was paid well and that seems to have been the motivator. I just wish he walked away from Disney as Spielberg has now done. He didn't owe Kathleen Kennedy or certainly this studio anything.

[Monterey Jack]

These movies simply were not worth his time but we know he was paid well and that seems to have been the motivator. I just wish he walked away from Disney as Spielberg has now done. He didn't owe Kathleen Kennedy or certainly this studio anything.

Considering how Disney threw Spielberg's West Side Story under the bus (given a poor release slot and ineffective marketing), I don't blame him. Then again, DIsney did the same to other "Fox orphans" like Ridley Scott's The Last Duel and Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley (released THE SAME DAY as Spider-Man: No Way Home ). Unless it's something that can potentially make a billion worldwide, Disney has no interest in nurturing a film's theatrical potential to the fullest.

[AndyDursin]

I KNEW IT!!

The short of it -- apparently Favreau and Filoni, the Mandalorian guys, wanted to do some kind of "multi-verse" thing wherein the Rey/Kylo Ren sequels were SEPARATED from the rest of the Star Wars series. That would enable Luke, Han, etc. to have their happy ending. It's what they were building upon with these Mandarlorian and Ashoka series.

Kathleen Kennedy wants the "multi-verse" thing for her OWN purpose - to remake the original trilogy altogether with LEIA AS THE HERO. No Han Solo (would be replaced by a "female smuggler"). Luke shuttled to the background. You get the drill.

You can call it crazy -- but if you watched OBI-WAN you know it's really NOT crazy.

Bob Chapek and other Disney suits are apparently standing in her way...can only hope they use their muscle to do so.

[Monterey Jack]

Just funny that Lukas - who was the king of sour, "I hate everything" cynicism in the FSM print era - is giving a pass on Andor because Tony Gilroy made Michael Clayton...fifteen years ago.

"But if you've been watching kid's movies for decades, and are now a somewhat functioning adult...seriously, grow up and try to enjoy the good stuff."

https://www.lukaskendall.com/post/andor-premiere